Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Tuesday Morning LG: The Vikings' OL struggles impacted everything except Justin Jefferson

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

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It is the Tuesday morning Left Guard show with former Minnesota Viking Jeremiah Searles. And Jeremiah, before we get into the tape, which has your face red, you're sweating, you're very upset, you were doing strange grunting noises and smacking the table, so you've calmed down to talk about the offensive line tape and much more. We don't always have to talk about that either. But first, the Vikings facility has been vacated because of a positive test on the side of the Tennessee Titans. And now the NFL is in a position where they have to figure out

what are they going to do here? Are they going to move back the game? Are they going to just play on schedule and not allow the Vikings to practice in person for a couple of days until all their testing comes back? So tell me from your football player perspective, if the Vikings still tried to play on the road on Sunday and only had one legit day of practice, how tough would that be? I think for this team, it's the panic button. It's the panic eject button. It's because it's a young team. There's not a lot of veterans that

have a ton of experience. I think if this is 2018, 2017, where you've got a veteran-filled team on both sides of the football, not a big as deal. But I mean, you've got young players all over the place that need those practices, need those reps to come and see what's going on. So it would be a nightmare scenario. I honestly think that's a nightmare scenario. I think the Vikings need to do everything they can to get into real-life practice. I mean, even if you're all standing six feet apart, but as long as you're on the field and you're talking about it and moving through things in a slower fashion,

like, it's that type of – of i mean most football players are such physical like visual learners that like we are very entrained of like we do it once okay we figure it out now we do it again we do it again then we do it again do it again and then you kind of have it versus if you do it one day you don't have a ton of time i mean installs people understand like wednesday's install is all base first yard first and second down on i'm going to show an offense base first and second down your run games you to show an offense. Base, first and second down, your run games, your kind of under center play actions. Then Thursdays is a big third down day.

You go third down, special situations, red zone. And then Fridays you go over short yardage, goal line, and kind of a review of everything again. And, I mean, if you try and cram all that into one day, you just won't be able to do it. How comparable might this be to playing on Thursday night football? Very similar, very similar to Thursday night football. But the difference is when you're playing Thursday night football, you have to rest your body because of the recovery piece versus a full week of sitting around. I mean, the nice thing is you have the iPads now,

it's not like you have to walk in there and get your physical playbook and do all that. You can have everything pushed to you, but at the same time, you need the ability to go through all that stuff. So it'll be interesting to see what the protocol is, see how they handle it. I mean, how quickly can you get all the... I think it was going to be how quickly can you get everyone tested and everyone cleared. That's going to be the end-all, be-all. If you can get everyone tested and everyone cleared? Right? I mean, that's going to be the end-all, be-all is if you can get everyone tested and cleared by tomorrow, I mean, tomorrow is really technically your day off, so you'd still be okay to have results by Wednesday morning if you could get back in.

Well, actually, today is Tuesday, isn't it? Tuesday morning left guard. Yeah, Tuesday morning left guard. Golly, I got hit in the head too much. But, yeah, if you can get everyone tested today and hopefully back in the building, even by say you can get back in the building by lunchtime tomorrow, then I think that that'd be a big ability to have something

you could do tomorrow. Right. And I think that even if they were to get back on Thursday, it's not easy but you get two practices in there. The other thing that they could do is a walkthrough on Saturday before they leave would be a possibility. Or the NFL could bump this back to Monday.

And I think that that's not a crazy thing to do because Monday night football is a thing that teams have to deal with. And then the Vikings have another game. They have to go out to Seattle. That should be interesting. And, you know, so you don't really want a shortened week going out to Seattle but if you have to do that it's not like it's the only time in your life you've ever had

to play on Monday and then go out and play a tough opponent after that and that seems to be feasible the concern is if they test everyone and then there's other positive tests and I don't know what the NFL does because we have no protocol for this we have not seen this before or we don't know what the NFL's protocol for it is and that was always a question going into the season it's like they can make this work they've done a phenomenal job of testing people every day but what happens if dot dot dot and we just really don't know the answer Major League Baseball was able to work around it early in their season and get through it. And the NFL would just have to do the same.

Yeah, I think they'd have to, whatever protocol they have in place is kind of, now you got to implement it, right? Everything looks good on paper, but let's implement it. Let's see the kinks. Let's see how it works out. Do we go Monday? Do we postpone? Do we do all these things?

