Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Vikings' offense showed what it could be against the Panthers -- but they nearly gave it away

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom try to wrap their heads around what happened between the Minnesota Vikings and Carolina Panthers in the Vikings' 34-28 win. How the offense came alive and Kirk Cousins led two very impressive final drives. Why KJ Osborn has played a key part in showing how good the Vikings offense can be ...but....they also struggled in the first half. The Vikings also let the Panthers off the hook with conservative decision making that kept Carolina in the game and allowed Sam Darnold to come back. Does this win eliminate the conversation about job security for Mike Zimmer? Does it give Kirk Cousins a good chance at being the Vikings' long-term QB? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, welcome to another post-game podcast in which we have to go, what just happened? And now we are at six games and in five of the six games, we have started the post-game podcast with what just happened. The Minnesota Vikings with a 34 to 28 win over the Carolina Panthers. And I have thought as we led up to recording this, Sam Ekstrom, about where I wanted to begin. And I just, I want to begin with the big picture of this and then we can get into all the other stuff. So catch your breath, calm down. And they're three and three. They have had good breaks and bad breaks.

No more talk of bad breaks. Not when you win the coin flip. Not when your receiver catches the ball and a tremendous, amazing catch by KJ Osborne reaches it out for a touchdown. No, no, no. You don't get to claim bad breaks anymore.

That's all over with three and three. It is exactly who you are. This is the definition of a team that is exactly equal with their opponents to the point where they cannot play a game where they pull away no matter how hard the other team tries to let them. And yet, Kirk Cousins, a man who has historically struggled so much with final drives, game winning drives, game tying drives, has this year turned into John Elway whenever given

the chance to lead these game-winning drives. And yet, Kirk Cousins, who put up well over 300 yards in this game, to be exact, 373, put together 12 points in the first half of this game. Fire Mike Zimmer was trending on Twitter in the first quarter and into the third quarter uh and and yet you come away saying everything that they've been was right here on display against the carolina panthers and the answer to the question is it good enough to beat dallas baltimore green bay la nope no it definitely is not so they have the bye week to deal with all of that but this this game was everything on display it was what you can be offensively it's what holds

you back offensively it's what you can be defensively it's how you can't rely on this defense to stop anyone when you really need them to be stopped. That's what I came away with. Three and three is absolutely the perfect record. That was the first thought that popped in my mind when KJ Osborne reached the ball over the end zone. Your thoughts, Sam Ekstrom. Well, first of all, I'm about two octaves lower today. Some broadcasting-related vocal cord trauma. So I'm limited.

On your point about three and three think of the four games that have come down to the final play you have won two of them now against the teams that I think are the two worst in Detroit and Carolina you lost the two early against teams that are better than we thought I mean Cincinnati's much better than we thought. I mean, Cincinnati's much better than we thought. Arizona might be one of the best teams in the league, right? So you lost against the better teams. You beat the worst teams. You're right in the middle. And then you split against Cleveland and Seattle.

Mike Zimmer said, even after beating the Lions, he said, yeah, you know, it's good to have these things even out. And you're right. They are even now. You've split your overtime games Greg Joseph makes a kick last week misses a kick this week you know misses a kick in week two but he made a kick in week one like Greg Joseph is basically splitting everything is evening out the universe has the Vikings right where they deserve to be. And I think they are what their record says.

And I think that if they were one game better, if they just win one of those first two, I think the perspective probably is a little different because there are those occasional glimpses. 90% was good today. I mean, there was a lot of good stuff, but it's decision-making, it's defensive lapses at bad times, it's the final two minutes of first halves, it's just that extra 10% that holds this team back from being a much better squad. And the fact that that 10% keeps popping up, and today it was like a special team's blunder against a team that had no business being in the game. They had no business being down two at halftime, let alone leading by five in the third quarter. And yet the Vikings gave them that opportunity. The Lions had no business being in last week's game. And yet the Vikings now two weeks in a row have

choked double digit leads in the fourth quarter against awful quarterbacks. I think we should just quickly rank the last three weeks, which, which quarterback was the worst between Mayfield golf and Darnold, because fortunately the Vikings went two and one they should have been three you know with the way those quarterbacks played and secondly how much do you attribute their awfulness to what the Vikings are doing defensively and how much is it that they're just bad and badly managed quarterbacks that's a really good question I thought that they played quite well against Jared Goff. They didn't play great against the run in the game against Detroit, but I've got more leeway for giving up

