Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - We need to talk about J.J. McCarthy overreactions

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

The internet is overreacting to reports of J.J. McCarthy's OTA practices and Matthew Coller has something to say about it. Plus, he answers your Vikings questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and just following along with what we've been doing recently one hour before wolves tip off why not talk some football for an hour because i'm sure that all of you are very very anxious to see the minnesota timberwolves play against the dallas mavericks so hey it's worked for the wolves going live before this maybe a good omen for them. I don't know. Purple Insider hasn't ever actually helped anyone win anything since I started this. The Vikings have no playoff wins, so I can't take any credit, but I'm very excited for the Timberwolves to continue their journey deep into the playoffs. And I will be bringing my rear end to the TV as Anthony Edwards suggested to watch with the rest of you

in about an hour. But for now, we've got some time to talk football and where I want to begin. And I will answer all of your OTA questions from what I saw yesterday out at TCO Performance Center. We were inside yesterday. So it was practice between the whole team. Of course, Justin Jefferson was not there, but we saw almost everybody else out between the whole team. Of course, Justin Jefferson was not there, but we saw almost everybody else out on the field participating. So anything that's on your mind, throw it my way, and we'll spend an hour here chatting about football. But I did want to start with something that I've begun to notice on the internet,

and this is a PSA. This is more of a warning than anything, that now that your team has drafted a first round quarterback, there will be a lot of folks who are really interested in declaring that quarterback either a success or a bust as fast as they possibly can. And that means every single OTA practice, there will be folks who are reaching to read my reports, Alec Lewis's reports, Kevin Seifert, Ben Gessling, Andrew Kramer, the beat reporters, Dane Mizutani, Will Raggett, all of our friends that come on this show and talk about what we see at the actual practices. We all wrote our recaps from yesterday's practice and I read them and everybody, cause I want to see, did I miss something? Was somebody else looking over there as I was looking over here? And so I read what Alec writes and I read what Andrew writes

and so forth. And, uh, I found a lot of the same stuff that I saw, which was that JJ McCarthy had a pretty decent practice with the backups as we would have expected that Sam Darnold was running the first team. I was curious to see if McCarthy would be QB two. He was QB three to start. That's fine. No big deal there. Naturally, you're starting with the rookies because the starters, you want to have Nick Mullins running that offense effectively, working with Darnold on that side of the field and letting JJ McCarthy during OTAs. Let's all keep perspective on this. Where we are in the world, it is May. So this is OTAs. They are just learning the offense for the very first time. So he's over on the field with a lot of

the younger players, the threes and the fours. And what we saw from him during practice was some stuff that was a little spotty looked like rookie type of play, which means, Hey, you know, he dropped a couple of snaps and there were some times where the balls should have come out or should have come out sooner. And it didn't't and he had discussions with the coaching staff about where the ball was supposed to go and there were other times where he looked really good and he made some great throws and there was one where we were standing on the sideline that I got a tremendous look at it because Lucky Jackson was coming right for me on the sideline and McCarthy let it rip, just put his foot in the ground and fired the ball. And you could see from where I was standing, how much

velocity it had on it. And I saw that Alec Lewis of the athletic, uh, who I'll get on the show, uh, soon enough to break down one of these OTA practices. He wrote something like you're surprised the ball doesn't have flames behind it. And I agree that it has a lot of velocity on the football. You can see the raw talent of J.J. McCarthy, but it's going to take time. It's going to take a lot of practices. Sam Darnold has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reps in practices, in different offenses, in actual games. Naturally, Sam Darnold looked like he knew what he

was doing. He looked like a guy who's been a starting quarterback in the NFL. Darnold, I thought, had a pretty good practice from my view. The ball was coming out pretty quick and on time and with great velocity. The arm strength of Darnold, even when they stand at the podium, you see Darnold is filled out a guy who's been in the NFL for six years and McCarthy's still a kid and he's bigger than maybe I expected, but he's still got to put on that man strength and so forth. I mean, there's really not a lot to take away as far as bigger picture conclusions with one open OTA practice from JJ McCarthy, other than, hey, you know, he's not number two right now. So that's our starting point. We'll see what the

progress is that he makes the timing, the footwork, things like that are going to have to be worked on and wrapped over and over and over and over again before the coaching staff is comfortable with him operating the offense. And before he can really start to battle with Sam Darnold. And maybe that will happen in training camp, or maybe it won't. The team has been very straightforward. This is the youngest quarterback in the draft that they are going to want to take time with him. This would be like right after the Wolves drafted Anthony Edwards, and he was, I don't know, 19 years old, watching a preseason game and saying, oh, I know what he's going to

be. Well, of course, nobody did for probably two and a half years with Anthony Edwards. And the same is going to go for JJ McCarthy. It might not take us years and years, but it's going to take us a while. So with each one of these OTA practices, we're going to go and we're going to report on them and say, all right, here's how we kind of looked and here's what happened today. And that's just where we stand right now. So we'll have another one next Wednesday. We'll have three practices in a row that are open to the media after that. And we'll

go from there. And yet, so everybody, I read everybody's reports who was actually there, not people who read our reports, took single sentences and then tweeted them out, but people who are actually there. And then I see this from who knows some guy named John on Twitter that calls himself an NFL insider. I guess you can do that if you like. Never heard of him. And he says conflicting reports. One report on JJ McCarthy says he's been struggling with ball security with the Vikings and that the coaching staff has given him an earful about it. Another report says within the same time frame, McCarthy has quote, blown away coaches. We live in a tricky era when it comes to nfl reporting have you have to trust your own instincts that's the tweet and this person has a fair number of followers now let

