Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Vikings defense collapses in Los Angeles

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani of the Pioneer Press from Los Angeles break down the Vikings' loss to the Rams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to Los Angeles. Matthew Collar and Dane Mizutani here in the Los Angeles Rams press box following the Minnesota Vikings 30-20 loss. And I just want to start out with a little opening statement as always to say that last week I began the post game pod by saying, Hey, that was a pretty fun football game and it's okay that they lost the closed one. I didn't think I was going to change any opinions about the Vikings because of their loss to the lions last week. It's different this week. This is a different loss and there certainly are a lot of factors to it. You go on the road, it's Thursday night football, but the problems tonight and the solutions that the Los Angeles Rams found against the Minnesota Vikings were beyond concerning and make you wonder about where this team is going to go, especially with Christian Derrissaw getting hurt in an injury

that seems like it could be serious. The other thing is, too, that each week we have heard Kevin O'Connell talk about how, well, entirely into the ground with two games in four days for a guy of his age having to carry the entire load. We didn't see Cam Akers. We barely saw Ty Chandler. The defense is looking old at times. Now, there are a lot of things from this game, including even Sam Darnold taking some sacks, although the last one was a face mask.

We will get to that as well. But there were a lot of things in this loss that would raise the red flags that would send up the flares that would be very worrisome. I think, Dane, going forward, tell me if you feel any different and we're going to go through them one by one. But that is my main takeaway from today is I don't have great fixes for this defense if it can't get any pressure at all on a quarterback. I don't have a great fix for the running back position if you're going to acquire one and not not play him at all and just have Aaron Jones do everything. Sam Darnold has one of the highest sack rates in the league, and he took key sacks. I know it was a face mask, but still a cack to close out this game.

And this was one that, based on the Rams and what they've done this year, should have been a win for the Vikings. The only yeah, but is they played their two elite wide receivers, and one of them played like an absolute superstar, but they had shut down superstars before and they were not able to do it tonight. So that's my main takeaway is yes, you should be concerned about a lot of things that you saw here tonight. I would not say the season is over because of the teams that they are playing going forward but i also think we're going to have to try to talk through what some of the fixes are to the issues that we saw in this game yeah i i think the whole time the vikings got off to their 5-0 start there was still

a subsect of people saying they might be frauds and those people probably are saying that pretty loudly right now. Where I would push back on that is if you just look ahead, there are winnable games on the schedule coming up. Where I would argue against myself in that that all of a sudden there are things that seemed like they should be easy coming up or seemed like they should be easy during games themselves. And now everything just feels kind of hard. And I think where you kind of land after this game, when you talk about you don't see a fix for this here or a fix for that there it's not that simple um is that it's starting to kind of feel like a house of cards we've seen this in the past where a team starts off really hot they start five and oh and then things slowly but surely fall by the wayside i think this group is capable of pushing through that i think the games against the indianapolis colts coming up the jacksonville Jaguars, the Tennessee Titans. I think if you come out on November 3rd and you just beat the Colts, some of this pressure

gets taken away. But you have to go beat the Colts now because you've lost two games in four days. So all of a sudden, the 5-0 start doesn't feel so good when you're sitting at 5-2. And the people who are probably going to be pounding their chest saying, I knew they were frauds all along, there isn't a lot to say about that right now because they might be right um i was standing there kind of on the table saying no i think this team is for real i don't think they're going to go revert and be one of the worst teams in the league like some people thought they would be at the beginning of the season but i don't know like i don't know if they're for real and i think that is a a pretty big takeaway um that we have kind of reached uh over the course of four days i'm walking into us bank stadium on sunday with the vikings sitting at five and oh i thought this might be one of the best teams in the

nfc walking out of SoFi Stadium on Thursday, I think there's a lot of problems that need fixing. And to your point earlier, I don't know how easy those fixes are going to be. So yeah, sound the alarms a little bit. I know people already were after the first loss. I'm sure they are right now even more. But we'll talk through it.

I do think that there are definitely issues on both sides of the ball, though. That's undeniable. The most worrisome thing, Dane, is that when it comes to the answers that the Lions and Rams have found against the Vikings defense in these last two games, you have to wonder, is this going to be the script that is used over and over against this defense? Because we have seen in the past a Brian Flores defense just last year that got off to a pretty good start and had a really good run in the middle of the season where they were shutting down teams left and right. They shut out the Las Vegas Raiders. And we were saying, hey, Brian Flores has got to get head

coaching attention and man this guy has really got this defense rolling but it was a lot of smoke and mirrors it was a lot of they're going to run all these blitzes and they're going to confuse the heck out of the other team and then that's going to cause problems for the quarterback but once again with Blake Cashman out and then then the other thing was to six man protections throws over the middle of the field. It is a blueprint now that we can just write out before the game of what teams are going to see on tape over these last two weeks. They put extra guys in here's an extra tight end. Here's an extra running back. They sent a lot of attention toward Jonathan Grenard because he was very good. Well, he's really been very good in pretty much every game. And they just allowed their wide receivers to move within the space that the

Vikings have allowed on defense. But that space hasn't been taken advantage of by many teams because they've been able to pressure the quarterback and NFL next gen stats had Sam Darnold down for a grand total of four times being pressured for. That's not going to do it when he dropped back, what, 38 times? He had zero sacks. No, I'm sorry, 34 times. Zero sacks, four touchdowns. He completed 74% of his passes.

And when you have receivers like Puka Nakua and you get time to throw, you're going to be able to find those open guys. And he just played great too. Stafford was so good at identifying where the ball was supposed to go. He put the ball in the right spots. I mean, you have to give credit to a Superbowl winning quarterback for playing like a Superbowl winning quarterback. But when you can draw out before the game, Hey, now we know what every team is going to do against them including running the football by the way Kyron Williams ran the ball well they went for over 100 yards but he had 97 on 23 runs which was 4.2 yards per run that's a pretty solid churning running game that they were able to play off of and then it's a lot of the in-breaking stuff it's taking

advantage of the fact that the Vikings simply cannot play man coverage most of the time. They don't have corners still, once again, that can just lock up their guy versus the top receiver. And that means that you're going to leave space in some of these zones. So if the quarterback isn't flustered or confused, then he's going to have lots of time to throw. He's going to know where the ball is supposed to go. I cannot help thinking that Cashman is still such a big deal on this, though. It's not the entire reason that Matthew Stafford put up all these big numbers, but Ivan Pace Jr. had a really tough time early in the game in the red zone with coverage.