run plays. They didn't really stop the run in this game all that well, but Carolina just kept going away from it. I think that they pressured Baker Mayfield a lot better than they pressured Sam Darnold today. And I mean, both the quarterbacks though, really gave them opportunities. And so did the wide receivers. I don't know that I've ever in a national football league game that has been played since the year, say like 2000, I have seen that many drops. I really don't, I really don't think so because normally, you know, since the invention of the glove, they catch all of those passes i mean darnold put probably 10 different passes right on the hands of his receivers that just ended up on the turf

and and they didn't catch it and then dj moore catches one and gets it stripped away from him by xavier woods a good play by xavier woods but still they were doing everything they could to undermine sam darnold as well which i thought really played into this and where they ended up in terms of the final score and in terms of the final stat line for Sam Darnold. But the final stat line, and this speaks to your point, 17 for 41, 207 yards. That's five yards in attempt, one touchdown, one pick, and four sacks to go along with it. And this game is one in overtime. I mean, that, that just should never happen when you play that well against the opposing quarterback or the opposing quarterback steps on his own foot a bunch of different times.

I mean, the first play of the game is Sam Darnold making a preposterously horrendous decision to throw an interception to Bashad Breeland. So Breeland, I guess you could get off his back for a week, but he threw it right to him. And, uh, you know, the fumbles, the drops, the poor play calling by the Carolina Panthers, who by the way, I don't want to hear any broadcaster ever again, ever, ever, ever say that Joe Brady is a genius. Joe Burrow is a great quarterback in the NFL. Jamar Chase and Justin Jefferson are two of the great receivers in the league. That's why Joe Brady's LSU team was so good.

Please stop with that. The whole broadcast along, wow, Joe Brady, I mean, he's just this super genius, and he's drawing up this great offense that's doing nothing. But anyhow, I mean, I think that it's been 50% good defense and 50% these quarterbacks are bad and their receivers are bad and they just did not play even to their own capabilities. But I also think that the last two quarterbacks they played in two years are backups in the NFL. I don't think Jared Goff and Sam Darnold are starting still they deserve credit for playing overall pretty well but again in the biggest moments this defense is yet to really come

through for them really at all this year in big moments and I think that's pretty concerning when you have the next two quarterbacks are named Dak Prescott and Lamar Jackson that's not Jared Goff and Sam Darnold. No. And you know, you also went plus two in the take give, and you were still in this situation. It was unbelievably reminiscent of the Seattle drive last year, um, where they, they, you know, traveled 90 plus yards with two fourth down conversions along the way. And oddly, Mike Zimmer just continues making the wrong decision. And I don't know if it's all his fault. I think it's more of a hindsight thing, but when he decides to blitz, you know, Kyler Murray hits him or, or, um, you know, today it was Darnold hitting more on that sideline throw, or he decides to play coverage and they burn them.

Um, you know, even today when they decided to play coverage, Mike Zimmer criticized that they were too far off the receivers. They gave up the 42 yarder to Thomas. So the, the role of the dice that Zimmer takes continues to kind of come up the wrong way in those situations. And I don't know, like if this is an indictment on the defense as a whole,

if it's just coincidental, if it's coaching or what it is. Because when I see the dominance for 55 minutes, I have a hard time not believing that that's real. I think it is real. But the fact that Darnold made two dynamite throws on the final drive after looking awful all day, I don't know, I guess you just tip your hat to him and say he was bound to do it eventually. I think that there are issues defensively. I'm not freaking out, I guess, as much as some about the late game meltdown today. I think if you continue to put teams in fourth and longs,

good stuff will eventually happen. You know, this is sort of an isolated deal, trying to look at it big picture. Um, and the fact that the Vikings won, you know, does allow you, I think, to view it a little more positively that, okay, there were some good things on defense. They were opportunistic. Um, Dalvin Tomlinson continues to look good. The, you know, Anthony Barr looks healthier. Patrick Peterson isn't hurt badly.

He only had cramps. That's a good thing. Bashad Breeland doesn't look horrible anymore. So you can spin this a little more positively if you're the Vikings, knowing that you still have to play much more complete football coming out of the bye. You have to play better on special teams.

