Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Vikings took what Dan Campbell and the Lions gave them

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

Matthew Coller and Paul Hodowanic debate how much of Sunday's wild win by the Minnesota Vikings over the Detroit Lions was a product of the Vikings taking advantage and making plays and how much was the Lions giving away the game. Should there be concerns about the mediocre offense? Do we think the defense will need to play "shell" coverages all year like they did against Detroit and Philly? What does this win say about the bigger picture? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to the Dan Campbell totally gave the Minnesota Vikings their second win of the season. And I am in disbelief podcast, Matthew Collar here, along with Paul Hodowanek from WCCO radio. Now, normally I will start off the postgame podcast with ranting and raving for about, you know, four minutes or so, and then I'll say, hi, Paul. But instead I want to do it this way. I want to start off right with a question for you, Paul. First, how much, just give me a percentage we should do of each, like a mini pie chart here. How much should we be crediting the Minnesota Vikings with a division win that they pulled off in the final moments. And Kirk Cousins made a beautiful pass to a wide open KJ Osborne. And how much should we say lions, lions, lions? Why did you lions,

you lions? Uh, because the lions also gave this one away. So how much credit versus how much was handed to the Vikings on this day? Well, first off, hello, Matt. I'm not used to this. Usually I have like four or five more minutes to prep, get me, get myself ready. But I'm being thrown into the fire now. No, I think it's probably like for me, 50, 50, kind of. I mean, the Vikings still to take the opportunity. I think you remember last year when they played Detroit in Detroit, when the Lions go down

the field and score on a last second touchdown, like there are ways that the Vikings could have messed this up. Still, they have messed this up in previous games in previous seasons. We've seen that over and over. They've been bad in situational football for especially last year. So I think Dan Campbell certainly opened the door, not going for fourth down late in the game, calling some weird timeouts to where he didn't have any, uh, when they actually needed them

late in the game. Um, but the Vikings still had to go out. Kirk Cousins still had to go find KJ Osborne. Like, I think this is kind of a 50, 50 proposition. Like the lions certainly did a lot of things to keep the Vikings in the game, but the Vikings defense made stops on, I think their last five defensive possessions, the Vikings offense didn't look great for a lot of the game, but came up and scored when they needed to score. So yeah, I think it definitely goes both ways,

but I don't think this is just a complete and utter meltdown by the lions and just handed it to the Vikings. They still had to drive down the field and do what they ended up doing. But the Lions and Dan Campbell played no small part in helping that happen. So I think this is certainly a game where after the struggles with the Eagles, you can say this, you had some help with this one, and hopefully that kind of gets some momentum, some confidence going your way,

and you can kind of pick this thing up from here because if you perform like the way you performed against the Lions, most teams aren't going to give it to you like that. But still kudos to them for doing what they needed to down the stretch. What would you say? I would go 60-40 thank you, Lions, and the reason just being that for most of the game, the Detroit Lions simply outplayed the Minnesota Vikings.

They played a better football game from top to bottom. Their defense was better shutting down the Vikings offense. Their offense was better getting ahead by 14 points than getting ahead by 10 points in the second half, coming up with a big touchdown drive. And I think when you mentioned that the Vikings defense was able to make some big stops, I mean, that's definitely true. They had the fourth down stop. There was also the run play. There was another pass play that was short that I think Eric Hendricks broke up on fourth down. So they came through in some clutch moments, but also the Lions allowed those clutch moments to happen. They did the classic, I played football in the nineties or early two thousands. Oh, we're up by 10.

Let's just hand off a bunch. Let's just hand off a bunch. And they randomly at one point then, so they're running, trying to run clock, trying to grind the Vikings down and it's not really working. And then it's third down in one and they launched the ball down the sideline and incomplete when that would be the perfect time to just hand off and try to get one more yard. Like the haphazard way of managing this game was so all over the place on the very first drive of the game. They could have easily gone for it on fourth down. Instead, they kick a field goal and doink it. And then they start going for it on fourth down. And then at the very end, when they most obviously should have gone for it on fourth down. And then at the very end, when they most obviously should have gone

for it on fourth down, they kick a monster long field goal with a kicker who's obviously not that great and doinked one early in the game. I mean, just bizarre stuff. And not only that, but also the Lions complete coverage bust in a situation that should be the easiest to cover the deep bomb because they know that they can give up anything but that. So I think that there was a lot more here to say about the Detroit lions, not being ready to win with their head coach as much as they want to play for Dan Campbell and that he is just a barrel of fun on hard knocks and everything else.

