Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Vikings beat the Bears a lot of help from the Bears

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

From Soldier Field, Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani talk about a win for the Vikings, an ugly showing on offense and an easy decision for the Bears now on Justin Fields Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to the Vikings and Chicago Bears absolutely played a football game at Soldier Field. It happened and it happened very much in the way that we expected to happen, which was ugly, strange, kind of miserable. But instead of the Vikings blowing it at the very end, they came through and they end up getting an interception winning the game against Tyson Bajent all right we need to get into all this Matthew Collar here as always Dane Mizutani from the Pioneer Press with me where would you like to begin the Minnesota Vikings are two and four and if you knew nothing else about how it went and I just told you they won you'd say oh all right well I guess the season's back on but uh the details do matter here do they not Dane they absolutely do and I think the saying

is a win is a win you'll take it whatever move on a win is a win they are two and four and that is a factual statement but there's no way you can exit this win get back on that team plane back to the twin cities and really feel good about what you just did because at the end of the day you struggled to beat an undrafted rookie quarterback named Tyson Bajet out of I don't even know where Shepard University Shepard University who was filling in for Justin Fields who who also did not play well. All of those things, and you were an interception away, just where Tyson Bain just throws the ball up at the end. If he doesn't throw that up, they might lose.

The Vikings might lose the game because they couldn't really stop the Bears with any sort of regularity on the ground in the second half. It did seem like that running game started to get going. As many plays as the defense made for the Vikings, there were just stretches where they couldn't even stop the Bears. And then on the flip side of that, the Vikings offensively in their first game without Justin Jefferson, nothing from this game showed you, okay, things are going to get better when they learn how to live life without Jefferson. I think they were two for 13 on third down, two first downs in the second half as a whole. Kirk Cousins looked uncomfortable.

The pass catchers not named Justin Jefferson were fine, unspectacular, I would say. So I just don't know how you can leave this game saying, okay, let's just bank a couple more wins and hopefully Justin gets back and we can really hit the gas because right now this team looks like a team that is going to just get throttled next week by an angry angry San Francisco 49ers team that just lost yeah I think that everything has to be looked at with context if the Vikings had had a really good start to their season and then justin jefferson went out and they were say three and two trying to go to four and two here today right and they

grind one out and it's a great performance by the defense when it mattered they get a bunch of turnovers i think we would say hey who cares like move on survive in advance anything you can do without justin jefferson in even if it's as ugly and as miserable and there's as many failed third downs as i've ever seen in my natural life uh but who cares if you're going to four and two but when you are going to two and four and trying to save your season and you're doing it against the team that has pretty much been horrendous this year outside of one and a half games. Remember, they barely were ahead of the Broncos at the end of the game and then blew it against Denver, who might be the worst team in the NFL. And then they beat Washington. Congratulations to you on that.

But this is not a very good team. It's not a very good team it's not a very good quarterback it's not a very good defense and to not be able to move the football against a defense that the broncos did and washington did washington moved the football against them and yet the vikings failed repeatedly on the ground repeatedly on third down and i think it really spoke to what they have been all season long which is an extremely uneven offense and the one factor that would always bring you back to life was justin jefferson and there was no it factor there was no jets to turn on because you did not have justin jefferson and they just repeatedly failed and a lot of it is you know kevin o'connell after the game is talking about close calls and how well you know if we only kind of caught that or you only kind of caught that but that's what

happens when you don't have greatness and i look jordan addison it would have been an amazing catch if he got there but there were so many checkdowns on third and long and just don't make a mistake type of football from Kirk Cousins that came this close came came a uh Bajent drive away from them having an all-time loss here at Soldier Field I mean it was way way way too close for comfort and there wasn't a whole lot here to give you confidence that there is some turnaround that is forthcoming wouldn't it have been something if Tyson Bajent was the reason the Vikings season went completely off the rails it's already off the rails they are two and four and like you said context matters this is a two and four football team that in both of their wins the win over Carolina two weeks ago and the win over Chicago

today they needed some wonky weird scoop, scoop-and-score touchdown. It was DJ Wanham two weeks ago in Charlotte. It was Jordan Hicks today on Tyson Bajan's third snap ever in his entire NFL life. Those are unsustainable ways to continue to win games. And in a lot of ways, those are the only reasons that the Vikings have wins under their belt right now. Who knows what happens in Carolina two weeks ago if DJ Wanham doesn't scoop and score? Who knows what happens if Jordan Hicks doesn't scoop and score today? I'll tell you what, the offense wasn't moving the ball. They weren't going to score points that way, so they needed the