You have to be more consistent on offense and try to put the boot on the throat once in a while. Like we're not having any of these conversations. If the Vikings do a couple of things differently. Number one, continue going for two. Like people are like the Vikings shouldn't have chased the points after they missed the first one yes they should it's incumbent upon going for two multiple times that eventually you hit because it's a 55 60 chance that you do and you have to keep doing it to allow the percentages to play out if the Vikings just go for two one more time and get it

they might be up by nine, and then suddenly the Panthers can't tie them, and it's not a big deal. Mike Zimmer confessing how bad the wind was and how they left Greg Joseph with a 47-yard field goal when the wind was bad. Well, that was kind of their doing. They allowed that to happen. Same deal with the 50-yard kick, leaving the kicker with these non-ad advantageous attempts when your offense was churning. I mean, the running game was great in the second half. Kirk Cousins was locked in in the second half. So boot on throat instinct is horrible on this team continues to be awful.

And that's an intangible that will will kill you against better football teams. So it's really wild to look at the box score after this game and say that there are criticisms, but let's go through them. So Cousins throws for 373. Delvin Cook runs for 140 in, I would call, an heroic performance. I mean, considering... And heroic, I love it. And heroic performance. I mean, he was fantastic. Really? They

stuffed them the first couple of times, the rest of the game, he was Delvin cook. He was really good. And they did this crazy thing. It's wild. I don't know where it came from, but they threw 27 passes to either Adam Thielen or Justin Jefferson. And lo and behold, it worked 11 catches for Adam Thielen, 126 yards, Justin Jefferson, eight catches for 80 and Hey, KJ Osborne, we'll let you continue your victory lap. But look, this is why we go to every OTA practice. This is why we go to every mini camp practice. So we can tell you before it happens, the KJ Osborne is looking good. Okay.

Just saying, but KJ Osborne gets six receptions for 78 yards. So your top three receivers end up together with 25 catches and the vast majority of the yardage and a few other people chip in like Tyler Conklin with a big reception. This is what everyone wanted to take the punt block for them to all of a sudden decide okay we've really got to get going and push the ball downfield to jefferson throw a ball up to him on a fade route once again he comes through with a contested catch adam thielen's touchdown is truly an unbelievable grab and maybe redemption for that non-catch in 2017, but he's got receivers and even KJ Osborne here with multiple fantastic catches that Cousins is getting from his wide receivers. And guess what? Always does from these guys. He has never been let down by his top two wide receivers in the whole time that he has been

a Minnesota Viking. So if you were looking for this week for them to come out and say, we are throwing the feeling we are throwing to Thielen, we are throwing to Jefferson, we are throwing to KJ Osborne, they did it and they did it a lot and they succeeded a lot in the second half of this game. The first half of this game, there were so many things that undid drives. There were penalties. There were runs when there shouldn't be, as there always are. And then, as you mentioned

anytime they had a chance to just close this thing out after the throw to Tyler Conklin I thought oh this is this is great this is so deserved because Carolina kicked that field goal when Carolina probably probably should go for a touchdown there to try to win the game in regulation and go for it on fourth down like I don't know what the numbers say. That's what I'd be thinking if I were Carolina. But they kick a field goal to cut it to eight. Okay, great. Close this out. And instead it's, oh, we got to the other side of the field.

Now everybody freeze. Don't move. We're in the other side of the field. Don't mess this up. And there has been that stiffness to this team. As soon as they cross the 50 a lot of times or it's like ah we're in field goal territory let's make sure we just get the field goal and i think it was what run short pass run missed field goal and and why that happens when you have

thelon jefferson and now i'm going to throw in osborne as well um i i'm not sure and i think that that's the thing that you still come out of this game with all the big statistics they had thinking about is, well, if you sort of reorder these numbers, you can put up like 50 points in this game. And yet you, you put up 28 in regulation. It wasn't enough to hold them off. And so you sort of left the door wide open for the other team once again, because you refuse to push the gas pedal down. And you mentioned it.

Are we being aggressive this week? Are we not flip a coin? I guess we're not, you know, and not going for two to go up nine. I mean, that's an easy one. That's an easy one because no team would go. I mean, okay. Detroit would go for two because there's tremendously bad and their season's over already. So they just didn't care last week. But if Carolina scores there, they kick the field goal. They play for overtime. If you miss the two point conversion, if you go for nine points and get it, the game is

over. There is no coming back from that. And they decided not to. The inconsistency of aggressiveness and the inconsistent decision-making. Once again, what a whack-a-doodle end of the first half. We're going to throw. Now we're going to run, but we're going to call timeout. Okay.