He does not know what he's doing as far as managing a game. And that gave the Vikings this win. But yeah, I mean, of course they had to come up with those stops at the end. It's just that when the other team does not play aggressive and continue to throw the ball where they were so successful throughout the game. I mean, there were open receivers all over the place early in the game. I don't think that changed. I think what changed is that they were just handing off for two, three, four yards. And the other thing that was strange is Detroit kept handing off right into Delvin Tomlinson, like of all the people, as opposed to going toward the edges a little bit more, which I would have

thought would be the ideal strategy for them. And certainly was on Jamal Williams touchdown run but that was one of the few that went toward the edges and the outside for them we didn't see a whole lot of trickery except for on a punt play where they ran everybody on the field then ran everybody off the field it's like what is even going on here like a lot of amateur hour type of stuff happened with Detroit even though I thought their football players outplayed the Vikings football players. And what ends up happening is because the game ended in such amazing fashion for the Vikings, you end up going like, Oh yeah, like those final stats don't look too bad. But I wrote this down at the beginning of the fourth quarter. It was about 10 minutes

left. I think it was right after a Vikings failed drive. Kirk Cousins had 151 yards on 29 throws at that point. And the numbers will look a lot better after the KJ Osborne touchdown pass. But on this day, Jared Goff was out playing him. Yeah, Jared Goff was easily out playing him. And just in general, like they couldn't find anywhere down the field. And C and cousins was averaging five yards per pass attempt at that point justin jefferson was taken out of the game completely by jeff akuta which is two straight weeks of a shutdown corner taking justin jefferson completely out of the game and then they did not have answers to theelin they did not have answers to kj osborne so there's a lot to go through with this game and say,

very few of these things actually worked on offense or defense. It was more, I mean, this felt like some of their wins last year, like against Carolina, whereas like, oh yeah, well, Carolina is a worse team and their coach is a fool. So yeah, like you were able to come back in that game, but it's not great. And here's the other thing, too, though. I'm not sure how much it matters right now that this happened, because next week is New Orleans. They're a train wreck. The week after that is Chicago, who won today in very unimpressive fashion

against Houston, and I'm not sold at all on their 2-1 record. So the Vikings have a chance to maybe learn a little bit from this and then go on to these next two very winnable games and be a four and one football team potentially by the time they play Miami who got a win today against Buffalo. They are a legit team, the Miami Dolphins for sure. And then especially in Miami is a particularly difficult place to play. So yeah, I think it was more Lions giving away the game.

I think that there's red flags kind of all over this team on offense and defense, and yet the circumstances are favorable for them for that not to be a huge deal. Yeah, no, I think I, when I picked the them for the pick the win loss record for the season, I think I had them starting out. Oh, and two and still winning 10 games. And a lot of it was because this middle stretch, they can pick off some games. The Cardinals don't look great. The Saints don't look great. Even the Cowboys later on in the season don't look as great as they did the Patriots.

So for them to get out of this stretch two and one against, I guess, a Packers team that we don't quite know, the Eagles look like a juggernaut and the Lions look much more frisky than even I think some of their ardent supporters, Koff Koff, Eric Eager may have thought early on this season, they looked solid other than the coaching decisions. And so for them, that's just something they have to clear up. But yeah, it opens the door for the Vikings to get a little lead in this division to kind of build on it and then see what happens later on.

But yeah, just I want to go back one time on the fourth downs because Dan Campbell went for it six times. They converted it four times. He went for it fourth and one from the Minnesota 30, fourth and two from the Minnesota 46, fourth and one from the Minnesota 45, fourth and five from the Minnesota 32. Those last two, they both led to touchdowns. The fourth and two from the Minnesota 46 led to a field goal for the Lions. So every time that they were converting, that ended up helping them later on. And so I don't know if it was the stuffed run that kind of

got into Campbell's head. And so that's why he didn't want to do it later on because that one comes just the drive before you feel like you can run it on fourth and one, you get stuffed. Now, do you feel like you can do it again? And so that's, I think that, that had to be what was going through his head. But the whole point about going for it on fourth and down is you got to commit to it. Like when you're going to do it at, like, if you're going to do it in the first quarter, do it in the third quarter, do it in the fourth quarter, like the situation, like down in distance, like you were always within like five yards, six yards on a positive side of the field. You just got to stick to it and keep going for it.

And you were getting them more often than not. And there were drive killers that would have won them the game at that point. And you're kicking at that point, a 54 yard field goal. Your kicker is his career highs, 30 or 53 yards. So that's a career high for the Lions kicker. You're kicking to the side of the field that Greg Joseph had hit two wobbly balls that's into the side with the doors open. I don't know if the sunlight was affecting them, if there was some wind that was coming

off the edge. I don't know if any of the players or anyone talked about that postgame, but like clearly Greg Joseph didn't look good on that side. Now you're asking your kicker to hit his career longest only to go up six. And I just mentioned Eric Eager. He had an article. He just tweeted it out a couple minutes ago. If you want to check it out, formerly of PFF, he put where he talks about why kicking to go up six is not a good idea anyways. And so it wasn't an analytically sound decision, even if he makes it. So I think, yeah, there were tons and

tons of things that kind of spiraled for them and some questionable decisions by the lions there at the end. But the result is a two and one Vikings football team that has now two division wins against the two teams that look the most threatening in the division. You have a chance to go beat Chicago. You start three and oh, in the division, that's really, really good for tiebreaker situations later on. And just for a division that looks like it's going to be close. If you're knocking off those division wins, that puts so much pressure on the other teams the second time around when you play them.

