Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Vikings beat down the bungling Bears on Monday Night Football

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani of the Pioneer Press break down the Vikings win over the Chicago Bears at US Bank Stadium Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

inside us bank stadium matthew collar here dame mizutani the pioneer press will join me in just a moment he's finishing up on a tight deadline here late at night but the minnesota vikings are now 12 and 2 everybody let me just say it a couple times for you just let it sink in a bit the minnesota vikings are now 12 and 2 the bit. The Minnesota Vikings are now 12 and two. The Minnesota Vikings are now 12 and two. And I went around asking people tonight, like, well, what did you think they were going to do? Did you think they were going to be this good? And of course, nobody thought the Vikings were going to be 12 and two at this point in the season. And as we continue to go into each one of these games going,

maybe this is the letdown game. Maybe this is the game where they come apart a little bit or just have that one bad day that ends up costing them and they slip out of the race for the conference. But no, after this night, a 30-12 drubbing of the very, very bad, bad bears. Tonight, they are now 12-2 and still in position, walking out of U.S. Bank Stadium to chase the NFC. But the answer that I kept getting on what my friends here in the press box thought,

including Dane Mizdani, who will join me here, is, Dane, everybody, take a deep breath. I know you're hustling to get up here and onto the show, but what everybody kept saying, Dane, when I asked tonight, Hey, how did, how good you think that the Vikings were going to be? I was asking our friend, Lindsay young on the way up here. Hey, what did you think before this season? And you know what she said, Dane? She said, I thought they could be four and 13 or 13 and four. And I think that's a great answer because I kind of felt the same way. I remember picking them to be nine and eight because it was right in the middle of the two extremes, but they have hit on one of the extremes.

But the interesting thing I thought about tonight's game against the Chicago bears was that they did not need Sam Darnold to be fantastic. Actually, Sam Darnold was a little bit off tonight. I thought he hit on some third downs. He only got sacked once. The interception was the right play for him. Just kind of fourth down, fling it up. The bears actually lost yards on his interception. So that was fine. He protected the football. His bad throws were toward the sideline, went out of bounds, just seemed a little bit off as far as his accuracy. Couldn't really get a good sense of what happened. I did ask Kevin O'Connell after the game. There was talk of him

hitting his hand on a helmet. Anyway, the whole point is that they have now won in a lot of different ways. Against the Arizona Cardinals, they did not play all that well and had to come back and win at the end. Against the Falcons, Sam Darnold went into legend mode and went crazy and had one of the best games that any Viking quarterback has ever had. And then, now here tonight, they go back to winning with defense.

This felt like an early-in-the-season win where they said, no, no, no, Caleb Williams, you're not going to come in here and deal with our noise and our stadium and scramble all over the place and score a bunch of points and have a comeback or whatever else. They hit the bleep out of Caleb Williams over and over again. They confused him. They frustrated him. They didn't give up much in the run game is this was a defensive win that allowed them to wear down the Bears on the offensive side

and for the second straight week really run the ball down a team's throat, which they had not done earlier this season all that often. And it was not a complete win where they just totally dominated, as you might think, from 30 to 12. But they did win with a side of the ball that has been struggling a little bit in recent weeks. Yeah, I think that's a good point. Like this team has shown all year that it can win in different ways. And I think last week was probably an example of us looking at each other after the game saying like, is this defense going to be an issue down the stretch? And I don't want

to use the Chicago bears as too big of a measuring stick because they stink. And Caleb Williams, the body language he showed throughout this game, terrible. Uh, he's talented. He really is. I think he's has the potential to be a really special player. Uh, but you could tell the Vikings just knocked him off his game early. And I think he just took his ball and went home. But after last week, I think we were sitting there saying like this defense could be an issue. Like they just got gashed by Bijan Robinson and Tyler Algier. Kirk Cousins threw the ball all over them. But I think we walk back out of US Bank Stadium tonight and say, no, I think they still have some juice in them.

Jonathan Grenard, just a demon off the edge today. Jallis Turner, I think he continues to pop and come into his own. You're seeing guys step up. Jalen Redman continues to pop. Jerry Tillery had a couple of really, really good, important plays today. So I think that's a culmination of guys coming together on that side of the ball that can make you have a pretty good feeling about that unit. Now, obviously, I guess we'll see who plays quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks

and the game against Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers and the game against Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions is really going to show what this defense is made of. But after the performance last week and really the performance the week before that, I think you started to feel like, is this defense running out of gas? Have they been asked to do too much this year? And then they kind of just proved it tonight. I think Cam Bynum put it best. They didn't really allow a touchdown until the end of the game, and they had already taken out their starters. So

it's everything you would want out of a defense in a primetime game, kind of a chance to make a statement. And I think they really did. So speaking of Cam Bynum, as far as the bigger picture goes, and before you walked in, I just kept saying the Vikings are 12-2 over and over again and kind of like, let's say it a bunch of different ways, see how it feels, because that is the reality here and it was something that we did not see coming. But I asked Cam Bynum, I said, what did you learn from 2022 when you were in this position?

And he went back to the way that they responded after the bills win the following week when they got crushed by the Dallas Cowboys. And he said that you cannot look too far ahead or you can't look too far back at your latest win, because if you do, you are going to get punched in the mouth. And it has been extremely impressive on a week to week basis. The way that this team has not ever gotten out in front of itself. I mean, this was a night where we went into the game and I wondered, are, is there going to be a little bit of Mike Zimmer used to say high on your oats, which is probably from the year 1847, but, uh, farmers know exactly what that means. It means getting a little bit too high

on yourself a little too. Oh, Hey man, everyone's talking about us as the talk of the NFC. We can chase down the lions, but you couldn't chase down the lions necessarily today in week 18, you needed to focus on the bears, Sam Darnold. He's doing the sit down with the SPN, all that sort of stuff. There was just that opportunity as there has been numerous times throughout this year to get a little too into themselves and then have a letdown game. And the only game that really was a major letdown, they actually won, which was against the Jacksonville Jaguars. And they had the ball for the majority of that game. So there has not been that typical Minnesota Vikings, oh, we never saw that loss coming. And what a shock so far to get

to this point. And it speaks to the resilience of the team. It speaks to how they're made up with veterans. This is one of the older teams in the NFL, which is often an insult, except when you're trying to chase a Super Bowl, then it is not an insult. It's a major benefit to your team because you don't have guys who are surprised by this, shocked by this. Jonathan Grenard, his team was great last year. So was Blake Cashman's same team. Andrew Van Ginkle's been to the playoffs before.

