Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Vikings matchup with Browns will tell us so much

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom begin diving deep into the Vikings upcoming matchup with the Cleveland Browns. After a great showing against Seattle, is the Vikings' offensive line going to be up to the task? How about the defensive line, can they get after Baker Mayfield and slow down the dangerous Browns offense? What do we think of the Kevin Stefanski vs. Mike Zimmer matchup? And what happens if the Vikings win? What happens if they lose to Cleveland? 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. Hey everybody, welcome in once again to our Purple Insider and Bring Me the News live stream. Matthew Collar and Sam Ekstrom here. We do this every Tuesday about two o'clock as long as the Viking schedule does not get in the way, which at the moment it has not. So we've had our Tuesdays usually off and we're here with Bring Me the News doing Vikings live. And we've got a lot to discuss with the Vikings now at one and two coming off of a huge win

against the Seattle Seahawks. We also have another full slate of football that has happened, giving us sample sizes on all the teams that the Vikings are going to face. So that is going to be one of our main focuses of this episode. Matthew Collar, Sam Ekstrom, as always. What is up, Sam? How are you? Hello, hello. The quarter mark of the season question mark coming up, even though it's not quite a quarter, I think that's always a really good benchmark to see where teams are at. and we're almost there. So we can maybe start taking meaningful, you know, takeaways from the stat sheet instead of just, you know, having fun with small sample sizes. So I read a article, I think it was last year, looking statistically at what section of the

season tells you the most about who your team is going to be about their strength and the beginning of the season has weirdness to it naturally just with teams not knowing who they are yet having to kind of make adjustments early season injuries that ruin seasons and so forth and the end of the season can often have some wonkiness to it as well it's usually the middle section that's coming up next for the Vikings after this game against Cleveland that tells you the most about your team because the teams have made their adjustments and they sort of have become who they're going to be. And I think that that starts with this week against the Cleveland Browns. So why don't we begin by just talking

about how the Vikings match up against what we've seen from the Cleveland Browns. Cleveland had a very close loss against a now somewhat failable Kansas City Chiefs team. That was in week one. And then last week, they get nine sacks against Justin Fields, which is probably not all that comparable. So what do we think of how the Vikings match up with the Cleveland Browns and what this game is going to tell us about the Vikings? Well, Mike Zimmer is looking at the Browns stats and he's jealous.

Number one in rushing attempts. Number two in rushing yards. Number one in rushing touchdowns. Number three in yards per attempt. So they are abundant in the run. They are efficient in the run. They are efficient in the run. They are productive in the run. They put points on the board. Their offense is third in scoring percentage, which is a stat that we both like that tells you really accurately how often a team is putting

points on the board. They're 50%. So this is a tough offense to slow down. And it feels to me again, like a shootout because the Vikings defense is scuffling. The Vikings offense is rolling and the Browns weaker side of the ball, at least statistically right now is probably their defense, even after that Bears game. And it's going to be thrown off too by the Kansas City stats, right? So they've kind of got a really bad game on defense and a really good game on defense. And then a Texans game in between that, of course, they should beat the Texans. So Cleveland might be a team that's hard to peg right now because they've hit three kind of wonky games early in the season. But if you use last year as a sample size as well, you know kevin stefanski is going to like coach

the team well they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot they're going to make the correct decisions they're going to go for it when it's appropriate and they're just amassing a bunch of talent on that team and they're going all in in free agency going getting guys like jadevion clowny who had two sacks in that bears game um And I think that he's the right coach to sort of manage that talent. And they've got, you know, confidence to win. Finally, they're not going to pull a Detroit Lions and give up a fourth and 18 and a 66 yard field goal. They've kind of graduated past that.

So I think Cleveland is going to be probably the most mature opponent they've faced, the best coached opponent they've faced, and probably with the most established talent. That's amazing how quickly things can turn around in the NFL for your franchise when you have a good coach, which Kevin Stefanski I think is clearly proving to be, a good quarterback. I'm not sure exactly how good Baker Mayfield is, but I'm sure that he's competent. And I was actually really impressed with what we saw from Baker Mayfield is, but I'm sure that he's competent. And I was actually really impressed with what we saw from Baker Mayfield last year in the playoffs against Kansas City, where I know that Chad Henney pulled out some magic at the end and it was a very strange game,

but Baker Mayfield was very good in that game, even when they were trying to play from behind against the league's best team. And then, you know, I think what we also have seen from Kevin Stefanski is there was an instance in that playoff game where Cleveland did not go for it on fourth down and it cost them. They gave the ball back to Kansas City. So what we've seen is Cleveland has been the most aggressive and the most analytically correct team when it comes to going for it on fourth down. I think that's an interesting factor because I saw this from Ben Baldwin of the athletic, but the, uh, he's got the fourth

