Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Vikings get run over by 49ers, does it matter that they are alive in the playoff race?

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom break down the Minnesota Vikings loss to the San Francisco 49ers. We start out with the big picture: The Vikings are very much in the playoff race after falling to the 49ers but the loss ends the idea that they have turned things around completely. The 49ers ran over the Vikings on the ground and turned things around completely at the end of the first half and ultimately Kirk Cousins couldn't come up with big plays when the pressure was at its height. Mike Zimmer made typical excuses about the referees after the game and now the Vikings are set up to have a so-so season... what will that mean for them? Oh and Kene Nwangwu is exciting, huh? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to remind you before we get started, the TickPick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. TickPick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. Hello, welcome to the It Happened Again, where the Vikings played a crazy one score game and we have a lot to break down after they fall to the San Francisco 49ers and end up now five and six. I want to start big picture and then we can work our way down because here's the thing, Sam, when you go look at the playoff odds and you look at the rest of the NFC, considering

the Philadelphia Eagles lost today, here's what you come away with. The Minnesota Vikings should be in the playoffs six weeks from now. Is it six weeks, seven weeks, whatever it is, seven weeks from now. They have games against Pittsburgh who lost by 40. Also Detroit and Chicago, a game in which on Thanksgiving, I will never recover from actually watching. So they should win those games. And then a couple of games where if you play up to your competition, as they so often have

this year and you get just one of them, you are easily in the playoffs. And otherwise, even if you're not easily in, there's tiebreakers to be had still. Carolina also melted today under a horrendous performance by Cam Newton. So this right now screams playoff team unless Taylor Heineke, oh my gosh, the irony, if Taylor Heineke were to somehow come charging from behind from the Washington football team. But aside from that, it's very hard to see any other team tracking them down. Here's my question. After watching this today and seeing Anthony Barr get hurt, seeing Delvin Cook get hurt, seeing Christian Derrissaw get hurt, knowing their situation

already is not going to greatly improve on the defensive line. Do you care about that, Sam? Do you care that the Vikings are still in great position despite their loss today to make the NFC playoffs. Yeah. You know, I think the injuries are going to hurt this team and hurt their ability to, to even win games against opponents where they should win like Chicago. Like I think they still have a lot of dicey games remaining, even though on paper they should win those games. That being said,

I'm not prepared to give up on any injury plague team as long as the majority of their offense is intact, which it still is. Kirk Cousins, Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen, still good. Dalvin Cook's loss is not good, but it's also the running back position. And Kenny Wongwu may be just as effective. We don't know he might not be dalvin cook's really good but i still think you can get enough from the running back position to where your offense can still be fantastic now the defense is starting to look like end of 2020 defense where your defensive line is unrecognizable which that that in and of itself is not great. And then you've got an injury to Anthony Barr, which if the hamstring report is accurate,

the team never confirmed it. You know, that could be a multi-week thing. We don't know for sure. We don't know the severity of that. We don't know the severity of Cook, although it seemed serious or Derisaw for that matter. So there's a lot going on right now injury-wise. And I think it's obviously a negative for the Vikings, but I don't mail in seasons

when you still have a good starting quarterback with good weapons on offense. I think that unit, as we saw today, it was kind of their undoing there for a little bit, but also got them back in position to maybe tie that game. And then Kirk Cousins was hit or miss. He was shoddy. We'll get into all that, but not mailing in the season yet.

But plenty of reason to be concerned on defense where, you know, you might get a reprieve against Detroit, but any, any good offense is going to have their way. I think with that front seven, if you don't have bar, if you don't have any of your defensive linemen, it's going to be a problem. So last year at this time, the Vikings had a completely depleted defensive line with Anthony bar out and they were five and six headed down the stretch. And they were right there in the, in the hunt graphic with good playoff odds. And they ultimately lost the game against Chicago, a Chicago team that was bad, a Chicago team that was running out Mitch Trubisky and struggling and trying to look for anything desperately

that could get them over the hump into the postseason, which sounds a lot like Chicago now, though I don't think they're going to make the playoffs, but Matt Nagy is looking for any reason to convince anyone that he should remain the head coach of the Chicago Bears. So he's going to try as hard as he possibly can to knock off the Vikings at least one of those times. And it's Chicago. So you can never, ever, ever write in a guaranteed win. I agree with you that there is no mailing in a season in which you can make the playoffs.

And it's funny how one little change by the NFL changes how we look at this season, because if there was only six seeds right now, we'd be saying, sorry, man, this is over. Now you have to win almost every game to get in the playoffs. And instead you could still be three and three, four and two and make your way into the playoffs. And I agree that their offense is good enough to not only get into the playoffs, but when some kind of shootout in a playoff game against the good team, because we just saw that last week against the green Bay Packers. I think what everybody's point is because after the game I tweeted, Hey, look, I mean, you're still way

better playoff odds than any of these other NFC teams chasing you. And I got a lot of who cares, which is why I wanted to ask if you care. I totally get that sentiment though, because now you're talking about in order to have a good season by NFL standards, you'd have to win every single game the rest of the way. And if you got crazy hot, which is hard to do when you have such a poor defense, if you got crazy hot through the rest of the season and went five and one, you're still only talking about what used to be considered a nine and seven type of season and barely slipping into the playoffs. This was kind of their last chance to be like, ah, good though. Huh? Like remember the fumble way back and the field goal way back and look at what we've done now.