me just go sentence by sentence number one there's no conflicting reports there wasn't i read them all there's none no conflicting reports we all saw the same stuff we're all taking the same approach because we're reasonable people. I don't know. The second part, uh, the struggling with ball security was two fumbles on snaps. So I don't know if that, maybe someone called it struggling with ball security to me. That's just getting down the details of the footwork and the snapping of the ball that you would expect a rookie. Given an earful about the only thing we heard the coaching staff maybe loudly talking to McCarthy about was the timing on a seven on seven play where he wasn't supposed to scramble. He was supposed to get rid of the ball. But again, why am I breaking this down? It was just something that seemed to happen where he needed to get rid of the ball a little faster. Again,

no big deal. That's what happens, but we did see that. And the blown away by the practices, that wasn't what was said either by Wes Phillips. What Wes Phillips, the offensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings said was that they have been, I maybe use the word blown away. I don't remember him saying that, but what he said specifically was that they have been, I maybe use the word blown away. I don't remember him saying that, but what he said specifically was that the coaching staff was extremely pleased with how JJ McCarthy was taking what he was taught, going home, studying it, and then bringing it back to the facility. As we would all expect from someone who was just drafted as a quarterback that that they would be taking what they're learning going back home studying it and then taking it on the field and they said that they were impressed with his physical tools which again that's why you drafted him

in the first round that's it that's the whole thing there There's no conflicting reports. There's no anybody saying that he looks terrible. There's nobody anointing him the next Peyton Manning. This is an OTA practice that I get excited about covering because I get to go see what they look like and talk to you about it and talk to other reporters about it and what we see. But then immediately you have people who so desperately want attention on the internet so desperately. And now I guess the Twitter pays people to get engagement, which is insane to me. So they go on the internet and they say stuff like this to rile

people up. What's going on at Vikings practice. They can't even decide if McCarthy's good or not. And it's already a little exhausting. We're only at OTAs. So I guess that the PSA is that every time we have one of these, we're going to talk about what it looks like, but we also need to keep in mind that this is just silly season stuff that, that any type of conclusion that's any bigger than here's what it looks like today. Let's talk about where we think things stand. Anything that's bigger than that is completely ludicrous. And anybody who was at TCO performance center would tell you the exact same thing.

My overall opinion of JJ McCarthy, having seen two practices that have been open to the media, is looks like a first-round quarterback to me in both ways. He looks like a first-round quarterback in his talent and his arm strength and his quickness. His feet are very quick. His ability to throw on the run, we saw that at Michigan. You see that up close. But I also see very clearly the progress that's going

to have to be made. And to get from point A to point B is such a long journey for people in the NFL that trying to draw conclusions out of it, trying to make big statements and bold statements. I would be a total fraud if I did that. If I here and told you guys guys he's a bust I would be a fraud that would be a complete lie we've seen so many rookies over the years struggle at first not saying that he is uh and then become good we've seen them look good early and then struggle later we've seen them look like they were men and then i mean i've told the kellen mon story but that was the only time where i saw a guy at this part of the year and felt like uh this is going to be a really hard road for him it doesn't feel that way with jj mccarthy but it's almost like we

get amnesia about what the team said about jj mccarthy when they drafted him, about his age, about his need for development, about how long it might take, and about the importance to Kevin O'Connell to not push somebody into the limelight right away. That that was very important to Kevin O'Connell to make sure that his quarterback was 100% ready when he was going to start. And that may mean in training camp. And I just want to prepare you for this. That may mean in training camp that it's McCarthy as the number three quarterback and Sam Darnold and Nick Mullins one and two. And Mullins is a experienced veteran backup who has won games in the NFL. He's one of the smartest football guys you're going to find. He can run a practice.

And remember, there's all these other players that have to get their practice reps in that are trying to get better and master the offense, not try to teach somebody who's a young kid. So maybe they want to take the pressure completely off him early on to be on the other side of the field and start to develop. And there is the Jordan Love example that he wasn't their backup for a while when Aaron Rodgers was there. It was Tim Boyle for the same exact reason. So nobody should be making anything out of this other than, okay, they're doing what they said

they were going to do, which is to take their time with JJ McCarthy. Next week when we go, we'll see where we're at. If he starts to get more first team reps, or at least with the second team, uh, as opposed to Nick Mullins, well, that will be a sign of progress. If he doesn't, that's fine. And that's really all we can come away with. But it's clear to me that McCarthy has a lot of talent. I expected to see that it looked like that for sure that the ball is coming out really, really well out of his hand a lot of times. And there are other times where it's rookie mistakes and that's all there is. And I feel like this has been a drum that I've been having to beat quite a bit around this team because the adjusted Jefferson thing is high profile and there's really nothing

to see there. So I don't mean to make this my thing, like the nothing to see here meme or whatever, but it's more of just saying like, look, if this goes where Sam Darnold is their quarterback, that was part of the plan. That's why they gave him the money. And when you watch the two play, you can tell which guy is more experienced. And eventually JJ McCarthy will be the quarterback of this team when he's ready to go. And that's the best way they can play it. Regardless of whatever noise comes out, I'm sure at some point on TV, there will be two guys yelling at each other saying McCarthy needs to start, you know, and he's not ready or whatever.

