Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Vikings-Bengals reaction: Nobody wanted to win but the Vikings found a way to lose

Episode Date: September 12, 2021

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom break down the Vikings' 27-24 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. How the Vikings' offensive line started out miserably. Whether Dalvin Cook's key fumble was actually a fumble. How the concerns from the preseason played out in Cincinnati. Why Joe Burrow looks like he's going to make the Bengals an exciting team. How the Bengals nearly gave the game away. Kirk Cousins's almost-winning drive and more. Visit tickpick.com/insider today and use the promo code INSIDER to save $10 on your first order of Vikings tickets! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

welcome to the post game minnesota vikings lose to the cincinnati bengals in overtime purple insider podcast matthew collar along with sam ext. Sam, you were trying to write an instant reaction that was your assignment for today. And that was pretty hard because of how this one went back and forth all the way to the end of the game. And it ended in sadness. Yeah, there was really the gamut of emotion in this one um i think first half it's total system failure i think by end of regulation you're you're just hoping to survive and get out of a road game with a win in which you trail by 14 regardless of the opponent that would have felt really good and then the controversial dalvin cook fumble you know as i wrote it grabs defeat from the

jaws of victory um we're probably looking at another greg joseph kick for the win and it never came to fruition this game reminded me matthew a lot of the green bay tie in 2018 with the the furious rally late and then kind of the the anticlimactic overtime except in this case they lose at the very end and the opponent is much worse like this is the Bengals right it only gets harder from here so uh all together a pretty discouraging performance devastating loss and um plenty to discuss all right so right there's always so many things that are kind of going through my head when I first turn on the recorder here so let me just say this that the offensive line was always going to be a

concern it was always going to be unknown as mike zimmer said until we actually saw it on the field and my expectation for it this week was that it was going to have some troubles at times because cincinnati has some good players on their defensive line and they got trey hendrickson in free agency they spent a bunch of money on him and DJ Reader they picked up so they had done a lot to try and improve their defensive line but what I did not expect Sam was five false starts I think four holdings unless there were more in the second half maybe it was five holdings I did not expect from the very outset of the game, from the offense and the offensive line, to not even be able to snap the football at the right time.

And that right there, you know, we talked about throughout the training camp and preseason, just how not on the same page everything was. Now, we didn't see a bunch of false starts in training camp and preseason, but there was always this sense of people kind of going this way in that way and not really being on the same page and that showed up right away and the other thing that showed up right away is Rashad Hill is absolutely a swing tackle he is not a starting left tackle in the NFL and now it's going to get even harder as it goes forward Chandler Jones had five sacks today in Arizona's game and they won handily. They also have J.J. Watt on their football team. And then it's not long before you get Miles Garrett in here. It's not long before you get T.J. Watt in here. Trish and Darisaw going, get ready fast, kid, because that was as rough as you're going to see a day for a left tackle.

We haven't seen anything like that since the T.J. Clemming time. Yeah, I almost feel bad for Rashad Hill. Like we wrote about him this week. He said he was so much more focused than he was in 2018. And I think both of us had kind of talked him up. We said, hey, like this has has done this now for so long he's a more mature player he works really hard and everybody loves him and the team keeps bringing him back so the team must love him so there's a reason why he's here and then that happened um you almost feel bad for the guy but it was and it wasn't just him every single offensive lineman was

penalized every single one so that's a that's a o-line penalty bingo blackout bingo um and i think theon mentioned this post game they were averaging a third and 21 in the first half and i think he's correct because i've got written down third and 26 third and 20 third and 15 third and 24 third and 20 third and 24 those were the conversions they had and they would have had a third and 19 if um if the cousin sack in the red zone doesn't get wiped out by that defensive holding call so i mean it was hideous man it was holding false start uh interior pressure the first half was so abysmal and the crazy thing matthew and this can maybe lead us into you know some defensive talk too they are up seven nothing at the two minute warning in spite of all of that and then two blunders by breland basically

lead to two scores so yes we'll get there uh along the offensive line though we saw a lot of the same things that we have seen forever like rashad hill when he plays too much it can be problematic Garrett Bradbury gets pushed back right into the lap of Kirk Cousins on a what was it third and 20 or something like it was like third and long and then they're still having that happen like getting Garrett Bradbury just picked up and lifted right back Brian O'Neill is mostly fine but Ole Udo did not have a great day committed a holding committed a completely senseless penalty where he just jumped on a guy for no reason that put them back. And Ezra Cleveland at left guard may have had the toughest day of anyone.