defense to bail them out today. If you want to latch on to something, it's that the defense looked pretty good, but at the same time, they looked good against the Bears. They looked good against Justin Fields, Tyson Bajent. It's just overall, this team continues to show that they do lack that it factor. Like you said, the only it factor on this team right now is Justin Jefferson, and he's out for at least a month, maybe longer. And I just don't see how this team right now is Justin Jefferson and he's out for at least a month maybe longer and I just don't see how this team after watching them again and we've watched them for now for six weeks I don't see how they're much more than just an average football team and an average isn't going to get it done an average is maybe the worst thing you can be because they probably are average

enough where they're going to win a handful of games this year because there may be teams worse than them. But at the end of the day, where does that take you? It's just kind of a directionless, rudderless group right now. And I get it. We're not trying to pile on after a win. It's just the reality. They won the football game today, 19 to 3. But I don't think you can feel good today 19 to 3 but i don't think

you can feel good about it no i don't think so either i mean there was really nothing to grip on to aside from hey daniel hunter made some plays he's still good uh josh metellus had a great game he's become part of the defense we knew that and the bad luck good luck you know we're always keeping this meter now of who's got good luck, who's got bad luck. I would say that it has been a bit evened out in their wins. Like you said, two defensive touchdowns. But also, Kirk Cousins throws a interception slash fumble. I think it went down as a fumble.

Fumble. Right, to Tremaine Edmonds. He ends up recovering it. And then immediately, Justin Fields turns around and gives the ball right back. And there were so many opportunities for Chicago to win this game. So many times that the Vikings just gave them the ball back, but not even gave them the ball back, gave it to them quickly. Once again, an opponent absolutely dominated the time of possession. And this is one of the worst opponents in the entire National Football League that you can face but that was the same case in carolina where this defense yeah they made some plays

today but there's a different narrative if they don't catch the ball that pops up in the air for jordan hicks or if he doesn't pick it up and nobody's in front of him and the way that it sort of kicks around and we like to play that game with both sides of what you know went right for you won't went wrong well the bounce is bounced right to them today to get this win the same way they did in Carolina, where Bryce Young couldn't identify blitzes, which neither can Justin Fields. Bryce Young's got an excuse, though. We'll talk about that later. But the offensive inconsistency still existed with Justin Jefferson.

It was still frustrating on a weekly basis but they would always survive i thought after i think it was like the second play of the game they threw a 15 yard pass or maybe first play to jordan addison and i was i was like all right you've got my attention like let's see how this goes because we know addison's talent we know his ability to get open and let's let's see a big day from him let's see you know 100 yard day and i don't know if it was jordan addison or if it was kirk cousins and the one play you know okay bombs don't always connect you know they're very hard to convert and maybe it's a tight a tad bit overthrown i i don't know whatever like that's not a big deal to me it was really the fact that they could not consistently

get the ball to him and i'm sorry is alexander madison marshall falk because like why first of all why is he in the game the whole game he did not block a guy on the fumble interception uh that kirk cousins had i mean he sort of got a shoulder into him but it wasn't enough he didn't stick the guy in place he didn didn't run anywhere. He dropped the screen pass. The screen passes were ineffective. And yet I saw nary a Cam Akers. I believe there was one carry from Cam Akers. Make it make sense.

Like why there was so much Alexander Madison in this game and why he was so featured even in the passing game when Jordan Addison, KJ Osborne, the whole conversation this week was, hey, you know, you lose Jefferson, but there's lots of great weapons here. Cousins said that this was the best group of weapons he feels like he's ever had from top to bottom and yet could not get going with those weapons. And it doesn't give you a whole lot of belief that, okay, now you're going to go to san francisco green bay's got a better defense than chicago their field is just as gnarly as this one

is so that's why you come out of a win and i'm sure people will say okay well the season's still live and they could do this that and the other thing but relative the opponent what what's supposed to convince me that that's going to be the case yeah nothing because I hear what you said about Jordan Addison the first two plays of the game or whatever it was when he runs that like pretty much a stop route at 15 yards depth and catches the ball and it looked like maybe they could get things rolling and I think the way it was framed this whole week leading up to this game on Sunday was, yeah, we're going to miss Justin, but Jordan is really special and you're going to get to see something out of

Jordan and you're going to get to see something out of TJ Hawkinson. You know, he'll be more featured than before. He didn't have a target until like deep into the second quarter. I think he ends up finishing with 60 something yards. And a lot of that is aided by a pretty long catch along the sideline. But just across the board, there was nothing about this offense that really proved to you, okay, I can see growth. I can see steps that they can take over the next few weeks, and maybe they can start humming. It really does go back to, oh, this offense was always just kind of a stagnated group that had the best player in the NFL at his position to really take them over the top.