And that's just not how I do business here. I try to tell you how I actually see it and how we should actually look at it, not try to create controversy out of nothing. So there you go. I thought it was a fairly good practice from JJ McCarthy, and there's stuff that he's going to have to work on. And my expectation is that as it goes forward, the more that he practices, the better it's going to look. And each week, we're going to see a little bit more from him and then go into training camp thinking this is very interesting. The other part of it too, is you could certainly argue, uh, you know, team McCarthy, he's going

to be a bust, whatever. If you want to, you can be that person. If you want, you can go on the internet, go in the comment section. Uh, he's going to be the best. He's going to be the worst, whatever. Right. That's yeah. You're right as an American or wherever you live to fight with other people on the internet. But it's just so clear that we're not going to know that for a long time. And if you think about other quarterbacks in the NFL, I was laughing about this a little bit today, how badly people want to declare him a bust or I was right about McCarthy or whatever. We still don't really know if like Justin Herbert is good. There's still debates over Justin Herbert

and how good he is. Jordan Love played a full season and I saw my friend Arif Hassan writing an article about whether he's good. Quarterbacks are so hard to figure out. And with JJ McCarthy, what we do know is that he's going to have a great setup here and the coaching staff is going to take their time with him. And they're going to give him every opportunity to succeed with a former quarterback as a head coach who comes from the McVay and Shanahan coaching tree in Kevin O'Connell. I guess more, yeah, more on the McVay and Shanahan coaching tree in Kevin O'Connell. I guess more on the McVay side, I suppose. And that's it.

That's really how we should be looking at it. I thought that Sam Darnold looked pretty strong, and if he ends up as the day one starter, that they'll have chances to win games with him as the starting quarterback. That's the whole thing. And if you're a person on the internet who takes one sentence out of my report or Alex report, whoever, and tweets it out to try to make your own controversy, I think that you're a joke and I can't respect that at all.

So, but you'll see it. You will see it. So anyway, that's, that's your update. That's what's going on with JJ McCarthy. And so if you have questions about McCarthy, Darnold, Nick Mullins, any other part of the team, I am happy to answer those questions. Intrepid Fool says it would be nice if he can develop. Luckily, KOC's offense relies heavily on intermediate routes in the field areas where McCarthy excels. I agree with that. In fact, almost nobody's offense is just a launch it down the field,

throw a bunch of bombs offense. Last year, most quarterbacks threw somewhere between 10 and 12% of their passes over 20 yards, which means that 90% of the passes in the NFL are under 20 yards. McCarthy is pretty good at, from what I see, especially when it's throwing, you know, an out route where he can really step into the ball and let it rip over the middle, very good velocity on the football. And as far as the touch on the football that keeps being brought up, that's another thing that we're just going to have to see. We're going to have to find out whether that touch on the football can improve.

And also a little bit of how much does it matter? I mean, it will matter if you have to put the ball up over a linebacker on a certain route. That will be required. But a lot of times in Kevin O'Connell's offense, I think as we saw when Nick Mullen started, guys are running open and you can throw a BB to him. And so I think that that part of the game is important, but it's not like McCarthy through 50 interceptions in college that way or something that, you know, you can throw a lot of rockets and then start to get more touch on the ball as you go forward. I'm not so concerned about the rockets versus touch, really more about when he's running those

concepts and he's got to read defenses and get the footwork right, that he's got it all down and that the ball comes out at the right time. That's really it. That's really all it is. And I compared it to the uh scene in the matrix where neo tries to jump across the buildings and they think he's the chosen one when he doesn't do it they say he's not the chosen one well we don't need to do that with jj mccarthy it's it's almost like it would be like this someone is playing their first pro tour event as a golfer. And on the first hole, they have a par. And then you're like, oh, he's not good enough. It wasn't an Eagle, you know?

Right. So like, there's that. I wouldn't even call McCarthy so far a bogey. It's looked fine. It's looked exactly how I thought it was going to look. CJ says, we're talking about practice, not a game. Matthew going full Allen Iverson. That's right, because it spoils it a little bit for me sometimes when I try to take responsibility here.

When you report on the team, I feel a responsibility to tell you guys exactly what's happening. And if there is something that is going badly, and we've had this with like Louis seen, for example, something is going badly, then we're going to say, Hey, this is not going well. And we're going to decide when it's right, when it's wrong to talk about, Hey, like, is this right? You know, is this going the right way? Is he going to take that next step? Is this wrong? Is whatever, right? So, uh, that's not right now. That's not even close to right now. I mean, that's, uh, we need much more, much more time. Um, uh, Wade says silly season, the exact phrase. We have 10 hours of podcast analysis for every one hour of OTA. No, that's a hundred percent true. Uh, and the problem is for me is that it's really fun to

talk about and it's interesting to see and i know that you guys are very excited about what's going on with jj mccarthy so i'm coming on here and saying well you know we had a fumble over here we had this one play but then he threw this one route and kind of painting the picture a little bit of how it looks. And then you get somebody taking this conversation and pulling it and making it look as so much different than it actually was. I feel like really typical of the internet today, but a little annoying because I'm trying to paint the picture the best that I can. And so is Will Raggetts, who was on the show yesterday and all the other reporters. That's what it's really about. I love breaking down OTAs for 10 hours. There's a lot of stuff to take away from yesterday, but I want to make sure it's the right stuff. You know what I mean? The right conversations that we're having about at this moment, at this very moment,

Sam Darnold is easily QB one of the Minnesota Vikings, and it's not particularly close. And if you were talking about it right now, if they had to start the season in a few weeks, then he would be the quarterback and McCarthy wouldn't be playing at all in the first season. They don't have to start in a few weeks. So is he going to make enough progress to really compete in training camp or not? How he comes back? And they talk about this for rookies, how he comes back from minicamp. Do they start to see enough progress in minicamp to give him some first team reps? These are all little hints.