We beat LA and Green Bay and San Francisco. Look at us roar. That takes the shine off of that potential narrative. I think quite a bit here losing this game because it wasn't just a loss. It was a loss in which they turned the ball over, which they haven't really been doing. A bad interception was really costly. And it's a loss in which they turned the ball over, which they haven't really been doing. A bad interception was really costly.

And it's a loss where you said other teams are going to be able to do this against you. Even bad teams are going to be able to do this thing because I thought San Francisco was actually kind of bad today. I thought the quarterback did not play very well at all. Jimmy Garoppolo was all over the place. He threw a horrendous pick. He was inaccurate through most of the game and yet still, and Debo Samuel was really good, but

the running game wasn't unbelievable, but yet they couldn't stop it at all. And I think that this is going to be kind of the story of the rest of the way, much like it was for last season. So I've been kind of flipping around to like, is this more like 2018 or is this more like 2019? And now it has a 2020-ish feel with Everson Griffin out and Delvin Tomlinson will miss at least one more week. Yeah, you know, it certainly had the feeling of that 2019 playoff loss, except with a little more fight in the second half, a little more offensive poise, but where you never felt like Garoppolo was a great quarterback. You never felt like he was just killing you,

and you never felt like the run game was blitzing you either. It was just these four, five, six-yard carries where it looked like they had no business going anywhere, and then Elijah Mitchell, wow, really hard runner. Never watched him before until today. Very impressed. He would just pound for a few extra yards and put Garoppolo in these pretty favorable situations. He was at times extremely clutch with his throws when he needed to be like a third and 11, third and 13 to extend touchdown drives. That was huge. And he actually had a pretty efficient bottom line. He was, I thought, bad, like straight up bad for the first quarter and a half.

And then when San Francisco just committed to the run, then they bulldozed him. I mean, that's going to happen when you are trotting out TJ Smith, Tayshaun Bauer, James Lynch, Patrick Jones. Like, who are these guys? It's unbelievable. I saw number 73. I was like, come on.

How do I not know what number of Vikings players? Oh, cause he wasn't on the team on Wednesday. That's why. Yeah. It's astonishing. And I, I, I'm guessing that Kenny Willekes might not like be back in shape yet because otherwise, why wouldn't he have been activated for this game? Why wouldn't you have used it?

Yeah. Didn't, didn't get that. But I think that going back to your larger point about this game, being a chance to change opinions. Yeah. Like I think a lot of people would say that it's been a roller coaster of a season,

but the highs have not been very high and the lows have not been precipitously low. It's kind of been this like, you know, two up, two down, one up, one down, week to week. It's more of a seesaw season than a roller coaster season. And I think to be a good team in the National Football League, you've got to have at least one winning streak of three games, probably four, if you're going to be considered legit and win double-digit games. And this team keeps turning down opportunities to do that. And again, another opportunity missed to get above 500. They still have not been above 500 in the Justin Jefferson era. That that's crazy to me

since, since late 2019, last time that's happened. Um, well, sorry, I was going to say, if we're looking for analogies it's more like canoeing on a windy day than necessarily riding some sort of tidal wave that goes up and down or whatever yeah sorry that was yeah paddling against the current climbing uphill you know any of those nature adventure analogies that's what this team is doing they're definitely you know giving themselves all the resistance in the world to work against. They're not making it easy for themselves. And that's kind of how the season's been. And that's how this game was, right? It was the feeling of a game that we saw a couple times last year, too,

where they kind of melted down for about a 15-minute period, gave up 21 straight points, and then fought back pretty admirably. Didn't give up any more touchdowns got a couple big stops got a gift missed field goal and then just couldn't take advantage but when you count on your offense to win shootouts you're not always going to fire the last bullet like you had chances here two shots into the end zone one last ditch drive at the end cousins incomplete on back-to-back drives on key third and fourth down passes and i would say most of them were inaccurately thrown you could argue for a flag on one but you're not always going to get those calls uh so a bad cousins game chance to win if you're the vikings that you you miss on the road you probably head back to the Twin Cities feeling pretty down.

But we've said this before, and this team has found a way to fight. I will give them credit. They do find a way. It's just hard to see light at the end of the tunnel after this particular loss, where you now are basically playing for a seventh seed, most likely. Well, the thing about playing for the seventh seed and hoping that you like everybody else just stinks it doesn't really feel super inspiring when you went into the season saying hey it's kind of all in they spent all this money on the defensive

players and everybody's facing kind of a reckoning season and then you get to this point and it's the same spot that you've been many times before. And if you think about, think about it though, from the perspective of two years ago, 2019, they were eight and three. And we were at this same point in the season. I looked this up there eight and three, and we were still saying like, Oh, I don't know if this team is like a contender and they've had an easy schedule. Like now we're looking at it going, well, I guess they could still make the playoffs at five and six. Like how much the standard has even changed in a couple of seasons to where we're at right now.