So despite the defense and offense not looking great, you come out of this game and it's, it's, it's just a favorable advantageous position for the Vikings at this point. Although they've been so hit or miss through three games. Yeah. And you do have to take advantage when the other coach does some buffoonery like Dan Campbell did, which the Vikings did. They do deserve credit for that. And they didn't do that last year much at all. Like not only is that though a bad decision to kick because it didn't work, it would be a bad decision if it did work. That's a great point that the Vikings would have got the ball back at the 25 with plenty of time to go all the

way down the field and score as opposed to four yards to end the game. I mean, that's as simple as it gets, especially with the fact that I know the Vikings defense did get some stops in the second half, but they also allowed some easy first downs on those fourth down conversions throughout the game where especially, you know, some underneath routes and things like that had been open. They ran for a couple of them, but the decisions got weirder as they went along in that game for Detroit. But I suppose you could argue that this is what the Vikings were looking for in Kevin O'Connell with someone who didn't counter with decisions that were just as dumb. Though I don't know how many chances there were for that.

Like this wasn't one of those for the Vikings crazy game management games when they went for it on fourth down late in the game. They kind of had to go for it at that point. And there may have been some pass interference that wasn't called. And Detroit, I mean, had their fair share of penalties. So you can't really complain about that, but there was the one right there where the guy looked to clearly grab Adam Thielen as he was trying to come back for the ball and they get a bad break on that one. But O'Connell, I mean, he challenged, I don't know if I would have challenged that one, but he won the challenge. It was pretty clear that he was going to win it. He called maybe a little bit

of a questionable timeout before fourth and one that almost cost them. At the same time, they stopped that fourth and one, so the results ended up going his way. I think that where you look at this game and wonder about how it's going to work going forward is there was a lot of frustration throughout this game shown with the Vikings. There were third downs that you were pretty like, what is going on

on this third down? Like, where was that supposed to go? There was quite a few times where you're asking what's going on with Justin Jefferson today. Like where might he be this afternoon? And the other thing is too, that, you know, KJ Osborne catches that big pass and had one where he was open that cousins overthrew. But for the most part, Irv Smith, KJ Osborne, Adam Thielen, the guys that are supposed to be the others were not so much. And they did get the run game going in this game and ran very successfully. But I think we saw that the results, even though they were getting chunks of yardage, it doesn't really matter that much if you're not passing successfully off of that.

And at one point they started running outside zone and running bootlegs and throwing to back up tight ends. And I was like, oh my gosh, like Gary's back, Gary Kubiak. I mean, this is the Gary Kubiak offense when Kirk is not on his game. This is what they would always go to is these short passes. Like they, they scored a touchdown basically on the back of two throws to Johnny Munt and a couple of runs. Like that's, it's an answer, I guess, but it's not an answer that you feel like you should really rely upon. And now we're talking about, it's been a little while since they were playing against green Bay and getting Justin Jefferson going and everything else rolling. And even Kirk cousins after the game was pretty unwilling to celebrate too hard.

I mean, look, you don't have to apologize for anyone. You get to keep the win that, like you said, as you go down the stretch of this season, that win could be a big deal for you. And being two and one, your odds, I'm sure there's that chart that goes around every year about being one and two, oh, and three, what your odds are. I think one and two versus two and one, it's a huge swing for how you feel about the, not just the momentum of a season, but just like mathematically now you have a little bit of room. If you are to go to London and not

wake up on time for the game or something, or if you end up, uh, you know, look, they can always lose to the Chicago Bears. It's what's happened to them the last couple years under Zimmer. When they start slow, then they have no margin for error. And so any game, any mistake becomes amplified because, uh-oh, now we're 3-6. We're not, we didn't just drop to 500. We're now several games back.

So that's what they're, they avoided that today. And that's big because we've seen the last couple years, those things just start to spiral. And then you're three and six and you're feeling bad about yourself. And you're not that far off from being a good team. You just can't execute when it, when they needed to execute and they did that today. So that is a positive. But what do we think is the reason why they have not been able to put up points over the last two weeks? I mean, I, I was perplexed on that last drive, if you want to talk about another Lions thing, that they didn't blitz Kirk Cousins at all. They just rushed four and kind of let Kirk have time,

and the wide receivers found time to get open. But I think continually when defenses know that the Vikings are going to pass, like Kirk was not good under pressure today. I'll be interested to see the stats again, but when he was blitzed, when he was under pressure, I don't know if it's a schematic thing where they're not finding him good, like dump off times when they're blitzing, they're not dialing up the right plays at the right moments.