I mean, the good news is it's not like either one of these teams is rallying for playoff contention here. So, I mean, they could just say, hey, let's just call it a tie, like the Bengals and the Phillies. Shake hands at the 50-yard line and move on with our day. Or wave at each other from the 50-yard line. Yeah, just a quick wave. Maybe a quick game of rock, paper, scissors across the field. Let's get into the game, but Doug Peterson. Oh, let's do it. Just go for it on fourth down, Doug Peterson. I mean, come on. Right, don't play to lose. Right, what are you doing? I loved when Frank Reich did that a couple of years ago and he got criticized for it. It was like, come on, everyone on the field wants to go try to play and win, not play for a tie. No one wants to play

an entire game, an entire overtime, beat the living crap out of your body, and then essentially be like, oh, we could have shook hands before the game and not done any of this. Like, no, go for the win. I'd rather lose than tie. 100% would rather lose than tie. Yeah, absolutely. And especially, I mean, if you're just – if you're the quarterback,

I mean, if you're Carson Wentz and you're like, wow, you're taking the ball out of my hands to make sure we don't lose but we tie, that's a hard one to bounce back from. And Peterson actually did admit if he was to do it again, he would have gone for it. Anyway, that's beside the point. So now you've calmed yourself after watching the tape. So I'll just give you my quick observation because I watched it back too. I was focused on Irv Smith and whether it was Irv Smith's fault that he did not get targeted. The answer is a definite no. He was open on numerous occasions, and even a couple of them, I'm not 100% sure because you never can be, but I think he was the read,

even the first read, but the pressure coming up front was so much that Cousins started coming off of his reads eventually a little quicker later in the game because, Jeremiah, the offensive line got absolutely dominated in the middle, and I think the right guard situation is untenable. Yeah, I mean, I don't like bashing players, and it's not something I enjoy doing, but there comes a point in time where you've got to hit the eject button. I mean, he has had now two abysmal showings. And it's not

just this game was the first time again, I don't know, I don't know their exact scheme, or anything like that. But I've played a line long enough to know there's certain rules. And there's certain schemes. And there's certain things that don't really change from team to team from coach to coach, like they're kind of just always rules, right? And you're starting to see him not do those. So it's not just physical performance anymore. There's some mental performances going in there, which is going to get guys hurt. I mean, for example, the pick six on the first play of the second half is 100 billion percent on the right guard.

There is a rule. If your quarterback is under center and it is a pass play and that linebacker walks up into the A-gap away from the slides, your center's sliding away from you, you have to take that inside linebacker and at least stun him and let the back then get to him. The back is six yards away. That linebacker is two yards away. Like, do the math. You have to. We used to call it a hard call where the guard would slide down, take the linebacker, and then the running back would go and cut the three technique. I don't know what they call it anymore, but it's definitely a rule. Everywhere I always, everywhere I went, every old line coach I had, that was the always, always rule.

And so, I mean, that's a mental error. And, like, you can't have those, man. Those lead to pick sixes and lose the leading games. I mean, you can fix physical stuff. Like, I don error, and you can't have those. Those lead to pick sixes and lose the leading games. You can fix physical stuff. I don't know if you can fix his physical stuff, but that is coachable. Those are things you can coach on. You can't really fix mental errors if you're going to keep doing those things because they cost you games. From the perspective of what you mentioned about Kirk Cousins,

I looked back and thought two straight weeks now, I'm not sure that Kirk Cousins could I looked back and thought two straight weeks now, I'm not sure that Kirk Cousins could have done any better. Against Indianapolis, maybe there were a few plays there to be made, but I couldn't find too many. And then in this game, I thought, and this is kind of going back a little bit on how I felt right after the game, but this is why you watch the tape, is because after the game, I thought, man, there was just some more he could have done there. But then when you go back and watch it, you think actually getting 30 points out of that one,

considering the way that Jadavia and Clowney and Jeffrey Simmons absolutely mauled the offensive line. I'm not sure that there was a whole lot more Kirk could have done. Even when he checks down to CJ Hamm, it's like, I get why you did that because your offensive line has been in your face the whole time. So you're going to C.J. Hamm. It's like, I get why you did that, because your offensive line has been in your face the whole time, so you're going to check down quicker. Sam Bradford would know all about this. I think he threw 80 passes to Kyle Rudolph, and every one of them, T.J. Clemmings was beat instantly. I mean, this is, it's what ends up happening to you as the game goes along, and