down bot and it sort of compares. Is that the right move? Is it not the right move just by the numbers? And the Vikings were all the way at the bottom for their decisions. And Cleveland was all the way at the top extra possessions in a game that could be a shootout is a huge deal. I also think it's a really good test for the trenches for the Minnesota Vikings. And you know that we love to get this way, like run the football. Let's, you know, talk about it like it's old school, John Madden football. But I feel like in the trenches on the offensive line, Cleveland might have the best line in the NFL. So that's a great test for the Vikings defensive line, which I think so far has been pretty bad, especially in the first half against Seattle. Obviously, Daniil Hunter has been excellent, but not everybody at once

has been very good on the defensive line. So that'll be a great test there. And then the offensive line, the Vikings have faced three teams that I would not look at in any way and say, oh my gosh, just menacing defensive lines. Cincinnati has, I think, by far the best defensive line of the three teams the Vikings have played, and it's Cincinnati. It's not that good. So this will be, I mean, head and shoulders above defensive line, offensive line that they have gone against.

And I think that there's a distinct advantage for Cleveland in both of these. But then again, Sam, what we could say is we don't know how this offensive line will take on a great defensive line. And we don't know how the Vikings sort of new look defensive line will take on a great offensive line because we just haven't seen those things yet. Yeah, it's a good point. And you mentioned that decent Cincinnati defensive line, they kind of dominated in that game. And granted, the Vikings were having to drop back on second and 20 a decent amount, but that wasn't a good example. Now, the last two weeks have built a lot of confidence for the Vikings offensive line. I think they maybe only have one weak link right

now, and that's Rashad Hill, who has consistently not been as good, but the sack numbers are excellent. Kirk Cousins had one of the worst sack rates in football last year, and I think he's number six or seven best this year, just 4%. Compare that to Baker Mayfield, actually a pretty bad sack rate, 10% through three games without that many dropbacks. I think that there's reason for optimism here, but you got to like, you know, show up and do it. The defensive line is where I think the Vikings have a good chance to, to really feast because even though that, that,

that protection is good with Cleveland, I think they've done a good job in the first couple of games, applying pressure and forcing quarterbacks out of the pocket. I really do not, not from everybody. I mean, not from Wanham a lot, not from Weatherly, but I've sensed it from Griffin, a ton from Daniil Hunter, who's been all over the place, and on occasion, those defensive tackles. I think getting home, though, will be easier against somebody like Baker Mayfield. So there's a reason, I think, to believe that this can be a good game for the Vikings in the trenches, but it is a great test. Cleveland's

obviously got Jedrick Wills, high draft pick, Jack Conklin, high draft pick, JC Tretter, and then Clowney and Garrett on the defensive line. And it's somehow the second time this year that they've taken on a guy who just had like five sacks the week before, which is pretty incredible. They're coming off that nine sack performance against Chicago. Well, and they did a good job overall against Arizona, though Chandler Jones still had a strip sack. We just forget about strip sacks that happen. They've happened each of the last two weeks, but we forget about them when the ball bounces right back to Kirk Cousins. If Chandler Jones's strip sack had bounced away and scooted into the hands of Arizona, that game maybe is not as close as it was. And the same thing really even

goes for this last week where there was a strip sack of Cousins. If Seattle picks that up, maybe the momentum of that game switches a little bit. So they've had some fumble luck with the two times that's happened. Rashad Hill has gone up against some good pass rushers in the past and not gotten absolutely destroyed. Now, he did against Chandler Jones when Chandler Jones had a chance. But even going back to 2017, he was forced to play a lot, went up against Cam Jordan in a playoff game. I remember in 2019, he came in early for Riley Reif, who got hurt during the game, and he went up against Brandon Graham all day and he did a decent job. But Miles Garrett is a different type of person. He is a complete alien. If you're talking about ranking all of the pass

rushers in the entire NFL and you say, how many of them actually compare well to Daniil Hunter or might be better than Daniil Hunter? There's like three guys. And one of those guys is Miles Garrett. I think we've also seen too, why Cleveland decided to move on from Sheldon Richardson and bring in Jadavion Clowney, that we have not seen the same type of Sheldon Richardson, but Jadavion Clowney has looked really good for Cleveland. And so this will be one of those, if an offensive line is a weak link system, how weak is that link at left tackle? And if Rashad Hill can handle Miles Garrett and even some sort of okay manner, just not give up like three sacks, like you said, or if Clint Kubiak can manage