Ways not to score at the end of a first half. So my question to you is, does this, do you think that this offense has the capability to be really, really, really good and are being held back? And this is a leading question because I do. And I think that's what happened today. Yes. I think today was a little bit like Cincinnati,

where the penalties were a huge problem. 11 penalties, 98 yards, offense and defense, honestly. I mean, on defense too, they kept giving the Panthers life um though the one thing this offense is not good at is resiliency from penalties they kind of wave the white flag and it happened on that you know that last minute drive in the second quarter where oh one penalty let's just take the air out of the football and get to the locker room you know timeouts in our pocket, too. Who cares? That's frustrating.

But I think as you saw, too, like in the Cincinnati game and today, when you don't have the penalties and you decide to open things up, you are really good. And we were hoping for a more aggressive approach today off of the horrible Lions performance. And I think we saw it. And I feel like it was a little bit Seattle-esque where they sort of threw to open up the run a little bit. I felt like once they started working it downfield and the crossing routes were open all day. I mean, that Carolina defense looked much more porous than we had been advertised. And that opened things up for Dalvin Cook really nicely.

I mean, he was excellent in the second half once the Panthers had to actually start defending the whole field. And I thought that was a really good offensive approach. So yeah, you still nitpick though, once they get inside the 40, you can't rely on Greg Joseph to constantly make these 50 plus yard field goals.

And as you saw today, he finally missed one 50-plus, and he missed another one wide right. That's an issue, obviously, for him with that wide right nonsense. And I don't know what to make of Joseph. I still don't. I still don't know if he's a good kicker, if he's unflappable, flappable, mentally tough. I don't know what he is. But I think that this offense and this defense both showed today why they should be taken seriously and also why they can turn themselves into a laughingstock pretty quickly. I mean,

it was all on display. So can you use the buy to evaluate and do an even deeper self-scout and figure out what's ailing you? And go into that Dallas game with the mentality that, okay, we are lucky to be here. We're kind of playing with house money. We might not deserve to be 3-3, but we're going to take this opportunity to start making up ground. Because I think they're one game behind where they should have been at this point if you beat Dallas you are getting on a better track um so they got to take advantage they've kind of been given a second life and they absolutely need to to take advantage of it to save you know sort of this regime I think and once again caller does that overtime

touchdown save people jobs I think that's once again, caller, does that overtime touchdown save people jobs? I think that's a legitimate discussion. Folks, football season is in full swing, but we've got basketball and hockey getting rolling as well. And SodaStick has got you covered. You have to see the moose t-shirt designs for Marcus Foligno. You could also get your hands on the very popular dollar bill Kirill shirts as well. on the basketball side the design with three wolves howling at the moon perfect for the spooky fall season and the design with the wolf carved into the state of the minnesota is just awesome it's very cool stuff and hey for you college football fans check out the tanner morgan t-shirts as well soda stick has tons of

hats and hoodies with all their great designs on them. You will love it. Go to SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K. Check that out today. Use the promo code PurpleInsider for free shipping. And also follow myself and SodaStick on Twitter for our giveaways. And I think that it does because we went into this game and I had heard both sides of this. I had heard by week, you know, the Wilfs are going to get together. I had heard, well,

they're probably going to give them longer than that two and four isn't a season being over. See how they do against that tough stretch. So I wasn't really sure whether it would be the case or not, but blowing a game against the lions and needing the last second field goal. And then blowing a game like this, where the opposing quarterback and the opposing offense is so poor. And as you said, that defense, a paper tiger, yeah. Paper tiger for Carolina. That is a defense that clearly played the Houston Texans and New York jets. That is, and Philadelphia Eagles, by the way, who don't have a good offense either. Like that's who they've played. and that's more reflective of their defense,

I think, than their talent. They really didn't pressure Kirk Cousins that much. They had decent coverage at times, but did not look like a unit that even made things all that tough for the Vikings. It was more of just, like you said, they found ways to undo themselves. Lack of aggressiveness when they got on the other side of the field at times. Penalties, especially what did Ole Udo end up with like three or four holding penalties in a single game. Those things will undo drives anytime.