We've seen him mostly turn into just a blitzer. Josh Metellus has his weaknesses as a pure linebacker they mixed and matched some other guys in there at that linebacker position but it's not the same as having the head of the snake it's almost like losing your quarterback when you lose someone who is the direct communication and has so much knowledge intelligence covers so much ground that's not any sort of excuse for losing the way that they did, but it is maybe an explanation for why it's looked so much different because they gave Cashman so much power to adjust the defense and they haven't looked like they've really been making adjustments. Earlier in the season,

you couldn't figure out who was playing what position. There were so many guys marching around that line of scrimmage. It's been much more static these last two weeks, and I think that's a major, major issue. So I'll be curious when he comes back if that's part of the solution to this. But the other parts of it, the corners being old, the pass rush on the interior just has not been there since what year? Honestly, what was the last year was it 2018 when they had sheldon richardson and every year it feels like we go back to that over and over again

hey matthew stafford if you don't get in his face he's going to crush you look at the guy i mean he's one of the better quarterbacks of the last decade and a half so you're going to have to get him up the middle and they couldn't really do that at all. Harrison Phillips got shrugged off like he was, instead of a defensive tackle, he looked like he was maybe a cornerback trying to tackle Matthew Stafford. So I think that it all comes down to those same factors,

those same answers that opposing teams have. Opposing teams do not have Goff and Stafford, though, for every single one of these games. But since we've been evaluating this, Dane, through a lens of can you be a championship caliber team, they've got to drop down notches now pretty significantly in everybody's big power rankings and things like that, because you can't just say, well, hey, they've got that elite defense. They can no longer be called that after tonight, I think. No, I don't think so. And we talked to Shaq Griffin after the game in the locker room here in Los Angeles,

and he said it's a copycat league, and teams are going to continue to copy this blueprint until we prove we can stop it. And I think that pretty much sums up the night. The Detroit Lions found a lot of success protecting Jared Goff with their incredible offensive line, waiting for that route to come over the middle and then having Jared Goff just stand back and throw the ball for easy completions. It's what the Los Angeles Rams did tonight too. If they don't have as good of an offensive line, but you leave an extra guy in the block,

you max protect and you let the veteran quarterback just stand back in the pocket, unperturbed, and find open guys over the middle. So it seems like the defense understands what's going wrong, which maybe is even more concerning, is that you have guys on the team who are on the field saying, yeah, people have figured us out and they're going to continue to do it until we prove we can stop it. I haven't seen anything over the last two games that leads me to believe that they are going to be able to stop it anytime soon. I think playing Anthony Richardson might help you stop it. But you have to, like you said, measure yourself against some of the top teams

in the league. And this Los Angeles Rams team is not even one of the top teams in the league. And this Los Angeles Rams team is not even one of the top teams in the league. And you made them look like the offense that they had when they won the Super Bowl. So this defense was something that I think everyone held their hat on through the first five weeks, through the 5-0 start. Like, oh my gosh, who's coming from what side of the field? Where is the blitzer coming? Where is the dropper? That aggression that you saw kind of lead them

throughout that first month of the season it was totally gone today and totally gone for long stretches on Sunday they look like a passive team on defense which is a total you know antithesis of what they looked like early on where they were the aggressor now they seem like they're sitting back on their heels for pressures tonight against that offensive line. That's unacceptable. They just don't have any stars that can win with regularity. It has to be everyone functioning as a unit. And that looks really beautiful when it works.

But sometimes you just need dogs. You need stars who are going to wreck the other team's game plan the Vikings don't have that they don't they have a bunch of good guys a bunch of above average to good to some great football players that when they're all functioning together in harmony it can look really good on the defensive side of the ball but they don't have one guy who could just blow up the other team's game plan and they don't have one guy who can just blow up the other team's game plan. And they don't have one guy that can just go generate a pressure by themselves. And that's why you see Matthew Stafford finish 25 of 34 for 279 and four touchdowns. The pressure matters.

And it's something the Vikings were able to generate with a lot of consistency through their first 5-0 start. I mean, we haven't seen it now for two games. And I think we're seeing kind of the repercussions of that in real time. When you can't pressure, when you let the quarterback stand back and throw the ball, most NFL quarterbacks, given time to throw, are going to find the open man. And then we talked about, you know, you mentioned the corners. They got old. Stephon Gilmore looked his age tonight. Shaq Griffin, in certain spots, he looked his age. There was one play I recall, and it's a good throw by Jared Goff or by Matthew Stafford

to Tutu Atwell on the sideline. I think a younger Shaq Griffin breaks on that ball quicker and he might intercept it. Byron Murphy Jr., he had an interception tonight, but he continues to be kind of a weak link in that secondary. And suddenly, the group that we were praising not two and a half weeks ago saying oh they added stefan gilmore how important was that piece what could have been if they didn't add stefan gilmore all of a sudden they look like a team that we thought they were going to be before they added him um you know not enough anywhere on the defense tonight um and i think it could be a trend moving forward until they figure out a way to stop it.

