Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Vikings played their best game in a long time and beat the 49ers

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani of the Pioneer Press talk about a crazy 22-17 win for the Vikings over the San Francisco 49ers, why this was one of Kirk Cousins' best games as a Viking, how Jordan Addison stepped up, why the O-line proved their worth and Brian Flores rose to the challenge. And what it all means for the trade deadline and future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 buddy welcome inside u.s bank stadium matthew caller dame mizitani the pioneer press as we are still standing here a little bit stunned after the minnesota vikings shocked the san francisco 49ers who came in a bigger favorite than any team has been at u.s bank stadium since the vikings signed kirk cousins and the vikings walk out with not only covering but with a victory and i know there will be a lot of you who want to talk about what this means what it means for the trade deadline what it means for the future are they going to extend kirk cousins now drafts let's talk about them. But that is not what this post game show is going to be about because Dana, we have to begin with talking about Kirk Cousins performance here tonight.

And there were some red zones that were still bothering him after the game, rightfully so. There were some drives that needed to be finished off. But when we walked downstairs, I asked John Krasinski, our colleague from the athletic, like, which one is this like, John? Like, which win is this like for the Vikings? And he had a good one right offhand. The win over the New Orleans Saints in the playoffs where Kirk Cousins played great ball and came away with a win there.

And this is probably the most challenging win. I don't feel like it was like the Buffalo win because that was so crazy and random and they had to come back from that game and they played bad and then they played good. This was a complete performance from the Minnesota Vikings behind an excellent, excellent showing from Kirk Cousins. Jordan Addison, we can talk about that draft. That's a pretty good pick there, Jordan Addison. And I don't know how this franchise does it. We'll get into all that in a minute, but this win Dane, very impressive and puts them now right back in the center of the playoff discussion in the NFC. Your first thoughts.

My first thoughts is, I mean, this is not a selling team at the deadline anymore. And I think tonight they made that decision basically pretty easy for the front office. They're three and four. They're heading into Green Bay next week where they can, if they win at Lambeau Field, be four and four. And then the trade deadline rolls around. I frankly thought they had no chance tonight. Maybe we'll talk about some people who did think they had a chance tonight. He might be standing to my left right now.

But are the Vikings a Super Bowl contender because they just beat a Super Bowl contender? No, I don't think they are. But they deserve to be able to go push and chase for the playoffs now. They showed that to the front office. They bounced back from a rough first month and a half with easily their most impressive win of the season and it's just amazing to me how this team is the same team we watched last week in chicago uh the team that couldn't do anything correct and just won because tyson bajan got thrown into the game who actually ends up being pretty good when he gets a week of prep uh they win that game last week which they had no business winning and then they go out tonight and they thoroughly outplayed the San Francisco 49ers for basically all 60 minutes.

You mentioned Kirk Cousins. He was spectacular tonight. His one interception, ill-advised throw, I would say. But Jordan Addison came out after the game and owned it and said, that's a bad rep by me. I have to go compete more for that ball. That's just maybe a 50-50 ball that Kirk's giving one of his guys a chance. So the one blemish on his resume tonight isn't even fully his fault. So you can't say enough about what he did. 35 of 45, 378, two touchdowns. And yeah, I mean, just a spectacular game all around by Kirk. And where that begins is on the offensive line.

Dalton Reisner may never give up that job again, but I want to talk about the right tackle of this football team. And sometimes throughout this year, people have asked, hey, why is pro football focus giving the Vikings offensive line so much credit? And my answer always starts with, they have the best offensive tackle duo in the entire NFL. And they were going up against the team with an incredible defensive line, starting with Nick Bosa, the defensive MVP last year. And I noticed him a couple of times, but largely Brian O'Neill coming off of an Achilles injury that he had to miss most of training camp, by the way,

scrapped with him for this entire game and did not allow him to get the strip sack, the pressure, the big sack that has hurt Kirk Cousins so often through his career. And Kirk had good pocket movement tonight. There has been a skittishness about C about cousins this year that we even saw last week against the bears that we did not see here tonight and this show has always railed against the monday night narrative and uh welcome everyone to kirk actually does play uh fine on on monday night mostly it's just a weird anomaly but it comes away with the win in this game that brian o'neill and the the season he is putting together is absolutely special. He was one of the top, if not the top graded pass blocking right tackle in

the NFL going into this week. And then the way that he just played against Nick Bosa is going to go down, I think is one of the top reasons that they were able to win this game combined with Jordan Addison. And when we connect this to the larger picture of what you said, are they a Super Bowl contender? Of course we're not going to, as Denny Green said, crown them after one win by a couple points, which they made more interesting than it needed to be with a missed field goal at the end.

But when we talk about the pieces that they have, and then you look around and you go, wait a minute, Atlanta, wait a minute, new Orleans, green Bay. They have way better pieces. They have one of the best right tackles, one of the best left tackles and interior Garrett Bradbury's had a really good year when he's been in now Dalton Reisner steps in. They ran the ball effectively. They had screens that were effective and gave Cousins time to throw the ball. By the way, TJ Hawkinson looked like a $17 million tight end here tonight for the first time, I think, all season long.