If Justin Jefferson was playing today, they'd probably blow the Bears out because he does something special, and he makes a few plays, and he goes for 150 even though they're double, triple, quadruple teaming him. When you don't have that player, they still need to prove to me that they are going to be able to move the ball. Because I remember talking to you this week, Collar, and it was, I don't know if the Vikings are going to know how to play offense without Justin Jefferson. And I don't know that they do yet. And right now, there's no indicator that it's going to get better I thought maybe the run game could be something you could rely on today and Alexander

Madison was not it I do not understand why can makers didn't get more tick because we've seen that guy he has a little wiggle he has a little pop I think he was a block away, and Kevin O'Connell alluded to this after the game. It was one of his only carries of the game, but he was one block away from really hitting it big. But how many times do you see Alexander Madison, and it looks like a seam's there, and then it just goes for like six yards, seven yards, gets tackled before the sticks. I think Alexander Madison is a good football player that's being asked to do probably a bit too much right now, and I think that's a big reason the running game has struggled.

I would like to see more Cam Akers moving forward, but maybe there's a reason we haven't seen him because I don't know what other reason there could be that in a game where the offense is struggling, you don't just try something different question mark like so right now you know you you walk away from this game particularly on the offensive side and just not feeling good at all you you can hold on to some things from the defensive side like we talked about but right now you're going to need to be able to move the football over the next month.

And then there's nothing that when the opponents get better suggests that the Vikings are going to get better at doing that. And this game, and usually we kind of work our way through the game and get to the big picture, but we'll get to the big picture now instead. It does not say to me you can't trade anybody. No. Now what it does say is, everybody else did you see daniel hunter oh boy gets after the quarterback like second round pick gets after the quarterback and maybe uh this jordan hicks guy he could still play that's a veteran leader out there he can help your team that would be more of my takeaway than oh oh they're back this was the real vikings this

was this was the team that you expected. And look, if they had come into Chicago and won 32 to four, I would not have been like, oh, okay, wow, season's back on just because we know the climb that they have to make in order to get back to the playoffs. But winning this way is just so wildly unimpressive that it shouldn't change the way that they feel about where their team is at about what their playoff odds are and yeah we're always going to look at point differential they've still got a negative point differential on the season overall they still have as middling of an offense as you can have in the nfl they don't convert third downs they don't generally they

were only in the red zone once today, but have not been a great red zone team. They're not an explosive running team without Justin Jefferson. They're not an explosive passing team. All that stuff should not change how we felt going into this, even though we talked about it as if it was a swing game for, Hey, if you lose, it's over. If you win the season's kind of back on a little bit but i don't really feel that way in fact i kind of feel like sort of in the middle because technically speaking yeah you've

got san francisco despite a bad performance by brock purdy your defense is not cleveland's defense by any means and then green bay yes you can win that new orleans lost to the texans today well i think is that who they played yeah like that like they can they can lose that they can win that game they could beat atlanta desmond ritter's still bad at football you can talk yourself into all these things but then you come back to you beat caroline and the bears who have a case for drafting number one and two next year by a grand total of 14 national football league points. Not great, not impressive. And I don't know what the answer is, because by this time,

the teams have kind of separated themselves, and also your team has kind of shown who they are. And when we're talking about Madison, the run game, and like for a minute there was, are they Dalton Reisner away? And probably not. We'll see if he's in it left guard now that Ezra Cleveland got banged up but they clearly are just not going to be a consistent anything and

especially if they can't run the ball very well which I think it's just time to start using Cam Akers a lot more yeah I do think Cam Akers should get more tick moving forward I would be surprised if he doesn't kind of stinks for him that if this is the game that he gets featured, he has to go up against that San Francisco 49ers defense because he's not going to look good against them either. But going back to your point about these guys looked good. Maybe anybody wanted Daniil Hunter? Two sacks today for Daniil Hunter.