around that. I think that Rashad Hill then sort of can pick it up because you look at the guys that they're playing coming up here. Detroit doesn't have anyone scary. Carolina does have some good defensive linemen. Brian Burns is good. Dallas was good last night, but I don't think they're great. Baltimore, the Chargers, then Bosa comes up. But I think that it can at least give them some confidence because I don't feel like Christian Derrissaw is super close to just popping into the lineup and taking Rashad Hill's job. But if Miles Garrett demolishes them and gets a couple of strip sacks or something, we're going to be going, oh my gosh, Christian Derrissaw has to get in there pretty fast. And I think it's

really, this will be the determining factor, whether we say this offensive line is solid and they can really be a good offense with a solid offensive line or, oh, okay. They just didn't play very good defensive lines in the first couple of weeks. Yeah. Like Hill is the, is the last one who's really yet to have a great game where you say, okay, like he can do it. Because Brian O'Neill is the only tackle in PFF grade. Garrett Bradbury, two good games, not great, two good games. And still, I think is going to be susceptible to that inside pressure a little bit. Rashad Hill still needs to prove it once to me, like the, they protected him a lot against Chandler Jones. And I expect they'll protect him a lot against Miles Garrett. And that is the benefit of going up against an edge rusher is that you can kind

of neutralize him by, by applying pieces, you know, to that side of the line. They've been utilizing Ben Ellison more as a blocker. That could be a play in this game for the Vikings. CJ Ham can always be that, that last line of defense in front of the quarterback. But I think that four fifths of the line has been like as expected or better which is encouraging because we've always said okay like two out of three of these unpredictable unknown pieces need to be good and I think Udo and Cleveland have been uh you still need Hill to pick it up and they're getting close with Derrissa I would say I think that if they if they didn't want to use Derrissa they would have IR'd him. The fact that he's going to be eligible to play, and he's been eligible to play, tells me in game, but maybe like two days after they

might be making a decision and saying, all right, like, let's try something different. And, uh, and miles Garrett is probably, I'm guessing he has cost somebody a job before, and he probably will do so again down the road. Well, and that's the thing about this season. That's so interesting to me, Sam, is that the way that it is played out with those first two losses is even though they were close and it's not like they played so terribly that you would say, oh, well, that, you know, last week was a fluke. Like, no, they played a pretty similar game against Seattle. Just the way things fell worked out a lot better for them in terms of their offense and their defense, which showed flaws, but also had some big stops. Well, those were the same case in the first two weeks. But the issue is that as we talk about Senate sort of finding out like what the

leash is on Rashad Hill, or if he can handle Miles Garrett, um, the issue is that there's no time to afford to find out that if Miles Garrett game wrecks you and gets three sacks and two strip sacks and you lose those fumbles, your season is then once again on the brink. After now spending a few days talking about how good they looked against Seattle and what they can do with this offense and so forth. Once you get to one in three, then call it a quarter or 23 percent of the season or whatever. But then you're talking about having to win both Detroit and Carolina. And then out of the break, listen to how this goes out of the bi-week. It goes Dallas who looked great last night.

And I think can really throw the ball Baltimore, who is I think good overall, but it's on the road at the LA chargers who just beat Kansas city. Then green Bay, Aaron Rogers looks fine to me. And then out to San Francisco that's after the bi-week. I think that really speaks to how important this game against Cleveland is and how much they need their offensive line to show up. Now, let me ask you a couple more Cleveland things,

just because this matchup is so important to what happens the rest of the way. Do you think that Baker Mayfield, do I want to say is scary or just maybe even good? Like, do you think Baker Mayfield can have a great day in U.S. Bank Stadium against the Vikings? Yeah, I do. I think it's going to be tough for him right away, as it is many quarterbacks going in there in there for the first time but I think that number one they don't always expect Mayfield to do that much I mean this is a Kareem Hunt Nick Chubb fueled offense um Mayfield has thrown it like 23 times a game so far this season I mean that's not that much and I think that Stefanski takes after Zimmer in that way and that, you know, they're going to lean on the running game and it's a very good