Cause there were a couple that it looked like he just had nowhere to throw with the ball, but I'll, again, we'll have to see different angles to know, but I just, I don't know if it's Kirk panicking when he gets under pressure or not having an option, but either way, they're not clicking right now when he gets under pressure and he's, it feels like teams can kind of pressure them when they want to, like they're able to generate a pass rush when they need to. And, and Garrett Bradbury susceptible, the guards are still susceptible to that. And that really hurts the offense. And so I think that has to be, that's kind of my biggest worry for the team right now is that doesn't allow

you to do the fun stuff with Justin Jefferson that you want to do. And there probably could have been a few more layups for Justin Jefferson in this game that they didn't really get him going like they did in the Packers game. But I think it comes down to Kirk feeling pressure or him worried about pressure at all times. Cause that even will get him when he has a clean pocket. If he's worried about needing to throw the ball right away or a pass rush is

coming like that, that's not a sustainable recipe. And so that's what it felt like today. And the lions didn't do it on that last drive, but when cousins were pressured, it didn't look like another good game for him. So that's the biggest thing, at least that I saw about why maybe this offense is still not clicking when when it could be

three catches on six targets for 14 yards you know our rule someone goes to jail right uh because now here's what is interesting to me though i retweeted this from mike clay and because i don't have it right up on my phone, I'm going to have to take a second here and pull it up. But Jeff Okuda basically shadowed, maybe not for the whole game in the way that Deion Sanders used to shadow people or Darrell Revis, but because there's a lot of movement for guys before the snap and everything else. But Jefferson ran 32 of 41 routes. This is

from Mike clay of ESPN. Well aligned across from Jeff Okuda and got three receptions on six targets and zero of his receptions were with Jeff Okuda as the closest defender. He was shut down by a number one corner. Now Okuda has had some tough times early in his career, but he's a top draft pick, an elite talent overall. And next week, I don't know if Marshawn Lattimore is 100% or what his status is. I assume that he's healthy. Then he'll probably do the same thing. So he's had a real run of corners to go up against in this first run,

and you can guarantee that they're going to look at what Jeff Okuda did and say, let's do the same thing with this top corner. The first week, the Packers forgot this was possible with Jair Alexander, and they just ran him away from everybody. But in this game, they, the Detroit lions said, no, we are making sure that our most talented guy is lined up across from your most talented guy. And the Vikings allowed him to take Jefferson out of the game. Now I'll also say though, that Jefferson didn't seem like he was quite as sharp as he almost always is. I mean, he had a couple of balls go off his hands. It looked like he maybe either felt he got held or just wasn't really prepared for the ball to be there. Maybe he

wasn't the top read and, and was kind of surprised that the ball showed up, but it did not seem like he had his best stuff today, which is weird because I can't say I ever remember a game, even when he was getting shut down, where I would say that about Jefferson. And then O'Connell and Jefferson were talking during the game. And you wonder if Jefferson's like, what is going on? Like, why can't you scheme me the ball? And I think that's especially concerning when this is supposed to be the offense that does the thing that like has all the answers for getting the number one wide receiver wide open and catching all the footballs this will not be the case I'm sure against every team but this is kind of blueprint ish for the last two weeks to have

your top corner, just lock onto Justin Jefferson and pretty much go wherever he's going to go. And now they're going to have to find a way around that because I don't know if they weren't prepared for that. Kevin O'Connell said that Detroit did different things on defense that they expected and that they had to kind of dig into the playbook a little bit as the game went along. And by the way, it didn't really work. And that's the thing about this game is even when you look at the final box score, it doesn't

look like it works. I mean, Kirk Cousins, even with that throw to KJ Osborne, which went for what, a 28 yard touchdown, he still ends up with 6.3 yards per pass attempt and a quarterback rating of just 93, which in today's NFL is not a great game. I mean, it, it, it wasn't effective even to make the changes that they did. And now the question is how does Kevin O'Connell find answers when defenses have adapted to them? But since they're two and one, it's a lot easier to say like, Oh yeah, we'll just go back to the drawing board and see, see what happens. So much rests on that Dan Campbell call, because if they get fourth and

four and they go for it, we are sitting here losing it about this game and how ineffective they were on the offensive side of the ball. And now guess what? Delvin cook is banged up. And by the way, I got a lot of very mean tweets about Alexander Madison when I said you really shouldn't trade him. A lot of people said, no, trade him for draft picks. I'm Billy Bean. I'm Moneyball Guy. I'm super smart.