And the emergence of the next Minnesota Vikings wide receiver. I mean, it's incredible that they've ever had one not work out. But I think they have the pieces to make an argument after this game now can they do it week in and week out i don't know but this was as impressive as it gets from all of those star players that we talked about going into training camp like this was the type of performance that we expected from them yeah you you talked about it just there and then kevin o'connell talked about it after the game. You just listed eight, nine guys that had great games tonight, and O'Connell himself said a bunch of elite performances,

and there's no better way to describe it. Everyone who you mentioned, everyone who he mentioned postgame, go down the list, elite performances across the board, and you needed those elite performances to beat a team like that. It's interesting because Kevin O'Connell has been talking all season about our best games out there. It really is almost like he's trying to will it into existence. I wrote this week that I don't think it is out there. I think it's a it's a made up thing.

Clearly, I'm wrong because it was out there tonight. And I think the reason he's kept going back to that is because of everyone you listed. You know, Kirk Cousins at quarterback. He's still, for all of his warts, you can do a lot worse than Kirk Cousins at quarterback. And then you go down the list of the skilled position players. Justin Jefferson, not on the field, but the best receiver in the game. Jordan Addison, slowly emerging into a star TJ Hawkinson. We showed tonight what he can do. The reason you hear Kevin O'Connell say our best performances

out there still is because of the talent this team has across the board. And we saw it tonight, just time and time again, when, when the big players and their best players needed to be their best players, they were, whether it was Brian O'Neill locking up Nick Bosa, whether it was Daniil Hunter getting home for a sack on Brock Purdy when he needed to. Cam Bynum quietly becoming one of the better players on this defense. He has two interceptions late in the game. So everyone who needed to be great tonight was great.

And that's the only way you're going to beat a team like the San Francisco 49ers when you're the Vikings. Yeah. And I guess what I'll be looking for this week after this was where was this? Right. And I think a major part of this was the 49ers felt like they were going to play their game, which is a single high safety. They were going to bring a lot of people to the line of scrimmage and they were going to put pressure on Kirk Cousins and look for him to turn the ball over. And what Cousins did tonight was remarkable, whether it was the few times he was under pressure, but a lot of times hanging in the pocket, waiting an extra second for someone to get open and Kevin O'Connell dialing up a lot of open wide receivers to take advantage of that pressure defense what i thought was a little strange is the 49ers played very different than what chicago did where chicago played a lot of too high a lot of quarters that kind of thing and they said no we're gonna put addison we're gonna man him up with charverius ward and we're gonna say hey beat us man to man and they did

beat our blitz and they they did. And which I will never understand as long as I live, why with a team has no timeouts and they've been checking down underneath, then you blitz the house and leave Jordan Addison to run wide open one-on-one down the field. And there were some baffling decisions. I'm sure on the San Francisco post game, they are shredding. A lot of things that they did did not take advantage of a lot of opportunities that the Vikings gave them like failing in the red zone. I'm a little more willing to forgive some failures in the red zone. When you beat a team like that, that is one of the best teams in the NFL. And I think you're right that this was

the most complete performance. They ran the ball effectively effectively the screen game has never worked under kevin o'connell until this day even a pass that they threw with a wide receiver worked but it was uh pulled back by a flag that was another thing thank you referees for not really involving yourself in today's game it made it for a much more enjoyable football game and post game where we don't have to argue about if a call was good or not. But this is the potential that the Vikings offense has. And this is why they thought themselves to be a playoff team. And yet we had seen such erratic play from them on offense that you, why would you buy it?

Like what you said was that that might not be out there because after you just watch that Chicago game, why would you believe it? It would be, I'll give you a reason to believe, two offensive tackles and Jordan Addison. And that draft pick, people are going to break down the 2022 draft pick probably as long as we exist. Louis Seen and Andrew Booth and the trade down and everything else. But you're allowed to correct your mistakes.

And the following year, they picked Jordan Addison with a defense that needed a lot of help and other things that they could have picked. And yet they said, let's find a partner for Justin Jefferson. And tonight it was, let's find someone who can take Justin Jefferson's spot and be a superstar. They do not win without him. They don't come close to winning without him. And now, as he has had this experience

of being wide receiver one, I've got to think that that benefits them going forward. When Justin Jefferson returns that now Addison has had games like this, where he does what Jefferson normally does. And this is, it's like they might have the best tackle duo and soon receiver duo in the entire NFL. And that makes me think if they don't lose against the Packers next week and look terrible, which could happen. But if they start to get on a roll here with Addison doing this and Hawkinson looking like that, then yes, this is going to be a playoff team. Absolutely. And I think to your point, that's why they kind of made the moves. They did this offseason why that Kevin

O'Connell has seemed so frustrated with their start is because I think he knew or he thought that this performance was out there regardless of what we might have thought based on last week's performance in the five weeks before that but going back to Jordan Addison didn't it kind of feel like remember Justin Jefferson's rookie year where for just some reason for the first two games, they just hit him. He wasn't on the field. And then he played against Tennessee in that week three game and he had 170 something yards and a long touchdown. And it was like, wow, this guy's really good. That's what this felt like to me tonight. It was like, this is Jordan Addison's first chance to be great, to be special

on national television. There's probably some casual fans across the league who don't even know who Jordan Addison is. Well, they do now. The play that he made before halftime, yes, it was an egregious decision by San Francisco to send the Blitz. Absolutely. Unforgivable. Because the best thing the Vikings could have done if you don't send that house is dink and dunk their way to maybe a long field of goal by Greg Joseph which is might as well be a 50-50 shot in the dark instead they they bring the blitz but what Jordan Addison did on that play to wrestle the ball away from Charverius Ward after having a play very similar to that on the first possession of the game

that he got wrestled away from him that went for interception, to make that correction in real time and step up in a huge moment, that just shows his potential. And you just see it week in, week out with this kid. It's not just like, oh, he's randomly running down and he's open in the back of the end zone on a busted coverage. He's making plays now every week and he has six touchdowns already. I think that's tied with Randy Moss the most through the first seven weeks of a career. He's going to be special. And yeah, this is a draft pick that Kweisi hit on. So are we going

to give him credit for the draft picks that he hit on? If we're going to rag on him for every draft pick he misses, I think we have to. I think we have to say, wow, they hit on that pick. Kirk Cousins said it two weeks ago, and that was before Jordan Addison just introduced himself to the whole nation on Monday Night Football. He was so good tonight, and I think it could be the start of something really, really special for this offense moving forward.