running game. So they're going to minimize what they want from Mayfield, number one. They don't want to put him back there too often against that, you know, the noise and the defensive line and ask him to make a lot of throws. So, but I think that Mayfield is also a guy that players rally around. I think that he sort of has that, that, you know, tenacity about him where he can come up big in some, some big situations. And I know he's not like a top five quarterback in this league, but he can make a lot of throws in certain moments. It's not always going to be perfect. It's not as consistent as some of the elite quarterbacks, but he's also got that mobile nature about him that can create not as well as a Murray, not as well as a Wilson, but enough to move the chains. And I think that he's not going to be completely overwhelmed. And he's been in big spots last year with this team. So I don't know if you're going to just flummox Baker Mayfield he's got a lot of weapons and a lot of talent around him and he's really benefiting from that system I think in Cleveland with Stefanski

yeah he's really reminding me of the 2019 Kirk Cousins except I think the difference is that I saw a stat about this from last year that Baker Mayfield on third down is actually very aggressive, that he is going to push the ball past the sticks, which we have not ever really seen from Kirk Cousins or not that often. He did it last week a couple of times against Seattle, but in the last few years, we just haven't seen a high level of aggressiveness that Baker Mayfield does bring. And I think that when it comes to somebody who's been facing the best defenses when he was in college, he plays in a really tough division in terms of defenses. Baltimore and Pittsburgh have been tough in recent years when he's come

into the league. I don't think he comes into U.S. Bank Stadium and just falls on his face like we've seen many young quarterbacks before. I also think that Kevin Stefanski's understanding of Mike Zimmer and those two is another part of this game that is going to be really interesting because Kevin Stefanski knows exactly how Mike Zimmer's defense works. And Mike Zimmer knows exactly how Kevin Stefanski's offense works. And I know that they say, well, you know, there's different coaching trees and things like that. This is different.

I mean, this is two guys who work together for many years and understand each other extremely well. And I guess where I'm most interested to see where in terms of Baker Mayfield is if the scheme can take advantage of the things that the Vikings have in place that they can't really change in a week. So the way that they switch on routes, the assignments that they have, how they deal with running backs, how they deal with play actions, like those things, you can't just flip a switch and say, we're going to do them all

completely differently. So Stefanski knows them. Zimmer knows that Stefanski knows them. I mean, this is one of those rare ones that actually feels like a division type of matchup because of the knowledge of each other's offense and defense. I think that that's where it will come down to Baker Mayfield. He's going to make throws to open receivers that come up big if the receivers are open. How well can the Vikings cover them? Which I think as we're kind of getting hardcore into this Cleveland game, which is exciting by the way, the issue of the secondary comes up, Sam. And I thought it was very interesting that Mike Zimmer said yesterday when we spoke with him that the new players coming together, seven new starters, that that has been a little bit problematic in terms of them mastering his defense and he adapts that with Xavier Woods having a tough game and Rashad Breeland being a pretty difficult start to the

season some miscommunications that have given up big plays that is another storyline here for the Vikings is is does Mike Zimmer have to pare it down does he have to make it a little simpler for these guys because any miscommunications are going to result in big plays against Cleveland. Yeah, it's a good point. Are we surprised that this is the case? Maybe we're surprised that Mike Zimmer admitted it so readily, but I don't think we should be surprised that this is occurring, that there are miscommunications on the back end. That's the most believable thing in the world. And the fact that maybe we convinced ourselves it wouldn't happen, shame on us. Like there's, it's just not realistic to expect seven new starters or is it eight new starters to come

in and understand each other. That doesn't happen overnight. So I think that what we saw last year when Mike Zimmer again had very high expectations for a defense when he shouldn't have and had even less reason to with all those rookies. We saw what he did and had a little bit of success midseason, like getting them to do simpler things and D, what's the word I'm looking for? Making it less complex on the defensive end, where I think until they got battered with injuries late in the season, that was actually working pretty well. Now, will he have to humble himself and say like, hey, you know, I wanted to do these things, guys. I want it to be exotic.

Let's just pair it down. Will he do that? I don't know. Should he do that? I think so. Like, I don't think you can afford to have another 17 point, you know, start for your opponent that and 24 points in the first half against Arizona. Like they're not adjusting quickly enough. They need to put themselves in a better position right from the jump. And yeah, if they don't,

you know, although Beckham Jr. is on the other side and he'll make sure to make you pay. I believe decomplexify was the word that you were looking for. I thought about saying that, but it didn't feel like a word. No, it's not. I don't think that's a real word.

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insider to save $10 on your first order for Minnesota football tickets. So when we think about like sort of the micro of this game, there's a few injuries on the Viking side that I wonder about how they might impact things. One of them is Anthony bar. The other one is Delvin cook where Delvin cook did not play last week. And I thought that as great as Delvin cook is, and I don't want to take anything away from his excellence.