But I don't believe, am I correct in saying they did not sack Kirk Cousins? Yeah, that's right. Kirk Cousins was kept clean the whole game. How did Kirk get away? Like, didn't you see a strip sack happening on that final drive where burns just like strips it and scores that that happened in my vision i saw it happening and then kirk was running up field that made no sense and i thought if you're brian burns why wouldn't you just take him to the ground like why are you he seemed to reach on the other side of cousins for the ball and like hold his hip with one

hand. Like they were at kind of a dance there and he just missed the ball. And then cousins is running. And it's like, this goes for how both teams really desperately tried to give each other the game. Because right there, if Brian Burns gets that sack guaranteed, the Vikings are punting that away because when they have sacks and they have penalties, they very rarely overcome them, which is another criticism that goes along with this game for the offense, despite the great numbers is how many drives were sort of stalled for one reason

or the other. But back to the point about the, um, the jobs. Yeah. I think that this win puts that conversation on the back burner for some time. Because even if you lose the next two, they're really great opponents. Then you have Green Bay. If you get a win there, you sort of bounce around 500. Then nobody, no big changes could possibly be coming. So I think that these last two weeks, these final drives, Kirk Cousins probably saved people's jobs

because if you blow it to the Lions and then blow it in the same fashion to the Carolina Panthers and lose both of those games, we're talking about a team that's one in five once again, and there's no real reason to go forward with this. And so, you know, I sort of pull back a little bit and think about like, if they get to the end of the season and something like this offensively is happening on a weekly basis where it's not perfect, but they're still very good and putting up big numbers. And they use that offensive power to beat some good teams and they get through that tough part of the schedule and they end up with something like 10 and 7, which is where I initially projected them. This is going to be really hard to talk about, about going forward. You know, if they get into the playoffs and they overcome these things and they're driving their success on offense and cousins is playing great.

Like, where do you go after that? So there is so much now still to be determined, but I think the conversation, and I'll even say this after today, I think even the conversation about the quarterback's future is on the back burner for right now because Kirk Cousins overall in these first six games last year he led the league in interceptions at this point this year he's one of the NFL's best quarterbacks and you could not have asked for anything better from Kirk Cousins today I mean he he didn't turn the ball over he didn't take sacks he got the ball out quickly he threw accurate passes to all of his receivers.

And he leads not, I mean, he led really two game winning drives in this game in which he has done week after week. So it's like you once again need the whole picture of cousins in the whole season. And I think we're at that point now, barring a complete disaster in the second half. I think we're at the point where we're talking about a full season assessment and the discussion of people's jobs for now goes away. But I very much think that there would be a meeting tomorrow if they had lost this game where people had a very tough discussion

about what they were going to do if they had fallen to two and four and blown a two score lead again to another very bad football team, which just quick side note, quick side note. Yeah. At the beginning of the year, when we're making all these predictions, some have been right. Some have been wrong. Los Angeles Rams. They're good. I wasn't sure they would be. But I had Carolina is maybe the worst team in the league. They're not, but I think they will be. I think at the end of the year, they're drafting like fifth or sixth after what I saw today. I don't think that team is going anywhere. So I'm going to, I'm going to stick with that take and

say they got a lucky part of the schedule, but your, your thoughts on the discussion of people's jobs after this. Yeah. First of all, I think you're right. I mean, I think some of those teams that started hot that we didn't love are coming back to the pack oak um less not low not Oakland Las Vegas being another one um Denver being another one but I think that when we remember talking to Ben Gessling and like Mayor Drune on a round table where I posed the question to him I said if you have a 2019 repeat, 10 wins, Kirk is very good, make the playoffs, maybe win a game, does that earn him more years? And Ben said yes. And it's hard not to agree with him. And especially if you consider getting to 10 wins after the start they had, that would mean winning 10 out of 15 games. It would be hard to

move on from that. This is a very good version of Kirk Cousins, and I don't want to have too much recency bias. It was rough the previous two weeks, and it was rough in the first half today, but his ability to consistently and dependably lead these late game drives is a game changer, right? I mean, the box scores were always good in the past. But his ability now to work the ball down the field and get you a guaranteed 40 yards and at least a field goal attempt. And then today to finish it off with a touchdown when you knew your kicker was struggling. That's admirable. And that is the extra bit that we needed to see from Cousins. Like, if you were asking, okay, what does Kirk need to do differently?