Now, it's hard until I don't mean to sound like the players, but it's hard until we watch back the game and look at it a little more slowly to see who made mistakes, who gave up sacks and so forth. But I think two of them were on Ezra Cleveland. So Kirk Cousins early in the game is behind the sticks, under pressure. They can't run the football. And as always, if they can't run the football, then we just end up with not being able to score until they get down two scores. And then remember that Justin Jefferson plays for this football team.

And I just feel like a broken record a little bit here in week one, Sam, where it's like, what are the problems? Well, your offensive line just pretty much across the board except one guy. Then you go to the same sort of things, not getting Justin Jefferson the ball enough. They did find a creative way to get him the ball and throwing it, but they waited until they were down two scores to largely target him and then the defense was just not perfect but when your defense plays that well early in the game and you don't take advantage of it you kind of deserve to lose and that was what i came away with here sam in so many different ways is there are games where you

go oh man wow they played really well and it came down to one field goal or one fumble or whatever and what a shame this one though deserved to lose on so many different levels it was not just that they lost to the Cincinnati Bengals it's that the Bengals went three for 14 on third downs the Bengals went for one of the most bizarre and senseless fourth downs I think I've ever seen up. I mean, I like going for it on fourth down, man, but up two touchdowns and you go for it and give the Vikings a chance to come right back in the game. Cincinnati did everything they possibly could to give the Vikings a chance. And they just said, no, no, we don't want it in so many different parts of this game, Sam.

Yeah, if the Vikings had won, they would not have deserved it. And yet you're still allowed to steal a game in the NFL. Like the wind would have counted style points. Don't matter. This isn't the March madness committee where strength of victory counts. I mean, you had a chance to win. You had a chance to write all of the wrongs. If you just execute in overtime and you mentioned it the defense i think in this game was was good like not even though they gave up 27 points for shot breland was singularly responsible for a lot of that um i thought the pressure was pretty good all game i thought peterson was good i thought the linebackers were good um there there were a

couple like serious issues um with breland late in that second quarter but i really thought they played great and um and cincinnati scored six points on their final seven drives after they went up by 14 i thought zach taylor made some mystifying decisions on offense it looked like joe burrow was maybe playing through something but they totally took the ball out of his hands even though he he was starting to really build some momentum. And I guess if you want to knock one thing that maybe was a little concerning today on defense, it seemed like running the ball was a little too easy for Cincinnati at times. You expect to shut them down more when you have all that beef in the middle. They rushed for 150 and some poor tackling at times like Breeland was horrible

Harrison Smith missed one Daniel Hunter missed one and a handful of others so you don't like to see that but for the most part I actually thought they played pretty well on that side of the ball right and Michael Pierce said after the game that they brought him here and Tomlinson here to stop the run they gave up 127 yards to Joe Mixon and he had quite a few very good runs in this game it also seemed like in the second half that I don't know for sure how injured Joe Burrow was but they just did not want to throw the football outside of third down with Joe Burrow and I thought that was an another open door for the Vikings and I think that's the part that as they fly home from this game,

they've got to be thinking about how many times did the Bengals open the door for him? And they played well in a lot of spots. The last throw by Joe Burrow is majestic. And he had several others that I thought, oh, my goodness. I mean, he really put the team on his back at different points in this game and made plays. The touchdown pass to Jamar Chase was flawless when he burned Brashad Breeland. And I came away thinking Joe Burrow might be a great quarterback. And I know he's the number one overall pick and he should play well, but considering that the defensive line was getting push against his offensive line,