It worked in their favor because they had to design a game plan that would throw the ball quick game a little bit more, use the screen game with Alexander Madison because he's good at it and not rely so much on every first and second down handoff, handoff, handoff, handoff. It worked in Arizona with Delvin Cook because they just were a bad defensive line and got plowed by the Vikings offensive line and by Delvin cook being excellent. But I wonder about bringing back Delvin cook. If he comes back this week, we'll find out at practice on Wednesday, if he is out there and practicing again with his ankle injury.

But if they bring him back, the one thing you get concerned about is are they going to suddenly rely on him more? It's, It's sort of like, maybe you've heard these before and I don't necessarily believe in them, but I remember when Megatron retired and some people said, maybe Matt Stafford will be better because he doesn't throw at Megatron all the time. Now with receivers, I think that's preposterous, but with this, when it's an inefficient play sometimes to run Cook as much as they do, I wonder if him either not playing or being limited could actually play in their favor. And I think that on the other side, if he is limited and they still try to run him the ball

as much as Mike Zimmer wants to give him the ball, that could be problematic for them. I do think there's truth to what you're saying in that like madison had a dalvin cook sized bottom line 26 carries six receptions but he got kind of got there in a different way it was a more modern approach where you run when you're winning you don't run to get ahead and then he was actually pretty effective in that second half, wearing down Seattle, grinding the clock once the Vikings had established the lead. Whereas Dalvin usually gets there the other way. They front load Dalvin in the first half.

It might work. It might not work. But either way, it doesn't really build them much of a lead. And then they go away from him a little bit in the second half because they have to. It seemed like last week's balance with Madison was perfect. And the way they used him in the screen game, excellent. I think he's just as good in the screen game as Dalvin Cook, to be honest. He's got better hands.

Dalvin sometimes gets a case of the drops. I think Madison was great. He ran hard. He's not going to pop off the explosive plays in the run game quite as much, but he is, you know, every bit as tough and gritty. And heck, he might be on the injury report Wednesday with all the hits that he took. He said he was feeling it after the game on Sunday. But yeah, I like where you're going with that. I mean, I look at their success or failure without Dalvin Cook in the lineup, and it has been mixed I mean they have struggled at times without him I think back to you know the the Green Bay game Christmas a

couple years ago where the division was on the line and and they couldn't get it done with Mike Boone you know Madison's start against the Falcons last year was very unsuccessful so it doesn't always work there's not a long track record of this working out for the Vikings, but I think in theory that makes sense. And just in general, passing the football with a red hot quarterback is probably a good idea to incorporate more in the game plan. I do think that a lot of their success builds off of what they do in the run game and putting themselves in easy situations to run play actions, which they haven't done a lot of, or even just run quick game. I mean, if you get to second and four, then you've got a lot of different options. A lot of things you can do. You can

hand it off. You can, uh, you can run a quick screen. You can do lots of things, right? Or you can take a shot and then end up with third and short. So those six yard, eight yard runs on first down when Delvin Cook is rolling are extremely valuable. On the other side of that coin, even what we saw in Cincinnati was, okay, Cincinnati's shutting down the run, but they're staying with it. And that has always been a coach philosophy. Got to stay with the run, got to wear them down, got to have those body blows, right? But if that doesn doesn't work if that doesn't play out into fruition in the second half then you're just behind the sticks the whole day so it's a very

i think the nfl team's relationship with the run is um if this was didn't facebook used to have a thing that you could say relationships that is complicated i think that's it they think it's complicated and they have so often just been like a eh, run. But maybe, and I thought of this after the game when Mike Zimmer was talking about Kirk Cousins and leadership and things like that, how he's performed. I did have it come into my mind. If he trusts Kirk Cousins more, if Cousins can go four games without a turnover, or maybe there's a tipped interception or something. That's the way to build the trust of Mike Zimmer. And the more that Zimmer trusts him, the more chances there are that they put

the throttle down in terms of passing first and then using the kill shot as the run game. And here's what I think of for this. I think of Sam Bradford, that at the start of 2017, they passed the ball incredibly well in that game against New Orleans which sticks out in all of our minds because it was so impressive from Sam Bradford then when they got in the fourth quarter it was just Delvin Delvin Delvin Delvin and they did not allow Drew Brees to get back on the field I feel like they did that last week where it was passed to match what Seattle was doing offensively and then run the football at the end of the game to keep the you know Seattle offense off the field that is a

winning strategy I think against almost any team so I just wonder like will you stick with that will you trust Kirk Cousins and stick with that even if Delvin Cook comes back and this has always been Delvin Cook's offense will it transition to Kirk Cousins offense truly for the first time yeah hats off to Clint Kubiak too for I assume having a pretty significant hand in this play calling that has given us what we saw the last three weeks um yeah you know with uh with Cousins and Zimmer the dynamic is so odd and has been so odd because they didn't watch film together until this training camp for the first time. Things were strained with the vaccine. Even Zimmer trying to compliment Kirk Cousins' leadership has been awkward because then Kirk has been asked about it and denies it.