They're breadcrumbs about where we're going. And since there you know, there's so many people excited about this Viking situation, we want to look at all the breadcrumbs and talk about them. It's just trying to make sure that we're balancing that and keeping our heads about us when it comes to it, not saying he fumbled the snap. So that means he's terrible or something, something like that. Uh, you know, I just, I just want to be fair, as fair as it could possibly be. William says, JJ knows that he will get the keys to the offense someday. He didn't start his freshman year in Michigan. He will do anything to help that team. I mean, I've seen nothing to suggest that he won't, that all of that's not true. I mean, I think it is that McCarthy is going to

do everything that he can based on what we know from him and what the coaching staff has talked about already to be as ready as he possibly could be. And that's all they are asking from him right now is to take what they teach him, go home and study it, come back the next day, be prepared to come out and practice it that next day, and then take more steps going forward after that. That's what they're looking for right now. And then the expectations will start to change as we go along and as they see more and more and more from JJ McCarthy. And that's what we're looking to track is getting some more details, getting

some more reps in front of us to see how he brings that along. And with McCarthy and his character and his work ethic and how much he cares about it, the expectation is that it keeps getting better. And so we'll keep an eye on that. Stardom 0910. What's funny is the bar for McCarthy to clear his top five to seven play. It seems most Vikings fans will be a okay with some average play if it's cheap. I don't think that that's really the case. I don't know if I agree with that because I think what you're looking for here from JJ McCarthy is that's two different conversations for one is to be a franchise caliber quarterback. Now I've always thought that quarterback rankings were pretty lazy.

Oh, he's the fifth best quarterback. He's the seventh. He's the 23rd. I wrote this about Jalen hurts before his season. That was a nearly MVP season. What I wrote about quarterback rankings and how we get them wrong is that it's really should be about which quarterback will have the best season next year. It's not a combination of what you think of their skill set and who would win some quarterback versus quarterback contest like they had in Hawaii in the late 90s

when they would do the Pro Bowl and they'd have Jim Harbaugh and Vinny Testaverde throwing at targets out there. That's not what this is. What you need to have, which is very clear, to win a Super Bowl is a top five to seven quarterback season. Now we've seen quarterbacks who you wouldn't rank in a contest like I was talking about in the top five to seven and Jalen Hurts is one of those he does not have the strongest arm I don't think he sees the field the best of anybody he is a great runner he can deliver the football to his weapons but he's got to have a great offensive line great receivers and a really good scheme that's designed for him, right? But they did that and he played top five to seven football and they went to a Super Bowl.

The same goes for Brock Purdy, where this is, if you had a contest, he's not throwing the ball the hardest and he's not running the fastest 40, but in the context of what that team has for him their system what they asked from him he gave them top five to seven play so can jj mccarthy do the same thing is what we're really asking here is he going to be top five to seven i mean whoever knows with that he was drafted in the same slot as patrick mahomes right not saying he's mah, just saying that no one knows, including the teams, who's going to be that good to be up in the top five to seven. But can the Vikings put enough around him to weigh his odds heavily in his favor? And that includes the approach of taking it slow with his development to get him to the point where he can have several of those seasons. And look,

him being cheap is important. It is important because the quarterbacks keep getting more expensive. So you're going to pay McCarthy like 5 million bucks on the salary cap while other quarterbacks are 40 and 50 million on the salary cap. That matters. That matters a lot for the team that you can put around him and a lot of people like to debate these things as if it's some sort of skills contest and they say well you know Justin Herbert he's a top five quarterback but Brock Purdy isn't not from how they've played and I don't care where you rank their skills I care how they play and if McCarthy can figure out the offense he has the arm to be a top quarterback,

the arm strength to be a top quarterback. And if he can operate the offense and make plays outside of structure, and he's got the receivers that he has, you can have a top offense around him, but that is going to take steps and progress of him learning to get there. So I think that you're kind of misunderstanding the argument that people are making around McCarthy. Huge Boy says, who do you think has more arm talent, Darnold or JJ? So arm talent's an interesting thing because it's not just velocity on the ball, which I think if they had a radar gun, the Vikings would rank very high now in the league for their quarterbacks on the radar gun for their starter and their rookie, because both these guys can really light it up as

far as how hard they could throw the football with Darnold. The deep ball is clearly better than McCarthy right now. And this goes with a lot of experience. But Sam Darnold in actual games, cause you can point to actual games and actual throws that he's made deep down the field. And he made one for Carolina against now I'm struggling to remember who it was in one of his wins. I watched back where he was feet were not really even planted. They were kind of close together. He was getting pressure and he just turned and let it go about 40 yards down the field to DJ Moore right in the basket. I mean,

he's got, Darnold has tremendous, tremendous arm talent, but is he the most accurate? That I don't know. I think it's really been decision-making that's a little more off than accuracy for Sam Darnold throughout his career, but can be erratic. We have samples of him in actual games, but as far as big time throws, who could make the most, Darnold might have the edge there because he could push it downfield a little better at this point in his career, but you assume that JJ McCarthy is going to come along. I mean, and look, Darnold was drafted number three overall on arm talent. He didn't have that great of a season at USC. It was basically, Hey, look at this guy throw the football. It's insane where McCarthy's was less about that, but I think he

still has, I think he has arm strength and arm talent also in my mind includes accuracy and anticipation. So probably Darnold is ahead of him right now, and he's going to have to come along with the accuracy part of that. Bron Frickin Solo says, I hope Mullins stays on the active roster because he has the most time working with KOC and will be an asset in the quarterback room. I totally agree. People always want to get rid of the old backup guy, but those players have merit. And not to mention, just as you're practicing and as maybe Nick Mullins is preparing for the opposing team, this guy was so much experience in the past. He's played for numerous teams, numerous systems.