What they do have is Brian Flores. I think he'll be able to scheme some things together over this mini-buy. I know he's going to take it really seriously and really personally how bad this defense has been for two weeks now. But it isn't a team that's going to be led by its defense, which I think people thought it was going to be when they were having so much success. I mean, I was shocked by this outcome offensively for the Rams. Now, one thing I did not know is that Puka Nakua was going to look like the guy that

he was last year. I really was shocked by that because I didn't think that Puka Nakua was going to play. I thought it was a little gamesmanship and like, okay, well, he's going to practice once and get one limited practice, right? Maybe they'll just kind of put that in the Viking sets. Oh no, he looked like one of the best receivers in the NFL. And maybe that took the Vikings by surprise a little bit too. Or maybe there's another part of this that when a team has a bunch of different weapons like Cooper cup and Puka Nakua and Kyron Williams. And look at the Lions where they have Jameer Gibbs and Amin Ross St. Brown. When you have multiple weapons that you can throw at this Vikings team, it might just be a different story. But what was, I think, the most startling is the fact that the Rams had not blocked well this year for Matthew Stafford.

And then suddenly they did tonight tonight and was that guys being tired was that not blitzing at the right spots was I mean there's a bunch of different potential explanations them getting up there quickly them using extra protection uh to keep tight ends in to keep running backs in to help out as maybe other teams didn't do as effectively in weeks past. But it still is not something that you have come to expect at all when this is the same team that took apart the Houston Texans, that slowed down the San Francisco 49ers when they were more healthy, and that for the most part played really well against Jordan Love until the second half of the Green Bay game,

and they completely shut down the Jets for most of that game. Defensively, I didn't think that it looked to me or the numbers look to me or the opponents look to me like, Oh yeah, this is just a bunch of bogus nonsense on defense. Now, maybe the touchdowns, you don't think you're going to get a touchdown every single game on defense that could regress. I thought, but I didn't think they would go from the number one pressure team in the league in terms of percentage of times they pressure the opposing quarterback to this. I mean, even when you look at how they played against Detroit, they had a very high pressure number against Detroit and Jared Goff just beat it. But tonight, that wasn't really the case at all. So a thing that I struggle with all the time is just how much to react to this. I tend to think the answer is it should be a lot because there are teams that have good offenses down the road. They're not coming immediately in these next three weeks. But I guess they have the next three weeks to try to dominate these opponents. If we'll know if Indianapolis will know if Jacksonville will know if Tennessee, if they start getting rolling against this defense, then you've got a serious problem,

but it's going to be a little while until they face a dangerous offense again. And so I'm not sure when the next test could really come to find out if this is who they really are on the offensive side. I want to start at the end and then I want to go kind of backward. Let's start with the face mask at the end of the game. I don't want to spend the entire evening on this, but I feel like I just can't rant about it enough. It's not that I think they were going to necessarily win. They would have to march the whole field with not a lot of time, and they would have to get a two-point conversion. But it's really about, A, how do you miss it? I mean, it was right there. His head could have popped off of his body. And the other

part, not just when it comes to hit the mistake of not seeing it at all, but also it's a scoring play. And we have these reviews, but you can't review an obvious face mask. I'll never understand where and why we draw certain lines with review. So, oh yeah, every scoring play is review except for that. It's pointed out by Buck in the comments. It's not a player safety thing to be reviewed. I guess.

I mean, I don't, I don't understand this at all. I don't understand how you don't at least get one more shot at that because it was such a blatant face mask. And then you have the pool report from the referees. And I always find these to be insulting. I don't think I'd ever want to be part of one because they're usually just the referees being like, well, sorry. Well, no, not sorry.

Actually, they never apologize. They just sort of say, well, but what did the referee say about the face? Let me read this from from Trouble Lake. He was asked basically what happened. Why did you miss it? And he said, well, on that play, the quarterback was facing the opposite direction from me. So I did not have a good look at it. I did not have a look at it.

And I did not see the face mask being pulled. Obviously, I'm not going to read the rest of it. Basically, they just threw their hands up in the air and they said, I didn't see it. They didn't even say we missed the call. All they said was, I didn't see it. I didn't have the right angle. Well, you're paid to see it. And you're right.

That doesn't mean they were going to get that 15 yards and march right down the field and pick up the two-point conversion and win in overtime. But I would have loved to see them play out that string, and they deserve to play out that string because it was so obvious. Sometimes you see face masks where the guy just barely gets a pinky on the face mask and they're calling it. This was an official looking directly at the play from the back line of the end zone, watching Sam Darnold's head snap to the left get yanked down and thrown to the ground and and there was nothing i just don't know how you miss it like i get it sam darnold's face is facing the opposite way when you're looking at it like he's looking the opposite way from you but then he's very quickly looking right at you as his head is

getting yanked so it's just a ridiculous way for this game to end what i will say is like i was worried walking downstairs at sofi stadium that the vikings were just going to lean into this and be like we got screwed by the refs the total total opposite like kevin o'connor so we're not going to use that um i'm sure he had a lot of things he wanted to say um he tends to want to say a lot of things about officials and and dials it back um but he didn't use that as an excuse um i thought it would have been pretty cowardly to use that as an excuse why you lost the game and they didn't um but they have every right to feel like they got screwed in that moment in time because they did like we we should

have at least got to see them march down the field 15 yards is not insignificant there you go from the three yard line to the 18 and then you have timeouts or you don't have timeouts but you you have enough time to march down the field um it it just can't happen i don't know why we have replay if we can't use it in certain situations where it's so obvious. It's all very arbitrary. It's just, it was a very, very, like, kind of blah way for this game to end. It felt incomplete in a lot of ways. So, yeah, it doesn't mask all the other issues, but it certainly leaves you with a sour taste in your mouth when that's the last offensive

play you get i i just don't understand if you are standing right behind the quarterback and one of your main things you're always looking for is is the quarterback roughed is he hit in the face and then he gets grabbed in the face and that's the reason he falls down the referee should be looking at the quarterback yeah i mean i know there's probably one guy watching linemen and one guy watching receivers but someone is viewing the quarterback and he gets hit in the face and goes down i i just truly do not know and uh several of you are asking about the assistance rules. I don't understand the NFL's replay system at all. Just to tell you the truth, I have tried, but I don't. And I know that they should copy the UFL and they should show us what they're talking about.