Because he can't become a mobile quarterback. That's not really him. He can't develop a stronger arm. That's not really possible. Can he be more dependable in the fourth quarter? Yes. So he's done that. He's added that element

to his game. He seems to have added a little more, a little more pocket awareness, a little more mobility. That's good. He's turning it. Oh, he's fumbling less. That's good. Like all of these things are good. Um, so the discussion does need to be had. If you do end up sort of rising above and getting to that 10 win plateau, still a ton of work to do, a ton of work to do. But at this point in time, I kind of still feel like if the Vikings lose games in this tough stretch, we're going to look at the defense more than the offense. Don't you get that sense that, I mean, we talked about paper tigers on defense. There might be a little bit of that to this good run the vikings are on

defensively you know because they have played such bad opponents and they're probably producing some of that awfulness but also you're just getting you're being given gifts when a team drops 10 balls like they did today um baker mayfield gave you a ton of gifts with inaccurate throws to open receivers. So I do have some reservations, especially with the way the run defense continues to give up pretty decent chunks on the ground. Whether it's sustainable defensively, I think it is sustainable offensively a little bit more. So Kubiak's got to make some adjustments. Um, you know, and Zimmer defensively has to make some adjustments and we'll see who does a better job of that after the bi-week. Yeah. I think, um, circling back to what you said about Kirk Cousins, that one to me is the

same place as Mike Zimmer right now, which is just so much is still be to be decided because Cousins has had runs of really fantastic play in his career. 2019 is a great example of that, where they got to 6-2 on a blazing hot run for Kirk Cousins and ultimately finished 10-6, where they came up short against good teams and important games down the stretch, and there's going to be a lot of those to come. This was not a great team that you were playing against.

He played tremendously well, but this is not someone that you're going to see in the postseason. It's a team that's still rebuilding and maybe has poor coaching and a poor quarterback and their top player on offense was out and the receivers refused to catch anything. And by the way, their offensive line is quite bad. Also, they were doing they got called for holding a couple of times, but I think they probably had more than that in the tank in this game. And so I think that the way that Cousins has performed so far this season is very much admirable, especially in those big situations where he's just trusted his receivers.

And it's almost like Clint Kubiak. It's like he sort of has these moments of blackouts where he forgets to be aggressive and has great receivers. And then all of a sudden goes, oh, yeah, I remember we do. It's a big situation. Maybe you should throw it to Jefferson and Thielen. And then again, KJ Osborne emerging as maybe more than a Jarius Wright, which I thought was sort of the bar. But although this was Jarius-like where he didn didn't have a bunch of catchers during the day and then came up at the biggest points. But with Cousins, you need to continue with the sample size

to know, is it really better? Because they came into this game ranked 19th in scoring. And if through 15 weeks, they're right in the middle of the league still, and they're like 15th, and you sort of have one good week, one bad week. And, you know, maybe there's regression on the game winning drives. You don't get them in a couple of these games.

Then we could feel very much like, oh yeah, I mean, that's cousins and this is who you're going to be. But if the offense uses, this is a jumping off point in the second half to get to rising up that ranking to be a top 10 offense, then I think that discussion is very much more in play about what they want to do with him in the future if he plays like this. I think it's just sort of early to be talking about that, though we'll discuss it more throughout the week, but sort of circling back to this game. When we talk, we talk so much about Zimmer cousins and those two and where they're at. And you mentioned, you know, the defense and being good enough to win a lot of games.

If they play like that, no defense in today's NFL is going to be perfect. You need to be good enough. The last few weeks they have been probably more than good enough but the boneheaded mistakes on this team have become a thing that I think continues holding penalties I'm not going to say they're going to block many more punts this year but missed field goals blocked punts holding penalties gaffes when you need a defensive stop. Like, I think that the definition of a team that's up and down is just like this, where you get a great play from Xavier Woods, and then you get a not great play where somebody's running open

down the middle of the field for a huge game. Or you get a great coverage by Patrick Peterson, and then Cam Dantzler gets burned, and it results in a huge play that leads to a touchdown. Like, I think that's another part of who they are. I don't know how you fix that part that they're going to commit penalties, especially the holding is an issue. Hey, if you don't give up sacks, would you give up holdings?