And when you think about the value impact of a receiver of that caliber who can make that play it's it's remarkable i mean it's like oh well are they picking a wide receiver too well a wide receiver too who can step into wide receiver one have a dominant night like that and win a game for you that's worth a lot and hey he's on a rookie contract. That's going to be, it's not just helpful when your quarterback is, it's also helpful when your star receivers are as well. But you know, I, I thought with Jordan Addison, what we saw on that particular play was something that goes back to the night he was drafted when Kweisi Adafo-Mensah, you know, they make their draft picks and then the GM comes out, explains why he loves the guy and everything. But one of the things that Kweisi said when he was giving his explanation for why they picked him was that he seems like a guy that was born to play football. And there are some players in the NFL

who are so wildly athletic that they make plays, they catch the ball when it's there and everything else. And then there are just crazy free-go football plays where someone, and Randy Moss had many, many of these. It just looks like this guy was born in a lab to play football and to have the sort of wherewithal to have that ball intercepted. It was picked off. It's in the other dude's hands and pull it out and then turn and head for the end zone. And we've seen him do this now with these deep touchdowns a number of times, regardless

of his height, weight, And let's not have a block too often that hasn't worked out great, but his, his height weight, it's, it's so much more to that with the receiver position. And we just saw everything that was building from like early in camp. Okay. He's doing it without pads and then he's doing it with pads. And then he gets into the first game and he catches a touchdown and you go like, okay, okay. And like you said, this tonight was the game we'll go back to when he's had many catches over a career and say this was the one. But I also want to talk about the defensive side as well. Last week, the only thing we could come up with to say nice

about the whole team was, hey, look, I think this Brian Flores guy knows what he's doing. And tonight, talk about coming out parties to the nation. People know who Brian Flores is because he was a good head coach for the Miami dolphins, but this was a gem and, and yeah, it wasn't perfect. They gave up a huge touchdown to Christian McCaffrey as one does. Uh, there were some conversions in there that they had on third downs. They moved the football at times. They had a lot of completions, but when push game to shove in huge moments of this game, they needed to stop them to hold them to a field goal or they, and they, they missed the field goal early in the game, or they needed to stop at the end of the game. They needed to confuse Purdy a

little bit to force him to run around and make some plays, which he all, he did sometimes. And then he didn't some other times and they needed to take advantage of the fact that two of their best players were not on the field. And this, this to me is Flores' gem. And you're right, man. It took everybody doing everything in order to win this game. But Flores showed how he could take less talent than they had last year and put players in the right positions and put pressure on the other team and confuse the other team with different looks and everything that Ed Donatello probably should have given a shot to last year Brian Flores has been I mean you talk about most valuable acquisitions most valuable people he has been exactly that and that's what he was tonight yeah he was and we'll go back to

the interceptions that brock purdy threw at the end of the game and look at them and say what are you doing like what are you doing making those throws that's a culmination of of the course of the game that brian flores had that's a culmination of this guy is just way uncomfortable because of the different looks he's having to decipher pre-snap, post-snap. One second it looks like this, it turns into something else completely different right as the ball is hiked. It's just the confusion that he can create on a weekly basis. Brock Purdy is a good quarterback in the league. We saw what it can do to a quarterback like Justin Fields last week,

a rookie quarterback coming in in relief in Tyson Bajent last week. But Brock Purdy is a step up over both of those guys, no doubt. But you could see kind of the same sort of impact that it can have on a quarterback when they're just having to kind of figure out all this muddy stuff pre-snap. And not to mention they have this guy blitzing or that guy blitzing and it looks like Josh Metellus is about to come off the edge but then he drops into coverage and someone else shoots off the you know the a-gap it's what you wanted last year when the Vikings

unequivocally had more talent on the on the defensive side of the ball you wanted more aggressiveness you wanted more confusion up front. But what Brian Flores has shown us over the past couple of weeks, but really over the whole season to this point, is that he can get less or get more with less. So when you start getting him more players, if they can figure out a way to keep this guy around for two, three, four more seasons, him and Kevin O'Connell could really have a special

offense-defensive thing going, almost like their co-head coaches and it's it's credit to Kevin O'Connell too he he knows what he's good at and he knows Brian Flores is good at the other thing that Kevin O'Connell might not be so good at and and he lets him do his thing it's not like Kevin O'Connell's coming in and saying I need to have a hand in the defense and I need, you know, we need to run this play or that play. He knows how good Brian Flores is. He lets him kind of do his thing. And we saw what it looked like tonight. Want to remind you guys to make Little Caesars,

the official pizza sponsor of the NFL. Order online during their pizza pizza pregame one hour before NFL games and get ready for some football and fun. Choose your favorite Little Caesars pizza or pick up the toppings you crave. Either way you win. And speaking of winning, everyone scores with convenient delivery or their in-store pizza portal pickup. So grab some friends, enjoy a few slices during the tastiest hour before kickoff pizza pizza. Also prize picks.