you're seeing in front of you your offensive line get beat over and over and over, and quickly. Kirk actually got rid of the ball in about two and a half seconds on Sunday and was pressured 60% of the time. I mean, when you talk about the safety of the quarterback, I know there are some people who say, hey, if he got banged up and Sean Mannion played, maybe Trevor Lawrence is on the way. You also don't want your quarterback who's under a long-term contract extension getting destroyed. And I think if they were to put in Brett Jones or Avion Collins, who's at least played, that that's probably the better way to go. And I guess I think, A, there was a reason Elfline was playing over Samia

because he's much better than Samia is. But also, here's another draft pick that is just looking like, yikes, on the offensive line. Yeah, I mean, he just doesn't look like he's developed much. Again, he didn't play, I don't think at all, last year as a rookie. Week 17 was the only time, yeah. Okay, so he got a little bit of time, but like that's not a large enough sample size to say like, okay, what do we actually have here? And I think that if this is a perfect example, if we would have had a preseason, does he even make the team, right?

If he goes out there and he plays like this in the preseason, like you started, like is he already number two on the depth chart or is he starting to fall already? But because we didn't have that preseason, you're starting to look at it. I mean, we're not even talking about the left guard. I mean, he had his fair share. I mean, and Bradbury had his fair share too. I will say this. I thought the tackles played all right.

I thought Brian O'Neal and I thought Riley Reif played pretty clean games. I mean, they had Clowney out on the edge. I don't think Clowney really got around them when he was on the outside. He wreaked some havoc when he was lined up inside. But I thought Riley Reif and I thought Brian O'Neal played really solid games, especially in the pass protection game and even in the run game. I thought they had some really good movement. I know Riley got beat inside a couple times.

But I think those two guys – but, I mean, I sent you a couple videos as I was watching the tape of, like, their line of scrimmage just getting reestablished in the Vikings' backfield by apparently all-pro, all-world Jeffrey Simmons. I've never heard this dude's name before, and that might be because I don't know a lot about Tennessee, but I'm watching this guy going, is this, is this the next like Akeem Hicks? Is this the next Fletcher Cox? Like who is this guy? Cause he made us look silly. It didn't matter who he lined up against. It didn't matter if it was over the center, the guards. I mean, he was just doing anything and everything he wanted on a physical, like,

it wasn't finesse. There was no Aaron Donald to it. It was just finesse, power over the top of you, and that's a can of worms that you don't want to open because now you're just going to see guys say, screw it. I'm just going to run through your teeth every play. I want to remind you to go to sodastick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. If you have not seen it yet, you've got to check it out. A couple of my favorite designs are the Duck Duck Gray Duck and the Randy Moss Goat, which you've got to see. All their apparel is screen-printed here in Minnesota on Super Soft, super comfy shirts and hoodies.

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app in the App Store and enter the code BLUEWIRE. Don't forget, that's code BLUEWIRE for $5 off your first order with DoorDash. Well, I will say this about Jeffrey Simmons. He is a first-round pick, and he had to sit out a full year with an ACL that he tore in college, and so he was going to be one of the higher picks. So he is actually good at football. I'm not saying he's not good, but he's got the world. Right, exactly. Yes. No, there's no question about it. He's good, and he played last year and didn't light the world on fire. And yeah, they have a tendency to do that with interior defensive linemen

of making them look at their absolute best. Aaron Donald versus everyone is tough, but versus Tom Compton was a memorable evening. And that's actually what that game reminded me of was that night in L.A. where Kirk played really, really well considering the offensive line. And I guess I just come back to the same thing, Jeremiah, that if you're going to extend your quarterback and you're going to pay him this first contract,

$84 million guaranteed, and you're never going to find a number three receiver for him, which still hasn't happened, and you are never going to find him a left and or right guard to protect him, and your center that you draft even though I like a lot of things that Garrett Bradbury does is not a pass protecting center right in front of a guy who's not particularly mobile it's one of those things where there are there are second

guesses with hindsight where you go huh well guess you shouldn't have called that play Koob's didn't work out but then there are first guesses, we've known this is an issue, and you built your offensive line to be tiny and mobile in front of a quarterback who is not mobile himself and who is susceptible to interior pressure. And from that perspective, I don't feel bad for Kirk Cousins in too many things. He's living a decent life. But from that perspective, he has not gotten a fair shake in many games. And Sundays was a great example of that, where if he's sitting back there on a couple of those plays with three seconds to throw, they are getting big gains at the end of that game and probably winning by

a decent margin. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I mean, you look and like, I looked at the flip side of it, like, what does Tannehill's pocket look like? Like, yeah, there was definitely a couple times where Yannick got in there, and, I mean, you got a couple by a foddy, but for the majority of the time, even when they lose their starting left tackle, there was a clean pocket. And you could see what Tannehill did towards the end of the game, the long plays, like, that's where you start getting those, right,