Well, it's the same. But Brian O'Neill didn't give up a sack, which keeps your story today more relevant. It does. It sure does. About purpleinsider.substack.com very good story by the way why brian o'neill does not give up sacks but um i guess i wonder what you think of that because that was it was such a huge part of this football game when you look at statistically they absolutely ran the panthers out of their own building and yet it was the the continued gaffes that have been

a definition of this team that I don't think you can just coach out with some sort of drill throughout the bye week. Well, you look at some of the guys they signed and their track records, Bashad Breland has been, he's been like good at the high end, maybe a little bit above average and pretty bad at the low end. So, and same with Xavier Woods, his year last year was pretty subpar. So when you bring in players that have shown that they can be pretty good and also pretty bad, and then you get inconsistency from them, that should not surprise you at all. It shouldn't. So the fact that that's happening is probably who they are. It's who they've signed. Your system is not going to make everything better

because you're still going to wind up, especially in the secondary with one-on-one assignments. I mean, an offensive line can kind of work as a unit, a defensive line can kind of work as a unit, but those guys in the secondary are going to be susceptible at times. And I think it's huge that Patrick Peterson is not hurt worse because I think he's actually been quite good for a large part of this year. A couple breakdowns, but mostly very good. Cam Dantzler has been OK when he's played, but also when he makes mistakes like he did today on fourth down, you know, that kind of makes you scratch your head. And Mike Zimmer seemed a little peeved about that during his post-game presser so i think there's going to be the and offensive line which you addressed too um did you expect them to be perfect all year

no you're gonna have ups and downs there as well christian derisaw could be the kicker that pushes them to be above average but you also need ole Udo to keep holding up his end of the bargain because he started holding up the bargain. Yes. Yeah. I wish I could say that was intentional, but it wasn't. Um,

I think that if you've got Derrissaw and O'Neill suddenly bookending at a high level, um, that's solid. Um, Rashad Hill, God bless him. Probably not going to play again this year

unless Derrissaw gets hurt um Garrett Bradbury is still going to have those those times where big defensive tackles bulldoze him and I I think that Bradbury's on the whole he's been pretty decent you know it's just that those those strong defensive tackles are gonna create situations where he's forced to hold or give up a sack. And this offensive line has its warts too. So you're going to be in more of these games. Like I would expect the Vikings to continue to be right there at the end. And then it comes down to who executes better down the stretch and against quarterbacks like Herbert Prescott Rogers Jackson., Jackson, that's going to be harder

to come out on top. Yeah, no, I, I very much agree. And, uh, even though Sam Darnold was sacked a few times, it felt like the pass rush was neutralized a lot throughout this game. And Darnold would just be sort of looking around like he didn't know what was supposed to happen. And I think, um, you know, maybe that genius offense wasn't giving him a lot of easy answers and then people were dropping passes. Um, but yeah, I just don't think that, um, like, I think that they're failable in terms of defense that we've seen other teams run by Mike

Zimmer that were not really failable. It reminds me of like the 2019 defense where it was good enough, but it could also have a tough night. It could also have a tough quarter. It maybe didn't shut everyone down on final drives and things like that. And that's where they are. And I think all things considered where their rankings are going to be, will look very good in the bi-week, but we have not seen true tests. I wanted to, um, before we sort of put a bow on this, I wanted to talk about just, just like the odd, strange, weird moments in this football game and just how many of them there were, uh, what, what in your mind was the weirdest thing that happened today? Like I, I couldn't decide because I thought in terms of weird stuff,

I've got a low key one that I think eventually is going to get them, but we'll see on a fair catch. The ball just randomly bounced right off of DD Westbrook, right up in the air. And it is one of those like where slow motion, where you just envision someone just grabbing it and running it for a touchdown, which I'm not sure is actually legal or if that works that way, but, uh, it just like went through my, and then he just grabbed it. It was just like,

Oh, nothing to see here. And every single week is a circus with DD Westbrook in terms of like, when is he going to fumble or run backwards? Or it's just this, was a that was a weird one to me um you know the the fumble by dj moore the drops like there was just so many of these kind of strange bizarre bounces in this game that it was as messy as gophers huskers was on saturday yeah so westbrook catches punts in like the most precarious positions, and sometimes I think his gunners are just running into him too, which is weird, and maybe that's a Ryan Ficken thing, but look at the Vikings' fumble count on the box score.