He looked great. He's an impactful player that can help a team that is trying to win a Super Bowl win games. He can do that. That's a fact. And then it's someone you see it week in, week out. You're probably going to continue to see it. So if that's what this game was good for, if it increases Daniil Hunter's trade value, maybe that's the biggest win you take away outside of the actual win.

K.J. Osborne had four catches for 48 yards or something. I mean, I don't know what you're going to get for KJ Osborne, but he's a, he's a pending free agent. Maybe someone would give you any sort of pick for him. It is kind of that, you know, narrative still exists of should they sell should they be sellers at this deadline on on October 31st and and yeah normally a win would would make you step back and say well maybe they should reconsider this but nothing about today shows you that they should reconsider this um because I think each game moving forward we're probably going to be sitting in whatever press box we're in, whether it's U.S. Bank Stadium, Soldier Field, I don't know, wherever else we go, the Superdome. It's just going to be the same sort of rhetoric after each game because there is no path forward, I think,

of, okay, they're going to take a huge step here on offense or they're going to take a huge step here on offense, or they're going to take a huge step here on defense. The reason that we walk away from today feeling better about the defense has less to do with the Vikings and the talent they have around them, and more to do with the opponent. So if each week, how you feel about this team moving forward is hinged solely on who you play against, that's not a good football team. That's just you are kind of what you are, and I think we're going to see that over and over and over again because for six weeks they have shown what they are,

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They'll satisfy your fall cravings during the busy season without any hassle. Try their dietitian-approved calorie-smart meals around or less than 550 calories per serving or protein-plus meals with 30 grams of protein or more per serving. Head to factormeals.com slash purple50 and use the code purple50 to get 50% off. That is code purple50 at factormeals.com slash purple50 to get 50 off that is code purple 50 at factor meals.com slash purple 50 to get 50 off i also wish coming out of here that there was something really juicy to talk about that would be a statement we could use to talk about them going forward. But today they were who we think they are in so many ways. And I was kind of curious to see if we got proven a little bit different on that. Like if we got like, oh, well, okay, well, with Jefferson out,

they were able to do, you know, X, Y, and Z and really get rolling and so forth. And the fact that they weren't was kind of what everybody thought, that they weren't really going to be able to do that. And after the game, you know, Kevin O'Connell's like, oh oh I was happy with a lot of the decisions Kirk Cousins made and I don't know who that says more about like where the bar is for Kirk Cousins that this type of game where you average 5.8 yards per pass attempt his coach is saying that was pretty good was it I mean I guess for Sean Mannion that would have been been just fine. If he had started today, it would have been probably about the same performance. There wasn't a single special throw or special play that was made.

And when we talk about trading Kirk Cousins, there would have to be somebody who was convinced that there was a reason to trade for him. He hasn't been a difference making quarterback all season and no, I'm not blaming Kirk or whatever after a win but once again you hope that your quarterback can take like a little bit of a step forward with your big guy out and kind of step into that light and say all right I'm gonna be the one that makes the plays here and we got check downs to Brandon Powell on third down and long and like well okay that seems about what usually happens if Justin Jefferson is not a factor in the game so nothing was different what I would say about and I want to get into Justin Fields because to me that conversation is more exciting than talking about like what happened on Greg Joseph's blocked extra point

though I did call this in the Uber we were taking down Uber from the airport which is a long way to the stadium and I said you know I feel like kicking's been out of the limelight something's gonna happen with the kicking and it did but it didn't matter so almost mattered but it almost mattered that's what really one point loss was right there for the taking and when they scored i was just like soldier field but the soldier field curse is over once they put in the new turf it's just different. I want to say before we get into that conversation about Justin Fields and where the Bears are at and how they might benefit from this and we might go back someday and go, yeah, that Vikings game was the time that really made the decision for Ryan Poles and the Bears that it was over.

And how funny that it was the Vikings that turned that corner for them uh i do think brian floris is good at his job i think he only has so much to work with one of those things is daniel hunter who was just terrific in this game dj want him will really miss justin fields when he's a backup for the buccaneers two years from now but i think he's got good game plans i see a lot of quarterbacks who are not even there there was a little bit of this with the homes herbert looks pretty comfortable but most quarterbacks this year against the vikings have looked a little unstable at trying to figure out where things are going like where who's dropping back at one point harrison phillips dropped back and i went like, okay, well, sure. Well, let's do it.