in close games like that. And on the flip side for us it was check down it was a quick hit here or there and so I mean I think that we talked about it last week the screen game right we talked about a lot I mean the first series there is a chance for a monster screen game to Dalvin Cook. Because, again, you built this offensive line to be mobile. But the problem is, and I feel like I'm picking on him, but it was hard because it popped off tape so much. Like, there's a rule. If you're to the screen side and you're an offensive lineman,

the first read is you have the three technique in front of you. The first read is you've got to stun him, and then you have to look at the linebacker and go, is he dropping into zone or is he coming up into man coverage because if he's coming up into man coverage you have to essentially turn it into a trap block and go and trap that guy out because he's going to go hug the back if he's dropping in the zone then you get out to your your landmark and then you go up and drew samia sat too long on the three technique and didn't look at the linebacker and the linebacker ran right past him just galloped up dalvin cook and i mean if you look at the linebacker, and the linebacker ran right past him and just galloped up Dalvin Cook.

And, I mean, if you look at the live shot of it, there is nobody on this side of the hash. I mean, Dalvin's running 40 yards before he even gets touched. And it was like they did that on the first series, and it went so horribly wrong, it's like they never went back to it. And so you're building this offensive line to do special things and certain things, and then as soon as they don't work, you just like man he can't do it and so you just kind of move away from it and it just kind of felt like it was that all game like nothing was consistently working

like you couldn't go back to the well right I mean there's certain plays that you have that like okay I know my offensive line can do this like when I was there it was we ran weak inside zone out of the shotgun with with Case and Jet and those guys that was our staple right weak outside zone cut it back behind all the strong sides and make things happen I still don't think going into week four now what is the staple that this offensive line or this offense can even do well it hasn't even felt like the wide zone either I mean there hasn't been those wide zone plays where it looks like you know I don't know mighty ducks in their formation or something that you know it's it's fun to watch when an offensive line is all moving in unison and and then there's the cutback lane or whatever but we haven't even really seen that

from Delvin it's basically his big plays well the pull from Irv Smith and the way he sealed off the linebacker for the 39-yard touchdown. Terrific play there. But it's been a lot of, you better be great, Delvin Cook, if you want to get any sort of yards, which shows you part of the reason that they paid him, because he can make something out of nothing. But at the same time, it also points to how much running backs are a product of their offensive line. And another point in this is the Vikings to be successful over these last few years or more successful did not need the number one offensive line in the NFL. They did not need to be the 92 Cowboys. They just needed to be average and they have come nowhere close. I mean, the 2017 line is a great

example. Like Joe Berger is not Larry Allen, right? But he's solid. And the same with Nick Easton. The guy's not Nate Newton, but he's solid. And if you have solid players there, you can do what you want on offense. But it's hindering what they can do here. And, I mean, I'm sure there are some fans who say that's okay because you just get a higher draft pick next year.

But it is it is really miserable to watch on a weekly basis I mean and that's a slippery slope to be like yeah you know we'll just get a higher draft pick next year it's like okay well then you realize that means you were the worst team in football right like how do you think you're going to get free agents to come to your team to make you better if oh that, that's right, we don't have any money. So I don't think that the whole, like, tanking for Trevor thing and all that, like, I think it's funny. Like, it's not going to happen.

There's teams that are worse than the Vikings, believe it or not. Oh, yeah. But I think that the thing here is no one is knowing how to fix it. And I think that's the problem. For the first time in however many years, no one is being able to step up to the bat and put their hand and be like, this is what's wrong and this is how we fix it. And that's on both sides of the football. I mean, we're focusing a lot on the offense here, but, I mean,

let's be honest, the offense put up 30 points, and the defense really held them to some field goals, but it was all late breakdowns and mental errors, in my opinion, as I watched the tape, that really plagued this team. So if I'm Mike Zimmer and I'm going into the meeting room and I'm going, okay, what the hell went wrong on Sunday? I'm picking every single mental error and I'm going to say, okay, we're going to fix all these.

We're going to fix every single one of these. And maybe then we can give ourselves a chance. And I guarantee you're going to hear him say, we can't win until we stop beating ourselves. That's a Zimmer staple, right? He mentioned that twice already in Zoom. Right, that is a Zimmer staple. And he's going to say the same thing because all the big-time errors

are off of mental errors and off of broken assignments. And so I think that if you and I are sitting here going, okay, how do we fix this today? I think that's got to be the starting point on both sides of the football. Now, you made a really interesting observation before we went on about how opposing teams are attacking the defensive line of the Vikings, which, by the way, just want to point out, Yannick Ngakwe is exactly Yannick Ngakwe. He gets his big play, and the rest of the time, it's, I don't know. And then against the run, it's what run?