If you even go back to 2018, they were in the driver's seat for a playoff spot at this time. And they ultimately melted down at the end of the season and went eight, seven, and one, which is a little above 500. And we lost it on that team, rightfully so, because they were good enough to go farther than that and didn't. But now,

if they end up with the same season where they're one game or half a game, I guess, or whatever, over 500 at 9-8, we'll be like, okay, that means that you had to play really great at the end to get to 9-8. That wasn't really what you were looking for. And with Mike Zimmer, there's only so many times at the end of a game like today that you could say, Hey, we didn't lose by that much. Like there's only so many losses you get like that per year. Hey, we fought today. It was the ref's fault, but we fought today. Like, I don't know. it rings pretty hollow when it's your sixth loss to put you at five and six now let's get into some of the game stuff because how about

a breaking news item first okay go ahead rap report has the diagnosis on cook shoulder dislocation mri tomorrow yeah i at first blush you know that's not a good injury. But on the replay, I'm looking at knee, ankle. Like, I thought it was lower body, right? And then they reported shoulder. This feels like big picture, like a better outcome than a lot of people thought. Well, he kind of like grabbed for his left side. And so I don't know. Like, I was thinking like a rib because he got whacked kind of on the rib side but okay a dislocation here's the other part their running

game with delvin cook just hasn't been good this year the 30 yard run today and the rest of his carries were nine for nine um so and and also alexander madison i'm sure he could pass block better than kenny wong who can a long who's got to touch the football. We'll get into that later though, because I want to talk about Cousins. Everything ultimately surrounds with this team around Kirk Cousins, around decisions they have to make in the future and what he can do for them right now with the,

is he going to throw it deep? Is he not going to throw it deep? Is he going to lead them somewhere? Is he got MVP numbers? Has he got all these things that float around the air all the time? This is a great example of what you have in your quarterback and Kirk Cousins and have always had. Last week, he was good against Green Bay. And in some previous weeks, he's been really good. And this week he was not good. And you lost the game. You can look at a million

other things and the Delvin cook fumble is bad and everything else. You lost the game because your quarterback wasn't good in a situation where you needed him to be very good in a game where your defense wasn't stopping anything. Your running game wasn't working. And you're saying, Kirk, this is you, buddy. This is the game you need. You're on the road. Everything's on the line. And he lined up under the center in a position that he had to tie the game. I'm sorry, under the guard, as opposed to under the center.

He lined up under the guard, as opposed to lining up under the center, forcing his team to take a timeout in the biggest moment of the game where they could have tied it potentially if they get the two point conversion and have this game have another classic possible ending that's kind of what you have in kirk cousins that some weeks it's just going and every throw is dropping in the hands of his receivers and then other weeks it isn't functioning even if the numbers don't come out that bad it's not really functioning. And it started out kind of like it was with putting up 14. The throw to Adam Thielen was kind of wild, but I think that was the right place he needed

to put the throw. Ends up being a touchdown. But this is when you put yourself in a position where you're trying to patchwork your defense, your offensive line isn't all that good. Your running back isn't that good or hurt or isn't that effective today and you say all right man we just kind of need you to bail us out and win this one against the team that is not playing very good defense honestly the 49ers were not covering the Vikings receivers very well and it didn't happen and there's been far too many times where

it didn't happen and that's kind of what this season comes down to in a lot of ways where, yeah, there's been things you have to overcome, but your offense has been healthy. Your top receivers have been healthy. Your running back's been mostly healthy. Your offensive line's been healthy and you needed to rely on this. And one week it works in another week. It doesn't, which is the true definition of a guy whose career is exactly 500. And next week he'll beat the Lions and it'll be right back to 500. Right now it's a game under. And so what we got today, and a couple of people sort of spotted it early on, like, ooh, this sort of looks like it's going to be a bad Kirk day. And it was, and that's why you

didn't win. Yeah. The stereotypical bad pick pick which has not reared its head much this year oftentimes because the picks you know he's made bad throws that just have not been intercepted um that was a bad throw that was we've seen that throw before where he just misses a linebacker and it burned him leads to seven points um he's a topsy-turvy quarterback and when you count on your offense to win shootouts with a topsy-turvy quarterback it's not always going to end well i mean it's it's a flawed model um when the run game's not working which was again that was the design for this team and you and to their credit they made the adjustment they said this this has to actually be a pass first team because our defense is not as good. We have better wide

receivers than we have running backs. We need to do this. So they do it and it's going to work some weeks and some weeks it's not going to work. But let's address the right guard thing. So what we don't know is why the play was frazzled from the beginning. Why was Kirk Cousins dragging Justin Jefferson from one side of the formation to the next? I think he had to drag two different guys. He's yelling, he's gesturing, the play clock is running down. This is a third down with the, it was a third down collar, third down, third and goal from the three. With the game on the line, sort of at that moment,

comes back, lines up under the right guard. They call timeout hilarious. That would happen to the same guy that knelt when he tried to spike one time. It is a little bit low hanging fruit, although I don't see it happening to other quarterbacks. So there's probably something there.

And I imagine that he addressed this after the game. We're still watching for those quotes to come out. I'm not going to get hung up on it. I think that he'll get pilloried on social media enough for it. It'll become part of his Mount Rushmore of boneheaded plays. Ultimately, the play that matters is that they called timeout and ran the play, and it didn't work. The pass to Conklin was broken up. So, you know, the wasted timeout, probably more pivotal, to be honest.