So when you're talking about a scout team quarterback, those backups have a lot of value. They don't get a lot of love. No one wants them to play. I understand that it was painful to watch four interceptions from Nick Mullins last year, but he is a major asset to the room. And I think they will keep them as a one, two, three, just whether he's number two or three that I don't know, it might whether mccarthy wins the job or not a huge boy says i've heard people praising jj for his throws on the run i think the vikes wanted may because he could do it better he threw 45 yards on the run and jj tapped out at 30 on his college film uh yeah i mean look how many bombs are we talking about on the run? That's something that Darnold could do for sure. Probably better than JJ McCarthy at this point.

But what are most of the throws on the run that you're talking about? Most of them are bootlegs where you're rolling out, keeping your eyes downfield, and you're throwing with accuracy and putting enough juice on the ball. Or if you're scrambling, a lot of times. Now, Russell Wilson used to throw it deep down the field, but a lot of times, even with Patrick Mahomes, are you talking about 40-yard passes, 45-yard passes, or are you talking about finding someone in the intermediate areas to throw the ball to? But McCarthy's arm strength is very clear when he sits in the pocket and lets it loose that he

gets it up to a very high velocity. It's very clear when he's rolling to his right or left that he can put more than adequate velocity on the ball to make throws to receivers on the run, the scramble drill, so forth. I see everything there and I'm not concerned with comparing him to somebody like Drake May at this point. They didn't get Drake May. He went to the New England Patriots. So I'm not watching his practices.

I'm not there. I'm only here. But I do think that with McCarthy, the talent is there. That has been the main takeaway for me in these first two practices. It's not hard. You don't need a whole lot of effort to see the starting quarterback, first round talent of JJ McCarthy. It doesn't take a lot of effort up close to see how big he is, how hard he throws the football, how quick he moves when we're talking about rolling out and, and velocity, just his top speed of himself rolling out and on the

move. It's, it's just not, it's not difficult to see. So, um, uh, Joe boo says, is, is it really a surprise when the guy handed the ball off 50 times a game in college? Well, no, it's not a surprise that he would need work. And that's the point when you draft the youngest guy in the draft. And then you're talking about somebody who hasn't run the Viking system because he's a rookie and only through 700 passes. That's why we don't overreact. That's why we're talking about this is because we know it's going to take time. Just like, I really think there's a good comparison with NBA players who come out of college after one year, and then we have expectations on them by the time, hey, they're in their second year. Why aren't they a superstar? Well, because they're 19 or 20.

And the same thing goes for this. I mean, JJ McCarthy is 21 years old and he just turned that a couple months ago. So yeah, the expectation should be that we see the talent and the reason he was drafted, but we don't see a veteran looking quarterback right away. That's, that's the point. Intrepid fool says we will stick with Darnold. I think he's shown us who he is. I hope he improves taking care of the football and performance under pressure, but I'm not overly optimistic. So I feel the same way about Sam

Darnold. I definitely feel the same way, which is look, when you pull up the bottom five quarterbacks with over whatever number of passes that would be a starting quarterback over a thousand passes. I did this the other day, all the quarterbacks since 2010 with over a thousand passes, Sam Darnold was in the bottom five in terms of quarterback rating. My expectations for him are not that he takes this job and runs with it and just never gives it to JJ McCarthy. But I also look at his talent, the situation where he's been, how he's got here and think, would it be completely shocking if he played better than he's ever played before? No, it would not be shocking at all. And would it be beneficial if the Vikings went three and three or four and three or

something in the first seven games? So there wasn't a ton of pressure for them to bring JJ McCarthy in if he doesn't win the job, if he isn't ready, like that wouldn't be shocking and it would be a good outcome for them. And that's why they paid $10 million for Sam Darnold because they believe in that outcome. And I could see it based on the way that he played in Carolina. I could see him playing better than he's ever played before, but I don't think that the ball security thing is ever going to change. It's sort of like trying to coach it out of James Winston a little bit. It's a guy who believes in that arm talent and is going to try to make plays. And sometimes it's going to go wrong. And I think that as far as seeing the field

anticipation, it's not always there with Darnold, but when you watch him run a practice, it's obvious that the guy has been around the league for a long time. It's obvious that he has top notch arm talent and it'll be interesting if he does start to see if he can shed off whatever happened before and make an argument to be a starting quarterback in this league the same way that Baker Mayfield or Geno Smith had. Daniel says, doesn't matter who's the QB if you don't have a good run or screen game. Well, you know, I think that it's fine if you don't have a run or screen game, if you're a really good team. But if JJ McCarthy or Sam Darnold is your quarterback, then yes, they will 100% need to have a better running and screen game. And one thing that I did hear that made me cringe a little bit, and maybe it's just sort

of word salad, I don't know. But Wes Phillips was asked if they're adjusting the run scheme because they have Aaron Jones. And his answer was basically, no, not really. And my response was, but can you though, maybe a little from where it was last year. Now, when Ty Chandler was the running back, he averaged four and a half yards carry. Maybe it was more Alexander Madison than it was scheme. I did feel like they lacked an identity and they lacked one thing they did well. When it was Delvin Cook,

it was so easy to see the one thing they did well, those outside zones, play action off of it, and every once in a while, throw something completely different out there. This was more difficult to see last year, last two years, really. What is it the Vikings do really well in the ground game? I would have liked to have heard that they made some serious adjustments after being one of the worst running teams in the league for two years straight.