So many of these guys have done this somewhere before. And maybe even if Sam Darnold hasn't, players on his offense have been to the playoffs before. They've gone deep into seasons before. Justin Jefferson has done it. Brian O'Neill, from our understanding, is okay that they x-rayed his knee. It looked fine. He was able to come back and keep playing. That's something to keep an eye on, but at least as we stand right now, but this team has a lot of players who are not going to get ahead of themselves and overlook a team like the Chicago bears. That said Dane, all the credit on the defensive side, lots of stops, fourth down stuffs. They, they got after Caleb Williams. They forced him to be looking at the rush all night long, dropping his eyes immediately.

And we'll get into what that all means for the future. It was sloppy though. Tonight it was sloppy. Now you come away with an 18 point win. It's hard to be too critical, but Blake Brandel, let's go an easy pressure cam Robinson. I don't know what happened there. There were penalties and there were some pressures and some missed blocks on the run game early in the game. There were some guys that were making mistakes that you wouldn't expect. There was a punt block, which turned out to be quite vicious. And whose fault is it anyway on that one? I guess we'll have to sort that out with Matt Daniels. Some people think Kamu Grugier-Hill may have had the wrong assignment there or something. But the point just being that to win a game 30-12 where I felt like you were sloppy and it was disjointed and it was not the prettiest thing, I think is a really good sign for them.

Also, when they play Green Bay here or when they go to Seattle next week, too many penalties, too many misthrows from Sam Darnold early in the game. Those things cannot exactly happen going forward down the stretch here. And Kevin O'Connell was honest about that after the game. Yeah. But I think you made a good point or I think that kind of sums up this game as a whole is how many times have we seen the game where they go up early and they just let the team hang around, and then all of a sudden it's a one-score game late. They played bad, question mark, and still won 30-12, or they played below their potential and still won running away.

So I get it. There is another level that this team can get to. Then there's another level that I think we've all come to expect on a week-by-week basis. But in a game, they felt like they really didn't have their fastball today to walk away and just kind of take care of business. And it was grimy, and I think that was the word Kevin O'Connell used. And you look up and you see 30-12 at the end of the game and you say like how did that happen but the fact that it did I think just proves like another way or another you know way that this team has shown they can win a game I will say like early in the game when they're up 10-7 and for all of the throws that Darnold missed today, and for as shaky as he looked at times,

he didn't always look like he was being decisive with his reads. And Kevin O'Connell said he set such a high standard for himself that when he air-middles a ball to the sideline, you're like, is something wrong with him? It could have been an off day. I know there was the report that he banged his hand on someone's helmet and maybe was dealing with a little pinky issue. We'll see about all that, but 10 zero. And he throws a dot to Justin Jefferson. It's just like he drops. I've never seen it happen. He dropped the touchdown.

That's a 30 yard touchdown that one would go into his stats to you take the interception away three, there'd be up 17, zero, and maybe the whole game takes a different complexion. I get it. Like those points did not happen. So we can't say like, well, like if they don't happen against the Packers or if they don't happen against the lions, like it doesn't matter. But I think there were opportunities for this game to, to just kind of fall all the way in the Vikings' favor early. It didn't. They showed a response late and they ran away with the game. So I think in the past, it might've been, oh, they could have gone up 17-0 there. They didn't. Now they're just in a dogfight the rest of the

way. They ended up putting their foot on the gas and then just kind of driving away with this thing. You might not ever see a Justin Jefferson drop as bad as that one ever again in his entire career. But I think that what he was shocked by was how wide open he was because the last time he played the bears, they had the entire defense try to stop him all at once. And he looks around and he's wide open and he's going to catch it and trying to run into the end zone at once, which every wide receiver who's ever played has probably done that. But that did have somewhat of an effect on how grimy it became because if he scores there, it's 17, nothing, and you are running away. And we saw there is a extreme lack of resilience from the Chicago bears. See, this is why we will praise teams sometimes and say,

like, hey, they fought. You know, last year's Kevin O'Connell team, they had a bunch of close losses with Nick Mullins and with Josh Dobbs, and we would come on the postgame and say, look, guys, I mean, they fought to the end. You just saw a team not fight. That's what it looks like when a franchise has given up for the season and packed it in.

And where the Vikings really took advantage of this was in the running game. Now, did they do it enough? Maybe not enough early in the game, but you know, Kevin O'Connell is going to try to strike. And he said that he went for fourth down and Darnold threw that interception because he just thought there is no way my defense has given up a touchdown here. If I fail, they are not going to allow the other team to drive the length of the field. And they ended up, I think, with a field goal because of a late hit or some penalty that happened on, oh, on the punt. Yeah, there was a, yeah, what a, well, we'll do some grades later, but I'll tell you the special teams

will not be receiving particularly high marks for this evening's performance. And I have started to lean a shade toward that's a legitimate concern. What is going on on special teams for this year? Because it has not been all that impressive, but I digress. So the running game in the second half, where you could really sense that the bears were not having it anymore and didn't want to tackle and Kevin O'Connell largely to his credit, ran and ran and ran and ran. And Aaron Jones ends up with what? 90 yards, 86 yards, almost five yards to carry. Like that is the type of offense that they need to have. So winning with the run game, I feel like it's a little bit of a reflection of what happened last week, late in the game against the Atlanta Falcons. They're up 14, they get the interception and they decide we're just

going to hand off, hand off, hand off. And they have a 98 yard drive where I believe there was one pass. And I thought that was a confidence building type of exercise for Kevin O'Connell to see. You can just put the game away with your fantastic running back, which he did today. And the fact that they didn't need Sam Darnold to throw for 300, they just needed him to convert some third downs. He was really a game manager today, not take sacks, complete some short passes to TJ Hawkinson. There's a couple of first downs that are just Hawkinson and then Hawkinson again, and then they grab Hawkinson. There's a couple of first downs that are just Hawkinson and then Hawkinson again, and then they grab Hawkinson and there's your first down. And if we were worried about Sam

Darnold's throwing of the football, his pass to Justin Jefferson at the goal line was another holy moly type of throw from Sam Darnold. So I don't have any problem really with this performance. I'm just curious about the potential of a hand injury with some of the throws that were flying up high a little bit. I also felt like Dane, that he might've been a little amped up tonight. I mean, this, you would not blame the atmosphere in here was one of the best we've seen all year long. One of the best, maybe in a really long time since the playoff game in 2022, possibly. I mean, it was really juiced up in here. A lot of emotion.