Kirk says, no, I'm the same guy. They can't even agree on nice things about Kirk Cousins. But there would be nothing kind of more neutralizing for like a 10-year veteran quarterback than to say, hey, you've been playing great, but we're just going to keep rolling with this run first thing, even though you've been good. I mean, what kind of coaching is that

if players can't earn more responsibility and trust by playing brilliantly? I think that's the approach you have to take. I think you're absolutely right. You run when you're winning. You don't run to win. There's a difference in that phrasing. And I think the Vikings kind of unlocked something against Seattle. And there's a good chance too, that they're going to have to kind of catch up to Cleveland on the scoreboard because they could put up points as well. Okay. I do want to play a little game of what if they win and what if they lose, but I would also like us for a second here to try to give NFL teams or players, Mike Zimmer compliments, like Zimmer style for Kirk Cousins. So let me, let me give this one a shot. So you think of one, um, you know, Hey, Matt Stafford has looked really, really good, a lot better for the Rams, you know, until

he gets a thumb injury and then falls off in the second half. He's just looked a lot better. I think for the Rams, should I, should I do Stafford? Uh, you can do anybody, anybody you want just an attempt at a Mike Zimmer for Kirk cousins compliment. Got it. Yeah. Um, so, uh, Zeke Elliott had a good game last night and that's the context here. Uh, yeah. So, uh, so Zeke Elliott, you know, we, uh, we shut him down in, in 2019, uh, on that fourth down play, but yeah, he's he's running hard. He's he's a thumper. Sam Darnold, you know, he's three and oh, and once he plays somebody, you know, I guess we'll see kind of where it goes. Kevin Stefanski. Oh, this is good. Yeah, this is good. Having him around. He had a nice one year sabbatical with the Browns last year.

Or even, I mean, one that we might hear on Kevin Stefanski, cause it's always been kind of muted. It's like, well, you know, he's a young coach. Didn't have a lot of experience as a offensive coordinator. So it's been good that he's, you know, doing it there in Cleveland. No, Mike Zimmer might use the word and I hope he doesn't, but he does this with his players. He might call him a kid. He might. He might call Terrence Newman, a 38-year-old man, a kid. He might say, Kevin Stefanski, good kid.

Liked having him around. He might call him, if he gets asked about Mike Prefer, he might call him a kid. Because that's another Browns employee. Mike's saltiness with Kevin Stefanski was always odd to me. I mean, Stefanski's offense in 2019 drove their success. And that was a complete game changer from 2018 where they had to move on from John D Filippo. And then Stefanski came in and put in this Kubiak offense.

And it seemed that every time Gary Kubiak's name came up, Mike Zimmer was like, all right, everybody stop what you're doing. I'm going to take 10 minutes and talk about how much I love about Gary, which same, honestly, all right, everybody stop what you're doing. I'm going to take 10 minutes and talk about how much I love about Gary, which same, honestly, I mean, Gary Kubiak is a legend and he deserves that. But then you'd be, I remember at the combine, someone was like, someone from Cleveland came up and asked Zimmer, Hey, uh, you know, Stefanski is the head coach. What do you think? And he's like, Oh, you know, he's a smart guy and he did a good job for us. And like, that was it. And I think that there's always a little resentment from Mike of guys who get it fairly early in their career

to be a head coach. I think there's just a little bit of like, I had to wait longer. I had to fight harder for this. And Zimmer has clearly proven that he is an NFL head coach and is deserving of the position and probably was long before that for the success that he had as a defensive mind.

But, you know, I think there's just a little bit of salties, which sort of adds to this. I know that Zimmer's not going to say anything that we're going to a bulletin board, so to speak, uh, when we talked to him on Wednesday, but, um, I just think that there's always been this little sort of like, eh, you know, I don't know. Stefanski wanted to leave with Pat Shermer and I didn't like that. And, you know, that kind of thing. So it will make for a very interesting matchup. He doesn't just he doesn't really prefer complimenting people that aren't with the team because you go back to the Everson Griffin good player comment last year that generated Everson's wrath when he went off about that. There's just something about Zimmer that has no nostalgia.