You should trade a good player for nothing. Guess not. You should keep Alexander Madison because look, Delvin Cook's hurt again, again, again. This is why you don't sign Delvin Cook to his extensionvin Cook's hurt again, again, again. This is why you don't sign Delvin Cook to his extension because he's hurt again and he fumbled again, which he's had actually some fumble issues. But that does not help them to have Delvin Cook potentially not only out, he's actually, I think worse when playing injured than he is out. I would rather have him out than I would have him playing injured because

most of the time, save for that one crazy game against Pittsburgh, he's just less effective. So we'll see how they handle that. That will be interesting to kind of look, how are they going to handle it? Cause they finally get their running game going and then cook ends up getting hurt. And we've sort of been down that road again. So this is going to be, I think a very difficult test for O'Connell to see how he finds ways now to counter after all that stuff that they talked about. We've got all the answers and everything else. Well, through three weeks, it's only worked one out of three times in the passing game. And I think body language matters even to this conversation. Again,

winning cures all but there were times where they had to call a time out because they couldn't get everyone lined up there's conversations going on the sideline there's a frustrated kirk i mean this sort of had all the earmarks of one of those games where you just go what happened and then and then dan campbell left the door open i was gonna ask you on the other side of the ball, though, defensively, this is another like whose fault was it anyway? Did the Vikings just benefit from Detroit? Because I think they did.

But did they benefit from Detroit taking their foot off the gas pedal, same as Philadelphia when they had a big lead? Or would you give them credit for bouncing back from pretty much having a horrible game up to that point yeah I mean I think both can be true I don't think the defense like continually it still looks like Goff did it in the first half Hertz did it for most of the first half like could get pretty much anything he wanted because the Vikings are just dropping into coverage and I don't know if it's because they don't trust if they bring, if they try to blitz with more guys, they don't trust the guys in the backend to hold up in coverage long enough to be able to send extra

bodies. I don't know if that's why they're not blitzing or they genuinely feel they can get a pass rush with four, but they weren't generating a pass rush with four enough. And at that point, like they're getting a lot of time and this defense is just not good enough. They just don't have the players to sit in coverage for that long and find a stop. So they entering the day, they were one of the least, they blitzed one of the least amount of times in the NFL.

And so you just gave Jared Goff time and eventually someone got open because the guys that are covering them are an old Patrick Peterson and an unproven Cam Dantzler and Josh Metellus filling in for Harrison Smith and Cam Bynum, who's has is a nice player, but still has his warts like Chandon Sullivan. These aren't, this isn't a amazing secondary. These are just kind of guys that the Vikings have in the secondary. So if they're not generating a lot of pressure, Jalen Hurts can look like the next coming of Aaron Rodgers and Jared Goff can outplay Kirk Cousins and look like the guy that was played for the Rams. Like that's just what happens when you're not getting pressure. And the Vikings have said Zedaria Smith,

um, Daniel Hunter, go get them. And when you're rushing for against an offensive line, that's really good in the Detroit lions. You're just not going to get enough pressure enough times. And so it just comes down to me. They just don't have the talent right now, especially in the secondary to stop a team that has any wide receiver, like talent, like the Packers didn't. So they were still able to cover those guys effectively enough. But when it's Amon Ross St. Brown, and it's even Josh Reynolds, and it's Dallas Goddard, and Devontae Smith, and A.J. Brown, you don't have the horses to match up with them, and you've gone

against two offensive lines, and you haven't been able to generate a ton of pressure. And so when those two things aren't working, your defense isn't going to work, and I still think that's an issue. And so, yeah, when you start running the ball and the Vikings can clearly tell that you're going to run the ball, then yeah, they can get some stops and they made some stops and crucially, okay, we give them credit because they could have gotten gashed. They could have still let up big runs, but they stopped them. So credit where credit's due there. But when they were in kind of neutral situations where they didn't quite know what the Lions were going to do, they were passing on them effectively. They were running the ball effectively enough. And so, no, I don't, I think they were opportunistic when they needed to be opportunistic and they made the fourth down stop and they played them well down

the stretch. But by and large, I think these are bigger issues for the Vikings that most teams are going to be able to exploit against them that they just haven't solved. And it's happened now two games and it's kind of apparent that what their issues are. And I just don't know if they're going to correct them now. If it's Andy Dalton next week, maybe you get away with it. Justin Fields, maybe you get away with it. But if we're trying to think about forecasting them out down the line against playoff teams they right now don't have the talent they don't have the communication they don't have the scheme

right now dialed up enough where you feel good about this defense against any good offense i agree with that they won't face a good offense for a while until i figure it out so they do have time to look better and figure it out they gave up 416 yards today at five and a half yards per play which is not good at all factoring in those last four drives i'm sure it was much higher much higher here's where i would defend it though and you laid it out that what else are you supposed to do because if you do start sending blitzers all over the place and they don't have anthony bar by the way, they have Jordan Hicks. That is a different player when it comes to blitzing and stuff like that.

They don't have pass rusher Jordan Hicks. Right. Not necessarily a pass rusher. He's had some years in his career where he's created some pressure off of blitzes, but not in the consistent way that Anthony Barr, that was like a legitimate skill that he had because of his size and his quickness and so forth. But, you know, when it comes to how Ed Donatell is dialing this up, I think that it's actually the right thing to do for the most part. It's just something that tells you a lot about their personnel.