Chris Carter was here. Jake Reed. They brought out a Randy Moss jersey. And I just got the sense that Darnold was a little amped up to begin the game. And then when they focused on some of the underneath stuff, he was really good at executing that. And that's going to travel from week to week, from possession to possession. That, to me, has been the difference with Darnold over the second half of this year,

the last five games. Those short passes that he's been able to execute, it allowed them to have some long drives, which they so badly needed. Yeah, and especially on a day where Sam Darnold's throwing the football at such a high level this year, and I think he knows that he's throwing the football at such a high level this year. And I think he knows that he's throwing the football at such a high level this year. So when he's not throwing the football necessarily that same level, I'm sure he feels that. So on a day where he wasn't at his best to be able to, like you said, check down, use TJ Hawkinson as a security blanket. At one point, TJ Hawkinson had zero

targets. And then on one drive, he had like three catches for 35 yards. Use him. And it doesn't always have to just be use him when, you know, things are breaking down, use them. If you need to just get yourself into a rhythm. I think he did that at times today. Um, and, and I think when you see him kind of fit a ball into TJ Hawkinson, when they really needed a first down there, or, you know, even late in the game, he fit in a ball to Trent, Trent Shurfield. There were times still where you saw the arm strength. You mentioned the throw to Justin Jefferson, which like you, that should have been a touchdown and he deserved it. I got a touchdown for his stats when he gunned that thing over the middle. Uh, the arm is still live. It can still make the throws. the throws it just wasn't all there today but his ability to

kind of take what the defense gave him over the course of the game I think was kind of a growth moment in a way and maybe a day that he'll look back on as not his best he wasn't pushing the ball 25 yards down the field he missed some some throws over the middle there was one to Addison earlier in the game on kind of that dagger cut that they love, that he loves, that he missed. He missed one to Jefferson, I think, after halftime. So on days when you're not able to push the ball down the field or you don't really have that fastball, I think that's what I've used now a couple times, to just take what the defense gives you. It's something that the guy on the other side of the field, Caleb Williams could probably learn from. If you don't have it, if it's not all there, just take the check down, take what's there. Don't check down on fourth and eight, but if it's

just check down sometimes. And I think even the interception was an example of Darnold understands situationally, like on third down, if I can get the ball to the sticks, I will on fourth down, I'm scrambling. I have to throw this ball up. I can get the ball to the sticks, I will. On fourth down, I'm scrambling. I have to throw this ball up. I hope it's not an interception, but he did give his guy a chance there too. He gets it. I think he understands situationally where he needs to go with the ball. More importantly, on a day where he doesn't have it, I think he understands how to get himself back into a groove. You saw that today. So it's not a game we're going to look back on and say, Sam Darnold deserves to be the MVP, everyone start chanting.

But I think it's a day we could actually look back on and say, look, he learned in that moment this is how he snaps out of things. You're going to need a win in a lot of different ways moving forward here too, not just over the next three weeks. This team kind of has goals long beyond that. And it's not always going to come easy. You're not always going to be able to push the ball downfield. So I think what he'd learned and what he did today could be a kind of a good teaching moment for him. Well, he did a really good job of winning this football game

with his brain, with good decisions, when his pure arm and playmaking wasn't quite the same as it was. I mean, even on the first drive where I thought he might've been able to scramble, but he sees a pass and he just can't hit it physically. He didn't make a good enough throw to hit it. But as the game went on, he made good decision after good decision. I always thought that this was Tom Brady's real superpower. And I'm not comparing Darnold to Brady, but just saying that when you make good decision after good decision, after good decision, after good decision, it just puts so much pressure on the defense. And if it's a seven yard pass, it's a screen, which was mixed into Justin Jefferson, which I really feel like Kevin O'Connell could use more to get the ball

into Justin Jefferson's hands, but they got some blocking out in front of him, but it was good decisions with the football. It was not big mistakes. It wasn't big risks that he was taking. And even a couple of the inaccurate balls, they're toward the sideline. The only person that's getting it is the receiver. It's not going to have a chance to be intercepted or turn into something that could give the Chicago bears some type of life. He did not do that. And even if you only end up with five and a half yards per pass attempt and a day where your defense is playing this way, Darnold often played to the score of this game and he played to the defense and the style of this game to probably pass on a couple of opportunities. And then his throw down the sideline toward the end of the game into the end zone to Jordan

Addison is just a good decision. Like he's rolling out. There's nothing really there. It's either throw it away or give a shot. And if it's picked off, oh, well, it's a punt. It's late in the game. It doesn't really matter that much, but if he gets a catch or if he gets interfered with, this game is on ice. It is over. And that's exactly what Sam Darnold did. They get the penalty in the end zone. I think Jordan Addison used the benefit of his lack of weight to be thrown around a little bit there. Whoa. And he ends up getting the flag and a huge gains, like a 40 yard gain on that play. But just another decision.