I'm going to be watching a couple of my prize picks on monday night it should be very exciting if you haven't heard of it then you haven't been listening to the show and if you have you know how much a part of this show prize picks has become all you have to do is pick more or less between two and six player stat projections that's a lot of different stuff yardage touchdown, you, you can do field goals, points by field goal kickers, and lots of other sports as well. So you're going to want to check that out. All it is more or less it's that simple. So if you go to prize picks.com slash purple, use the code purple for a first deposit match up to $100. Very simple. One of the reasons I love it. You don't have to put down a huge amount

of money or time. We do it on the show here in about 30 seconds. I make my picks that quickly and submit them as soon as we've contemplated and thought deeply about the picks. Very, very easy to do. Not very costly either. So it's a lot of fun. PrizePix.com slash purple with the code purple. Daily Fantasy Sports made easy. I think what we're seeing over the last few weeks, it goes back to maybe Carolina. And I thought that they largely played well as a defense against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Of course, Patrick Mahomes is going to make some plays. And Cam Bynum actually caught it this time when it was very close, as opposed to having it just go over him like he did in Kansas city. And he referenced that after the game, but I asked Kevin O'Connell, I said, you know, Brian Flores has been talking about this identity thing with the defense for quite some time now. And he wanted to find an identity. It was a big goal for him to take the personnel and the talent that he had and meld it. And he said, he used the word morph. He said, we can morph into a lot of different things. And I think that's the perfect word to describe this.

It's not like they do one thing. We talk about blitzing all the time. It's not like they just do that. It's that they throw a lot of different coverages and a lot of different looks where sometimes they've got everybody up and they drop back and sometimes they don't and they blitz. And I think that's a great observation that you made that they have a lot of quarterbacks looking like a little bit of hesitation there.

The only one that didn't was Justin Herbert, where he just caught the ball and knew where he was going with it. But there was hesitation in Purdy's game and the ball was not coming out super confidently all the time. now he did complete a lot of passes yeah but that's another thing is they gave up two three explosive plays on that one drive and a snap aside from that though they forced them to go down the field down the field and it's so funny because last year we heard about ed donatel all the time saying oh we're gonna make them have these 12 play drives and they didn't. And then this aggressive defense has somehow had that effect. And I think where you really see coaching is in Cam Bynum because

Cam Bynum has had a great impact for this defense this year. Josh Metellus has as well. It's been very valuable. These safeties have come from players that we weren't even sure could play in training camp. And now we're talking about week in, week out, they're making plays. DJ Wanham was involved tonight. They didn't have Marcus Davenport. Once again, Daniil Hunter might be making his argument not to trade him, but rather to extend him as he got his 80th sack and passed Everson Griffin. But I just, I couldn't be more impressed really from day one with Brian Flores from training camp. But I was always like, I don't know, man, let's see it come together because I'm not sure about this talent. And then Ivan Pace, Caleb Evans had a huge breakup on third down.

And Jonathan Bullard is stuffing runs in there. They did not get run over like they did in Philadelphia by Christian McCaffrey, like we might have expected. And all of this, I think, ties back into their defensive coordinator. Absolutely. And I think it's interesting when you think about the players that are excelling. And I just think about Cam Bynum and Josh Metellus, like you just mentioned. It maybe isn't surprising that they are two of the brightest players that you will come across because you need to be.

If you're going to morph to take the words out of Kevin O'Connell's mouth, if you're going to morph into different things on defense, you need guys that are able to learn this, that, and the other thing and be able to say, all right, we're doing this right now. And then two plays later, Jordan Hicks was wearing the green dots going to go into the huddle and he's going to call something and it's going to look completely different than what you did two plays ago. Well, the players that are in seem to be able to grasp that and kind of morph on the fly.

And Cam Bynum and Josh Metellus collectively, I think you can make the argument, just like as far as most improved players this year, those guys have really taken their game to another level. I think we knew Harrison Smith was being used wrong last year by Ed Donatel. I think we knew coming in, what we knew about Brian Flores coming in and what we knew about Harrison Smith for every year of his career, that wasn't when Ed Donatel was his defensive coordinator. You knew that was going to work. You knew that was going to be a good marriage. You figured Daniel Hunter was going to step up and be an incredible player. Like he has been week in, week out, year in, year out.

The consistency, which you wrote about is just, just amazing. But when you see other guys rise, when you see certain guys go from maybe a special teams player like Josh Metellus into a really impactful player on the defense that goes to development, which is a big part of coaching. And that goes to on the flip side of that, the player's ability to kind of retain that knowledge and, and, and just be the player that, that the coach needs in that moment. Um, you're seeing that marriage with a lot more players than I thought it was going to be possible. I thought it was going to be a build that was going to take a few years to get some of these players that you needed to, you know, effectively use Brian Flores to his best of his abilities. But you're starting to see that they have maybe a little bit more than we even thought. And the cupboard's not as bare. Now, there are

definitely areas that they still need to improve on defense. And there's talent that still needs to be infused into this unit on that side of the ball. But just the way that this thing has come together slowly but surely. And, you know, we still have 10 weeks of football, 11 weeks of football to go. I don't know what it could look like. It could continue to look better because it really has to this point taken a step every week. I definitely think that if you could pluck fred warner just bring him over here how about you just come over here then their defense would really be something what amazes me is that if you have a jersey you're gonna be out there yeah for the vikings defense and that is remarkable every person that they

dress they use kairos tong's out there at some points. There have been games where he hasn't even been dressed. I saw Jaqueline Roy at one point making a play. I was like, OK, I guess so. Brian Asamoah got hurt tonight, but he last week was involved and he was out there for a handful of plays. Brian Flores seems to know how to take everybody and put them in the right spots. And we even saw Dean Lowry, you know, make a play tonight. They, they caused that fumble early in the game, which they needed many times this year to have their defense, take the ball away.