Let's, let's confuse the heck out of everybody and have him drop back at coverage. I think that that is real. Even if Justin Fields couldn't spot a wide open receiver, if he was the only person on earth. Yeah. And, and maybe that's a good thing to latch onto because for the first couple of weeks of the season, you know, you look at the week one game against Tampa Bay where the defense looked good for a half and then looked pretty bad in the second half. You look at the week two game against Philadelphia where there was not an adjustment made.

The week three game against the Los Angeles Chargers where there wasn't an adjustment made. And you were starting to wonder, are these game plans is Brian Flores capable of making these adjustments but then you see the next three weeks and how it looks even last week against the Kansas City Chiefs I thought the defensive game plan worked and I think the fact that they're switching up these game plans week to week. This week against Justin Fields, it was clearly, let's confuse the heck out of him. Let's blitz him sometimes. Let's drop guys into coverage. Let's make him read a defense, which he cannot do. You see that the game plans are working. And just because they didn't work for the first couple of weeks of the season, I think that was more to do with the talent that Brian Flores has at his disposal

and not his ability to coach up a defense and scheme up a plan to make the other team uncomfortable. So yeah, I mean, the Vikings have someone in Brian Flores who, at least moving forward, I think if you get him some players, you're going to have a good defense. He was never going to be someone who could take the 31st ranked defense with all the talent they lacked and make them a top 10 defense, but we're going to see incremental steps forward and we're starting to see them. I think, yeah, they probably do have a good defensive coordinator on their hands who is going to continue to make offenses uncomfortable. Will that equate to wins? I don't know but but that's a good sign so the thing is for me is last year the bad quarterbacks looked good daniel jones correct not

good uh but he looked great earned himself a lot of money mike white career backup at best but not a guy you can really win with brought the jets back in a game versus the vikings look totally comfortable we have not seen the couple of into game versus the Vikings look totally comfortable. We have not seen the couple of bad quarterbacks that they faced look comfortable at all. And there's a baseline there where Justin Herbert and Patrick Mahomes and Mahomes didn't have the game of the century against them, but still they scored a good amount of points against the Vikings and that offense isn't that great. But the, times, Jalen Hurts looked a little bit shaky. Even at times, Baker Mayfield in the first half and then was more comfortable in the second.

But when we take the totality of this season so far, I think that they've been an average defense with below average talent. And that, to me, is a good sign for Brian Flores. And if you can make the bad quarterbacks look bad, well, I mean, that's a start because that's where you, I mean, that's where you get a lot of your wins in the NFL. There's only like nine teams that matter and all the rest of them you should beat if you're a legit team and you should cause problems for them. There's only 14 quarterbacks who can play.

Everybody else stinks in the NFL and you should win those games and you should hold them to 19 points and you should make them look bad. 13 points, I mean, and you should make them look bad as Flores' defense has done the last two weeks. So I have a lot of trust in him, but I also don't think this season's getting him a head coaching job. So in a way, like it could play out in their favor to have been kind of middling, but also we saw all the signs of things that could be really good with a little more talent and we'll see what happens with marcus davenport and i saw you know everyone's gonna say here he goes again he's hurt this was a this was a bad luck thing actually from davenport

this time but on the bear side tunnel vision fields can't see anything can't identify anything and the only way he can ever make plays is by running and scrambling. He doesn't make plays off schedule where things go wrong. And then he throws the ball to somebody like Mahomes or anyone with good pocket sense at all. And he's just a turnover machine waiting to happen. This, this is it for me. This is all I needed to see i wanted to give field some time because usually a team doesn't tank in someone's second and third years but dj

moore is legit that dude can play the catch he made from bajan at the end of the game where he just went up in between two guys caught it went down hard he's a great player mooney can play a little bit they got tight ends who could catch the ball two of them they could run the ball today i think fields just can't play i think it's over which means that now they're going to be in the running to draft caleb williams with the number one overall pick or drake may i guess if that ever becomes a discussion this this was the wow he had a great game and that oh no no no back to earth for the Chicago Bears that is the most interesting development that could have long-term implications

that comes out of this game yeah isn't that interesting that the Vikings today might be the reason the Bears decide yeah we do need a draft Caleb Williams. Because for the past two weeks, when Justin Fields in defeat, but looked pretty dang good against the Denver Broncos, who stink, by the way, he just looked good against a bad team. And then Justin Fields looked pretty dang good against the Washington Commanders, who also stink, and he just looked good against a bad team. I think there was some sort of, well, maybe Justin Fields is okay. Maybe we can fix this. Maybe we don't need to draft a quarterback.