He throws that ball all the way to the back of the end zone. And if the guy picks it off, it's not that big of a deal. Just good choices by Sam Darnold tonight. So I think he does deserve credit for that. He will have to get his throwing back on track next week. But I don't think there's a huge concern about it coming out of this game, considering the way that he played overall over the last few weeks. So I wanted to bring up two before we move on to grading the coaching, talking about a few other positions and also Caleb Williams. Just what Justin Jefferson did tonight. When you think back on this season, there's going

to be some things that really jump out in your mind. There's going to be the giants game and the first throw that Sam Darnold makes to Justin Jefferson, where maybe you thought just for a minute there, this could actually be a thing. I know I did in New York when we talked about it, the excitement, the new energy of this team. And when he makes that throw,

we all go, okay, Sam, the 52 yard touchdown beating Kirk Cousins, the Randy Moss tribute from Justin Jefferson, getting up into the camera. We love you, Randy. It was really special. And that really, I think, speaks to Justin Jefferson's character, what this franchise

means to him. And this was a guy that when we talked about his contract and all those things and all these receivers negotiating these big contracts, and then he just got it done. And he said that he loved this organization and he wanted to be a part of it and he cared about it. And it was near and dear to his heart. And it was special. That was not just stuff that he was saying because he got some money. He could have pushed farther. He could have pushed it harder. He could have pushed into training camp. And a moment like that tonight to have that connection between the goat and the present goat, Justin Jefferson, the greatest

receiver in the league right now, that was one that will stick out to me for a really long time. And I think was a very special message. And it shows the, the selflessness, the thoughtfulness of Justin Jefferson, that he would care to do that in a big moment for him on national TV to send that shout out to Randy Moss. So I thought the whole team from the Jersey that they brought out the honorary captains, the other two wide receivers for three deep, it was just, it was really, really a special way to honor Randy Moss and show support in his battle with cancer. Yeah. Uh, the, the moment with Justin Jefferson in the end zone legitimately gave me chills when you go back and watch the video and he just really

was intentional. Like he definitely had a plan. If I get into the end zone, I am honoring the goat. Um, but he, after the game in the locker room came out wearing a Randy Moss Jersey, talked about how much that moment meant to him pregame with Chris Carter and Jake Reed holding the Randy Moss Jersey up before the coin toss. Um, and, and Justin just talked about how that kind of, that emotion kind of willed him through the game, if you will. Um, so I think to one, have a guy who is so good in his own right, be able to like separate the forest from the trees and be able to see how important this other guy who played the receiver position long before you, who laid the foundation long

before you, for him to be able to really understand what that means. Um, and then lean into it. And in a really special moment where this, this organization, you know, they pulled out all the stops today to prove and show how much they are behind Randy Moss in his fight. I just thought it was – Justin Jefferson continues to impress me. And in everything he does, the person that he is, you mentioned the way he handled himself this offseason, but the guy just gets it. He's a 25-year-old kid who just gets it.

And I think that today was a good point of that or a good proof of that. So I think it's good you brought that up because that is a moment, I think, you're not going to look back on the Chicago Bears game on Monday Night Football, the 30-12 grimy win, as, ah, man, what a weird game that was. You're going to remember that was the Randy Moss game. That was the game where Justin caught the touchdown and honored Randy. That was the game where the greatest receiver to ever play the position for this franchise got proper and showed his flowers by someone who is the only person that

could maybe ever even come into the conversation from him. So that it was an awesome moment. And then I think it was a special thing that we'll remember for a while. Gifting is hard, but here's a hint. Give the gift of connection from U.S. Cellular. Not sure what that means. Here's a slightly more specific hint. You can choose four free phones and get four lines for 90 a month from us cellular your family wants new phones how do we know they told us the good news is that compared to wrapping presents you are great at getting hints so take a hint and get them four free phones and four lines for 90 a month us cellular built for us and i just want to point out that all of things like this come from the top come from kevin o'connell he played with randy moss and he talked post game about how

special randy moss is to him and also he's talked throughout really since the very beginning of how important selflessness is, selfless leaders, selfless players. It was a selfless act by Justin Jefferson. And again, very, very special on this night. So let's talk about the grading of the coaches, the quarterback, the different parts of the team. As far as coaching goes, I would have to give Brian Flores an A for the adjustments, probably an A plus for the adjustments that they made to contain Caleb Williams. Maybe they were even a little bit struck the first time when they played him in soldier field about just how elusive and just how fast this guy is. And that was another question of mine to Kevin O'Connell post game was like, what did you kind

of make of the pass rush? He said that they changed up the rush lanes, which, you know, that's one of those things you go back and study and you play them again. Caleb Williams was an absolute hell against this defense all night long. A plus for Brian Flores on the offensive side, dealing with a quarterback that was a little shade off. I thought Kevin O'Connell mostly did a good job with that. I would have preferred to see them stick to the run a little bit more earlier in the game. They got back to it at the end of the game to finish it off, but the underneath passing game was effective. It felt like they had the football a lot throughout this night, where in previous weeks they didn't have the longer drives.

And when you put up 30 points as a team, it's hard to complain about a whole heck of a lot from the game plan. So I would have to give just overall coaching on the offensive and defensive side, high marks, maybe a B plus for O'Connell. The fourth down didn't work, but I was fine with it. Maybe take the points, but yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's fine. You're playing a bad offense that you're really confident you can stop. That's an aggressive decision. We know O'Connell wants to be aggressive, so that's okay. No huge issues there. The coaching, though, does deserve a demerit for the penalties. That goes on the coach when you have that happen, so maybe O'Connell has to go down to like a B or B+. But the special team's just a freaking F outside of Will Reichardt.

Will Reichardt swinging the leg. Will the thrill looked very good with his 50 yard kick. That is important that he is back to being himself, a blocked punt, penalties, mistakes, just not what you're looking for on the special team side of it to have one blocked and to have one negated on the other side. I mean, you can bet that that meeting tomorrow between O'Connell and Matt Daniels is going to be a little tense, I mean, you can bet that that meeting tomorrow between O'Connell and Matt Daniels is going to be a little tense, I think. And we have reached the point where I have to say that special teams are a concern. They are officially a worry of this team as we go down the stretch.