and there were several times where he had to, where he took a sack or where he had to rush a little bit, and yet he still found ways to make plays sack or where he had to rush a little bit and yet he still found ways to make plays but as he stopped throwing the ball later in the game for whatever reason whether that was bad coaching or an injury after he got sacked by Daniil Hunter it just allowed the door to be open for the Vikings and they semi kicked the door open and there's so many sort of little errors and mistakes and problems that we can go over but I thought one of them was even the Vikings timeout usage challenging the play at the goal line when they have Delvin Cook they're going to be able to run it in and they challenge

that play with Justin Jefferson it doesn't come out even though it looked like it should have been a touchdown that doesn't turn out and then they use another timeout to read the defense and even though I think it turned out to be a good play after that, they use the timeouts so they didn't have enough time to get in the end zone at the end, just in time to put Greg Joseph in field goal position, which was a good drive for them. But they didn't have a chance to win the game because they gave up those timeouts. So there were a lot of different things like that. So as we're just sort of buzzing around to different spots in the game, did you think Delvin Cook's fumble was a fumble? No, no, I didn't. This was one of those cases where I think twice the Vikings were on the

wrong end of a call, but based on the criteria that the league uses to overturn, I think the correct call was made because the look was not definitive enough in either case now when jefferson crossed the goal line uh they only had a look from behind and in front but they didn't have anything down the goal line which i think is crazy how is that not a built-in camera that like sits sort of a little way above the field so no one's blocking it and goes straight down the goal line thought that was weird and as you said cost them a timeout because they went to overtime and accomplished that field goal at the end i don't think that's a huge second guess um

considering they started at the three yard line it was going to be hard for them to traverse the field you know in in that case and score um but the dalvin cook fumble at the end um i think if it's called down on the field it stands and i can see why it stood in this case because there were there were body parts in the way at the exact moment when the ball was stripped free uh you couldn't exactly piece together that exact moment. And I think they were obligated to keep it with Cincinnati. And I think the officials were guessing like in the moment when it happened. I think they were guessing. I don't think they had a view at the time and they just didn't have a good view to overturn it.

So I think the Vikings can can certainly, you know, have regret over that call and be a little bitter about it. But it's in no way can you you know blame it all on the officiating when uh you put yourself in that spot right and i saw very little of that on twitter of people blaming the referees even for the penalty counts i mean all the penalties to me were well rashad hill grabbed the guy up by his neck and tried to drag him down or or right or ollie udo just like did a pro wrestling move on that guy so you deserve that um Bashad Breelans was a takedown so he deserved that one and all the false starts what are you supposed to do to argue against those and even with both reviews I think

that the way that it's set up is if it's obvious you overturn it. If not, you go with what you're supposed to go with. And I think when you end up with this game, where it's not the Fox number one, it's not the Fox number two, it's not Sunday Night Football or ESPN, you are not going to have 5,000 camera views where you can get right in there and see that. You're going to have a couple.

And we've run into this a few times. I remember finding this out a few years ago. Like, yeah they just use the tv broadcast like wow they're just seeing what we're seeing i thought they had some you know super secret roger goodell cam or something but instead it's just if you can't see it then they can't see it and if i had to say with you know whatever i don't want to say gun to my head is such a weird saying, but I'll say it anyway. Like if I had to say, was it a fumble or not? I would say no, it was not. However, how can you overturn it with the views that we got? And then, you know, the thing is with Delvin Cook has had a few of these in his career. He nearly had one in the playoff game against New Orleans, but I don't know how you even look at this and say, well, Delvin, it was your fault