Maybe this is something where if we just surround him with more talent, he can play the position and we can really take off in year three with him. No. And today was proof of that. But the fact that the Vikings are trying to hold on and scrap together this season, if the byproduct of that is that they just let the Bears convince themselves that they need Caleb Williams, and now you got to deal with that guy for a decade. I mean, frankly, this was probably they were going to come to that realization, whether it was this week or five weeks from now with Justin Fields. But this is probably the tipping point for me as well.

I know it is for you. Yeah, this guy just isn't going to be a good quarterback in the NFL. He can't read a defense. And you're right when you say a lot of these times when these mobile athletic quarterbacks break contain, they're keeping their eyes down the field, they can make a huge play happen because once they move that pocket or they make the first guy miss, there's a receiver running wide open in space.

Justin Fields doesn't see that guy because he's just running the ball, turning the corner and trying to eat up as much yards as he can with his legs. It was pretty much the only way he was effective today against the Vikings before he got knocked out. And I just don't see moving forward how the Bears are going to feel any differently about this guy because he's probably going to continue to kind of show you who he is. I have a couple more thoughts about things that happened today, but since we're on the subject, who would you rather be right now as a franchise, Vikings or Bears?

Probably the Bears, because I think I'm going to have a real shot at drafting Caleb Williams or Drake May, and then I'm going to have a really good shot at also probably being able to draft Marvin Harrison Jr. The only argument for the Vikings is you have Justin Jefferson, you have a future Hall of Famer, and there's no guarantee, even though we've crowned Caleb Williams as the best prospect since Andrew Luck, there's no guarantee, he turns out, there's no guarantee that Marvin Harrison is at any point in his career better than Justin Jefferson is right now. So maybe you could make the argument for the Vikings,

but I would rather be the Bears because of just honestly like the wonder or like the chance of, okay, what could we be down the road? We know what the Vikings are right now, and if they throw it in reverse and they can get themselves into the conversation for, you know, a franchise quarterback, maybe you could, you could change my mind. But right now I'd rather have the team that I'd rather be the team that could likely have picks number one and number two in the 2024 draft. Folks, if you've been listening to the show, then you know how much fun we have been having with prize picks this year. Just go

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Download the GameTime app, create an account, use the code INSIDER for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account, redeem the code INSIDER for $20 off. Download GameTime today. Last-minute tickets, lowest price, guaranteed. Yeah, and when you look at the Texans, you would have said six months ago or whatever, before the draft, oh, what a disaster franchise that is.

I mean, who would want to ever be the Houston Texans? And then, oh, I think you want to be the Houston Texans now. But that's, of course course they got the quarterback situation looks like pretty right with CJ Stroud and Will Anderson looks like a great player as well as you said no guarantees and of course we're doing this right after Caleb Williams had his worst game I implore you to go look at the time Peyton Manning threw four picks it does happen to college quarterbacks but uh i i mostly agree but the bears also have a long way to go for the players the vikings already have and i mean like derisaw jefferson i mean you know more is really good but he's not just a jefferson and then brian o'neill these are going to be long-term parts of this team but aside from that though when you start comparing the who are the great players the offensive tackles are great and fields is the offensive line doesn't do him a ton of favors

he makes them look worse i thought that bajan made that clear later in the game when he was dropping back finding guy to throw to letting it go and like they move an offense crazy how that works uh and i could see why they liked him actually aside from his wacky plays where he turned the ball over and tried to do too much. He actually was delivering what he was supposed to do on the offense and not just sputtering back there, which is worse evidence against Justin Fields. But the point just being that outside of two offensive tackles, which are very important, you go to the defensive side, you compare these teams player for player okay Jordan Hicks and Daniil Hunter are the stars of today's ball game are either these guys here one year from now probably not looking at you know where they are in their careers maybe Hicks continues to come back for veteran leadership

but certainly not Daniil Hunter with his his contract situation the possibility that he won't be here several weeks from now and he really you know is making an argument for any team come get me because i'm balling out once again now for the the second straight year coming off his injury so there is that case that the offensive line is a little more settled garrett bradbury is back and is continuing to play well and all that but aside from that you know i it's it is hard the only thing that the Vikings have going for them is historically the number one pick is not always the best quarterback. Sometimes they are and sometimes they're not. Recently we've seen Mahomes, Tua, Herbert, lots of good quarterbacks who were not the first overall draft pick turn out to be good.