Maybe what they think the adjustment is, is better offensive line play, better, more talented running back. And they might be right. I'm a little skeptical on that, but Aaron Jones is very, very good. Jamie says, my argument is we'll be asking a quarterback that threw 15 times a game to throw 40 times a game with a team that doesn't primarily run like Michigan. Also, McCarthy is playing bigger, faster, quicker players. Well, everyone is every, every single rookie to ever play in the NFL is going to play

bigger, faster, quicker players. So, I mean, if you're, if your argument is that that's why they should give them time, then yes, I agree with you. Yes, I agree. I agree because you're talking about somebody who just doesn't have a ton of experience and they're really going off of the raw talent and the character of the player, the belief that he's going to take the two things and meld them together to make a great quarterback, which is the personality, the work ethic, the leadership, all that stuff that he's known for. And here's over, here's the arm talent and the speed the quickness the playmaking and you're melding them together and if they come together perfectly then you have a great quarterback that's what they're looking for you're right though to say that they have an offense that

rests so much on throwing the football and if you're going to put in JJ McCarthy, he has to be completely ready. He can't be just kind of, okay, we think he's mostly the way there. We're just going to run some play actions and hand the ball off. Like that's not what they're going to do. They're not going to do that. They're going to, when it's time for him to play, they're going to put the offense on his shoulders and they're going to go and play the way they want to play. And they look, they made that clear because even Wes Phillips was asked about that. Like how much adjustment is there changing of the offense? And they said, yeah, we looked at some of those things in the offseason. We looked at college, we looked at the NFL, and we took some of the plays that we liked and put them in.

But fundamentally, it's the same offense as it's been, which gives you the answer there that they're not going to pare down this offense into some junior high version for J.J. McCarthy to play just to say that they drafted a guy that's on the field and where they were smart, I believe is telling ownership this in advance and getting ownership on board. This is what it felt like when we talked to Mark Wilf at the owners meetings. I didn't see any of the aggregators there, just me and the other reporters. So whatever they said about it, I'm not sure, but I got the impression from Mark Wilf that they get it, that, that they get it, that it might take some time. They still have expectations to win

next season, but they're not saying, Hey, put this guy on the field. He's got to be on the field. If you draft him, he's got to be on the field. So that's, I think, their organizational approach from top down is to be patient. So we should be too. And we'll know when it's gone too far if he's not quarterback two or he's not getting out there and it is Darnold and whatever else. But at that point, that's going to be a ways down the road before we have more answers. So, uh, Nick says, uh, do you want to be the one to go ask Justin Jefferson to tank? I assume that you're talking about, uh, the next season where they need to be for next season. And sometimes

you guys go back and forth with each other and I lose track of who's saying what, but as far as, you know, next season goes, that's another topic of like, how far do we think this team should go? How good do we think that we, they should be? And Harrison Smith even addressed that. He said that he thinks that they're better than some of the expectations for them. So he's aware that they are not favored, that six and a half is their over under. Personally, I would go over on that, but it's really hard to know with who the quarterback is right now. This next year is so much more about whether if Darnold starts, it's about trying to reach the playoffs, of course, but it's so much more about the overall progress of the roster. So thinking about last year and how they found some main pieces last year in people like

Ivan Pace, Cam Bynum, Josh Metellus. Now they're going to play. It looks like, it looks like as of this moment, it looks like they're going to play Blake Brandel at left guard. We might see more Andre Carter after last year, he was a UDFA and we're going to find out during training camp, whether he can play or not, if he could be a future piece to this, they're giving a lot of wide receivers opportunities here. So is it going to be, you know, Lucky Jackson or Jalen Naylor or whoever? I mean, Jalen Naylor was practicing with the ones and there still seems to be expectations on him. And that's, I think a major part of this next season is looking at all these players that we believe are going to be part of the future and saying, all right, where do they stand when we get to the end of the year? Where does Blake

Brandel stand? I mean, where does Ty Chandler, who could be their running back for the next few years, if he splits carries with Aaron Jones and they like him. Or even if Brandon Powell, who still is, I don't know, he's in his twenties, I think. So, you know, Brandon Powell is really good at this wide receiver three role and has one of those late career breakouts. That's the things we're looking for. Jerry Tillery was a name that came up. He was a guy that they signed and we didn't think a whole lot of when they signed him former first round draft pick, and he was with the ones.

We'll see how he progresses as well. Will Riker, they got a kicker. We're going to find out if they have a kicker by the end of the year. That's what this is about. Where do you stand when you get to the end of the road? Do you look like a team that's almost there, or do you look like a team that is still pretty far away and uh daniel you're right that jaylen naylor has not remained healthy so far i believe in his rookie year he was

healthy he just didn't play a lot and then last year he got hurt twice both kind of bad luck things but i i never go there when it comes to the injury prone thing. Never go there because I've seen too many guys have bad luck and they get labeled as injury prone and then they're fine. I'll give you a good example is Kyle Rudolph. Kyle Rudolph got hurt early in his career. Fans called him injury prone. And then he played every single game for, I don't know, five or six years in a row. So when it's a young player,