because there were so many other things that happened in this game where they put themselves behind or did not take advantage of opportunities that the Bengals gave them that you just thought, well, it's almost appropriate here. And I thought a tie would have made so much sense because both teams tried so hard to lose this one. So now this is the part where we have to talk about Kirk Cousins, Sam. And I'm just going to say this, that of course this is the part where we have to talk about Kirk Cousins, Sam. And I'm just going to say this, that of course, every football game, we're going to break down what the quarterback did and talk about his game. I just, I thought that this was the most Kirk Cousins type of football game that you're going to see. Like he did not do anything

spectacular to overcome the circumstances that he was given. And there were key points in the game where you went, OK, I guess it's third and 12 and you're going to throw it six yards, as does happen with Kirk Cousins. He ends up with very good stats, 351 yards, two touchdowns, 106 quarterback rating. But I also thought that when they were down in the game, he brings them back. He gives them a chance. He makes some very good throws. The touchdown to Adam Thielen, where they sent everybody, and he got the ball out quick and accurate.

They go in for a touchdown. So he played a role, but it wasn't his fault that they got down in the game. That was more jumping off sides every play. I don't know how you overcome that necessarily, but also it's that constant thing that we're always doing of going well you know there were a lot of things that went wrong and he came up with enough to get them there but when it was a big moment to win the game they trusted delvin cook and he fumbled the football so i just thought this was it was sort of a very this is what you expect from kirk cousins type of football game

this performance will not change anybody's opinion of Kirk Cousins, right? I mean, even with the final drive, which I'm going to give him credit. I thought that was a pretty stoic drive with no timeouts, backed up at the three, because the one before that caller, and they're one play away from having this be the end of the game for them, because Cincinnati had a third down. If they converted converted they win um they didn't but the previous drive was holding call um sack no first downs even on the possession

like it was the that was the quintessential end of game cousins drive and then he he gets blessed with another chance and actually looked really good KJ Osborne i mean this if the vikings win this is the kj osborne show oh yeah i'm so fired up about like how um good he looked after all of the hype that i've given him thank you kj for once for giving me like credibility in this job but um i felt like that was a great a really well executed driveexecuted drive down the stretch. But, you know, early in the game, conservative, skittishness in the pocket. I think he was around five yards per attempt for about two, three quarters. Bumped it up to 7.2. But if you look at Burrow, like Burrow was 9.7 yards per attempt.

He was way more efficient with the throws he was asked to make. And in Cousins' case, I think when he decided to trust his receivers, he was pretty good. He just didn't do a lot of that early in the game, and we'll have to, again, watch the tape, see if guys were open. But, like, when he threw it to Thielen in the first quarter on third down and Thielen was blanketed and just found a way to make a play, I felt like that's the kind of throw we need to see more often,

and it's the kind of throw that Cousins made when the vikings back uh was against the wall so um and you know more minutiae but some interesting things today too like four wide receiver sets yep um on on offense kubiak draws up a trick play i thought that was all kind of interesting but um again cousins being behind the chains constantly in the first half is only going to make him look worse. But I don't know if he's the reason for those situations. So it's kind of tough to evaluate him. Right. And, you know, he did a lot of the classic things where he made some really great throws.

And then there's the time where he just lets Garrett Bradbury get walked right back into his lap and that's kind of what Kirk does and when he had time to throw he made a couple of really great throws and you have to give him a ton of credit for the final drive because they get down to fourth and four and he fires a ball into a tight window to KJ Osborne and makes a great catch and sets them up for a chance at overtime, but they can't get it done. And they get the ball, right? They stop the Bengals. They get the ball, and it's like there is where you have to do it,

and they don't do it. So then it's, well, okay, now we got the ball back again, and that's where you fumble. There's just a lot of that always with this offense and with cousins. And I, and I really truly think that, uh, one of the hardest things to be consistent on offense is when you're getting pressure because pressure always goes up and down one week, somebody can have a great performance under pressure. And then the next week they can have some turnovers or big mistakes. And it's just hard to do the same thing over and over again

when you are behind the sticks, when you're getting pressure, all that sort of stuff. And that played out a lot today. I didn't think it was some horrendous performance. I didn't think it was some great performance. It was just sort of a middle of the road. When Cousins gets behind two scores, he usually brings them back in some way way he usually puts up pretty good stats and he gave them a chance to win the game despite playing really really badly so I mean I guess we we just we have to do that thing where we break down the quarterback but in this one I mean what can you really say about it like well you know he didn't Mahomes or Brett Favre and just overcome you know second down and 20 all the time but uh he also didn't, you know, Andy Dalton or something and just, you know, throw underneath all the time and ruin any chance to win the game.