Can they just punt the football? Can they just cover a punt? Can they just kick effectively, not get penalties, things like that? You're going to be asking yourself every single time a special teams play ball but i'm always going to go back to like they they schemed up a really good play that justin jefferson shockingly dropped and obviously i don't have any demerits for for what brian flores did on defense but special teams yeah like the when we talked to matt daniels i actually think this is a good coaching point where they're okay with certain penalties if they're made in like combative situations like it's okay to to screw up if you're trying to like fight like i think he's okay certain times when it's a maybe you have a holding on a punt return because if the guys engage like that's what you

want out of that side of the ball you want guys who are willing to kind of put their body on the line in the limited snaps they get so i get get those coaching points. I understand that. But I think it might need to be communicated in a different way because we're just seeing too much carelessness on that side of the ball. And I'm as big of a Matt Daniels fan as there is out there. But at a certain point, you have to look at this unit and say, you're right, there is maybe an issue here. And the fact that it comes up and the fact that we're talking about it is not what you want out of your special teams group. That should be a unit that you can almost, as the head coach, just turn away.

And if you're punting the ball, go to your defense or go talk to your offense. Or if you're getting the ball back, you can get your offense ready to play. Instead, it's probably something you have to watch now and kind of like clover your eyes. Is this going to be an issue? Maybe we don't block punts anymore. Maybe we don't try and do that anymore if you're the Vikings because you had the roughing the kicker in London,

which maybe, maybe wasn't, but still, don't be anywhere near the punter's legs. You had the roughing the punter again tonight. Trent Shurfield almost blocked it, which would have been cool, but he didn't. Instead, he, he run into the kicker and then it's, it's a, they extend the drive that way. So Ryan Wright nearly gets his head taken off today because of a missed block somewhere. Like you said, maybe it was Kamu Grugier Hill. Some people think it was Ty Chandler not picking up the free runner. Maybe it was both of them, but if it was either one of them or both of them, that cannot happen. And it's just, it's things

like this that in a close game in the playoffs could come back to bite you. So yeah, a little cause for concern. I think it is, it would be foolish to just write this off as, eh, that happens sometimes because we've seen it now a number of times. But overall coaching pretty good. That side of the ball, very bad. Okay. I have to amend the grade, a great point by the chat. the watermelon onside kick did not work josh oliver fell on top of it so d minus for the special teams now there's going to be an unprecedented move here on this post-game show and all of you should feel excited to be a part of it that move is going to be to grade the other team's quarterback we would not do this but caleb but Caleb Williams is going to play against the Vikings

for a long time to come. Let me tell you F minus F F F F minus Ryan poles was sitting more close to us than I realized during the game. And when they showed him on the broadcast, we have TVs here in the press box that are just above us looked up and I see him slumped down, frustrated, sad. And you know, I was reminded of watching him during the draft season and last year and seeing the same exact thing from an immature college quarterback that we were all told was going to stop doing stuff like that. When he got to the NFL. Caleb Williams was not for it tonight. He was not a battler. He was not a leader. He was a slumped over dude on the bench that was not trying to drag his team to compete with the top team in the division and show that they were there to fight. He was there

to kind of give up until the game was mostly over. He got hit early. He started dropping his eyes. He scrambled all over the place like a total lunatic as if he had learned nothing at all about how to play quarterback in the NFL over the last 13, 14 weeks. I think if you are Ryan Poles and the Chicago Bears, if you're saying that just hiring another coach is going to fix all those problems immediately, I'm not so sure. I think there's some fundamental issues with Caleb Williams that he's going to have to resolve himself, that you can't just pin on Shane Waldron. You can't just pin on Matt Eberflus.

Leadership like that in that type of moment where you're still in a football game and you are just laying down on the sideline on the bench and everybody sees that and that's shot all over the internet. Every one of his teammates are going to see that. That is a bad look for him. Tonight was a bad look for him. And I thought he was much worse in this game than he was the last time he faced the Vikings in a difficult environment on a big stage. They should be really worried. I mean, I know like, look, we're covering Sam Darnold. So patience, right? They should be, I think they should be very concerned about what they have at the quarterback position, even though he is supremely talented. Yeah. I still think in

the end, talent's going to win. I think he's going to have a fine career, but when you do things like you did tonight, when you just kind of quit, um, and we talked about this over dinner, pregame in the press box, me and you were talking and said, I think if they just put a good lick on him early, he might just say, you know what, screw this. I want to play for a new coach. If I could sim to the end of the season like this was Madden, I'm sure you would click the button right now. But you can't do that as a franchise quarterback of an NFL football team. So the fact that you've got no fight out of him today, it couldn't be a cause for concern.

I think when Jonathan Grenard sacks you, it was the hardest strip sack I've ever seen in my life, but when that gets you to curl up into a ball and basically just quit, that's not a good look. That's something that I think when you're trying to earn the respect of 52 other guys, maybe 70 other guys, if you include the practice squad, maybe a hundred other people, if you include the coaching staff and everyone else who helps get you onto the field every single week, like if you're trying to earn their respect

and you are laying down on the bench and all of that, like, yeah, that can be a cause for concern. What I will say is like, he still has the talent and I think talent just wins. Uh, but I, it is not as easy as just saying, get the right guy in there. Everything is fixed because there are certain things about him that I don't think another person can fix. He has to fix that. He is young, and he is raw, and he has not always had to play on of be a leader by doing crazy things on the football field. But when there are other players on the field who were the best players in their college or the best players at every step of their career, and it's all just even in the NFL, you need something intangible. It's something that Kevin O'Connell talks about. It's something that he praises Sam Darnold for having,

just this calmness, this coolness, this collectedness in all these situations. Caleb showed none of that tonight. It is an F- upon F- upon F- performance from him. And while I hesitate to say, like, sound the alarms, is this their guy? Because of the talent in that frame of his i do think that this game and this type of performance on a national stage before a national audience in prime time you can start having people write narratives about you that i think in some ways are merited i'm not all about writing people off when they're 22 years old, 23 years old,

but until further notice, like he's a quitter. Like he's a guy who, when the going gets tough, he just goes home. Like they're four and 10, they haven't won in two months. You're the number one pick. I get it. It's a hard position to be in. I'm sure all the bears fans listening or the bears fans on whatever podcast they're listening to are probably just saying there's not enough help around him right now. But you know what, when you're the quarterback, you have the ability to get everyone to pull on the same rope. He didn't do any of that tonight until, like you said, it was way too late. He pads his stats. He gets a touchdown. It's BS. It was not, he didn't deserve the one 91 and one touchdown that he threw.