They should explain why things are or aren't reviewed. A scoring play should be looked at. There's safety rules. There's a lot of different things that you can go through in this but it was a factor in the game i don't want to go just continuing on and on and on about it but it's so obvious that that impacted their chance to potentially go tie this one and make this some sort of super crazy game and instead it ends just kind of uh with a whimper i really want to talk about Sam Darnold, though. And I know we usually talk mostly about the quarterback when we get to our grades. So I guess we could just start there with this.

In grading Sam Darnold for tonight, it's a hard thing to do. He keeps putting up games of 100 quarterback rating where we still have a bunch of gripes. And that's a difficult thing because we kind of went through that with a previous quarterback this felt like a game from the kirk cousins era where the second half of it where he'd have a good quarterback rating and yards and a couple touchdowns and they would lose by a score and we'd go it wasn't good enough how do you want to process 18 for 25? That's 72% completion percentage, 9.6 yards per attempt, 128.8 quarterback rating. And he gets the ball to Justin Jefferson eight times for 115 yards. And it just is so hard to sit here and say, it's not good enough.

And yet just like last week against the lions it's that two drives that are in the red zone that they don't end up finishing and it's a handful of other plays including a big sack where there's what four minutes left in the game and they need a first down and he takes a sack and it's not a five yard sack it's like a 20 yard sack and so then they're completely out of position the three sacks for 28 yards is a huge statistic here for sam darnold in terms of the hidden yardage but i also thought he controlled the game he threw the ball well he didn't turn it over at all which has been an issue at times i mean let's start the grades How do you want to grade what Sam Darnold did tonight?

I'd give him a B. And I would even say maybe even a B+, because he threw a touchdown pass to Jalen Naylor, too, that Jalen Naylor dropped. That's a huge play that he makes. And I know some people were saying, just tuck it and run. You can get the first down. Well, he hit one of his receivers,

who has been one of his more reliable receivers, right in the hands. That guy is extremely fast. If he catches the ball at like the seven yard line, I think that's a touchdown. I think he scores on that play. And it was a great play by Sam Darnold to evade the pressure, to throw it to Jalen Naylor. It goes as a drop. It's a drop on third down. They kick like a 22 yard field goal, which is becoming far too common of a trend for the Vikings kicking 22 kicking 22 23 24 yard field goals because they can't get into the end zone but i can't blame sam darnold for that one he made that thing happen um and i think he should have had walked away with three touchdowns and i like i think if you give jaylen nailer that play to make 10 times he makes it nine but he didn't make it tonight what i will will say is with Sam Darnold, why I can't give him an A

and why I probably can't even give him a B plus and I probably will just stay at a B is because it's second and eight from the 43-yard line. You're down at that point by eight points. It's 28 to 20. Five minutes left and you had just handed the ball off. You were near midfield. Second and eight.

He drops back to pass. It's not a Second and eight. He drops back to pass. It's not a play action. He just drops back to pass. And there is an outlet to his left. And he loves to reverse pivot out. And it looks really cool when you reverse pivot out and it works. But when you reverse pivot out and it does not work, you take a 13-yard loss.

So you go from second and eight to third and 21, then he just threw like a duck to johnny munt and punt um you can't do that there if you are there and you feel the pressure you should know where your outlet is you can dirt the ball and then you can work with third and eight you cannot work with third and 21 so there are things here that continue to be common trends for Sam Darnold. And it feels a little like piling on when he does have the stat line that he does. But they scored two touchdowns on the first two drives of the game, they didn't score a touchdown again. So when you are the leader of this offense, if we were going to be so extremely hard on Kirk cousins and I was one of

them and you were one of them for, for not getting it done. And we were not, we were constantly saying like enough with the excuses, just get it done. We have to do the same thing with Sam Darnold. I know he was good tonight. I 122,

120. I can't see it. It's 128 quarterback rating. It's good. It's great. But it's, it's, it's another game where it just feels like there were things left on the table. It feels like the sacks, he doesn't just take two-yard sacks to your point. He takes 13-yard sacks.

And those things all kind of add up, especially in a game like this. Short week. Weird. Everybody kind of feeling a little tired. And all of a sudden now you're taking these big losses. So it's just, it can't happen. Hold on. Let me silence my phone real quick so I can tell you that us days are back at U.S. Cellular again.

Exclusive offers just for customers just to say thanks. Right now you'll get $1,200 off any phone plus $400 off any tablet. Amazing, right? Yeah, but my family is so excited about their new devices that they keep texting me during the show. They're all about Us Day's deals like $1,200 off any phone and plus $400 off any tablet. Terms apply. Visit us us cellular.com for details yeah i think with trying to grade darnold you have to factor in those sacks is a big element of it but i i definitely think about if naylor catches the ball i mean it's a great play he's scrambling around he finds naylor he's wide open and he should just catch the ball and run for a touchdown and then Darnold has three touchdowns and it's a different game and I'll throw another part of this out there when it comes to being a different game is if on the other side let's see 34 passes and 32 runs by the Los Angeles Rams now compare that to the Vikings 25 passes and 32 runs by the Los Angeles Rams. Now compare that to the Vikings, 25 passes and 22 runs.

That's way more football plays by the Los Angeles Rams, way more opportunities. And they just weren't on the field enough. Because if Sam Darnold is completing 72% of his passes and he's getting the ball to Justin Jefferson the way that he was in this game. And they're on the field more and they get a few snaps and there's more opportunities. They're going to put up more than 20 points.