But I will say, though, Sam, I don't know whose fault it is, but when Justin Jefferson ends up with five catches on nine targets in the NFL in 2021, I just think it's a failure. I think it's an early failure that they did not have the ball in his hands and your scripted plays like right off the bat. And I know that they were talking about how the playbook shrinks when it's third and 20, second and 20, but this guy can do anything. He could beat anyone man-to-man coverage. This is a single high team. He was getting a lot of man-to-man coverage today. And there were just opportunities missed a couple of throws that weren't accurate to to Jefferson and just not being able to get him the

ball early in the first quarter there were two targets one catch for minus one yard and then in your biggest moments you're going to him but you need him before that you need to get ahead in the game with Justin Jefferson and I just wonder are you going to figure that out at some point? Yeah, so I actually think a little bit differently about this today. And you can you had more of the high vantage points in the press box. You probably saw more of the coverages. But when you've got Thielen working like he was and Osborne is getting open to and Jefferson, you know, he probably needs to get more targets than osborne certainly but when you've got three guys that combine for you know almost 250 yards that's not a bad day

through the air and to be honest i thought jefferson i thought he missed some opportunities like you expect him to be a contested catch beast in any tough catch that was available today and a couple of those were cousins fault a like minor overthrow thrown behind him so it's not 100 blame but he didn't reel in a lot of tough ones today and i felt like if he makes a couple of those throws or those catches he's probably at 100 yards and we probably aren't having this conversation so i'm gonna push back slightly on the jefferson stuff um and also say that when he's got the ball in his hands, he's really good. And I think he should have gotten the touchdown on that on that.

Yeah. So my point is that it's not about the total that everyone ends up with. It's about get the ball to Jefferson early in the game and use that as a driver for your offense. Because last year, Jefferson had twice as many catches in the second half of games, and that was because they would get down in the game, and then they would go, oh yeah, we need to desperately throw it to Jefferson, and then he would make plays and score touchdowns and be great. And it was the same deal today. This was a 2020 Vikings football loss.

This was not a, this is, you know, everybody said, oh, this is the 2021 Vikings. Everything is in the past. No way. This was the loss to Dallas. This was the loss to the Bears. It was the same look for them of, well, we're going to make mistakes early. We're going to have drive stall early for whatever reason. And then we're going to discover Justin Jefferson later in the game and get back in it. And I think that that can't happen. So there's some nuance to the point. It's not just throw it to Jefferson every time. It's that they had to wait to do it.

You know what I mean? And I will say, too, that when I think on the first four first downs of the game, Dalvin Cook got the ball. Two of them were runs. You know, two of them were like very short passes behind the line of scrimmage but that's that's very predictable dalvin cook might be your most talented offensive player but passing is still better and justin jefferson i think has proven that he needs to be in that mix like he needs to as you said be the starter sometimes um don't have it always be

dalvin and there was a lot of dalvin reliance early in this game kind of running up against a pretty stout run defense to be honest um the bangles were really good at stopping cook and once again the vikings are about a quarter too slow to adjust to a more pass happy offensive uh scheme i just wanted to say um before i get to kind of the big picture with you on this jamar chase seems to be able to catch the football wow uh he was good like extremely explosive in this game just ran by bashad breland a couple of times snatched some footballs out of the air like this cincinnati team you you might have not liked how it looked because of their coaching because of their weaknesses

but you see the bones of something actually quite good and uh i wonder i always wonder when vikings fans are watching these games if they see a number one draft pick quarterback and a great receiver who's drafted high and they think like well we kind of know who everybody is and what everybody is and they don't and there's got to of know who everybody is and what everybody is. And they don't. And there's got to be something exciting about that. So I did want to point that out that I was in Ubers around Cincinnati the last couple of days. And every Uber driver was like, Joe Burrow is great, man.