I mean, they seemed a little bit discombobulated on that final drive of the game when they could have used a little more breathing room. And, you know, Madison doesn't get out of bounds on a key, you know, a little pass to the flat where they could have saved some time at any rate. I probably won't harp on the right guard thing too much. I'm more concerned just about the bad throws, like missing Jefferson on fourth and goal, 10 feet over his head, missing Jefferson on fourth and eight, well out of his catch radius. Those to me are more indicative of the bad Kirk day. Okay. I will because these things have just popped up with

him so many times. And when we talk about cousins and what they should do in the future with him and why his record is what it is and why they haven't gotten farther with him. There's a lot of other reasons that are not related to Kirk Cousins, including that they just don't have a great offensive line at any point or even a good one at any point. And their defense has not been what it was in 2017 when they went deep. There's been a lot of decisions and draft picks. Hey, Antoine Winfield Jr. made an incredible interception today how about that who would have ever guessed but uh there's so there's a lot of reasons that are not related to Cousins there's coaching reasons that sometimes you tell Cousins hey man don't you dare ever throw a pick and then you're telling him hey throw those picks throw it

deep like the mixed messages the rookie play caller There's been a lot of things that have been messy during the Cousins era that have nothing to do with him. But what it so often comes down to is, does he have it that day that you really need him to have it? Or is there something to tick off on too many big games, too many important games? So against Los Angeles, he comes through at the end of the game with some big throws against Green Bay, a couple of deep throws that are brilliant and perfect, and he's great under pressure. And then today he starts out with a couple of drives that look really good. And then something goes a little awry. And like you said, there's inaccurate throws mixed in.

There's just not looking like you're really in command of the offense. Then some things go wrong. You take a sack, you have a fumble, and these are all things you can overcome. But think about the offense today was not good. I mean, it was under 400 yards and they got a kick return for touchdown that makes it look better than it was, but it was not the offense that I think they were capable of considering no one could cover Adam Thielen or Justin Jefferson. And Thielen ends up with no catches in the second half. Justin Jefferson, just four catches on nine targets the entire day. And then you have this meltdown moment. And so often throughout his career as a Viking, think about the game against Seattle in 2018, where he turns around and throws

an overhand pass in the direction of Latavius Murray when there's wide open receivers. And it was just, oh no, something is off here. That's not working with cousins. And that's just been the case so many times that when you're asking, hey, can you rely on him to go down the stretch and win playoff games for you or whatever else, you know, there's something like this that kind of is going to show up. Even the interception in that linebacker dropped into his flat zone, which is where that linebacker always goes in that situation. And he threw it right into his hands. Like that wasn't some sort of amazing scheme from the 49ers. It wasn't some sort of, Oh my gosh, how did they possibly fool him? It was a, what an incredible job hire that defensive coordinator. It's like, that's where that guy always drops into his own. It's either straight back or to the left, like into the flat. And, and he throws it right into his hands. Like those bad

Kirk moments come up so often throughout a season that you end up sort of throwing up your hands and get, we have no control over whether this version or that version, the one from last week or the one from this week, ends up showing up. And that play where he lines up under the guard is just so evident of what we talk about with bad Kirk. And so I can't really get over it because just like you said, it goes under the Mount Rushmore of like, huh, he did what?

But like not in a good way. So there's that. There's other things to discuss here. But I think that that's one of the bigger picture things is can you get three good games in a row from him where he drives your success? No, you can't. So there's that. There's other things to discuss here. But I think that that's one of the bigger picture things is, can you get three good games in a row from him where he drives your success? No, you can't. And I don't know that there's any time that you have in terms of big games that they've won multiple three, four big games in a row with him as their quarterback.

And that's why they are what they are over the last few years. Now, we do have to talk about other stuff, which is the game changes once again, Sam, at the end of a half again, where you're in command and you need a stop or anything. That's not a nine minute touchdown drive. And here goes San Francisco handoff, handoff, handoff, a couple of throws from Garoppolo. And then they come out and they do it again. I thought that was where this game really changed was they just are now not capable of, even when another offense is sputtering, slowing them down when they need it the most. And now they are one of the worst teams ever at the ends of first halves, which is kind

of crazy to think about. Yep, 66 points allowed in the final two minutes of the first half that's crazy um now this one was a tale of third downs right because caller i gotta go on a rant man espn.com auto playing videos in my ear oh yeah never not be the the worst part of the Internet. Yep. It belongs. Yeah, it's a cesspool. It belongs on the dark web. Get it off my videos in general.

Man, brutal. Oh, I thought. Yeah, like play it on mute. Why do you need to play the same three videos over and over and over again? I could hear you be shocked in your voice of like something hit you like a train. OK, so you were talking about third downs. I'm unhinged. Stop third down and eight on that drive san francisco tries this wacky double pass well defended by the vikings and peterson you know runs into george kittle penalty and mike zimmer wasn't happy about that one i think it was questionable um third and two you

pointed this out on twitter it's a sneak by garoppolo which looks extremely vague as to where he was down where the ball was placed relative to the first down it wasn't measured that was that was bizarre he might have had it he might not have had it but there's no way of knowing because it's just some guy likeing it, right? Isn't that weird? That's so weird. That is weird. And then third and 11, just coverage breakdown. Can't let it happen. If you make that stop, you hold them to three.

I think you feel pretty good about going into halftime 14-10. If you make that stop, you're feeling pretty good. But third downs. And that's where the game started to turn, is to where garoppolo was making like strangely good throws on third downs in big situations and um the niners were just efficient they were they held the ball for 37 minutes in this game and again this isn't a two-minute drill meltdown per se it just sort of is a long drive that like ended inside of two minutes so it is different than the normal two-minute meltdowns we see, but it does have the same feeling where you're constantly going into halftime,

scratching your head as to, man, we played pretty well in that half, and yet the score is tied. How does that happen? And San Francisco double dips. I mean, to their credit, 75 yards out of the locker room, that's a demoralizer. When you barely touch the ball, they hold it for like 12 minutes and suddenly you're up seven to

down seven. That is a backbreaker. Hey, everybody, Minnesota football is in full swing and there is no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the internet for Minnesota football tickets because TickPick, that is T-I-C-K-P-I-C-K, is the original no-fee ticket site. It's the only one you'll ever need as your go-to for football tickets. TickPick got rid of all those awful service fees that the other ticket sites charge, which allows them to guarantee the best prices on all of your tickets. Don't believe it? If you can find better prices on the same seats on another site, TickPick will give you 110% of the difference.