I think they were second to last and takeaways through the first four weeks of the season. That wasn't going to fly if you were going to play this aggressive. And if, if you were going to beat teams like the San Francisco 49ers. So Brian Flores has just come through in spades for what they wanted him to be. Now, they get the win. It's a five-point victory.

There were some things to nitpick, okay? This was not the perfect football game. It was as well as this team can play. But we need to talk about some things that were sort of puzzling or a little troublesome about this team in particular starting with the red zone that's where kirk cousins unfortunately ended his press conference after talking about how great they were for uh 11 minutes and then the last question our friend will rag it's our last question hey kirk what about the uh terrible red? Why don't you tell us about that?

Come on, Will. What are you giving them grief for? But no, I mean, honestly, they had opportunities in the red zone, and are they overthinking it? The words too cute come out online sometimes when we talk about this, or is it just kind of a random thing where they're not punching it in? No tush push. Don't do that. Look, if you're going to sneak it with Kirk Cousins cousins spread it out and make it look like you're gonna throw then come up

and sneak it don't try to he's not jalen hurts and it's not jason kelsey as your center okay so let's not do that ever again also incredible play by fred warner to leap over i've never seen anything quite like that but uh, what is the story here? Because we can praise it all we want. We can talk about how great it is, but if they put up only 22 points because they kick field goals and also field goals, I mean, look, they won by two field goals and they kicked two field goals there. So maybe I'm wrong, but if you're going to kick field goals from the 20 yard line or 10 yard line, 20 yard field goals like that all the time, I, it's not really going to work in a league where teams can

put up points on you. So what happened there? Yeah, they kicked a field goal from the three yard line and a field goal from the two yard line. Both times they did it. I said, that is just a stupid decision. You can't do that. It's going to take a lot more than field goals to beat the 49ers. It's going to take touchdowns. But when you look at their struggles in the red zone, I can kind of, I guess, see if I squint really hard, why Kevin O'Connell was like, let's just take the points because I don't know if he really trusts his offense. When you get into that below the 10 yard line, below the five yard line you know area of the field I think a lot of it has to do with this offense seems to be predicated a

lot often or a lot of the times on these timing routes these crossing routes that take time to develop down the field and then when you just shrink the field those things aren't always there you saw it today Kirk Cousins had Jordan Addison open on just kind of a crosser over the you know the middle where Jordan Addison ends up with depth in the back of the end zone kind of that space that he's kind of starting to make his little area of the field that two yards between you know where the end zone ends and and where he's kind of standing in the back of it Jordan Jordan Asin wide open and Kirk Cousins misses him but that that was the timing was just off and we've seen it all year I I think

and then he Kevin O'Connell tried it today so maybe I'm wrong here too you you could try and just run the ball you know and not be so cute and have to have these timing routes that take five seconds to develop when you're not always going to have that much time but he tried that today and alexander madison got stuffed um like one second after he touched the ball there was a missed block i don't really have a good explanation for why this offense struggles in the red zone because it shouldn't there are there's weapons and they're able to move the ball with consistency and regularity down the field. I just think at a certain point, you just need to impose your will on the other team and then maybe not drop back to pass three times in a row. I think a couple of runs is okay.

And if you're going to run the football, I would prefer you run it with your running back and not your quarterback. You don't have Jalen Hurts. I think if I was Nick Sirianni and they wanted to ban the tush push, I would call up this film and I would say, look, the Vikings tried to do it twice. And they almost fumbled because Fred Warner turned into an alien who jumped over the line of scrimmage. And then they got called for false start because Garrett Bradbury snapped the ball illegally. So not everyone can do it. But the Vikings should never try it again.

No, I totally agree that they should. But the quarterback sneak works all over the league. Do that. It's just their specific style of it it's not a football cheat code that works every time no matter who you are and what you do it's a lot of teams even with the patriots they used to do this with brady where they would spread it out and then he would just go up and sneak it and he's tall and he would stick the ball over it really is your personnel situation. The thing about the tush push is it brings everybody into the same spot, which is usually not what you want. It's sort of counterintuitive. And that's why I think Philadelphia is the only team that it works for. They have the best center in the league. They have one of the most athletic and strong quarterbacks in the league. So yeah, that was overthinking it. And there's a lot of overthinking it. And I agree

when you have to have wide receivers running all the way back across the back of the end zone all the time, like you don't have to get to there. Actually, it's just right here, like right in front of you. But I noticed when the 49ers had the ball down there, they just gave it to their all world running back. And one thing that I just am failing to truly understand is Alexander Madison's usage versus cam acres. So, and on that particular drive cam acres was incredible. He had the screen pass, which they haven't had a good one of those.