Like Josh Metellus is back there. Harrison Smith is hurt. Well, OK, what are you supposed to do? You can't move Josh Metellus all over the place like Harrison Smith. You can't bring him off the edge. You can't really do a whole lot more than just try to keep everything in front of you. And here's the thing. It actually kind of worked today in some ways. In this way specifically, three for 16 for the Lions on third downs. They converted four of those fourth downs and several were on just horrendous plays by the Vikings defense that left people wide open, but three for 16 on third down, like that's the plan. The plan is yes, we're going to let you run. Yes. You're going to hit these underneath passes, but you're going to get in

fourth and one or something, or you're going to come short of the sticks at least once on your trip down the field because that's kind of the best we can do so i know that drives people crazy it looks bad it feels bad it feels like oh man you're letting jared goff just sit back there or let jalen hurts sit back there well jalen hurts hit a 53 yard touchdown and had a 26 yard touchdown run you can't't give those up. And even with the Jamal Williams run that had extra thrusting at the end in the end zone, that can't really happen either. And what a time that was, especially the press box counting the number of thrusts. It was like one, two, three, four. The broadcast did it too. They counted the thrust. Oh, they did. Okay. This isn't safe. This isn't safe for families, but we're going to show it again and we're going to show it in slow-mo. So that was, that was the good for you, Jamal Williams, but a pretty stupid penalty to take. And the Vikings

started their next drive in good field position. But regardless, I don't think there's any other strategy. I don't think there's anything else. It's basically like, look, this looks bad and feels bad. So they must be doing something insane. But if they were blitzing all the time and giving up big one-on-one opportunities for someone like Amon Ross St. Brown or A.J. Brown last week, I mean, you're just asking to give up numerous big plays. The problem is you have to have it work because if you give up an explosive play or two, then your defense is really going to look pretty poor. And I also think they did get some help,

but there's really no answer for this. There's no button to push. The only button is the offense has to be better. You can't fall down 14 to nothing in the game. You are going to have to match the other team like they eventually did today after Dan Campbell helped them out. But I don't think that there's like a guy to bring in

a big scheme change that they're going to be able to do. It's really, you're going to have to tolerate feeling like the other team has the ball a lot and is getting a lot of yards. And then when you get your opportunities, you got to be the team with the end. This is just the type of football. I think they're going to have to play because now that we've actually seen it out there we can tell like oh okay well Zedaria Smith and Daniil Hunter aren't just going to like shred every tackle and get all these pressures all the time there's going to be some pretty clean quarterbacks this year I think right yeah so that's where the indictment goes more on the roster building than it does the coaching it's maybe you could envision that Patrick Peterson and Cameron Dantzler as your top two cornerbacks may not have cut it this year and yes you invested a first and second round pick

but those picks generally aren't gonna they may play but they're not gonna have just an amazing outstanding impact on your team especially corners we. We've gone through that. It's really fickle with how first year corners, secondary players do. So I think a lot of them, yeah, right now, based on the players they have, it's kind of what they have to run, but I don't, it didn't necessarily have to be this way, but it's the way it's, it's the way the coaching staff now with the players that they have, have to operate. So yeah yeah i can see the argument because suddenly you start sending eric hendricks jordan hicks on a blitz and you're playing one-on-one man coverage all up and down the field and i think you can see like okay chan and sullivan's

going to give up one patrick peterson will get cooked every once in a while cam dancer will do the same and yeah those big plays are going to happen. Like, so you can see why they're doing it. They're just trying to get by. Um, so yeah, the offense has to be better, but it is an indictment a little bit on how they built this roster that three weeks into the season, relatively healthy. This is still how they look and how they have to play in the secondary. So, uh, Lewis scene basically didn't play. If he was in for any defensive plays, I didn't see them. And I feel like we would have had other people see them and tweet about them. If that was the case, it was Josh Metellus all the way. So Kevin O'Connell,

uh, I'll call it a white lie, call it a sports lie. I'm not calling him a liar because you're totally fine in not giving away things to the other team as a head coach. So it's cool that he did this, but he didn't really tell the truth about Lewis scene and how much he was going to play. Not that that came as a surprise to us. I thought that maybe he would work them in on some type of situations, but instead it was Metellus all the way. One thing that this does Metellus, because he was pretty decent, is this is why usually teams don't draft safeties in the first round, because Cam Bynum has looked pretty good or fine, and was a fourth-round corner,

and Metellus was a sixth-round development player off special teams. Both of them seem to be able to play the position. You wouldn't want that long-term. The Vikings developed Anthony Harris. They developed Anderson Day. Oh, like this is not usually a spot that requires that or that players often because of it's such a smart position. They sort of come out of nowhere and then turn out to be good players. Xavier Woods last year was a fifth round pick for the Cowboys and developed into a decent player. It's kind of why, and I thought Mattel has played extremely well in this game. I'd have to go back and look and see what PFF says and all that. But

at least to me, if you're not giving up any sort of big play, he made a bunch of tackles, gets the interception at the end. Like I thought that Josh Mattel was totally fine. But the fact that they didn't play scene at all, I think tells you exactly where he stands. He is the fourth safety on the depth chart. End of story. He's basically not playing at this point. Even when Harrison Smith comes back, if he goes down again or Bynum goes down, we're just not going to see Lewis seen aside from special teams. It's definitely a red flag that he's not in. That's not over with. He's not a bust. But now you have two guys who are fairly young

who look like competent safeties. And I don't know when Louis Scene is going to end up being that guy because you can't take Bynum out of the game. And now Metellus has proven that he's pretty decent there as well. Andrew Booth Jr. did not play. So if you're sort of keeping score on the rookies at this moment, not great from the perspective of the first two picks. Something else I wanted to ask you was actually circling back a little bit.