I've never heard of a run. Which, just a quick aside, I think it's going to gain momentum eventually with more running quarterbacks. A defensive end that can set the edge is going to be a little more valuable or considered that way when you have guys like Ngakwe who are movable as opposed to someone like Daniil or Everson or Frank Clark watched last night against Lamar Jackson. So that's kind of an aside. But I want you to explain what you meant about how opposing teams are going

to attack the Vikings defensive line. Yeah, so one thing I noticed, and the Colts did it a little bit last week, but the Titans really did a lot, I mean, from the first beginning on. So one thing that I looked at and I was like, okay, what are they going to do to get Derrick Henry into the run game and how do they want to get their best matchups? Well, one thing that I noticed is they'd start in one formation. So say they'd start in a trips formation to the right. So then our defense would set their strength to the defense's left, which means that Jaleel Johnson is at the three technique, Shamar Steppen's at the nose on the weak side, and then they go through a cadence,

hut-hut-hut, and then they'd motion the tight end to make it go back to a double, so now that it's a balanced thing, and then they'd make the defensive line shift. Now you're putting Jaleel Johnson at the nose, you're putting Shamar at the three technique, and then they're running at the nose. So they're understanding that if you can get Jaleel Johnson to the nose, not his natural position, they can then have the center single block Jaleel and allow the guard a free run up at Kendricks, who right now is our best linebacker. And then you're either going to have a fullback that led up on the Sam or the Will, whatever formation. And they did that a lot. They did that a lot. They put a lot of eye candy in front of this defense mostly I think a lot of that has to do with getting the defensive

line shifted to get the matchups up front but also you got two new linebackers in there and you start trying to make them move around you start trying to make them look at different things what are their reads are their reads moving are the reads different I think you're going to see a lot more eye candy against this defense because of the fact that Anthony Barr's out. Because you've got Eric Kendricks. Again, I think Eric's playing out of his mind. I think Eric's playing fantastic football right now. I mean, he's covering backs and passes.

He's making as many tackles on the field as he can. I mean, he's playing really good football right now. The problem is not a lot of supporting cast besides Harry in there. And, I mean, you saw Harry down inside the box a lot more than you'd usually see him. And I think Zimmer, same as we're talking about on offense, is struggling to find who are we on defense. Do we blitz? Do we rush forward?

Do we run our over double tom? Like, what do we run? And it's a lot of a mixed bag, and it was kind of a feast or famine day on defense for these guys. Yeah, and against Indianapolis, they played a lot of too deep safety and kind of dared the rookie to run over him, which he did, which he did. And that's the give and take. Your point about Kendricks and Harrison Smith both playing fantastic football

and the defense is still awful, and that's exactly how defense works. It's just like the offensive line. You're only as good as your weakest point, and if your weakest point is a 39-year-old Terrence Newman, you're still good because he's still good. He could still play, or in 2018 or 19, if it's Mackenzie Alexander, he still became a decent nickel corner, but now your weak points are so weak that opposing teams are just saying, we're going to run over you, And actually this kind of points to why Lindvall and Shamar were a decent combination, because if opposing teams shift your defensive line, you have two guys who can handle that spot

as opposed to just one. Now tell me about motion, because this is a thing that has come up recently. ESPN put out numbers on how often teams motion, and dead old last, number 32 is that little Vikings helmet. And I don't know if I could look at Gary and say, hey, Gary, 2020, my friend, not 1998, let's go. Or if it's just a product of how they want to play on offense. Not everyone has guys motioning left, right, and all over the place. So should they be motioning more often? Yeah, a lot of the motion has to do with, I mean,

so I was with the Bills in 2019 or 2018. I can't remember the exact year. But we were just like, you know, we're going to do our offense very similar to, and you know who started it was Sean McVay. Sean McVay started this. We're going to put a tight bunch, and then we're going to motion guys across, and if the line is straight, snap the ball, we're going to motion them back. We're going to put a tight bunch and then we're going to motion guys across and if the line is straight the snap of all we're going to motion back we're going to motion this or motion that and and it's really really effective if you do it right and the reason it's really

effective is a couple reasons so pre-snap motion is what we call an indicator formation so if we're going to go from trips right to doubles left you're going to send a motion guy across and it instantly tells you if a guy runs with him okay now it's a man coverage if the whole thing shifts like okay it's zone coverage and then as an offensive lineman you're watching going okay we're going to shift this guy across and say we know it's inside zone and we know this and we know at the snap of the ball we're sending another guy back across so we started as trips right and we're going to end the formation the ending formation after the ball is going to be trips left. And so that's where you start making your mic IDs when it's not what we talked about.