But I think that sometimes we just separate the offense and the defense and as if they have nothing to do with each other. But I'm going to check. Do I have time of possession? Yeah, pretty well dominated 34 minutes to 26 by the los angeles rams and if you're not on the field it's pretty hard to uh do much more so i i almost feel like this is a nitpicky night for sam darnold one of the sacks he gets face masked one of the touchdowns gets taken off the board because it's dropped i mean he threw the ball extremely well we needed 100

yards from jefferson We talked about that. It's time for him to have that breakout. He talked about it. And we've kind of been saying, hey, you got to get the ball to Jefferson more often. Eight for nine with 115 yards to Justin Jefferson. You can't really ask for much more than that. But you also can't do much with 25 pass attempts. And on the other side, too uh with the rushing there has

to be another player that you can give the football to there were no other people that ran the football other than aaron jones and sam darnold and that is a 29 year old aaron jones on four days rest and a hamstring injury and he runs the ball 19 times and nobody else touches it that is malpractice i know that they don't like ty chandler but he comes in the game for one series they throw a couple times and then that's it we haven't seen cam acres at all there's got to be a couple of plays kevin o'connell loves him so much there's got to be a plays. You just asked way too much from the dude. They didn't block well enough. The D line of the Rams is actually pretty good, but I just can't go super hard in criticizing Sam Darnold when, when he was throwing the football tonight, he did about as well as you could possibly do it. Actually, my, one of my favorite throws of the

night was the 25 yard pass to Josh Oliver, which then didn't end up meaning anything. But it was a patient. He dropped back. He had time to throw, came across the middle, found the right guy. It felt like he was pretty on point tonight. And once again, we said this about the Lions game. What percentage of the time that he plays like this, will you win the football game? I think the answer is you, you expect 75, 80% of the time that Sam Darnold plays this well, that you're going to win.

I would guess when quarterbacks have 128 quarterback rating, they probably only lose about 20% of the time. And that makes it hard for me to even give it a B when I feel like there were opportunities there for it to be more of an A minus. I think I thought a little more of his performance than you did, but just to go to the running backs, it's a D minus. Aaron Jones made an incredible catch down the sideline. Unbelievable play. 3.1 yards per carry on 19 carries is not a good enough running game. And that was another issue too, because they did have three and outs. They score the two touchdowns. They go cold on offense, which we've

seen them do kind of repeatedly over the last few weeks. And they have always gone cold on offense when they can't run the football. And I just, I don't want to keep saying this over and over again, but didn't you just trade for a running back because you didn't trust the other running back and then Chandler is in for three plays? I mean, that one's a hard one to deal with because it's like they just had horse blinders with Aaron Jones. He's so good that they wanted to have him on the field, on the field, on the field. It's too much to ask and they didn't block well, but it's too much to ask for him to carry the ball as much as he did carry the load as much as he did be on the field for almost every play. This, this is going to be, if he doesn't get hurt, this is going to be a career high in the percentage of plays that Aaron Jones is playing when so much of the conversation

was about his age and his previous workload. This, this is not sustainable. You can't keep asking Aaron Jones to do this. No. And I don't, I don't know why Cam Akers is not seeing the field. I thought it would be today. Maybe it's just because he just got here last week and but like i don't i don't care like no excuses like find ways to to get other players on the field because when aaron jones is fresh and at the peak of his powers he's electric but when you run him 19 times on probably not 100 on that hamstring coming off of a game on sunday turning around for a game on thursday like you're gonna see him wear down over the course of a game and Sunday, turning around for a game on Thursday, you're going to see him wear down over the course of a game, and you did.

He was pretty electric early on. This is a defense for the Rams that was giving up something like 150 yards per game rushing heading into this matchup. Their numbers are going to look a heck of a lot better after only allowing 64 tonight, but the Vikings helped them. They really helped them, you know, be so effective at stopping the run because they continue to run Aaron Jones,

just right up the gut with some bad blocking. But I think you need to give him a breather here and there. Ty Chandler, like if you don't trust him enough to play him, then, then don't play him. But then why did you trade for ham acres? If he's like cam makers was in this offense last year,

he has quite the familiarity with Kevin O'Connell. I get that it takes some time to reacclimate after being in an offense in Houston, but I feel like this is enough time for him to at least get a series, two series. Then you can mix in a Ty Chandler if you don't want to play him all the time. But it did seem like they had blinders for Aaron Jones today.

It seems like Aaron Jones is the only running back on this roster that Kevin O'Connell trusts. And I get it. I trust Aaron Jones too. But he is approaching 30. He's a guy who has had a history of injuries. And he's a guy that you need now and in week 17 and week 18 and if you continue to run him like this into the ground you might not have him for for

week 17 and 18 um so the the running game as a whole yeah i think you said d minus i would say d like you gained 64 yards against i think they came in as like the 29th rated rush defense in the league. It can't be anything much higher than that, but I do feel for Aaron Jones in this scenario because man, he's given you everything he's got. You gotta give him a blow here and there. So it just, the game plan overall on the offensive side of the ball at times,

like when it was on fire early on, looked great. And as we've seen kind of the last two weeks now, start fast, finish slow. And then we saw it again today, the running game being a pretty big culprit of that. The only thing that would save the grade, and I, well, see, I want to say running backs and not just Aaron Jones.

It's not his fault. He's the only one that played. So they get also downgraded in the running backs because no one else can be trusted on the field uh the only saving grace is that aaron jones made one of the best catches i've ever seen by a running back that flipped backwards down the sideline that that was the maybe one of the more frustrating things about this game is that i would have enjoyed talking more about Justin Jefferson's all-universe type of tip it to himself catch and Aaron Jones's catch and some of the spectacular plays that they had on offense but they just ended up letting everyone

down and making those not matter so much offensive line how do you you feel grade-wise with the offensive line? It's hard to say. I mean, B-minus? They were fine. C-plus, maybe? They held up in protection pretty well, except for in pretty big moments. Sam Darnold sacked three times, like we said, for 28 yards. Some of that's on him. A lot of that's on him.

The one sack we've talked about at length that should not have been a sack should have been a 15 yard penalty for the vikings um so we can handicap that and say two sacks so they did they were pretty good in pass protection i think some of the pass protection issues when when the vikings feel sped up is sam darnold processing and it tends to be pretty slow going from progression one to two to three to four sometimes he holds the ball too long and that's why you see when they don't show up as sacks they they show up as dirt balls or you've seen him a couple of times this year kind of just you know throw the ball into the ground which I guess is better than your alternative of what he used to do, which is force the ball downfield.