I promise since Kevin O'Connell has gotten here, that's the best one. And here's cam acres patiently running behind the offensive line and then bursting forward for 30 yards. He had a 13 yard carry on, on that play before that. And then they get to the goal line. TJ Hawkinson's kind of hobbling around,

and they tell him to go down because he's screwing up their substitutions, which was really, they weren't faking an injury. They messed up the substitutions. It seems like there was some confusion about that. But, okay, fine. Then they take Ak acres out of the game. What this isn't Jerome Bettis that you have at the goal line. This isn't ironhead Hayward. For those of you who are old, this is, this is, this is Alexander Madison who, you know,

you have to get the truck started, warm it up a little bit before it goes. Cam acres has some lightning to him and it's not a thunder and lightning combination. It's one guy has lightning and the other guy is a guy. And you know, Madison is fine. And when we look at his yards per carry at the end of the night, most of the time, it's like four yards to carry. It's okay. But Akers has an ability to actually create explosive plays. And that, that to me would, would work well in the, in the red zone and like everywhere else too. I mean, I, we were baffled by it in Chicago and I'm still kind of baffled by it tonight. I thought that they should have been playing acres a ton with the way that

he was running. And then he kind of just went out of the game and we didn't really see him again. Yeah. The, the, the sequence that you you just mentioned is is a perfect example of that i frankly if i see cam acres take that screen pass break like a thousand tackles follow his blockers and gain 35 yards he actually almost rolled into the end zone he he fell on someone's back and almost turned his body in a way that allowed him to stretch the ball across the plane they would have scored a touchdown. That would have been helpful. But if I see that play, I don't really need to see Alexander Madison much more in that particular game. It's okay if you have a running back by committee.

We're not saying Cam Akers is Christian McCaffrey, the guy we saw on the other end tonight. But if you're going to ride the hot hand, ride the actual hot hand. And if you see Cam Akers make a play like that, and he's made, frankly, quite a few plays like that since he's come over in that trade with the Rams, I think at some point you have to really start to think about how these running back reps are divided.

I'm not saying bench Alexander Madison. I'm not saying he needs to be a guy who gets five carries a game now and be a backup running back like he a game now and, you know, be a backup running back like he was when Dalvin cook was here, but I need to see more, you know, a 50, 50 split. Um, because like you said, one guy has juice, the other guy runs really hard. Um, but the guy who has juice is cam makers and he's, he's a guy who you can see just subtle things he does he's just different and he's a little different than alexander madison he gives you a different look i i got to imagine after watching this game back the coaching staff will feel the same way

and say let's get this guy more touches i don't know how you could watch it back and not feel that way. So yeah, maybe in Green Bay, we'll start to see the tables turn a little bit. I do think it's only a matter of time though before Cam Akers starts to see a bigger role in this offense, just because of how dynamic he can be at times. Again, not an all-world running back by any means but he's someone who I think has a skill set and a talent to make plays and right now the Vikings could use plays at the running back position guys I know that you might act tough and pretend that you don't care about how the skin on your face looks but we all want to show up to football parties and holiday get-togethers looking good that's where Caldera Lab comes in.

Over 100,000 men trust Caldera Lab because of the way they give you an easy skincare routine that turns into clear skin. And hey, it makes for a great gift as well. You're going to want to try the regimen, which has three simple parts. One of them is called the Clean Slate. It is a face wash that leaves you feeling refreshed. Also, the base layer moisturizes and hydrates, and the good helps your skin look tighter and smoother and, dare I even say, younger, which a lot of us could use.

We have all looked in the mirror and thought, when did I start looking like that? Well, trials have shown 94% of men showed improvement in their appearance after using Caldera Lab. So just for you guys, use the code INSIDER at calderalab.com. Get 20% off right now. That is 20% off at calderalab.com with the code INSIDER to make unforgettable first impressions with the best gift for this holiday season i think you saw it tonight that this goes back to the hey like pff's finally grading their uh offensive line is being good what's going on here the results are kind of mixed i think that they're

probably right about the run blocking it It's probably been pretty good. It's pretty good. And there's just yards left out there. And especially, and I know he's the best, but especially when I saw McCaffrey get every last yard out of every run. I mean, even when it looked like he was gobbled up, be like, oh, he got like three yards, got like four yards. And then if there was any room, he was getting a lot more than that and he's playing injured. And that's what he looks like. And I see more of that with cam makers, where if there's any room, he was getting a lot more than that. And he's playing injured. And that's what he looks like. And I see more of that with Cam Akers, where if there's an opportunity, he's going to maximize what you can give him from a yardage perspective.

And I don't know why the Rams didn't want him, but I think he's pretty good. So I'd like to see more from that consistency in the run game. And also, Madison's got to catch some passes at some point. And if he's not going to then maybe acres can or hey look ty chandler's got some jolt to his game as well i would like to see more of the other running backs mixing in than just pushing the madison button over and over and over and over again because we saw what the other guys could do tonight two more things to talk about one is brock purdy and the san francisco 49ers and how we view them now after two straight losses for that team and then yes we'll get to the big picture stuff

that everyone is tweeting me during the game look it's like the second quarter i don't know if they're trading kirk like or whatever like stop i don't know i i'm not scouting quarterbacks in college in the second quarter of this mond night game. This is super compelling. Okay. Take a breath. Take a breath. But on Brock Purdy. So before the game, I said to you and Will Raggetts, I'm having a premonition.

Here it comes to me. I think Brock Purdy is going to throw a bad interception that cost San Francisco this game. And they did. But, you know, I'm not bewitched, Dane. You may think so after what happened tonight. I think it's just with Brock Purdy, you see why he's won a lot. And you also see why there's a lot of people who go, I don't know. I don't know about Brock Purdy.

Because he made a lot of really good throws. Got rid of the ball. Found guys open open it's not like he played like garbage but there's a couple of these moments and the interceptions were exactly that where you go that pass was not accurate and one of the stats that came out this week somebody posts as a chart sorry i forget who there's lots of charts online was when receivers are wide open. What's your accuracy percentage? No, no surprise. Kirk Cousins toward the top of that chart. But Brock Purdy was not.