Like the mic ID might not be the true middle of the three. And so it really messes with defenses on the run fits because now new gaps are created. So when you're just staggered formation, you got your fullback, you got your running back, you got your tight end, you're just set like A gap, B gap, C gap, D gap, right? Every gap is covered. When you start motioning guys across, it creates new gaps. It makes linebackers, instead of being true downhill linebackers, they might have to move laterally before they can go downhill. And that gives a huge advantage to zone running teams because you've got linemen that are firing off forward because they know where the gaps are because you're creating them. And if you can be effective at it, it's really, really hard to fit it up.

Like, it's really hard. And you saw Tennessee did it a lot where, kind of like you're saying, a student body left, but they had a tight end that would cut back across the ball, create new gaps. And so now Kendricks and Wilson and Harry are all trying to get over into their new gaps and that leaves that bad cut lane that Derek Henry came out for five six seven yards each time and I mean they just kept plugging away at that now the thing the Titans never had is that huge run which is usually what comes in like the third fourth quarter when you keep plugging away plugging away plugging away and then finally someone misses a gap assignment and it's the the 40-yard run out the back side. So I think it is a newer offensive scheme.

Like motions have always been a thing, but the idea of motioning across pre-snap and then motioning back post-snap is a Sean McVay staple that everyone's trying to cover because the NFL is the ultimate copycat league. So Minnesota, do they want to copy that? Do they not? I think they have the talent to do it. I think you could get Jefferson going.

You could get Thielen going. You could get Dalvin going on some stuff. And even C.J. Hamm's good running the ball. So I think it would be a good wrinkle to add. But you've got to make sure that your offensive line understands the gaps that are being created as well. Yeah, and if it all comes back to that, it's always a problem. Now, something I spotted on film, this kind of goes back to the offense, because I think we know the defense miscommunications, wide open, big plays.

It's what happens when you have rookies playing corner, and it's part of the reason why when we said, hey, you know, Rhodes didn't play that well last year, and neither did Wayans, so they'll just be better this year with rookies. Like, well, it can be worse, just like at right guard, but something in terms of this motion idea that was concerning was Irv Smith ran a deep cross on a play action, and their linebacker knew exactly where he was going to be. You could see the linebacker peek back and be like, I know what you're doing. You didn't draw me in because I know that you guys do this, and I know you're running a deep crosser. And then they had two guys right on Irv Smith. Now, last year, I thought that

Kevin Stefanski may have done a better job of disguising some of those passes off of runs, but this looked like an exact Gary Kubiak staple that he's been running for his entire life and I think some of these linebackers have kind of picked up on it and also when you're in a situation where you're passing and you're kind of in a tight game I think that they went okay if you hand off here and get five or six yards that's fine but I'm not going to give up a 30-yard deep crossing route to Irv Smith and that's where I think they need to add more to it if they want to hit on these plays. And again, that's why it's not Irv Smith's fault that he didn't make a 20-yard reception there, because the linebacker knew exactly what they were doing and was able to stand right in front of him.

Yeah, I mean, that's another great thing you can do with motion is you can run four different plays out of the exact same formation with the exact same motion, right? I mean, you can run, you can run inside zone with starting him over here and motion him over here. Like you don't have to just start him there just to run the play. And so I think you nailed it. It's, it's a way to keep guys off balance. It's a way to make them look at something more during the week. I mean, not just on Sunday, like if you say, okay, Hey,

we're going to run the same playoff, the okay, hey, we're going to run the same playoff, the same motion, and we're going to run four different variations of this play, two run, two pass, three run, one pass, whatever it might be. They then have to spend the week game planning that formation and running those plays in practice. And instead of just like, all right, well, here's what they do. Line it up right here, practice it all week, and then hammer it home on Sunday. And the other thing I haven't really seen from Gary Kubiak's offense is kind of the flavor of the week on the offensive side of the ball. Like, what's the wrinkle that you put in this week against a certain look? Or what do you want to come out and do differently to put them on their heels early? I haven't seen