He's great. He's going to be so good. And I thought, well, we'll see how it looks. And he looks fantastic, I thought. And so, you know, you add Jamar Chase to that. Mixon was good. It was kind of an exciting team to watch even though i think they won't have their coach for a very long time so was there anything else you wanted to point out before we go big picture on this oh man there's

so so many things and yet i can't pinpoint any one thing i mean if you think about all the new pieces that they incorporated, I think the only big kind of whip for today is Breland. I mean, Breland is probably the goat on defense and the other 10 guys were fine. Like I didn't really have an issue. Um, the, the defensive rotation I thought was pretty interesting. They used, um, a little more of a three, four style at times they had one of them and Hunter on one side, they had Griffin and Richardson inside. So Mike Zimmer, and he alluded to this in the star Tribune interview for today, that they're going to,

they're going to unveil some more of that stuff this year. So that is something to watch going forward. Certainly not in the top, you know, 10 talking points from, from from the game but x's and o's you know during the week to kind of ask around about that i think is kind of the that that'll that'll satiate the real hardcore football people yeah definitely the way that they use the defensive linemen was something that we have never seen before from mike zimmer with the amount of different looks and different personnel and who's lining up inside outside even sheldon Richardson was a defensive end Daniel Hunter took a couple snaps on the other side today and Michael Pierce getting two sacks he said for a guy that has three career sacks two in one day

felt pretty great and there there was a few plays I mean he just threw a guy and had a tackle for loss in the backfield or played a big role in one he had another sack that was really impressive that he straight up caused and I thought Pierce was probably their best defensive player today other than you know Eric Hendricks is always terrific Greg Joseph 53 yard field goal with the pressure on had to kick it twice how about that Greg Joseph struggled on those long field goals just another interesting note about that last play from Cincinnati. Mike Zimmer said they practiced that and they knew that that could happen and they just didn't get it like that, that the other team executed better than them, which was an interesting little note because the way that it was lined up, they were stuffing everybody in the middle.

And I don't think Joe Burrow would have gotten the QB sneak. So they made the perfect call at the right time and he made a tremendous throw but that was just kind of an interesting little nugget that we picked up also Jordan Berry good for you man his one punt that went 63 yards and pinned Cincinnati back really gave the Vikings a chance to win the game and so I guess he deserves a little shout out because I thought outside of maybe the first punt, he had a really good game and they picked him up, obviously, to let go Britton Colquitt. But big picture, Sam, this was the game that we said, look, you really can't lose this. But if you do, it depends on how it looked. And it looked super ugly.

And week one does not always tell you the truth about who a team is. But a lot of the things that were problematic for the Vikings in preseason the offense not really being connected or looking like they had gelled the offensive line having so many questions not really sure how Bashad Breland or Patrick Peterson would look as far as I know Peterson had a good day but just maybe not a perfect defense with some flaws. So if the other team plays well, they can score on you.

They can move the ball on you. It looked kind of how we thought it was going to look, except for worse with the penalties and going to Arizona after they just had a great day. You should be very concerned about where this is going to go to start the season, because this is not a team that I think goes 0-3 and then says hey we're good guys we're just going to bounce back I just don't see this team having that fortitude to be able to do that even if they have some easier games that come up against Detroit and Carolina so now it becomes early in the season we are only going into week two but it's Arizona is a big deal because of the way they lost this one.