He was more toward the bottom of that. And they have a lot of open receivers. But if you airmail one at the biggest moment and it's intercepted, I mean, here's another premonition. This happens to them in the playoffs where they play a close beat them up type of game and their defense isn't quite enough. And Brock Purdy throws a bad interception and they lose. I think that he's, he's good enough to be very good and take this team into places that they expect to go. But I also think that he's going to have, he's going

to have those negative plays that are going to cost them. And he missed opportunities. He had, he was running to his left. He had IU wide open. He throws it into the ground. It's a no catch. That's it might just be who he is with some of his flaws. Yeah. And I can, I can attest it. It did happen. We were sitting at dinner and Matthew Collar looked us in the eye and said I think Brock Purdy's gonna throw a weird wonky interception and sure enough he did the guy was wide open and he threw it to Cam Bynum instead I think a reporter a TV guy asked after the game like what was going through your head when the ball was coming to you on your first interception because Cam Bynum was sitting in center field and the guy was open on, I forget, I think it was IU, maybe it was Jawan Jennings

and Brock Purdy just threw the ball to the Vikings. It was a weird wonky interception, like Collar said it was going to be. But yeah, I think it's okay. And Brock Purdy deserves a lot of credit for the success he's had to this point. But it's okay to have nuance when we talk about quarterbacks and say, this guy was playing with arguably, and I think arguably with Philadelphia being the only other arguable, the best collection of talent around him on both sides of the ball. They traded for Christian McCaffrey last year in the middle of the season. They have Debo Samuel, who's the gadget player of all gadget players.

They have Brandon Ayuk, who is a spectacular wide receiver that I think is only going to get better they have George Kittle they have a crazy good offensive tackle and Trent Williams protecting his blind side it's okay if a guy succeeds in that situation but I think there was this like want or this rush to crown Brock Purdy is like how how good is he? Is he a top five guy? Because he's never lost as a starter. Like, no, he's a guy who,

I mean, now the draft can be a bit flawed as we've seen that the, the Niners took Trey Lance number three overall, and he wasn't very good. Um, but there's a reason he found the draft. I think there are limits to this guy's game. And I think there,

because there are limits to his game, there's a limit to the ceiling of the team that he plays for. And if everything goes right and Brock Purdy doesn't screw up and he is the ultimate game manager, kind of like another guy who used to play for the San Francisco 49ers, Alex Smith, if he can be the ultimate game manager, you could probably win a Super Bowl with Brock Purdy as your quarterback. But if he's asked to do a little bit more, you run the risk of these mistakes that we saw tonight.

The Niners just needed Brock Purdy to be okay tonight and not make an egregious interception. He did it twice. They got the ball back down five with the chance to win the game. They were moving the ball and then he threw another one. So yeah, I mean, there are just, it's okay to start questioning Brock Purdy, you know, where he kind of stands in the Pantheon of NFL quarterbacks. I think it was hard to do because all he did was win for like the first 12 starts of his career. But now that we've seen him kind of come back down to earth now to lose two

games in a row. Yeah. It's okay to question like, how good is this guy really? While also acknowledging, yeah, he's a pretty good quarterback. Well, so I guess the question is,

is he a Tony Romo, Mark Brunel, Kurt Warner was in the house tonight. He walked by me and I was like, Oh, it's Kurt. I saw him too. Hey,

look at that. I mean, Hey, it looks good. Hall of Famer. One of the best quarterbacks ever walks by, you know, go, Whoa, hey, Kurt Warner.

But is he Kurt Warner or is he Case Keenum? Because tonight he was Case Keenum. Tonight he threw the Case Keenum passes. The Case threw a 2017 that didn't get picked, and Mike Zimmer went nuts, except for they got picked by the Vikings. And if that's what he is, then in the NFC Championship, he throws a bad interception and they lose the game because of it and they get blown out. That's kind of what the 49ers look like.

They are also always hurt. They play so physical, but Trent Williams didn't play tonight, Debo Samuel, and then we saw Fred Warner get hurt, a few other guys. And I just wonder, can they stay healthy enough to go very far? But they are still the premier or a premier team in the NFC. Philadelphia has probably won after this week. to go very far, but they are still the premier or a premier team in the NFC. Philadelphia is probably one after this week. And then San Francisco does not drop off their perch as an elite team, which is why this Vikings win is so meaningful to get that tonight, which brings us to what does it all mean? And I wanted to wait about 44 minutes before I talked about this because

it was a really exciting football game. And I don't think that as if you're a Vikings fan, I don't think you have to with every win, like kick the dog and be mad that your draft status is changing. We knew when this season started that this team had talent and that they could win games and that they could upset somebody like San Francisco because they have a good quarterback and a good offensive line and good coaching and good receivers. And we, we knew that. Okay. So if you thought, I guess that they were never going to do this. I know not everyone has premonitions like me, but no, I just mean that they have good players and they were probably never going to tank and trade Kirk to the Jets after three weeks and then try to draft Drake May because they are

playing Jaron Hall the rest of the way. That was never really realistic. And so in the middle of a game like this, it's sort of like, I don't know what to tell you. Yes, their draft status is slipping away through their fingers. But what do you think it means? I mean, you said at the very start of the show that there is no selling at the trade deadline. I think that's probably true. At the same time, if they lose to Green Bay, then there's still three and five. They just got there in a different way that we expect. So does this completely take off the table, any possibility, or does it still retain that, that, that this could be a pop-up win for a team that ends up three and five, or if they're four and four, are they one of the more legit teams in a week nfc like next week change there's like two directions that this can go that are that this led us to yeah i don't want to be negative tonight but it

would be very vikings to win a game like this and then lose to green bay next week everyone's already thought of that don't worry but if they just take care of business because jordan loves stinks he's not a very good quarterback um i get it it's hard to play at lambo it's a rivalry game those are always weird and they're not quite as weird as college football rivalry games where fake fair catches you know decide the outcome but rivalry games are always kind of weird so i don't think we can just chalk up and the vikings actually don't deserve this respect yet to say they're going to beat Green Bay next week because we've seen this team do a lot of Jekyll and Hyde so far this year. But if they take care of business next week, they will play on a Sunday. The trade deadline would then be on a Tuesday.