He wasn't good at any point tonight. You know what actually reminded me of this might sound strange, but Brock Osweiler, the Vikings played Brock Osweiler early in his career when he was playing for the Houston Texans and they beat him up and he just got rid of that football or he just tried to run away, look down at the rush, looked like he wanted nothing to do with the football game. We've seen every type of quarterback play against the Minnesota Vikings. That is one of the most give-up performances that we've seen.

I think that's not some sort of backup. Even though we've seen backups that will even fight. Think about how many times they hit Jared Goff, or keep coming after a veteran quarterback like him and the veteran quarterbacks, Matthew Stafford. How many times could you hit Matthew Stafford to make him give up? There is no number. You cannot make him stop coming at you one play after the next. And there's a long way to go for Caleb Williams. But the fact that he started looking down, getting scared, not seeing the field, running all over the place,

and then getting himself hit worse, that is a very bad sign, I think, for his development because he hasn't made any. He's playing exactly like I would have expected to see in the preseason. That was the type of showing he had tonight. So we'll move forward with the rest of the Vikings, but unprecedented, felt we need to talk about. That was a very concerning, if you're the Bears, performance. And boy, it's going to kind of be funny if the tank to get Caleb Williams, they don't even get one of the best quarterbacks in that draft because May is looking good. Daniels is going to be in the playoffs more likely than not.

And the others, Bo Nix was going to be in the playoffs more likely than not. And, uh, you know, the others, uh, Bo Nix was going to be in the playoffs as well. And a lot of the draft analysts thought that he was like a third round pick, but that's for another time that I roast those people. Let's go to, uh, the, the offensive line. It was a struggle tonight in some ways and not so much in others. I think that I've landed on a spot with this and Brian O'Neill coming back was really huge for the offensive line, but who they are as an offensive line is they're definitely flawed. Their quarterback is not fully sure how to handle blitzes. And that's something that other teams are going to take advantage of. We saw a free runner again at Sam Darnold and Oh, Oh,

didn't spot it at the line of scrimmage. I think that his vision for that stuff is just a little bit narrow. Like the old Madden cone. It's a little, he doesn't quite see that stuff with protection. And I'm starting to think that that's the quarterback and his direction. Cause at home, you shouldn't have things like that happening. So that's a little bit of an issue there's going to be some runs blown up in the backfield because these guys aren't perfect i think blake brando might be wearing down a little bit this is his first time ever playing this many games but at the end of the day one sack time to throw on third down he dropped back in the pocket a number of times, didn't get rid of the ball immediately. They were able to just hang on and give him enough time to throw. And what that is, is probably the 12th best offensive line in the league.

If they had Derrissaw, they'd be top 10. You can win with it. There's some concerns there, but I think you can win with it today. I would have to give them something like a C plus or B because they were able to run at the end of the game, largely protect Arnold from getting sacked, but just some, just some concerning negative plays and some penalties on Cam Robinson that hurt them. Yeah. The Cam Robinson performance tonight was not something he's going to enjoy watching in the film room tomorrow. I think it was like three or four illegal formations,

maybe a hold, maybe a false start, not a good look for him. But I think that's probably a good way to phrase it is like the 12th best offensive line in football, the 13th best offensive line in football, because there are going to probably be plays throughout every game. And there might even be weeks throughout every month that you're like, Oh, that's an issue. Even last week, like the first half, pretty atrocious. The second half, pretty good. So like, it's probably just going to be a little bit of that, like a roller coaster, if you will, with this offensive line, losing Christian Dersaw is huge. Obviously if he's there, he's their anchor.

He's someone who I think you just set him on the left side. You leave it. You don't worry about it. He probably makes life easier for Blake Brandel as well. You've seen some of the clips where he blocks like three guys in one play. You lost that guy. But the fact, even if Cam Robinson had a bad game today, the fact that you can put him in there and you can only allow,

I don't know how many times Darnold gets sacked today. It says twice. He had time to throw generally. He was holding onto the ball a little bit today. The running game was able to kind of finish this game off. So for as much as the offensive line struggle that times, I think, I still think they kind of rose to the occasion when they needed to, largely because I think Brian O'Neal coming back into the game served as a pretty big boost. It's just a hard place to put David Questenberry in. He's played left tackle in a pinch.

He's played right tackle now in a pinch. He got beat pretty bad on one play that Blake Brandel also got beat on. But Brian O'Neal returning to the game tonight I think was a big thing. And talking to him after the game, he had a huge brace on his knee. Um, and he said he felt good. Once he got the clearance to go, he was definitely coming back in. Once they told him you can't make it any worse. Um, he was definitely coming back in. He didn't start the second half, not because he was injured, not because of anything like that. He said because they put about seven pounds of tape on his leg. So he had a mega huge brace on.

He's hoping not to have to wear that next week. But he talked about next week in a way where I'd be pretty surprised if he missed it. Now maybe he wakes up sore, then that's an issue. If you lose Brian O'Neill for any stretch, the offensive line is going to be rough. But I think, yeah, to say that they are a top 12-ish offensive line is probably pretty accurate. And with that comes some ups and downs. I want to toss out one other thing that we didn't address for the coaching, but Kevin O'Connell mentioned it after the game.