And maybe that's good. Like maybe you don't want to get caught up in kind of mourning the loss of a coach or player because Zimmer's seen so many of them come and go that he's kind of desensitized to it. But that comment I made about the sabbatical, that's a real Zimmer quote when he, in relation to Vic Fangio, he said, yeah,

I like, I like guys like Vic who get chances instead of, you know, young guys that go on one year sabbaticals. That's really how he feels about this stuff, which is not Kevin Stefanski, by the way. I mean,

Stefanski really had to grind his way up. I mean, he goes back to what Childress and then all the way to, you know, with Zimmer all the way to, you know, with Zimmer all the way through the Zimmer era. So he deserves all the credit he, um, he gets, I think. So if the Vikings win this game, Sam, I think the way that I'm going to view it is, okay, let's talk about where you stand in the NFC North. Let's talk about your upcoming schedule, how many games you're going to win. And let's

talk about you as a contending football team, because this Cleveland team is for real. They have tons of talent on both sides. They have a very, very good and very modern head coach. They have a great running game, a great offensive line, a defense that's emerging with Jeremiah Owusu-Koromola playing extremely well. They're a rookie. They they're for real and if you beat them i won't walk out of there like i did the other day going gosh they beat seattle but what is pete carroll doing with his life like i don't think we'll be saying i think we'll be saying that is the win against a very strong team that you needed to prove that you're as good as you thought you were going into the season yeah i think at that point you start paying more attention to Green Bay saying, okay, like now we're after Green Bay. How do we catch them?

And number two, when are you going to win a road game? Because you've let two slip. And if you beat Cleveland, it becomes more apparent that you shouldn't have lost those games. So who are you going to beat on the road? Because two winnable ones in the rearview mirror, Carolina, your next chance, and then you listed off Baltimore, San Francisco, LA pretty soon after the bye. Those are not going to be any easier. Those are going to be much harder than Carolina. So how can you, and remember more road games than home games this year, Vikings have the schedule weighted against them. So where are you going to win road games than home games this year. Vikings have the schedule weighted against them.

So where are you going to win road games? That's been a problem for Vikings teams in the past. The defense gets much worse on the road. They slow down. They can't play on grass. They can't play in the cold. So I think that becomes a legitimate talker as well. And even the home games.

So Ben Roethlisberger looks like a corpse, but their defense is phenomenal. And we have seen this times before that when there's a dominant defensive line, the Vikings have trouble with them. And that even happened in Cincinnati with just a good defensive line, not even a great one. Aaron Donald and the Rams come in here the day after Christmas. I mean, Chicago at the end of the season, like those are good defenses, good defensive lines that could be troublesome, which that's what if you win this game, you still need to probably win the next two or at least one out of the next two to give yourself a chance with that difficult second half schedule, which brings me to the other side of this,

which is what if you lose? Yikes. which brings me to the other side of this, which is what if you lose yikes, uh, then you have to beat Detroit, which you probably will, but Detroit seems feisty. And then you have to go to Carolina, which at the beginning of the season, and this is, that's how we'll finish the show, by the way, is sort of where we were right so far, where we were wrong. But, um, Carolina is not an easy one. Like you said, on the road, they're usually a different defense. And even if I don't think Sam Darnold is good still, and I think they've played nobody, Carolina does have a lot of talent on the defensive side. So this becomes,

I don't think that we get to the same level we would have been at Owen three in terms of talking about hot seats and everything else. But I think that all of those conversations sort of sweep back in as, whoa, now you're playing Detroit. And if you lose to Detroit and you start one and four, then this thing is scary all of a sudden. This is a bad situation, just like that on the turn of a dime. So I feel like this is a huge swing game for really the entire rest of the season for this team.

Well, you just can't afford to have losing streaks from this point on. I know that you just started the season, but you're already at the point where every loss puts you one loss away from complete panic, meltdowns, percentages plummeting to make the playoffs. If you can stop losing streaks at one, then you're probably going to be okay. And Cleveland is a game that we would have willingly let the Vikings lose. If we said, okay, you're going to lose one of these games. You would have said, all right, might lose to Cleveland, but you're probably going to beat Cincinnati and Arizona. They've exhausted their

wiggle room. So now you are forced to beat a very good team. And then you can't have another letdown game. I think we're going to look back on Cincinnati and say, that was those game. That was the Colts game of previous years where there was no reason they should have lost. Right. Arizona is probably good.

That's probably a justifiable loss. They should have had that the wire, but they are going to regret those losses later on in the season. So there's no wiggle room. And they're not going to lose to Detroit, are they? I mean, Detroit might take three weeks to recover from what happened with the Justin Tucker doink through the uprights. Yeah, that one is...