They win in their four and four. Like, absolutely not. I do not think you can sell. Now, if they lose, yes, that does open the door for maybe someone calling Kweisi and saying, we'll give you this for Daniil, and then you say, okay, we'll do it. But if they win next week, Sunday, because they won tonight, yeah, I don't think there's any way you can sell. But to kind of go back to what you were talking about earlier,

yeah, the draft position was slipping away tonight because they won a game that they probably weren't supposed to. Um, but if you just swap out the Tampa Bay win, which the one that they were probably supposed to be at that team and they lost to them and you just swap these games out and they lose tonight. Um, then where we end up with at the same three and four, uh, this team was always going to be too good to draft Caleb Williams to draft

Drake May. It just sounded cool for a little bit, right? Like when they were down, when they start 0-3? Yep, 0-3. Yeah. Then it was like, okay, if they trade Kirk to the Jets, then they start this guy, then, yeah, they could be horrible, and they could win two games,

and then they could maybe draft Caleb Williams or Drake May. But what we don't really take into account when we have these weird hypothetical could-this-happen scenarios is the 53 guys in the locker room. That if you trade away your quarterback and start Jaron Hall, you're going to lose a lot of guys. I think there is something to building a football team. And culture is a word that's thrown around a lot. But I kind of believe is something to building a football team and culture is a word that's thrown around a lot, but I kind of believe it here with this team to a degree. It was just never a realistic thing that they were going to trade this guy, trade everyone and sim to the end of the season, like it was Madden. And then we're drafting and it's April. So yeah,

I get it. If fans are frustrated that the draft position is changing and it's probably getting worse and they're going to end up in the middle. And I actually said that one of the worst things this team could do is be average and miss the playoffs and they might be average and miss the playoffs. But at the end of the day, like the reality was they have too much talent to be drafting high and then potentially drafting one of those top upper echelon quarterbacks. So I think we can stop talking about it. They're not going to trade Kirk. They're not going to,

they might trade to Neil, but if they win next week, I don't think they'll do that. And they're probably just going to be good enough to win enough games where they're going to be in that second tier of quarterbacks come April. And who knows what that means for the future of the quarterback currently under center Kirk cousins, all of that will come into focus, but it's also just okay to enjoy this win tonight because it was a fun game and they did win. And I think that that's where I'm at is not just the feeling of tonight, but also it is still early.

There's a lot of football to go. I don't know where you're going to be drafting at the end of the season. I mean, just living and dying with every win of like, oh, that, well, that means we dropped a 10th in the draft or whatever. Like, I don't know. You're going to have to see how this plays out. There are a lot of teams that need quarterbacks that are going to be drafting high. And I don't know what to tell you when they do a competitive rebuild, they had too much talent going into the season to not give these guys a chance and and look at what we saw tonight would you prefer jordan addison not rip the ball away from the guy your your your young rising star receiver not show up or the guy you just paid a bunch of money in tj hockett's

you know had a huge night tonight and deserves all the credit for his performance tonight would you prefer that that contract is a bust or that your tackles who are going to be here regardless of who your quarterback is that they stink or like dalton reisner might be a future left guard for them they could resign him garrett bradbury's turned a corner he's now a good player uh and i i can't assess the right guard for tonight but he didn't kill them and if you have a group of five offensive linemen and star receivers and stuff, do you want them to lose? I mean, it kind of went this way. This is a Minnesota Lynx comparison, so it might be tough for some people.

But the Lynx drafted high last year, and people expected them to be the worst team in the league. And then they weren't. They made the playoffs. But they did it on the back of their young players. So what did you want them to do? Give those back. Those are people you need for the future as well. The other thing is, too, that teams trade up for quarterbacks and everything. And with Kirk

Cousins, we always know this. The minute you think you've solved the Kirk Cousins Rubik's cube, he does the exact opposite of what you think was just happening. Like the minute he plays in Chicago and you go, Oh boy, get, get Quinn Ewers in here today. Then he comes out and has the game of his life. It just plays spectacular football. That's the roller coaster that we have gone on and we're going to continue to go on through the rest of this season. But they said they were going to be competitive and they're competitive as of tonight. And if they don't melt down in green Bay next week against a bad packers football team so of course we will be there at lambeau field i have uh secured my hotel which you can never get

actually in green bay and now i am going to search out places to eat meat and cheese because we are headed to wisconsin so we'll spend a lot of time through the rest of the week talking more about what it means and all that stuff. The trade deadline tonight was more about a terrific win for the Minnesota Vikings as they always find different ways to surprise us. So Dane Mizutani, make sure you read his work and mine as well. Purpleinsider.com, go there. Thank you so much for the huge amount of people that are up at midnight central watching this recap can't thank you all enough for watching from us bank stadium behind us we will uh we'll see you soon thanks everybody