And I think it's important. Josh Oliver, CJ Hamm got a lot of work tonight. And the Chicago Bears were not putting in their bigger personnel when the Vikings did. So they just kept doing it. And this is a little bit of an edge that they have that I would like to see them take more advantage of as we go forward. I know they're a three wide receiver team, but they have these extra tight ends and they have CJ Hamm, which very few teams prepare for a fullback. So you're always looking for what is the smallest edge. And with so much attention on Jefferson, Addison, Hawkinson,

throwing in a couple of big dudes a little bit more and working them more in the run game, I think is a strategy that they can go forward with. And also overall helps the blocking, gives Cam Robinson a little bit of help on that side or CJ Hamm up the middle where I think Brandel is having a bit of a tough time over the last couple weeks. So they've got some answers and some options with big people

where they don't just have to rely on that. That could be helpful as they go forward. I wanted to talk about on the defensive side. Okay, Jonathan Grenard. We're just at the point where how about the world mention and maybe just say Grenard's name correctly and not Greenerd. That's where he's at in the national conversation. Nowhere. As because everyone talks Micah Parsons, who deserves it? Miles Garrett, who deserves it? TJ Watt, who deserves it? I think we're throwing Jonathan Grenard's name in this. I mean, he is just blowing by people on a weekly basis. He's tracking people down. He's creating huge pressures at the end of games. This man has elevated his game to being one of the best players in the entire NFL this year. And it always takes like an extra year for people to figure it out. But maybe as they get into the

playoffs here, there will be a little more attention on him. We all know that. We've talked about that a lot. Dallas Turner, though. Oh, my goodness. If you had already shut off the game, obviously you guys didn't go to bed since you're still watching right now. But if you had already moved on, started looking at YouTube, scrolling social media, maybe trolling some Bears fans about how bad they are, and you didn't look up and see the sack that he had. Whoa. I mean, this was one of the explosive dips. The shoulder flies right

by the guy, the reasons that he was drafted in the first round. And the thing is that what we do here in this post game, we're not going to be alarmists. We're never going to lie to you. And so when we came in here earlier this year and he played like eight snaps, we said, look, they're going to develop Dallas Turner. And if we see him more and more as we go forward in this season, then it will be a good sign for his future because he's a very young player and there's a lot of talent on this defense, but we've got to see it. We've got to see it as we go forward each week. Now we're seeing it a little bit more last week. He had a couple of nice plays, track down a dude, hit Kirk cousins

this week. He puts on this disgusting move on a tackle sacks, the quarterback it's coming along. I had a long conversation with Dallas this week, article out there. Hey, another one of my articles came to fruition. Maybe if I just write every day and cover every player that randomly it'll work for a 12 and two team, but no, it must be me, uh, with, uh, no, I had a long conversation with Dallas Turner and I really thought that his perspective was good on this season. He's paying attention. He's developing. He's listening to everything. Brian Flores has to say he's a very smart kid. And to see that that's the reason you pick him. That's the reason you trade stuff for him.

This could be a weapon for them defensively that would almost be like getting someone at the trade deadline because they didn't use him early in the season. That singular player being able to rotate in, play multiple roles, rush the passer, drop back in coverage, and be a difference maker could be really massive for this defense going forward. That's a big development for today for him to get that confidence building sack. Yeah. And the move that he made on that sack,

you cannot teach is the thing, like the bend that he shows on that sack and the ability to be explosive out of that bend is something that you cannot teach. It's why people had him pegged as the best defensive player in the draft, depending on who you were talking to. It's why the Vikings traded all the draft capital to go up and get him when he was available there at 17. It's because he has things that you can't teach. What he has learned over the course of the year, what you can teach him over the course of the year is how to function in the structure of a defense. When you're not just in college, hey, you're better than that left tackle. Rush as fast as you can and try and tackle the quarterback. That doesn't always work in the NFL.

It certainly doesn't work if you're a 21, 22-year-old like Dallas Turner. Not to go off on a tangent, but Jared Versus is a very good player for the Los Angeles Rams. He's probably going to win defensive rookie of the year. He's 24. He's two years older than Dallas Turner. So where Dallas Turner is at in his development, I think it required a little bit of seasoning. It required sitting behind two, by the way, very good football players and Jonathan Gernard and Andrew Van Ginkle. It's kind of hard to find playing time for him when you have those two guys just patrolling the edges. But what you talked about in your conversation with Dallas Turner, and I think what comes up anytime you ask anybody about Dallas Turner, is just his ability to take coaching this year,

to not take it personally, to operate as a true professional. I don't want to take another shot at Caleb Williams, but I will. He, at no point this season, dipped his head, ducked his shoulder, oh man, lay down on the bench. I'm not playing. Pout. Woe is me. All Dallas Turner did was keep putting his head down, saying, I really understand. This is good for me. I'm going to have a really long career. And when you see plays like that, you can see, yes, I think he's going to have a really long career in the NFL, but I also think he can be really impactful this year. Um, I don't know. He had a sack in the first game of the season. Uh, I think he kind of just tackled Daniel Jones.

Um, but the play that he made today, I think he could probably make in a vacuum in any week, but the fact that he's now learned everything that he needs to learn about this defense and can kind of just essentially be thrown into any spot and used in a way that Brian Flores likes to use his defenders, that's a huge weapon. And then at any given moment, he can just dip down on you and make your right tackle, your former first round pick right tackle look silly. It's a great thing for Dallas Turner. It's a great thing for the Vikings. And you're right. Like he could be a piece that they have that maybe people didn't think they have.

Maybe he doesn't show up on film when you're trying to pre-scout the Vikings as much because he hasn't had a ton of snaps this year. But here he is now in week 15 heading into week 16 heading into the home stretch not only making big plays but just really popping every single time you see him on the field and you guys mentioned dwight mcglothern in there a little bit late at the game getting some development from him but i also think somebody who needs a big shout out is fabian moreau this guy didn't play the whole season long. And then Stefan Gilmore gets hurt. He gets mossed by Marvin Harrison jr. And oh boy, the teams are just going to attack Fabian Morrow

over and over again. Uh, it's a backup. He's going to be a problem. I haven't noticed them the last two weeks having any problems in coverage and they've been able to play a little bit more man I've noticed because that's what Fabian does best. So you need on a defense, all these heroes that aren't the big superstars to do their jobs in order to succeed. And I felt like they really, really have done that these last couple of weeks, but especially tonight, some of these players that you don't always necessarily equate with the success of this defense could be big for them down the stretch. Let us wrap with this kind of where I started Minnesota Vikings, 12 and two, 12 and two, 12 and two, 12 and two. And they're going to go to Seattle. I don't know who their

quarterback is going to be. We'll see. Sounds like Geno Smith was telling people he's going to be okay. That is not an easy place to play. It's not an easy team. They are fighting for playoff position, but the Vikings now have a shot to go to Seattle, come back here against Green Bay, and then face the Detroit Lions with the division on the line if they continue to roll along like this. I think the last couple of weeks, there's been these galvanizing moments, these momentum type of moments for this team, this confidence building in Sam Darnold, because you know what, when you're asking, Hey, what's our team really going to be? How good are we? You know, who else does they can lie and say, they don't those guys, the players, the executives, the coaches throughout a season, they're watching it come to fruition. You get to 12 and two.