I don't like to go there. It was, I mean, he got popped in the Vegas game and got injured and he might've had a breakout there, but just a, just bad luck, just ran into somebody, got a concussion. Those things happen. So what are the questions you got? We got about 15 minutes until tip off amidst Vikings overreaction OTA season. It'll be another few days before we get another practice. And then the week after that is going to be a mini camp. But as far as just the overall team and how they look and that sort of thing, we're going to figure that out as we go along. But on the defensive side, Dallas Turner was playing with the first team. And if you have Turner getting a good amount of reps there and

then Van Ginkle mixes in, that's what I kind of want to see is how they're managing the linebackers and the secondary. We saw Makai Blackman looks to me like an outside corner, that that's what he's going to be doing. They weren't moving him inside a whole heck of a lot, but maybe Byron Murphy gets to move inside more. Shaq Griffin had a couple of nice plays. It's possible that he fits in there fairly well. Daniel says Booth and Seen still have a chance to turn it around. I would go one for two there. I believe that Andrew Booth may have a chance and I'm not putting it at a super high chance, but it is a chance for Andrew Booth to force his way onto the field during training camp. I don't see much of a world where Louis seen suddenly explodes into

a quality player, not when they bring back Harrison Smith, not when they bring back Theo Jackson, who they liked. I don't know. It's just hard to see. But this is it though. Louisine will go into this training camp as a guy who is very much on the bubble. I don't know if they would cut him, but he's on the bubble of this is your last chance to show that you could do something. You're no longer a rookie. You're no longer coming off of a gruesome injury, which maybe could have been an argument to set him back last year. Now it's your time to prove that you can actually play in the league. Maybe there's something there. Maybe there's not, but I would lean toward no with him based on the

way they've handled the roster and with Booth, they got Shaq Griffin, but they didn't make some other crazy big signing at cornerback, which makes you think it's possible that a booth could be something with this team. And with the way the corners get hurt, he may end up being needed last year. It was only needed for 60 snaps or whatever i thought he was okay uh when he played so you know uh we'll see we'll see with andrew booth i'm not going to declare that one yet uh stardom says why wouldn't you make the offensive line strong and add another wide receiver instead we have dallas turner and no future next year if we we're bad, they knew the

schedule was rough and did that better be better than nine and eight. Well, the offensive line as an entire unit, and this depends maybe a little bit on Blake Brandel, if he's the guy at left guard, uh, I think with their tackles and experience center ed ingram improved last year it's a fine offensive line i i know that that gets people worked up because one position is not locked down but please go around the league and look around there's a lot of offensive lines that are in dire shape that don't have christian derisaw and brian o'neill part of making the offensive line stronger is keeping it together and gaining chemistry, which matters. They may be looking at Brandel as someone they've developed over multiple years. Ingram is someone they've developed over multiple years as being a fairly strong unit.

If they can come together with, you know, Brandel is a first--time starter i don't look at this as a disaster offensive line so that might be part of it i would also ask who they were supposed to get the offensive linemen were very very expensive in the offseason and if you go through where was that money supposed to go which guy would you have brought in because i've looked at all of them now maybe my suggestion would have been throw a couple you know smaller contracts at veterans but if you're going to say well hey why didn't you make the offensive line stronger well you got to have answers there so they were supposed to draft a lineman well which one was it because they all went off the board really fast in the first round and as far as adding another receiver, I might have as well, but I wouldn't have done it instead of Dallas Turner. I mean, edge rusher is the second most

valuable position in the sport. So getting an edge rusher who can rush the passer and create sacks, strip sacks, game-changing plays, that's pretty valuable to me. You don't win anything without being great everywhere. If you're just okay here and not great there, if you're just good on offense, but bad on defense, you usually don't get that far. So giving Brian Flores a pass rushing weapon to try to get that defense within the next two years to be a top 10 unit is important, but you can't, I mean, they don't have everything. They don't have everything. They didn't have enough money or draft capital to get the best guard, the best wide receiver, the best edge rusher. They got one of them. They got one of the best edge rushers in the draft. That's why next year is the year where they're going to have that money this year. They're

still paying Kirk cousins not to play here, which maybe some of us might've suggested in the past not to do that, but they did. Flick says Blake Brandle's season for better or worse. That's how it seems. That is how it seems, is that it's going to be Blake Brandle's season for better or worse, even if they sign someone that Brandle appears to have the job, they really rave about him. They've been talking about him for a few years. We haven't seen anything of him in actual games. He got into that Buffalo game, I think at left tackle and played okay there and started one game last year. There's just not much of a sample of him we can only really go off the decision that the coaching staff believes in him enough to have him there that they think he

can start that's not me saying i am telling you it's going to work it's just if we're judging by what they've done they didn't feel the need to go out and way overspend on somebody at that position based on what they had seen. John says it's obvious McCarthy is mature for his age, but he's barely 21. More maturity is going to be needed to perform before he starts. He will get there in time, no doubt about it. I mean, yeah, like this is, John, you're being way too reasonable. You're being way too reasonable.

You're supposed to be nuts and say that he's a bust because he fumbled the snap in an ota practice that's what you're supposed to be saying saying it's uh you we're going to need to give him time to mature that's crazy talk uh jamie says i might agree that darnold could be the biggest surprise of this season being with great weapons finally and one superstar tackle and the other very good his protection should be good when we talk about the quarterbacks who were most let down by their franchises and by their teammates and by their coaches sam darnold is an all-timer he's an all-timer when you go back to the new york jets todd bowles is their coach they don't have much for weapons. And then it immediately shifts over to Adam Gase, one of the worst coaches of the last 10 years. He is not

great under Adam Gase and then goes to maybe the worst coach, not named Urban Meyer of the last 10 years, Matt Rule. That is a loss situation where the guy signs this enormous contract only to be fired what a year and a half later? The contract they gave him, you would have thought he's going to be their coach for life. And then a year and a half later, he's out. And that says everything you need to know about Matt Rule. Then Darnold plays with a different coach for a little while. He's actually pretty decent.