Boy, if you think that your team is tortured at least the vikings are tortured by getting almost there and winning a lot of games and then disappointing you at the end with detroit it just never happens it's just when when do that what's even the most tragic detroit moment like in the playoffs or anything, you have to go back to what Brett Favre in 91 or something, making it whatever year it was 93, making an insane throw to win a game against it. Like that's the last time they've had a playoff disappointment. So things like this are probably just the usual. I'm sure that Detroit fans walked out of there being like, yeah, okay. That makes sense. A guy kicked a 66 yard field goal against us. It's about right. You're right. Detroit is bad. There's no, if they lose that one,

then we are talking about hot seats and everything else. But I think that this Cleveland game really gives you an indicator of how they will play when they get to those stronger games later in the season. The Dallas one now coming out of the break national television, Dallas looks like a good football team. And so that's going to be interesting too. All right, let's talk about where we were right and where we were wrong so far. This is the three week edition. And so far, the Los Angeles Rams have been very, very good. I thought that they would have some 2018 Vikings vibes to them.

I was not buying it. I still think that Matt Stafford has done this many times in his career where he's looked really good and then he hits a skid and he struggles. So I expect that still to happen at some point. But I was very skeptical of Los Angeles. They have come out looking great. And for them to beat Tampa Bay at least through three weeks, they're a legitimate Super Bowl contender. Yep. The teams that I was skeptical about have been pretty good. Carolina, LA. There was one other one. Yeah. Carolina, I thought might be the worst team in the league, but I forgot to check their first three-week schedule. Yeah. I mean, the Broncos too, right? Like a lot of those two and one, three and oh teams,

I think are surprising some people. So early in the season, but I would not have done well. If I was in like a pick them league where I had to pick winners, I would not be doing well at this stage. What about from a division standpoint? I mean,in fields is playing already but not playing well uh matt naggy looks like a mess yeah green bay is right of the ship i think that's to be expected and the lions might be a little better but then they i mean they should have won the game against the ravens so i don't know i thought they but actually this is who i thought the lines would be i thought they'd play like competitive games and lose. Yeah, I think that's fair. I'm trying to think of the rookie quarterbacks like Zach Wilson, horrible, horrible,

horrible. Justin Fields, ugly, ugly, ugly. Like what, what rookie is playing the best right now? I'm trying to think like Davis Mills had a bad game. It's Mac Jones, but he just came off a very bad game himself. The thing about these rookies is, and I got a few of these tweets the other day. Oh, good thing the Vikings didn't draft one of these guys. Like, I don't know, man. Playing as a rookie is just impossible. I don't think there's any correlation between rookie stats and long-term success from what we've seen.

I mean, there's the fact that Patrick Mahomes sat out his whole first season and he is already one of the great quarterbacks in the history of the NFL. And the fact that Peyton Manning was like three and 13 with 29 picks or something. I've just never made like heads or tails of what guys do in their first season. It's all about, to me, the second season, because then you've had the real off season. You don't have to go through the draft stuff or anything else like that. You can put your entire focus on it. Um, but I think that man, the guy who feels the best for rookie quarterbacks is Trey Lance. Let me just play a little, not too much. Also with the score

touchdowns also with a good coach, by the way. And I'm not sure any of, I mean, you know, new England, of course, but I'm not sure any of these other teams have good coaches. Yeah, there does seem to be a little bit of a drought right now with, and, and that's going to happen. Like copycat league, young coaches getting hired all over the place. They're not all going to be winners. I don't know that there's another one where I would say it has been completely different from what I thought Atlanta getting a win sort of keeps that take alive. I thought Atlanta would take a big step forward. They really haven't.

I mean, they had to win by three against the New York Giants. Vegas has been extremely good. They kind of just escaped against Miami the other day. But, you know, maybe Cincinnati being two and one's a little bit of a surprise beating the Vikings in the first week. Not surprised at all in terms of where we were right, that Jacksonville is winless. Urban Meyer has no idea what he's doing. So anyway, we'll kind of keep up on that with like our, you know, where we were right, where

we were wrong. So Sam, great stuff. Glad you could do this. Appreciate Bring Me the News for hosting us to record our podcast. And we will do it again every Tuesday here on the Bring Me the News YouTube, Facebook. So make sure you join and make sure you check out the Purple Insider podcast every episode, five times a week, sometimes more. And purpleinsider.substack.com is where we do our writing from TCO Performance Center. So very cool stuff. Thank you all for joining and watching,

and we will catch you next time.