I guess the more I talk about the offensive line, though, I mean, 64 yards rushing, that's partially on them. That's largely on them. And it was 2.9 yards per carry is not good enough. And some of that is on the running backs, but a lot of that's on the offensive line. So I thought they were pretty good in pass protection. I thought they were pretty bad in run blocking. enough and some of that is on the running backs but a lot of that's on the offensive line so I thought they were pretty good in pass protection I thought they were pretty bad in run blocking so I guess I'll just lane land right around a C yeah I guess C is about the best you could ask

for when you lose Christian Derrissaw at halftime I thought that the sacks and again I know he's face masked but still you're holding holding onto the football too long. Yeah, and this has been a thing all year long is holding onto the ball. And Darnold did that a lot again in the 13-yard sack. I think, again, it's on Darnold. Yes, somebody gets through, but you're holding onto the ball. You're running backwards. You're losing more yardage.

So I don't want to put those on the line. And I have to grade it on a curve when you lose your best player at halftime. And I think that there puts me a little bit more in the range of a C plus or something like that. It was probably a good enough offensive line performance to win the game and they weren't able to do it. But the run blocking against this team to not be able to have more explosive runs that would have made Aaron Jones life easier. It seemed like he was gobbled up pretty quickly on a lot of these runs and there have been mistakes. So yeah, I think you could just say an average to below average type of performance. The receivers are

interesting, but I want to just sort of stop and pause and give you the explanation on the injury to Christian Derrissaw, because once it happened, a lot of people asked, well, why didn't Kevin O'Connell decide to kneel down there? I mean, first of all, you've been watching Kevin O'Connell, right? I mean, how often do we ever see him just take it to halftime kneeling down but what he said is that he saw that the rams had a package out there defensively with only one linebacker that they had a dime package out there and he thought if they just tried a simple head off maybe they could get 10 12 yards and explosive play and then they would have enough time to try to get it to midfield and kick a field goal this is a run play that they use a thousand times that derisaw has run a thousand times

it was a freak accident i don't think there was anything to second guess from the coach there at all uh i don't think that he if he had known it was going to injure his left tackle guys then yes of course just like so many people on social media must have known must have had a premonition and known that the left tackle was getting hurt but i do not think that this was a mistake in play calling i think it was just a bad break and trying to tack on an extra three trying to be aggressive in a game like this that you figured was going to be high scoring i actually thought was the right move and also even even calling it aggressive to hand off up the middle is sort of playing it in the middle anyway well we see a look let's try to hand it

off and if it works then we'll go for it and if it doesn't uh then we won't but they hit a 51 yard pass from the goal they hit a 97 yard pass from the goal i don hit a 97 yard pass from the goal. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't have tried to score there. And sometimes in football, somebody falls on your left tackle. I don't know. That's all I really have to say about that. I don't want to fight about it, but onto the wide receivers. I think we've reached a bit of a trend with Jordan Addison here, two catches, 22 yards just hasn't really been involved. But when you only throw 25 passes because you're never on the field, because your defense isn't stopping people, it's a little harder to be involved. When you have three and outs,

it's harder to get everyone involved. Jefferson was marvelous. As good as you're going to see him, everybody else, Trent Shurfield scores a touchdown. to see him. Everybody else, Trent Shurfield scores a touchdown. Good for him. I wrote an article about him this week, so that worked out really well for me personally. But the rest of the wide receivers, not really anywhere to be found. And I just don't know how many weeks in a row we can say that TJ Hawkinson being back would be nice for this offense. But this was a one-man

show. A for Jefferson, F for everybody else. I'm serious. Jalen Naylor, that opportunity to make a play is there, and he dropped it. It's a touchdown. That would have elevated the grade. Jordan Addison can join the offense anytime he wants. Now, this is, like you said, a common trend or a recurring thing that continues to happen. I get it like it's on the play caller to feature a guy that maybe grows disinterested when he's not

early a part of the offense um that's also on you as the player to continue to be locked in um two catches for 22 that's that's just not good for a guy that I think when we've seen him really ball out, have both said to each other, this guy is a special receiver. Two for 22, that can't happen. The entire grade gets raised by Justin Jefferson just being amazing for the millionth week in a row. He's just a special receiver like if the vikings had won that game i think we would have talked probably 25 minutes about that catch that he had um i tweeted maybe that was as good as the buffalo catch it probably wasn't nothing will ever

beat that um but he did catch it one-handed um twice with both of his hands so he caught it one-handed this left hand he got popped up and then he pinned it to his helmet with his right hand. I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that. And then you got his feet down. He is a special player that, I mean, eight catches on nine targets. More,

more, please keep throwing him the ball. There were still too many stretches. I felt like throughout the game where it was like number 18, still on the field. You can keep throwing him the ball. There were still too many stretches. I felt like throughout the game where it was like number 18, still on the field, you can keep throwing him the ball. I know it's not that simple because there are looks that are just being totally thrown Jefferson's way to take him out of the game.

But I have a hard time believing we couldn't have pushed the ball more to Justin Jefferson when there were chunks of the, of that game where he just seemed completely unguardable. So I don't know what I would give the grade as a whole. Like I said, A for Jefferson, F for everybody else. I think that's the exact right grade. And with Jordan Addison, I think when we put, we can put things into a bucket of this is what happened today. And this is what's a concern for the whole season. The fact that Jordan Addison is just not involved is a concern for the entire season. Kirk Cousins really loved Jordan Addison.

He talked about him repeatedly in postgame press conferences and said, we crushed that draft pick. And also, Kirk threw the ball 40 times a game. So when you throw it 40 times a game, you keep players in rhythm getting the football. He gave Addison a lot of opportunities to catch the ball, and that's the hard chicken and the egg. Do you criticize the line for a sack or Darnold for a sack? Do you criticize Addison for getting two catches or the quarterback for not finding him a little bit more often? I thought that overall, Darnold mixed up who he was throwing to, throws to Shurfield throws to Oliver.

But when you have a receiver who is a first round player and has shown it through his career that he has every bit that talent, otherwise they probably would have moved on from him based on some of the other stuff off the field. And he's only getting three targets a week. That's a failure on somebody's part. I can't fully identify who, whether it's him and the routes or the alignments or whatever it might be, or it's just the quarterback not finding him. He can be a machine with 10, 15 yard routes, breaking off guys, getting open. There were some numbers about separation that showed he's been really good in separation.