Now, we've had lots of exciting games at U.S. Bank Stadium this year. There are still more to go, including Los Angeles coming here. It's always interesting when Chicago comes to town. So you're going to want to go to tickpick.com and check it out and make sure it's tickpick.com slash insider, because you can save $10 on your first order for Minnesota tickets. That's tickpick.com slash insider. So last two weeks now, the Vikings have given up up 31 and 34 and they've had a couple of missed field goals mixed in where this game should not have even had a final drive uh where you just

like all of a sudden opposing teams are missing field goals like what is happening that's how weird 2020-21 is 2021 uh is is that opposing teams are actually missing field goals like crazy against the Vikings. And that's what happened there at the end. But if they make those field goals from last week and this week, you're talking about giving up over 70 points in the last two weeks for the Vikings. Some of that was fueled by an interception in your own zone, a fumble in your own zone, but the capability of teams.

And we've seen this even going back to when they're playing someone like the Browns to have these long, successful draining drives. And there's this capability of the other team to keep your offense off the field. And that means that every drive ends up being big where you can't have a three and out that you get sacked by Nick Bosa when he completely baptizes Christian Derrissaw, right? You just can't have a three and out that you get sacked by Nick Bosa when he completely baptizes Christian Derrissaw, right? You just can't have those things. And that's the thin margin you're playing with when your defense is now in such rough shape.

So here's another question. And I will get to the referees. I will not forget that because it was one of the worst ref games of the year. However, you only had three penalties last week against the Packers. So you can't complain too much, Mike Zimmer. Anyway, Mike Zimmer's defense is now horrendous, like in terms of their points allowed, rush defense, pass defense. They showed it on the screen. It was 27th, 20th, and 22nd. It's going to be worse after this week. They will play the Lions. They will play the Bears. Those teams will give you a little assist on that.

But also they've got the Rams and Packers. Oh my God, Big Ben. You're going to be a little better than that maybe statistically. But we've talked about cousins. We've talked about the things that they were trying to overcome today defensively. And Zimmer is saying, hey, we had guys showing up this week they were trying to overcome today defensively. And Zimmer is saying, Hey, we had guys showing up this week who are trying to learn the defense and play how much responsibility for back to back years of bad defenses. Are we putting on the defensive

head coach? Yeah. So this year, I think significantly more than last year, where last year they went in with a defense that just didn't have a chance. I mean, and I know that they got hurt too. Last year they got injured, but they had even less margin for error than this year's team. I mean, this year's team, once it all got pieced together, you know, and granted it was still thin, but you had a pretty good third linebacker. You had a pretty good option, you thought, like as your first cornerback off the bench. Your first defensive tackle off the bench was pretty good. Your first defensive end off the bench was pretty good. And as it turns out, your first safety off the bench was pretty good, too.

So you did have at least one layer of depth. And the thinking would be that, well, we can withstand some injuries with that. Now, the amount of injuries they've suffered of late is enough to give Zimmer, I think, a bit of reprieve when it is, it is your entire defensive line, the entire defensive line. Um, and they've found creative ways to get pressure still. Um, and you know,

your defensive backs have been a little, a little bit better. Also porous at times it's hit or miss. I think I still look more to the strategy of this defense, like, you know, big picture over-investing in defensive tackles who still can't stop the run and, you know, paying, you know, two, two linebackers, what you're paying them. And I'm assuming that, you know, Breland was going to be a hit from day one. Like there, there are some questions I still have about the way the whole thing was constructed. Um, and then assuming they could all play together from week one.

So I pin some of that on Zimmer slash Spielman, but I look at a performance like this, and I have a hard time tearing Zimmer apart because I don't think you can do much with that personnel. And again, there's no team with enough depth i don't think to withstand that um yeah now it comes back to player development like you know why why are you why do you have players like lynch and patrick jones and you know armand watts who aren't better and that's you know i don't know if that's a fair question those are day three picks in some cases but their depth isn't that great. It's fine. It's average.

It's maybe below average in some cases. So I'm not going to tear apart Zimmer of late. I think on the whole, there are some big picture questions that need to be asked about why it was constructed this way. And that's probably why it's leading to what it's led to. Yeah. And I agree with you that there is no team that has four good defensive backups that you could just throw in there

but at the same time mike zimmer projected this from the very beginning and said if we have any problems this year we're going to be pretty short and even with everson griffin in there they were pretty short and they couldn't really get after Aaron Rodgers when they needed to most and they were sending big blitzes and that's what caused him to hit a few big plays against Green Bay. So even before they lost Griffin and Delvin Tomlinson, they were struggling to get after opposing quarterbacks without Daniil Hunter. There was so much that was on his shoulders. With Anthony Barr, it could have been foreseen that his injury could be a problem. He was coming off an injury. Nick Vigil is okay, but he's not Anthony Barr.