Oh, no, no, no. You're one of the best teams in the NFL. There's no debating it. Two straight multiple score wins. Now they've got to be up to about 117 plus for a point differential. That is a Super Bowl caliber point differential. Their two losses are by 12 total points. And it should be 10 because that was a face mask in the

end zone. And I saw around the league, there's every week there's face masks that they're missing. It's not that hard guy grabs the face anyway. So this team has now established itself as they know they're, they're this good. They know what type of chance they have going down the stretch, but also don't seem to be letting that get too far out in front of them. These next few games will have drama and a chance to improve their playoff position. So they will be fascinating to watch. I don't know that there's any other way we can put it at this point, other than these guys are good and what happens next, who knows, but the path is there for them over these next few weeks to have one of the best seasons. It's already there, but truly one of the best seasons we have ever seen from the Minnesota Vikings. Just like we drew it up when I picked the schedule,

when it came out, I deleted that episode. I was sitting on the porch of your house. We picked the schedule and I had no time to prepare. And I remember I just rifled through a few games. I was like, yeah, they might win that one. I was not paying attention. All of a sudden I had them at nine wins and I didn't really know. I thought they were going to be pretty good. I didn't know at that moment in time that I'd even picked them to win nine games.

I just kind of was rifling through the schedule. I certainly would never have picked them to win 12 games. I would not have picked them to be 12 and two with the ability to maybe win 15 games without getting too far ahead of ourselves. But you just look at the way the schedule lines up now, Seattle, you might be playing Sam Howell. Yes, you might be playing Go Smith, but you might be playing Sam Howell who looked like if I had to go play quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks last night, he did not look good. So if you were playing Sam Howell next week and you take care of business there, like you took care of business tonight against a quarterback who didn't want to be on the field, then you host the Green Bay Packers at home in what will

probably be flexed to a primetime game. I have no idea how it won't be. And then you get to go to Detroit. The biggest thing the Vikings earned the right yesterday is to control their own destiny. And they do for the first time since very, very early in the season. The Vikings control their own destiny against a team in Detroit, by the way, who is just continuously getting decimated by injuries. The Vikings have had their fair share of injuries this year, but I've never seen anything like what's happening to the Detroit Lions up north. They are now lost David Montgomery today for the season. They've lost a lean McNeil. They've lost basically five or six players on their defense. It's a war of attrition in the NFL. And sometimes it's just about who's healthier.

If the Vikings play the lions in week 18 and they're healthy, like I get it. You have home field advantage. I get it. That offense can score with anybody, but I might take the Vikings like with the way that they have been playing over the last seven games on this seven game win streak. So everything they want to do is in front of them. It's something I think we've talked about at length this year is that the NFC really didn't have a big contending team aside from the Lions, and now all of a sudden it looks like the Lions might be in that kind of group, that conglomerate of teams.

Maybe there just is a bunch of teams that are good. But one thing's for sure, the Vikings are in that group of teams that are good. And when you're there and when you're in a position to maybe win the NFC North, and when you're in a position to maybe take and take it and win the number one seat in the NFC as a whole, like all of those things are possible for the Vikings right now. And it's, it's pretty crazy. It's pretty, it's not something I expected,

but it's something that I think over the course of this year, it's not that insane how it's happened either, because you've just kind of seen it build to this point kind of week after week. Yeah. And I don't think that a lot of the wins have been random. I mean, that's really the thing is tonight.

Was this random? No, they were just the better football team last week. Was that random? No, they were the better football team. Arizona might be the only one where I thought they got away with, but really that's for the whole year. They outplayed the Jaguars. They outplayed the Titans. And the biggest complaint in those wins, Indianapolis was, well, you didn't win by enough points. Okay. Well now as the season has sort of made its way to the good teams, the bad teams, they're starting to pull away from a bad team like this. Now they're going to go play

a good team, uh, in Seattle. So it's reminded me, let me just make one comparison before we wrap, uh, a little bit 2021 Rams that year. If you go look at who was in the playoffs, Kevin O'Connell's the offensive coordinator, a big arm quarterback who had, by the way, a sub 500 career record, Matthew Stafford, who had played for a terrible organization, was big armed, top draft pick, lots of good receivers, good coaching, good defense. And if you look at that bracket for the playoffs in the NFC that year, it's the Packers that were good, but flawed. It's for the 49ers with G. It's Tampa Bay with Tom Brady a year older. And it just was kind of there for them to take that it was more even than usual. And this year, now with the Lions with so many injuries,

it is as even and close as it gets between about four teams in the NFC. The Packers, the Vikings, the Lions, and the Philadelphia Eagles. There is just not a lot of gap between them. And we'll see where we stand in a couple of weeks on that. But it feels like this Vikings team has put itself in position to play with anybody in the NFC and compete for the Super Bowl. Real quick, before we go, got to remind you about a sponsor of our show, US Cellular. Give the gift of connection for US Cellular. Here's a hint if you're not sure what that means. You could choose four free phones and get four

lines for $90 a month with US Cellular. Your family wants new phones for the holiday. How do I know? They're in the comment section. They told us. The good news is that compared to Rapid Presence, you are great at taking hints. So take a hint, get four free phones and four lines for $90 a month with U.S. Cellular built for us. Cannot forget our very special sponsors on the show. So thank you everybody so much for hanging out. A lot of you here tonight. I could tell from the attendance and from the comment section, the energy's building.

Lots of live shows, Jeremiah Searles, former Viking to break it down tomorrow. Brian Murphy, also live show on Wednesday and Thursday. Andrew Kramer this week will be in Seattle. Looking forward to that trip. Just book that thing.

So off we go, everybody. Now, do you believe, I think we're going to have to say it every time they win. Now do you believe your Vikings are 12-2? All right. Thanks, everyone.

Appreciate it. Have a good night. 12-2. Whoa. Football. Football.