Something that Kevin O'Connell said, because talking about the rookies, I thought that the offensive line held up pretty well today and the Vikings couldn't find receivers but if you're looking for things that should project favorably I think through three weeks you would probably give the Vikings offensive line like a B minus which is the highest grade I've given them through three games I don't know since like 2017 probably when they had a halfway decent offensive line so I think what I'm interested in in your kind of final comments here Paul is like what do you think after three games like what parts of this team do you think are kind of the truth about who they are and which may not exactly be yeah I think the offensive line is a decent one i think like today there weren't any like

like dakota dozier drew samia like just get run over don't know what you're doing like it'll at least look like that's going to be a competent unit uh i think they've shown themselves to at least be competent through the start of this season um so i think that's pretty clear i think the last two games of what kirk cousins has been like when he does get pressured though i think is generally what we have seen throughout his career he gets flustered in those moments he can't create with his legs he ends up standing in there and it's kind of hit or miss if he can make a good play with his arm or he's checking down or something so like you mentioned with the i don't know if it's scheme, they're not finding good dump offs, good, like just easy buckets for him on those when they're blitzing,

or if it's Kirk unwilling to throw them, but that's, that's not quite working. So I would say the offensive line is a decent one. I think we still have more to see out of these receivers. I think the unit can be better than what they've shown so far. I think Thielen finally got involved today, but Justin Jefferson was non-existent. KJ Osborne obviously popped up when he needed to, but I think that unit can be approved upon. I'm not sure exactly that's what we're going to see every day. But then going back to the well, I don't think the secondary changes much from what we've just seen them be.

I think a couple times a game, Patrick Peterson will look like he's still pretty solid, and then there'll be a couple times where he's four strides behind someone and they're running free. There's going to be moments with that across the secondary because they just don't have the upper level talent to hang there. So I think the secondary, for better or worse, is going to continue to look like it's going to continue to look.

I don't think crazy, massive miscommunications have happened. They've happened in certain areas, but I think it's just, it's a product continue to look. I don't think crazy, massive miscommunications have happened. They've happened in certain areas, but I think it's just, it's a product of the talent. I don't think they necessarily have it. And I think the D line is pretty similar to what we'll end up seeing all year. Zadarius and Daniil are capable of making big plays and big moments, but they're not Micah Parsons.

They're not a Bosa. They're not a Watt. They're not going to consistently be right there all the time. Um, they're going to be there a lot and on occasion, and they're going to make their presence known, but they're not a top five, uh, edge rusher. And that's fine. You don't, they don't have to be, but if that that's just going to be what they're going to be, if they're going to run up into good offensive lines, like they did with the Eagles and the lions, it's going to be so,-so and we'll see how it goes.

And that's where the coverage again, becomes a big issue. So I think generally the defense by and large feels like what we're going to see from the defense, the offense is where some different things could happen. Yeah. I think that you do have to ask, uh, if Daniil Hunter is really the same version of Daniil Hunter at this point, at least so far. And I was just checking box score wise. They produced two QB hits and zero sacks today, which I mean is pretty darn concerning. I think as far as the pressure goes for a team that does have a very good offensive line in Detroit overall, but like, that's not what you expect from Daniil Hunter and Z'Darrius Smith. And I think that was the reason Jared Goff had a lot of time to find open wide receivers

is because they just weren't creating pressure. And if those two guys don't look really, really good, then you're not getting almost any pressure on teams. That to me has to get better. Whether it's going to or not, I'm not sure. That's a very small sample size thing for Hunter who missed a huge portion of last season and when you think about like even Hunter last year started off a little bit slowly got some sacks but didn't have

the same pressure numbers and then ramped it up as he went along so that may be the case here same was Zedaria Smith who missed time and so far I think he's been all right. But not being able to consistently pressure the quarterback, I think will sustain. And here's the other thing. I also think that this offense doesn't really show any signs of being like magically different. I think that magically different is off the table. Being good is not off the table, but being this whoa this revolution kirk for mvp oh my god like i don't think that that's gonna happen like uh you know here's another thing that i've noticed though we were just talking about sacks like kirk cousins over the last two years last year and so far this year he's not taking a lot of sacks, but he's also not throwing