that from this offense in these last two weeks. Like, it seems very much like, hey, we're going to line up, we're going to line up. We're going to run what we run and like, you need to stop it. Well, they're stopping it. I think it's, it's time to dig a little bit deeper into the bag of tricks, dig a little bit deeper into something new. And I don't know if that's a product of not having OTAs and not having

preseason, but something's got to give because it seems like these defensive coordinators kind of have the number for the Vikings offense right now. Thanks to a lack of natural athleticism or commitment or overbearing sports parents, fewer than 1% of 1% of 1% of people will ever play professional football. But instead of entering the NFL, they've joined another league, the League of Football Watchers. This football season will be different, and Pepsi is here to get you ready for game day, no matter how you watch. Maybe at some point they'll get some Vikings fans in the stadium to see where this team can go with their young pieces, but it doesn't appear

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Take advantage of all the great sign-up bonuses. Don't forget to use the promo code BLUEWIRE at BetOnline.ag. That's BLUEWIRE, all one word, BetOnline, your online sportsbook experts. Yeah, and when those play-action deep crossers aren't working, that means that they've figured something out. And even the opening drive against Indianapolis, they did the same thing, deep crosser, same exact thing happened. Darius Leonard dropped back right to where they were going to throw it

with that route combination. And Kirk actually made a great throw into traffic to be able to make that play work, but it wasn't going to work the way that Indianapolis defended it. Now, I invented something that I'm calling. Yeah, I know. It's not as exciting as you think the the uh 2021 tunnel where we go down into the future tunnel and the only signal we get is from the future 2021 and i want to talk about justin jefferson with you here because i remember asking players last year when they knew delvin Cook was going to be really good.

And to a man, it was, oh, OTAs, training camp, like the first day of training camp when he turned up field and we all went, holy bleep. Justin Jefferson, if you didn't know before because of a weird training camp and everything else, you know now. And he just has a look where he's just moving at a different rate than everyone else some guys are fast running straight forward in shorts and some guys are fast on a football field that was fast on a football field yeah I thought he was outstanding I mean if there was a bright spot besides Dalvin Cook yesterday it was definitely Jefferson I mean I think that

he's exactly what they wanted him to be when they drafted him, right? I mean, you draft a guy that early at the wide receiver spot, after you get rid of Diggs, you're going, we need a guy comparable to maybe a little bit less than what Diggs brought to the table. Now, is he Stephon Diggs? Not yet. Does he have the flashes of what I remember seeing as Diggs of a young guy? Absolutely. Maybe even a little bit more because of his size. And, I mean, this is only going to help him. I think this is only going to help this offense because it then frees up feeling a little bit now because you now have to focus on this guy named Jefferson, right?

Like, you can't just be like, oh, he's a rookie. He isn't doing much. Like, no, he's game plan now. He's going to have a nice big circle drawn around him during the week on scout team. Like, we need to know where this guy is because he can go the distance and he can hurt us but one thing I want to talk about that I loved about him was just blocking or no line but I mean even on that long run that long third and one run with Dalvin with the pitch and Dalvin circles it around outside I remember watching it all of a sudden you see this Tennessee player come flying in from the

sideline right like where the did that guy come from? But that's because Jefferson drove him out of bounds. Like I thought that even on some of those perimeter receivers screens, Thielen had one. I mean, Jefferson is not afraid to put his nose in there and block these corners. And I'll tell you what, you earn a lot of respect in this league for being a blocking wide receiver. And that then opens the opening. You go get in these guys' face and you beat them down a little bit in the run game, I'll tell you what, you earn a lot of respect in this league for being a blocking wide receiver. And that then opens the opening. You go get in these guys' face and you beat them down a little bit in the run game,

they don't keep up with you quite as quick there in the second half. All right, so put it on an excitement meter of, let's say, in the blue is it means nothing that he had a good game. In the light, I don't know, yellow is hey good good for you in the orange is okay get really excited and in the red is holy moly this guy's going to be a hall of famer where where are you on that spectrum until he proves it to me you can do it consistently i'm in the light blue uh just just because i'm like a veteran nfl-er i'm in the light blue man anyone can do it once right it's like it's like if you talk about like the jared goff syndrome right unbelievable year unbelievable year takes into the super bowl you give the defense coordinators a year to figure

out your offense kind of figure out and then all of a sudden you kind of fall off this clip so for me i need to see him consistently do this and show out two, three, four weeks in a row here, and then I'll start moving that meter up. But, yeah, I mean, that's just the veteran NFL guy in me, that young guys have a tendency to do really, really well, get really, really excited about, and then they don't reinvent themselves coming into the second year

and things go bad Baker Mayfield right right yeah I mean yep very very it happens the sophomore slump is a real thing and so I know it's early in this year but if he can consistently grow this year and just keep getting better or even stay the same of what he's doing right now and then come back next year and pick right back up where he left off then then I'll start moving that reader up. But, I mean, I'm hoping to end this year in the yellow. Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. And, of course, media-wise, red.