But Lawrence and Williams are probably in that Andrew Luck elite prospect conversation so that this continues to be the race for which rebuild works better and there was no real corner turn for the Vikings today there would have been had they lost this game and it would have gone down as an all-time hilarious loss at Soldier Field but it might have been a corner turn for the chicago bears uh to think that okay now we absolutely need to do what needs to be done and they might just keep playing bajan the rest of the way if they know that that's where they want to be and last year we saw them basically do that in the final week of the season uh what is your feeling about TJ Hawkinson after today? Another drop, it looks like, or another.

Was it a hard catch? Was it not? Made a couple of plays, but in no way was the, oh, Jefferson's out. Now we can lean on our highly paid tight end. There's still something that's not quite working there in my mind. Yeah, the drop that he had had today and I'll call it a drop um it's another example of all the drops he's had where yeah it would have been a really tough

catch to make but yeah you're the highest paid tight end at least by average annual value you should make that that play um and there just hasn't been a lot of playmaking ability from TJ Hawkinson this year. So I leave this game where he finishes, let me look it up, with six catches for 50 yards. So I thought he was at 60 yards. He wasn't even there. This felt like an opportunity for them to really lean on TJ Hawkinson or make him like a focal point in the game plan. It's not fair what I'm about to say because Travis Kelsey is one of the best tight ends to ever play the game. But when the Vikings played the Kansas City Chiefs last week in a gotta-have-it drive, Patrick Mahomes threw it to him five times. They marched right

down the field. Travis Kelsey made a ridiculous catch that gained them a first down on third down and forced the Vikings to burn it, lose a timeout because Kevin O'Connor threw the challenge flag when he shouldn't have. And they marched right down the field and they scored a touchdown on the back of Travis Kelsey. In the game this past Thursday, Travis Kelsey had 100 yards receiving in the first half. Like, he is a difference maker tight end. The Vikings paid TJ Hawkinson like a difference maker tight end, and I'm not sure he is a difference maker tight end. The Vikings paid TJ Hawkinson like a difference maker tight end, and I'm not sure he is a difference maker tight end. I think we're supposed to believe he is, and I think there are things about him, his frame, his ability to get open, his ability to make plays at his size.

I think there are reasons to believe that he is a guy who can be that, but he hasn't shown us that yet. He hasn't shown us that he can be this guy you can lean on when the best receiver in football, you know, is hurt for a month. And he didn't do that today when I think this was a pretty big opportunity for him to kind of prove, yeah, I deserve the money I got and I'm going to be a playmaker for this team for a long time to come. Yeah. And I guess there are parts of me that wonders about with him and Addison just I mean how much is it that Kirk Cousins always seems like a tick off this year and this is every game where he has seemed just ever so slightly behind whether it was and now we're starting to rack up the number of times where this has happened

where these especially these third downs where he drops back and the protection is fine it certainly is against this bears defensive line all day the protection is mostly fine and you see guys coming out of their breaks and just to my eye it's like football like it's just you know what i mean like the the herberts and the mahomes and like on time quarterbacks you just think like this is where it should come out and then it doesn't and then it goes to brandon powell or it goes underneath uh to alexander madison on a third and long we're just like this can't really like that's who you're throwing to right now and i'm sure that when you look back at the tape you'll see okay well i get what he saw or why he didn't throw it but he's always had to be an anticipation thrower and it feels like that's not quite what he's trusting at this moment and i

wonder how much that plays into because every tj hockinson drop has been a dive a difficult caliber catch and i think the difference between him and the truly great tight ends and money is always going to play into it and so forth. You have to overpay when you sign somebody. I always looked at him as about the seventh best tight end league, fifth to seventh, somewhere in there. There's a big drop off after those elite guys. But I don't know that we ever thought TJ Hawkinson is a contested catch monster who's mossing people like travis kelsey does travis kelsey has some of the best hands i've ever seen in my life at tight end and all of these throws

have been just like a little bit off and the hockinson even talked about not being on the same page with him so look i mean we're this deep into the season you should be on the same page with guys but that's what i keep coming back to with a lot of these individual performances where we've seen the talent from Addison. We've seen the talent in the past from K.J. Osborne. We've seen it from T.J. Hawkinson a lot last year. And yet there's a lot of these throws where it's like Osborne's diving and can't quite get there.