the ball very, very far down the field. No, like 34 years old. Is he Alex Smithing a little bit here, which is good to not take sacks, but it's also when your average depth of target coming into this game was the second lowest in the NFL and it did not get higher today. I guarantee you that. Yeah. Like, I wonder if cousins is not only like concerned about his physical nature because you know, he can't get smacked too many times, uh, as an older quarterback, but the other thing is like that he's just making that the way he plays now in order to keep away from those negative plays. And I don't know that that jives with exactly the last quarterback that Kevin O'Connell worked with,

which was Matt Stafford, who's always willing to take too many hits and throw into too many tight windows and all those things. And as far as sustainable or not sustainable, like, I don't know. But I do know that that seems to be like I'm not on the same page as my quarterback here, where you're playing this a lot of underneath stuff type of passing and getting the ball out even when there were times in this game where cousins was not pressured at all he still just threw it to cj ham it's like um okay yeah i mean maybe he was the only guy open but you didn't even have to throw it at that point you could have moved around or or tried for something else and it's just like now I'm getting rid of this thing. So I do have that in, in my mind of like things to watch

exactly. Um, but I think that, you know, like the running game that they had today is probably what they'll have for the season. I think they can run the football a little better. I don't think Justin Jefferson's getting three receptions. The last two games, I don't think will be what we'll see for the rest of the year. But I think what's off the table is the idea of having a special offense this year. So what I would say to close is just that what we've taken away from these first couple games

is like, this is going to be a flawed team. It's going to be a frustrating team at times, but look around, like pop your head out of Viking land. Hey, let's look at what everybody else is doing on the other little football islands oh the bears no they're not good uh detroit yeah this team's probably not going too far green bay i'm watching them right now on the tv next to us uh recording here and they're up 14 to 3 but they've got some problems of their own sammy watkins not surprisingly hurt the nfC is just not super

special in many areas and in many divisions, like basically none and Philadelphia might be the only great team. So even if you're flawed, that's kind of how big this win is. And if you have to win games like this, that are like, what happened there? How did you even win that game? Well, that's what happens when you play other bad teams or other mediocre teams is they give you these opportunities. So it's weird to feel like you have a long-term projection on some of this stuff just is not great, but also you can totally see them reeling off a bunch of wins because they have enough talent to do so. Yeah. Uh, just quickly on that Kirk Cousins observation you had per next gen stats this week, Kirk Cousins had the fourth longest time to throw.

He was at 3.09. But when you look at his average intended air yards, he was amongst the or the completed air yards. He was amongst the worst of the day, like below average. So he has a lot of time to throw, but he's not throwing it that far downfield. So I think that's kind of representative of what you're saying there. Like even when he has time, he's not pushing it down the field because he, along with Jared Goff, Lamar Jackson, and I think, uh, who else? Uh, yeah, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins were the only

quarterbacks above a three time to throw as of the noon games. Um, but he was still then not pushing it down the field. So I think that's what you're saying. And I also, with your point on the offense is just going to change in small ways. Like they didn't run, they didn't run the ball at all on third or fourth down. They had 11 third or fourth down plays. They didn't run the ball whatsoever.

So on those late downs, those money downs, they're still throwing it. I think those are the small little edges that O'Connell's still having over a previous regime that probably is running on third and three on occasion and probably not getting it and things like that. So there are enough small changes, but I think when you have largely the same personnel and a quarterback with, when he's had so many different coordinators that's shown kind of his colors, you can only change so much. You can only innovate so much when a lot of the people around you have

been the same for a long time and have produced similar results. So I think that's what you're saying. But at the same stroke, to kind of wrap it up, like you mentioned, all teams are flawed. You're not in the AFC where you have to go up against one of these juggernauts. You're not going up against the Chiefs. You're not going up against the Bills or the Dolphins or the Ravens or the Chargers. Like, name, go down the list. You're not going up against any of those teams green

bay's flawed tampa bay's flawed even the rams are flawed so you can certainly get by being flawed it'll just depend on how flawed you are and how that stacks up against some of the better teams but at two and one with some easy games coming up they're doing what they need to do to remain in the playoff picture going forward right Right. And how healthy you stay, right. How many things kind of go your way is just going to matter, which we kind of thought it did, but I had higher expectations for the offense.

So an unfulfilling yet exciting win for the Vikings. So anyway, from us bank stadium, I'll sign off as well with Paul and we will have all sorts of coverage. Next week is going to be actually really cool because in the second half of the week, Jonathan Harrison, who does producing for Purple Insider, does our social media, does the Hot Routes show with me. He is going to England to represent us there.

He's going to be in the press box at the game and everything else. So that's going to be super fun. I'm looking forward to it. Also, if you haven't checked out the Hot Routes show, it comes out every Tuesday or Wednesday morning where we break down the whole league, Jonathan and I. So make sure you check that out. And maybe we'll get Paul on an episode soon as well. So, uh, okay. Well, uh, a very, um, uh, I guess, uh, reactionary game like gives us a lot to react to and think about for the next

week where they will play the struggling saints. So thanks for your time, Paul. And we will talk to you all again later.