In the secondary, they've been mostly healthy, if almost not completely healthy, aside from Harrison Smith missing two games and the brief absence of Patrick Peterson. Still, you go from Harrison Smith to a rookie who played pretty well, Cam Bynum, but to a rookie. Nonetheless, it was always a thin type of unit. The thing that you hope for in a game like this is can you figure out a way to hang on for dear life? And especially if Jimmy Garoppolo was looking antsy from the very beginning, overthrowing wide receivers, looking like any pressure was going to throw him way off. I mean, there was a play where Anthony Barr bull rushed the guard, which is a linebacker

on a guard. And this is why Anthony Barr is different because of his size. And Jimmy Garoppolo just like went, ah, what do I do? Like he's, I totally get why they drafted Trey Lance, by the way, they shouldn't be having any conversation about, oh, maybe we'll stick with Garoppolo. Like, no, no, no, no. Like this is these he's okay. Like he wins a lot. And I think he gets the job done as we saw with some gutsy throws, but you can totally see it. And it's stuff like that at the same time, like your, your whole deal is, can you create a defense that's good enough to give you a chance and they have not created a defense here that has been good enough to give them a chance they had when they were healthy early in the season and that's that is personnel kind of

reminds me of the dan quinn falcons thing where like i believe dan quinn is a good defensive mind but their personnel fell off so significantly that there wasn't a whole lot that the guy could do. And I think that's where we are with Mike Zimmer. Still, the big picture matters more than anything. Two years in a row through 11 weeks, you're five and six, two years in a row through 11 weeks, your defense isn't good enough. And any given week, another team could just run over you and you lose a game that you're supposed to win. That's not where you wanted to be, even with all the potential excuses there. And that's what we end up with after this game. So let's talk about the refereeing though, real quick, because it has to be discussed. Bad, bad today. Just bad. I mean, I don't know if it was bad on both sides or just

bad against the Vikings. This is how it goes in the NFL, though. If you watch the games on Thanksgiving, guess what? It was bad. It was really bad. There's 26 penalties in one game. I wanted to cry in my cranberry sauce. Didn't eat cranberry sauce. But it's not good around the league.

It's been a struggle. Nobody can figure out what holding is. There's all sorts of these issues. So I get where Mike Zimmer is coming from. I wonder if the league heard some of the chatter of like, man, there was a 70 billion holding calls on Thanksgiving. Just like dial it back a little. Kevin Seifert of ESPN is reporting on it. Oh my gosh, this historic amount of holdings. And I wonder if they didn't want to call as many today. There were certainly a few of those. Adam Thielen's catch is a catch. I don't know how it's not a catch. It didn't really matter, but it's a matter to the timeout. That is a catch.

I don't know why it wouldn't be. The ball never touched the ground and it was clear evidence that it never touched the ground. So I don't get it. The only thing with the refs is that some games they've gotten calls, some games they haven't gotten calls. You're five and six. I don't know what you want me to tell you, right? Like who wants to hear that from Mike Zimmer after this game? If your team is in total position in the playoffs and maybe you're talking, oh no, we'll be

a three seed instead of a two because of the refs. Dang those refs. But when you're talking about giving up the ball for 40 minutes out of the game to the other team, you threw a pick, you fumbled, you just didn't play well outside of Kenny Wong Wu's kick return. I don't know. I just don't have a whole lot of sympathy for you when the refs screw you a couple of times. When your quarterback throws a completely inaccurate pass, but your receiver gets turned around him i supposed to say ref throw the penalty there i don't know like i guess but i mean it should have been a penalty but i i just can't get to a place where i say wow ref so against the vikings that's the reason they

lost this game i i don't feel that way yeah penalty count ends up five and five um and i think you could probably find a couple holds the other way too you know it's not completely one-sided just because no holds last week at all what right yeah absolutely um i here's how america feels about it i tweeted out zimmer's quote after the game quote these guys hold all the time talking about the 49ers I've got 70 quote tweets about an hour since and I bet 69 of the 70 are nice are be quiet Mike just stop and some of those are Vikings fans a lot of Niners fans you know chirping as well but a lot of Vikings fans saying hey you're the defensive guru and your team gave up a billion rushing yards, right? We are learning something about Mike Zimmer. He is not so much of a savior that his scheme

is going to win you football games defensively. I don't know how many coaches that would describe anyway, but it's not Zim. He needs talent. He needs high end talent. Right. And he needs talent that's been playing together for a while and understands like exactly what's going on all over the field. This defense, particularly against the run. You know, I don't know enough, I guess, about football to know like what's easier to scheme run defense or pass defense. I would assume that coverage is trickier in today's NFL. The run defense is very puzzling to me why it can't be more effective. And we keep hearing Andre Patterson tell us again and again, when you've got linebackers like Eric Kendricks and Anthony Barr, that's the greatest blessing you could have because those guys make all the tackles. And that's why our defensive tackles don't need to get through the line more than they do. But that's not working at all. So I don't really understand why it's as ineffective as it is.