And it's one that we could ultimately look back at and say, just like we did in 2018 with the loss in green Bay that you started out with, we could look back and say, yeah, that that Cincinnati game that they let slip through their fingers. That's what costs them a playoff spot. Like that was going through my mind today. next three opponents arizona huge road win today very convincing seattle big road win at indianapolis very convincing cleveland currently leading at kansas city by 12 in the third quarter so that's what's coming up um it's not going to get easier for the vikings i think if if there is such thing as momentum in the NFL, you can take a lot of good away from the second half

and just burn the tape of the first half. I mean, it was continuation of preseason levels of ugliness, the lack of execution, the mental errors. I would have loved to have Phil Rauscher mic'd up. I can't imagine what was going through his head at that point with all five of his offensive linemen melting down like they'd never heard crowd noise before. C.J. Hamm with two quick false starts.

I mean, when C.J. Hamm's making mental blunders like that, it's just hard to wrap your head around. Now, I want to couch all of this in I've never gotten into overreacting. Like all of the tweets at halftime, season's over. I just can't do it. I've seen too many week ones that were misleading. I saw the 2014 Vikings blow out the Rams in week one and then look horrible the next week. I saw the 2015 Vikings look horrible in week one and then blow out the next two teams and make the playoffs.

And that's gone that way a lot of years. So week one is goofy. I mean, you see a subpar product all over the NFL with teams that are tackling like for four quarters for the first time in nine months. And it doesn't always look good. So this was kind of the ugliness that i expected remember i had predicted a close game vikings by three in an ugly one and they lose by three in an ugly one and i i don't think i'm willing to make any big picture declarations until after arizona if arizona looks the same way and they're going home to face two playoff teams uh and staring at oh and three

you know then obviously the stats are completely not in your favor the playoffs start to to look pretty dim and then we start talking big picture about Zimmer cousins and Spielman but you know until I see them fail again next week I I don't want to say that this is going to be indicative of the whole year. No, I'm definitely not there yet. It just going into the season, there was a feeling from us and maybe everybody, this has been a bad preseason and training camp from interpersonal parts to performance on the field out. You know know the defense was pretty good on daily basis in training camp but the offense also really struggled and then in the preseason games they couldn't get in the end zone and this was a continuation of that and when the concerns carry

over that's where you go all right now what are the fixes are there fixes to the fact that you have an offensive line that you've drafted a bunch of guys and it just everything you seem to try doesn't work so when is it going to work how are you going to fix it because it wasn't just false starts I mean it was holdings it was sacks it was pressures a lot was going on in that offensive line today that they you know wanted to be better but lost Riley Reif move a tackle to guard and you're expecting him to be good right away so that continues to be an issue I think the defense is never going to be perfect at any point this year because it has enough flaws and enough talent to be good but not unbelievably good and if Kyler Murray and Russell Wilson and Baker Mayfield three

very very good quarterbacks come out and play like they usually do, they're going to score points. And you can't just, like they did last year, you can't just play every game from down 14 and then hope that you come back when you finally start throwing it to Jefferson. But to your point, as we are speaking right now, New Orleans is up 17-3 on Green Bay. And I don't think anybody expected that. Atlanta lost 32-6.

I don't think anyone expected that. Atlanta lost 32-6. I don't think anyone expected that. Pittsburgh beat Buffalo on the road. Like there are a lot of odd things that happen in weeks one. Tennessee I don't think is so bad as they were to give up all the sacks to Chandler Jones. So you make a fair point that you cannot go crazy and say season's over, fire everybody. But you are behind the ball immediately

and you can't really stay there. You have to bounce back right away, or I think this team ends up in some trouble. So, Sam, great stuff. I hope you enjoyed – who was it calling the game today? Daryl Johnston and Chris Myers? Chris Myers on Fox Sports. Well, I was at least inside. It was insanely hot outside.

So maybe that played a role in the defensive line rotation. But I was in here, and everybody tried Skyline Chili at halftime. I did not. I just had a couple of hot dogs. I was not going to go there. I wasn't eating noodles and onions and everything else in the middle of a game that's already tense. I thought, I'm not doing that to my stomach. So good stuff. We will talk again very soon on tuesday we'll do our usual bring me the news live stream and uh i will talk to you then thanks for your time sam have a safe trip back