We don't have an orange. We either have a blue, which is Treadwell, or a red, which is you're a superstar already. Now we expect you to do it every week, and we're going to put you right back in the blue in a week. But here's what I saw. I saw things that are translatable to the future, and you know I listen very closely to people's comments as well as what I see on the field. When people talked about Jefferson being very interested in becoming a route technician, like just bothering everybody about their routes and their releases and just talking to other guys and picking other people's brains constantly, that is something that correlates to success in the NFL. You know this really well that older guys, if you're established, especially that

you're always willing to take on, or many players are willing to take on somebody who's got questions and can be a good player. And if you are a thoughtful guy and you really love the game and you want to understand it, like that's going to correlate to you getting better quickly and adapting eventually when you have to. And the other thing is releases off the line of scrimmage as an outside receiver. This was the biggest question for him and the way he blew away Malcolm Butler with a release that my friend Donald Jones explained to me exactly what it's called, but I forgot now. But anyway, it's like a specific technique that you do and immediately jumped off film like, wow, he just blew away that guy off the line. That was the question about him, and he's already taken that step.

So, yes, we do have a tendency to jump right to the guy's a superstar now, but translatable things to 2021 in the 2021 tunnel, it looked really good in the tunnel. Yes, I completely agree. The tunnel looked really good, and it's always good to hear young guys be humble. I think there's a trend in the NFL of young guys coming in thinking that they're already Larry Fitzgerald or they're already Larry Allen or they're already Tom Brady, and that's a recipe for disaster versus it's refreshing to meet a young guy in the NFL that comes in and just wants to be a sponge, right? Absorb, learn, understand, be respectful. And I haven't been around Jefferson personally, but from the guys that I still talk

to on the team say he's a very stand-up guy too. Very respectful guy. I mean, you probably got a chance to interview him once or twice, maybe, I don't know. But I mean, it sounds like he does things the right way on and off the field. So that's a big translator too, to on-field performance in my mind is how does the guy treat people? how does the guy act off the field is a direct correlation to on the field. Him after the game did not act like he won the Super Bowl. He acted like that's what's supposed to happen. Like I'm supposed to be this good and I plan on continuing it, which I thought was the right way to take it. So anything more from you from breaking that down before we wrap up on Tuesday morning, left guard, now that we're going to come out of the tunnel, if there's anything else you want to talk about or, you know,

eventually we might get into this tank for Trevor thing more, but we had kind of a lot to talk about there. So if there's any, any parting shot that you have. Yeah. One, one thing that I, I, as I broke down this film I was curious about, you and I talked about how Vikings offense, Tennessee offense, wanted play action, right? I counted 17 play action shots against the Vikings defense. That's a lot.

And the 14th one was finally where they hit the deep ball, and that was because they stayed their commitment to the run, and it was working. Like you said, I mean, Derrick Henry didn't have a 50-yard run, but he averaged almost five yards a carry. That sucks those linebackers up and sucks them up and then deep shots. So I think the more that we see the play action against our defense means the successful run is going to be a problem for us.

So keep an eye out when we play the Texans who are struggling. But I think that all around they're going to try and hit us with that play action shot too because if we put it on tape, we put it on film, now can we fix it? Right. And that's where you want to see the progress if we peek back into the tunnel, hey, for 2021, let's fix some stuff. Right?

Like this can't keep happening. And, you know, just from the perspective of where this is going, you know, someone like Holton Hill, I think is probably on his last legs here. And so you want to see either he, you've come to a fork in the road. You either are really not an NFL starter, maybe not an NFL player, or you are, and you can go either way in these next couple of weeks, the rookies will get more leeway, but I'll be interested to see where that goes. So, all right. Another really fun Tuesday morning left guard.

We do this every, essentially Tuesday. Hey, who knows? It might be Wednesday morning left guard next week. If things change with COVID, who knows? It's a Viking season. You know how this goes. You can never take a deep breath. I was trying to play golf this morning and, you know, breaking Viking news as always.

As always. As always. Well, this was really fun, Jeremiah. We will do it again next week. Absolutely. Let's hope so. Bradbury's getting those snaps down.