Maybe that they've just run into some well-schemed offenses. San Francisco certainly is that. But I guess that's the biggest head scratcher is because the pressure has been creative. The pass coverage, I think, has been decent, but the run defense puts them in so many bad situations that that one's a little tougher to figure out. Sam Ekstrom here, wondering if you're stuck on your company's injury report. In an unfortunate situation like that, it's good to have someone in your corner. That's where Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer Law can help you understand your rights under Minnesota's

workers' compensation laws. There's enough uncertainty in our lives nowadays that the last thing you want is to feel helpless if you wind up in a bad situation after a workplace injury. Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer will fight for you if there's been a wrongfully denied work comp claim Thank you. and Kramer will provide you a dedicated and experienced disability attorneys that have secured their clients tens of millions of dollars. Our good friends Mike, Pat, and Evan will handle all that messy legalese to and from the insurance company about your claim while you focus on what's important, your recovery. And there's no cost involved for reaching out to Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer. In fact, you don't pay a dime unless they successfully obtain your benefits. You get paid, then they get paid. It's that simple.

The website is yourminnesotaworkcomplawyer.com, where you can find a phone number to get a free consultation. This is an attorney advertisement from Kemet, Sanford, and Kramer, yourminnesotaworkcomployer.com. So I think that defensive ends, once Hunter went out, have at no point really been good at stopping the run and weren't when Daniil Hunter was even in, the defensive tackles weren't good enough really either. They would put in, I mean, we saw the Seattle Seahawks do this, where the other team would wait until they kind

of had a matchup and then they would take advantage of it. But it has your your point, though, is right, because at no point this year have we looked at them even when they had everyone healthy and said, OK, you're you're good. And they had those two fat guys in the middle. The whole strategy was there and they got run over in those games when that was the case. So it is worth kind of scratching your head. I think maybe not having Anthony Barr makes a difference because Nick Vigil is not really a run defender at all. He's much more of a coverage linebacker. But again, we're talking about you can lose some guys and still be able to not allow 200 yards rushing to the other team. You are allowed to do that. Other teams miss players and don't allow 200 yards on the ground,

right? Fred Warner got hurt today. He's a great, great player. And the Vikings didn't just start handing off and running wild the minute that he left the game. So that doesn't have to be the case. I guess, you know what about this game? Because every time we start to get into something, it's a little bit minutiae. And I want to add one one more thing about the cousins and jefferson thing uh but every time i kind of come back to thinking about this as we're talking it enters my mind that this was the game that could have sold vikings fans on this football team if you go go through all the stuff they went through this week with Everson Griffin, the emotional tax that they had to pay this week,

dealing with that situation on Wednesday, and you go out to San Francisco and face a team that's got a lot of really talented players, and you beat them, then I think people are kind of in. And they're saying, this team could really do something i mean look at the nfc who's special and tampa bay is good but they're not super special and kyler murray gets hurt all the time and oh look matt stafford is actually still matt stafford everyone who's surprised seven and four that's what you expected for all in oh no you have the same matt stafford that played for the lions the zebra didn't change his stripes shockingly.

So you're not that impressed by some of these teams that you're facing. You just beat green Bay and you'd be saying, get in, get that six seed. And you've got a chance to beat some teams in the playoffs. If you win a game like this and when you don't, it's, ah, I knew it. Right. And I think that's the biggest thing that all the other stuff i'm kind of getting lost in of like i don't know is james lynch blocking his gaps or something i don't know like the big picture is the wind went out of the sails that you had from last week and think about

how many times that's happened sam how many times with this team has that happened where you go, oh, man, big win. Now it's time. Season on again. They can do something. And then you go, ah, here we are, five and six, right? I mean, I just I can't get past that part of it to start talking about, do you think that their left guard held a lot today? Like I don't know who cares right there would be a lot more forgiveness for a loss like this if you had banked up two more of the games you should have won earlier in the

year like if if your offense is representative in the middle two quarters against baltimore you can win that game or if your defense is representative like if either side of the football holds up its end of the bargain, middle of the game against Baltimore, you are, you know, probably winning that game. If your defense like doesn't fall asleep in the last two minutes at Arizona, Craig Joseph makes a kick, you win that game, right? Like they had so many chances to build equity,

but instead they kept remortgaging. And now the monthly payment is getting higher and higher and they don't have a lot of equity with the bank the bank being the fan base um there's just no forgiveness left i mean they're running out of of margin you know i think that every season you sort of are on this march like with every loss that gets you closer to that eight or nine mark, which in essence eliminates you, you lose equity. So this team, when you look at all six losses, all six losses, you could justify having had a chance to win those games. Right. And when the coin keeps coming up against you, you you know in these 50 50 flips more often than not yeah you're you're not going to have any kind of margin for error down the stretch and and you're

not going to win over a lot of believers you know who i think were pretty pumped about the packers game and willing willing to buy stock and then, plus the injuries. It's going to lead to, you know, like I've said many times before, it's a two-week league. Every two weeks, the whole thing changes. And now you have to beat Detroit, which a lot of teams have done, but a lot of teams have had to sweat to do it, including the Vikings. If we're being honest, it would, you know, everybody knows what I'm going to say.

It would just be classic. I mean, it would be the typical classic thing to have happen of like, Oh, we've played all these close games and we're actually good. And they still fight. And then it finally, the earth gives way underneath you and you lose to Detroit.

And then it's all over and no one believes in you at all. And if like, this would be the game. I don't think that's going to happen. Cause that team is truly a truck fire, but it is classic Vikings fashion. I think what you're laying out there is exactly why everything rings hollow at this moment is, well, it was the refs. Well, Kirk was a little off today, but you know, he lost Delvin or it was the defensive line being out or it was the whatever.