Goes to San Francisco, has a good start out there when he played. That's all we really know is under very bad circumstances, he's been very bad. Under really good circumstances, does it mean he's really good? Probably not. Could he be closer to average? If you were an average quarterback in the NFL last year, you probably threw for 4,200 yards, 25 touchdowns, 12 picks,

92 quarterback rating or something like that. If Darnold plays like that, you're going to feel pretty good about it. And that would be my projection or expectation is somewhere like that. Maybe a few more interceptions, but somewhere like that. And you know, it could be okay. That could be a good bridge quarterback to give you time to let JJ McCarthy develop. Daniel says the offensive line projected to be 11th. I assume you mean by PFF standards. That's how I would view them. I look at them as a mid-pack, maybe a little bit better offensive line.

We're just very much trained on the left guard thing. Oscar says Aaron Jones can block on third down, So we have a chance. That's a need and an improvement. Last year, it was very, very poor. The blocking from the running backs, aside from when CJ Hamm was in doing blocking on third and long, big time, big time improvement to have Aaron Jones. Flick says, I think the first part of the season will be tough. The schedule is harder at the beginning and no Hawkinson. Yeah. And when we talk about all those weapons, that's right. That Hawkinson is very unlikely to start the season. It might even be five weeks of Robert Tunyon who looked great by the way, Robert Tunyon looked great in practice. The guy is huge and he

can move. Maybe it was just a bad break in Chicago last year because I'm now looking at Robert Tunyon going, okay, could this guy make the team? Could he play? I mean, it might be a decent little signing for them to get a receiving tight end who can go down the field a little bit. But to your point, it will likely be a difficult start to the season considering the schedule that they're going to have to play. Wade says excited that we finally have a running back who can effectively pass protect and excel at swing catches. It's really sad how swing passes have to be a plus, but they haven't been the last two years. Delvin cook and Alexander Madison drop passes like crazy the last two years on those little swing balls. I don't really get

it. I mean, I don't get what happened to either one of those guys, but there were a lot of drops that you're not going to see from Aaron Jones. Sue says, hypothetically, how far can a fully realized Sam Darnold take this team it depends on what you mean by fully realized I mean he was drafted as the number three pick to be a superstar quarterback if it's a superstar quarterback then this team can win the division and win 12 games and it'd be fantastic because I think Brian Flores will have them in the top 15 defensively and he could take you to an elite offense but we're talking about a very small percentage that that happens it's just the raw talent that made him that top draft pick sure if

he got on a case keenum heater where every interception was dropped and you just every ball that he threw up into traffic was caught by jordan addison or justin Justin Jefferson, it could be a great season for him. Most mostly realized Sam Darnold probably is what I was getting at with a projection for him. If he played the whole year thrown for 4,000 yards, mid twenties and touchdowns, 12, 15 picks like an average season that has some really good games, some really poor games. And sometimes you're frustrated and sometimes you're amazed. And that's what I think the Sam Darnold experience really is. Wade says probably 7-10, 8-9 if he plays the whole season.

I'll agree with that. I will agree with that. Yep. Tristan, it is crazy that the Vikings went 13 and 4 with the 31st ranked defense in 2022 it is that was one of the weirdest seasons of all time it was and then of course in the playoffs that came back to bite him the really odd thing about that season is that they started off eight and one and then after that if you include the playoff loss, they're just the 500 team. After that, they were who they actually were. But every one of those games, each one has their own

story in 2022. The doink from the New Orleans kicker that could have won them the game in London. The fumble from Jalen Waddell in Miami as Teddy Bridgewater was bringing him back. Imagine how that would have felt for this team. How about Amir Smith-Marset holding penalty so Chicago can't come back on the Vikings? Something had to happen in every single one of those games. In the Washington one, where Washington is clearly on the doorstep of winning that game and Taylor Heineke throws a crazy interception. The Vikings come back on a wild throw from Kirk Cousins. That is one of the weirdest seasons ever.

It generally, if you finish 31st in defense, it's pretty hard to be all that good. So, yeah. Anyway, let me scroll down and get a couple more in because we're almost at tip off time almost wade says dallas turner's a future star still young but floor and ceiling are really high it looks like a grown man to me uh that's somebody that i wouldn't expect you're going to need a ton of time for him to develop into a good player his he will get more beefed up as he goes forward, more definition, the arms

and chest and all that. But, uh, his strength, his speed, you, I mean, he stood, Will Raggetts mentioned this on the show yesterday that he was right next to us doing drills. It's like, okay, uh, this guy's got some first round physical talent. That's for sure. Uh, cerebral fanatics as people are underestimating KOC's QB genius. He was literally piloting Dobbs through the Falcons game. We're about to see the best Sam Darnold we've ever seen. Yeah. I mean, I don't think we can really take much out of what happened in any of those games for last year with Dobbs, including the good stuff and the bad stuff. But as far as being a coach who is going to put a lot of focus on his quarterback, his passing game, set him up for success. He has not ever been set up for success like this

and actually played. You know, he's actually having to play in New York or in Carolina with bad coaching, bad teammates. And now he's got a chance to play potentially if he wins the job with a former quarterback coach with a good passing scheme. We've seen that succeed in the past and with really good wide receivers. So I don't think that anyone's being unreasonable to believe that if Sam Darnold starts, it's not like you throw away the season because Sam Darnold is starting. Uh, there could be, I think ups and downs there, but more ups than there's ever been. So anyway, I mean, it's wolves time. So I got to run. You guys got to run, got to go watch the wolves. So bring yourself over to the television and good luck to the wolves.

It's been a super fun run. Uh, and I'll be, uh, I'll be watching in the same way that you guys are. So hopefully, you know, they go where you need them to go. Take care, everybody really appreciate all of your time. We'll be back with a plenty more as we go forward. So keep it locked here to this channel. Take care.