Eric Kendricks recovered one, Tomlinson recovered one. Okay, so some of these are good ones but Jefferson loses one Kirk fumbles when did Kirk fumble he got strip sacked and it bounced back to them remember it bounced off of Ezra Cleveland was that no no that was his throw no that was incomplete it's the lateral yeah the lateral oh the lateral right yes that's what I mean yeah when I say this game had all sorts of bizarre things I don't know that I've ever seen a quarterback try to throw the ball away and literally fumble it backwards by launching it backwards out of bounds.

I mean, I've seen guys throw it backwards by accidents. They're getting sacked, but not just, Hey, I'm trying to throw it away and throw it backwards for a seven yard loss. No, this was kind of a 2018 thing whereirk a couple times did that on balls that were actually inbounds oh yes yeah and i think like rock thomas might have been involved and i think covered most of them but yeah that was a weird that was like 2018 kirk bad um and dalvin fumbled along the sideline theelin had to recover it um oh, Chris Herndon making a catch. How weird is that?

It was like a blue moon. That's right. And I think Shai Smith, who had not played all year, ends up with their touchdown, which was kind of odd. Like the handoff. Was he the one who got a handoff that ran for a touchdown? Shai Smith? Maybe it wasn't a handoff. Hubbard had to rush it.

It was Hubbard, but I think he got a big play. Shai Smith got a big play shy smith got a 16 yard run on that first drive but yeah this thing i mean there's two point two point conversions all over the place uh yeah it had a lot going on so what here's what i want to say to wrap this up and you give your final thoughts as well and uh much respect to you grinding it out with the vocal issues you've done a great job thank you you. I want to say that one, if you come here every Sunday to Vikings football for entertainment,

man, you have not been shortchanged this year. You have gotten every bang for the buck. You have gotten heart racing, sweating, whatever for almost every single game. Even Seattle had moments in that game, but every other game has come down to the very end. And so if you're looking for entertainment, we could say this about the first part of the season.

It has been all sorts of crazy, entertaining. And at the end of each game, you and I split back forth with our instant reactions for the website. It's a rewrite every week it has been uh for us so that's that's a thing uh the other the other thing i would say is um that as we sort of consider this season to be a reckoning year where you go this way or you go that way there's no continuing um just to sort of stay in the middle. You're either staying with these guys or you're moving on from these guys. We get to find out in the second half of the season, like this sets up for great, potentially

great drama in the second half of the year and a while then in the season. And this last week of spending the entire time talking about like, yeah, dude, they could be fired if this goes sideways. And then having it be so close is why the NFL is King, I think. And so I'm excited about that, Sam. I am excited to, to track this and see where it goes. And I'm going to put the conversation about people and their jobs to the side after this game. And we'll see if it comes back or if it never comes back. And it will be very interesting for you and I

to follow the rest of this. And from that perspective, a win for Vikings fans, keeping this interesting is big for them, i think because now sunday night football against dallas matters can you imagine the misery of being two and four trying to lead up to that game hype it up oh yeah come to the stadium big game everybody watch two and four like this makes it a lot of halloween costume yeah right. Right. Is it a bag over your head? That's not the case. And man, we are this close to it being the case. So what a day.

What a wild and weird day. The Vikings are now the Kevin Clark tweet, which says the Seahawks have never played a normal game. Oh, yeah. That's the Vikings right now. Like they were. You talk about diverging paths. If the left path is complete tank, blow it all up, the right path is you overcome, get over the hump. They were just going down the middle, started kind of drifting maybe off to the left, and the rumble strips hit. And they're like,

whoa, get back on course. We got to go straight down this road. We're going to wait till the last possible second to commit to a path. And, um, I think we'll find out which way that path goes probably within, I don't know, five weeks. We'll have a little more clarity. Yeah. And, uh, just one more, one more thought is just what today showed in the second half is you have the offense to do it. So there are no excuses for why you spent on the defense. You've got the talent on the defense and you have this, the talent and a quarterback playing extremely well. The running back is back healthy. You have not had a single dinger cut on the offensive line. They've played better than they've played in years. So there is no excuse for why you can't have that offense drive weekly

success. And we can hold the team to the standard that we expected when we started the season. And when they start, when they signed Kirk cousins, that would be my final thought. So we'll have much more to say by week. We'll do another episode. We'll have some interviews. We'll do the whole thing again. And I mean, you need two weeks to recover from these last two games. So great again, break it down again with you, Sam, and we will talk soon. Thanks for your time. Thanks, buddy.