And it was the whatever. And this to me, that's why I started with the big picture. And I want to end with the big picture because that's really the takeaway for today is I was ready. And I think you were ready to say, if you win this game and you have a 90% chance to win in the play or to get into the playoffs and you show the type of resilience that it takes and your quarterback drives your success this was always the thing that could make me change my mind was hey if you're up there and passing expected points at it in the NFL and if

you're a top passing team in the league and your quarterback is winning you big games against good teams that's different from what we've ever seen before. And hey, you can do something here. This really takes the shine off of that thought. And like you said, two weeks ago, they're ready to fire everybody. Two weeks later, they're ready to crown everybody. And then here we are with you're ready to kind of throw in the towel again. I would say with this team, you never want to do that because of how crazy things are. But just moments after this game ends,

the feeling from a lot of people, I think is, ah, yep, you are who we thought you were. And it's hard not to say that because here's what I want to end with, Sam, is like what's going to be different though? I mean, the schedule is different, but is the defensive line improving?

I don't see it. If they bench Ole Udo for Blake Brandel, is that better? Or for Garrett Bradbury, is that change anything? The idea also of, Hey, throw it down the field all the time is great, but that also comes with high variance. So if your quarterback is a little inaccurate that day, it just, you're not going to succeed, which is kind of what happened today. Your running back might be out for a significant amount of time. It's just hard to say like, Oh, if they just do X, Y, and Z, we thought, Oh, the answer is just like pushing the ball down the field and being super aggressive. But then you saw today, Oh, if you get a bad Kirk day, then you just don't win. It's kind of hard to say that they're

going to be different now that they couldn't pull this one off. I was willing to say it if they did. If Kirk came out and dominated this game and threw for 350 against the good defensive line in a big game where everybody was watching and talking about it leading up to it, I was ready to say, okay, this team could actually be dangerous. And now how can you say that? It doesn't seem like a lot of their injury issues are going to get quickly rectified either. I mean, I think Tomlinson conceivably comes back soon, but Pierce hasn't played since week four. Everson Griffin is out indefinitely. I mean, the last time this happened, it was four, five, six weeks. Hunter's out for the year.

Barr, don't know. I mean, hamstrings are not anything to mess around with, if that's what it is. Dalvin Cook, I feel like you don't get surrounded on a cart unless it's fairly serious. I don't really know the scale

of shoulder separations, or dislocations, I should say. Because you see guys with separated shoulders, get them popped back in, they run back on the field. Yeah, so I have no idea. I have no idea what that means for him, but I don't sense that this team is just going to get healthy all of a sudden, and that's going to bring a surge. I think this is the reality. You're going to be shorthanded, at least with some of these guys, for the rest of the year. So if you can't deal with that, yeah, it's going to be tough to see it change. I think that you can continue with this offensive approach and know that Cousins will probably put

together some great games. And you hope that those great games happen to align with the games where you happen to need them most, like where you need to score 34 to beat the Rams or Packers. And then if he has an off day, you hope that it aligns with maybe the Lions next week, and you can still squeak it out and win that game. And then just patchwork your way to the playoffs. Now that's not going to inspire anybody.

Right. And that's not going to lead to a deep playoff run. But that feels like the reality of the final six weeks to me. That is exactly right. And that is why this game is sort of sticking. I think with a lot of people is that if you win this one, then you go, okay, easy schedule down the stretch, beat these teams, get in. This is exciting. Now it's, it really comes down to kind of two options for the rest of the season. I apologize for the

bleakness here, but we live in reality on the show. The two options for the season are a horrendous meltdown where you lose games you shouldn't lose. And somehow the Philadelphia Eagles or football team or whoever ends up beating you for a final playoff spot. And we all go, how did that happen? Or you barely make it into the playoffs and you lose. And then we go, oh, well, they definitely played football this

season. And we don't remember some of those games, but it was kind of what we thought from early on that it was going to be eight, nine, nine and eight at best and met, right? Those are kind of the two ways this feels like it can go. Now, if they won this game, I would feel differently. If they had dominated this game offensively, I would feel differently. But it was kind of the same old. Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot one more thing. And I know we've gone long here. Jefferson seemed P.O.

at multiple times. Yeah. Just want to mention that. Not really a great sign. Very upset with his quarterback there. So which is interesting coming off of what he just came off of. But, I mean, I guess I get it. You had three throws in his direction that didn't give him a chance.

One of them low, two of them high. There might have been more. I could be forgetting. But those three in all very key spots. Yeah. You had the one on the fourth down in the end zone. You had the one on the two point conversion. You had the one at the last play of the game.

They were just nowhere close. Oh, and there was another bomb early in the game where he threw it to San Jose for some reasons. Oh yeah. Yeah. Miscommunication. That was a little odd.

Sure. I think priors matter there, you know, like three, like you said, two, three weeks ago, they're not throwing it his way. He's very frustrated. Gets the ball a couple weeks in a row. Okay, I'm okay. But then it comes back pretty quickly.

Just like if you know somebody who's chronically late and then they're on time a couple times in a row and then late again, that's way different than someone who's on time all the time. Anyway, we'll end with that. But, um, this will be interesting to see now where it all goes, which ones of those directions, and then the decisions that have to be made around all of this team will set up. And if they're, you know, where they're going for the playoffs, if they get there, do they blow some, one of these games, you know, all those things. So there's a lot that we'll have to discuss as we go forward, Sam, thank you for your time. Thank you all for listening to our podcast after another close loss again.

So good day. We'll be back every day as always. We'll see it.