And you go, oh, maybe he should have had that. Addison's diving. Maybe he should have had that. Butison's diving, maybe he should have had that, but the throw is just a little bit late. And I want to see how this develops through the rest of the season. I mean, next week could be pretty rough, but through the rest of the season with Cousins,

as there's this discussion and the Schefter report, he's not going to waive his no trade clause. Diana Rossini's sort of hinting that the Vikings might be interested in keeping him, which just does not seem realistic at all to me, but like that's sort of out there. How we feel about this and were we looking at the players who weren't catching the ball when it was more of the timing of when the ball was coming out? Or did we overrate these guys because you and me look good when Justin Jefferson's on the other side.

And I think that's a major part of the discussion as well. I don't really know right now we're going to get a bigger sample, but I honestly feel like I don't know. Yeah. And we are, we don't have to make those sweeping declarations yet. You're right. Because this next month is going to prove a lot of what we want to see because Justin Jefferson will not be there. Everyone, like you said, looks good when Justin Jefferson is taking two defenders,

three defenders away. But in the next month, I think we will learn how good is Jordan Addison for real. I think he's really good. But I also thought he was really good for the first five weeks because he was running wide open after he beat a guy one-on-one on the backside. He had a touchdown today, so I think Jordan Addison's a playmaker, but is he a guy? Is he a guy you can lean on moving forward? We're going to find out. Is TJ Hawkinson a guy you can lean on? Just because he was unspectacular today, maybe he really puts it together over the next four weeks with Justin Jefferson on IR but I do think it is a good point you make about Kirk Cousins and maybe he's kind of the common denominator holding some of these guys back because you can run the route or

be open and if you if the ball doesn't come out on time you're going to look worse in the end and I don't know if we're going to find that out at any point this year even if Justin Jefferson does come back maybe TJ Hawkinson is better than than I'm giving him credit for and he needs another quarterback to unlock that area of his game. I think, again, the Travis Kelsey, TJ Hawkinson thing, I probably should stop doing it because they're two different players and one is one of the greatest tight ends of all time. But I would venture to guess Travis Kelsey would probably look a little worse with Kirk Cousins as his quarterback too.

So maybe I should handicap that a bit, but I do expect the guy who gets the big contract when the other guy didn't get the big contract this offseason Justin Jefferson I expect the guy who did TJ Hawkinson to be more impactful than he has been and kind of be able to overcome even just maybe middling quarterback play at times I don't think that's too much to ask for a guy who's making the money he does, who is clearly a focal point of this build, this organizational build, with Kweisi Adolfo-Mensah kind of leaning in, making that trade last year, re-signing him to a big contract.

So I need more out of him, but I think you're right. We'll probably learn everything we want to learn over the next month or so when Jefferson's not on the field and I wondered about the age thing going into the season I've wondered about it for two years because of where players go historically who are like Kirk in their mid-30s I don't know if this is it or not I mean you have those great stats to start the season and maybe that will come back a lot of that's playing from behind and today there was a chance to start the season and maybe that will come back. A lot of that's playing from behind. And today there was a chance to play from ahead and really put the Bears away.

There was eight chances to put the Bears away and just bury them and say, good night. Let's move along. Let's have a very excellent, confident win. And instead, still a major part of the discussion that this offense that was supposed to be pretty legit has never been this year and then today looked flat out poor without justin jefferson if that's what they do next week they will lose by 40 points to san francisco so we will see where it goes from here um yeah it's a weird post game to do when it is a win but at the same time you feel like they left a lot out there uh and then we don't have answers

to the things we were maybe looking for answers for so but that's your post game from inside soldier field matthew collar dane mizzutani we'll be doing it again next week after monday night football it's gonna be late but we'll be doing it we'll be doing it from uh us bank stadium and then lambeau field after that so we'll be here for you every week and lots more to go as well on the channel as always. So thanks for listening and we will catch y'all later.