You have to find ways to get him the ball more often. So I agree with your grade the defensive line what's lower than f i mean super f super f yeah super f one of the single worst defensive line performances that we've seen covering this team and we went through 2020 and 2021 when everybody got hurt uh i don't know entirely what happened here. Grenard was in the blue tent several times, which I think was a factor. Van Ginkle has kind of been asked to do a lot of the pure edge rushing. I would have really liked to have seen Dallas Turner off the edge tonight when nothing else is working. They're leaning on Patrick Jones way too much.

Patrick Jones is a 20 snap, 15 snap guy, but he was out there there the whole game that's just we've seen that movie before that does not work i i mean is dallas turner now doghouse status because he his snap counts have completely depleted and if you were going to just throw somebody out there to rush the passer i would have thought it would have been him because of his speed off the edge and we just didn't see it. So that's another one that last week I was saying, well, I, you know, look, it's, it's a rookie and he's developing, but if there was a time to use him, I thought it should have been tonight.

The interior was abominable, absolutely awful, totally steamrolled, pushed back, no pressure whatsoever as the single biggest reason why Matthew Stafford was able to chill back there and just throw and throw and throw and throw. And is that because it's a Thursday night football game? I don't know. Other people play on Thursday. This is why I can't give this excuse. Every week someone plays on Thursday, they don't get four pressures in an entire game against the other quarterback. This is another one I would throw into the bucket of a very serious problem going forward. And I guess I wonder from you, because we agree, Super F, does this change your mind in any way?

Because it could go either way about potentially trading for a defensive tackle, because you could argue, well, that would be a big difference maker. But you could also argue maybe it's just not in the cards this year to do that. How like how crestfallen are you about this single loss when it comes to that? Yeah, I see where you're going. Last week when they lost to the Lions, I said it did not change my opinion. But at that point, I still thought they were a legitimate contender in the nfc this loss would at least give me you know some pause a lot of pause like i'm not trading the first round pick i just like i i i get it like that's maybe reactionary but i think we have to be reaction reactionary here you might have lost your left tackle for who knows how long um that that injury

looked bad you're now five and two with a lot of cracks in the foundation um you you can't part with that first round pick but at the same time you're five and two heading into a pretty soft part of your schedule so i think you kind of have to do something um so maybe i'm not all in on you know trade a first and another first and another first for dexter lawrence i don't know if that was ever on the table guys i know it sounds really fun but i don't know if the new york giants are trading the guy who is leading the nfl and sax from the interior um i just don't think that's going to happen but i do think the vikings need to trade for somebody. And I need to canvas. It's going to be an article we write at some point.

I'm sure everyone's going to do it. I know you already did it. There's got to be a way to at least find some depth or find an impact player. I mean, I, Calais Campbell's like a hundred years old, but I would throw a fourth or third or like a fifth round pick and try and bring him in.

He seems pretty ageless in what he can do well. And what he can do well is generate a push up the middle. And it's something the Vikings cannot do well right now. So this has changed a little bit of my perception. I'm not all in, trade it all, go full Rams, as Kweisi would say. I'm not there anymore. But I think at five and two, you still could be eight and two over the next three weeks um so you have to at some point try and address what has become a pretty big weakness um and we've seen it kind of in in spurts um now

we're seeing what it can look like when it's really bad i think they were asking a lot out of harrison phillips jonathan buller jerry tillery that trio um taki taimani getting in like you're asking a lot from that group of four uh with not any real big talent pieces in there um i think harrison phillips is a really good player but i think you're asking him to do a lot when you're asking him to stop the run and rush the passer. They need something else there. And while I wouldn't trade the one, I would trade something to bring it in.

So I want to expedite the grading process here because we agree that the secondary was a super F. Also, there's no real debating that. Stephon Gilmore really looked like a 35-year-old player who is playing two games in four days. Ivan Pace is not but Blake Cashman. And he struggled, I think, again for the second straight game that he's a guy that needs to be let loose like a Wolverine to just go do whatever he needs to do. And Cashman is the in command type of guy that's a good relationship but i don't think it really works with pace trying to pretend to be

blake cashman because they're very different the reason i just want to jump through that is because we all know that that was the worst part of this team i would also say if you have there was a clock on the big board and it said on one of the throws, Stafford had 6.1 seconds in the pocket. But let's count to 6.1. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. That's how long he had to throw the football. That's insane. So anyway, we understand the

relationship and all that stuff we don't need to go into that because i think the conversation about where they stand is more interesting at this moment with the the overall big picture because when you zoom out this game is actually in these last say these last even four weeks cut it into the last four weeks it's much more of what we thought this team was going to be. Some up and down games, some really fun barn burners. The defense has some great performances. Darnold is hot and cold. It hits some big shots that are amazing, but also frustrates you. It's really looked like what I thought the 2024 viking season was going to be it's also where i thought this roster was a year away on defense and needing of using that 78 million dollars in free agency for next year to fill out the big parts of this to get a corner to get a defensive tackle going into the season and then

when everybody played their best through five weeks we just went well maybe it's one of those years like in a baseball lineup where every hitter has his career year at once and you just go, okay, well, all in. So I've been saying all in, use the first round pick, try to go for it. I think that pumps the brakes a little bit on that for me, but I also can't help think about what is upcoming here and how just in the NFL in general, we crazy overreact to literally everything that we ever see in front of us. And five and two can easily turn into eight

and two and an eye blink and your chances to go to the playoffs, your chances to win the North, your chances to have a home playoff game, to have a buy are still pretty high at eight and two, if you can end up getting there. So I think what we have seen here is kind of your, your terrifying potential future. If they keep playing like this and don't fix the issues that they have, but also it's, it's just hard not to factor that they've already played most of their most difficult games so far maybe i'm a little less uh enthusiastic about the trade first round picks for something although i always wanted them to trade it for someone that they would get to keep not that they would have to give away i still look at next year as being like the year for this team

with McCarthy coming back and so forth, but I really don't think, and I saw so much of this tonight and I get it. People drink during the games and they get mad during the games. And what are you doing if you're not yelling at someone on social media during your football team's loss? But five and two is a great spot to be for this team overall and it's really really i think over reactionary there to start saying all right we'll see you in 2025 i mean some of you give up so easily like how do you even just get up and get to your vehicle and turn it on like in the in the day to go to work if you give up this easily. They're five and two at this spot in the season. It's a good place to be, but it's also maybe a

wake-up call that some of the stuff early in the season that didn't show itself because Andrew Van Ginkle was picking off passes and running for touchdowns has to be addressed, corrected. Maybe there is no correction and it might get you later on in the season. But I think where they're really going to be shown now, I was not looking at it this way before, but now I am, that the true Vikings will be shown to us in these next few weeks.

If you go blast the Colts, blast the Jags, blast the Titans, then okay. I mean, you are still in great shape, and that was a blip on the radar. It was a tough Thursday night football game. You lose to the Colts. You lose to the Jags. It really, if you don't go three and O in these next three games, then I will say, all right, we did miss something about that start. It really wasn't in the numbers. It wasn't in the opponents.

It was maybe in the fragility of relying on so many older players to play so many snaps more than they really could have been expected to play without depth yet on this roster because it just isn't quite there yet so i need i need these next three games to really tell us where we should be with this team yeah and i so like i think where you set yourself up well going five and oh, we set it after each win after they were wanting to know two and oh, three and oh, four and oh,

five and oh, like you don't have to give the wins back. You get to keep them and you get to build yourself kind of an installation for a game like this, for a weird Thursday night game where you play horrendously, a bunch of positions, get upgrades from, from Dane and collar.

And, and you, you go into-buy feeling pretty crappy about yourself. But zooming out, like you said, let's take a breath. You should beat the Colts. You should beat the Jaguars. You should beat the Titans. And if you do what you should, then you should be 8-2. And I get why people will kind of be looking under the bed for that boogeyman at that point, because if you're eight and two, you still probably are wondering how good are we actually,

because of a four day stretch like this, where you lost to the lions and then came back and lost to the Rams. But if they win the games, they're supposed to, that they should, that they are hands down better than the teams coming up over the next three weeks then they're in a really good position still moving forward um i would venture to guess if they go out and dominate the colts at us bank

stadium on sunday a lot of the people that were ready to quit the season will be saying i'm right back in they got me again i'm ready to get hurt. And if they do it again to the Jaguars and they do it again to the Titans, like this is an overreactionary league. I think the takeaway from today was some of the stuff that went wrong feels like it could rear its ugly head again. But at the same time, when you zoom out, like they have put themselves in such a good position with what they did early in the season to be able to slip up like this in one of the games. And now we get to see who they really are over the next three weeks. Because like you said, like if they are who we think they are, they will win these next three games pretty handily. They will be eight and two heading

into a really important road matchup with the chicago bears which would i think would be the next test for them um these next three weeks they're a test in their own right um but they're not really a test to see how good this team is like if you are the team that that we think you are um that they think they are you win these next three games without much effort or without much you know leaving little doubt um and then you see where you are when you kind of regroup at that point um but i do keep coming back to like those three games felt like almost like no matter what wins um and now i have a little bit of i don't know maybe what team's going to show up on Sunday. And then I think they have left themselves open to that type of criticism with a pretty disastrous four-day

stretch here. Yeah, a very noticeable struggle tonight in the comments section to deal with this loss. So I'll just run through. The point about the next three games is that you have to win them because you have to come out of this easiest stretch at eight and two if you don't and you blow it against the jaguars blow it against the titans then what you are as a team as one that any given week can either beat the texans or blow it to the jaguars. And that's just who you are. If you take care of business, then you're a team at very least that we can say has mostly beat good teams played with the best teams and had a blip on the radar against the Los Angeles Rams.

That is the point. Also, I don't think that it necessarily, and maybe this will just never change. Every single game that's played does not have to be a referendum on the general manager and the coach. It just doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be. This is an overachieving team so far at five and two. It's been better than expectations. Sam Darnold has played the best football by far of his career in the NFL. And

that is a lot because of the head coach. There's also been a lot of plays with the head coach that they would probably want back and some details that they still mess up every week and then come back and tell us, oh, we're going to work on those. And then they don't line up right. And so there's frustrations there. And with the roster, it's always been on a timeline. And this here was kind of patching up a lot of spots, hoping that Brian Flores could eke out good enough scheme with these players and get the most out of them to the point where they could have a good defense. And they've been one of the best defenses in the league, built on going into free agency,

making good free agent signings. I just don't understand how one football game out of seven turns into every single person sucks and should be fired. But I guess what would it be football if it wasn't right, especially in front of the nation? So I guess I would say deep breath. Enjoy your football on Sunday. I will have another live show following up the Sunday early and afternoon games to react to how those impact the Minnesota Vikings. So try to enjoy it. Relax a little bit. Sober up a little bit after

this loss. And maybe we'll start to get the picture after this where they stand in the nfc what they might do with the trade deadline and how they're going to fix some of the issues that were problematic here tonight but again coming out of here the team is five and two and they are in a position to be one of the best teams in the nfc that did not change but it did send up a lot of flares of concerns that you have to wonder if teams have figured out ways to beat them on some of their weaknesses. That is the entire bottom line. And just to end it, I don't know how long Christian Derrissaw is going to be out. We did not get a real report on that. We just know that he is out and has a knee injury and we'll try to find out more as we go forward.

So we'll see what happens. If there's any trade, you know, emergency podcast right here in this place. And always, always, if they make any big moves. So keep your eyes out as we get closer to that trade deadline. And of course, all of our usual coverage will continue. So thanks so much to everybody for watching slash listening get some sleep everybody it feels like you're gonna need it and we'll talk to you guys later football