Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - What's next for the Vikings? A roundtable discussion

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Matthew Coller, Manny Hill and Brian Murphy talk about their takeaways from the Vikings loss to the Rams and what it means for the QB position and much more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and we have something very special for you tonight. I've just landed back from Phoenix, Arizona, where things that were very regrettable for the Minnesota Vikings happened. So we are going to break it all down, plus talk about what comes next for the Vikings here on a special roundtable, including Manny Hill, who is always here to break down every game, and Brian Murphy, who is normally Monday morning Murph, but instead it's Tuesday evening Murph. Welcome, gentlemen. I am pleased to have you guys in the same room. You did a lot of radio, including with me, in years past. So I'm very excited for

the next hour of discussion. But I think the place we got to start is, how's everybody feeling today? Murph, how about you give your thoughts after a whooping in the desert? How did you wake up thinking about the Minnesota Vikings this morning? I woke up thinking, am I really going to have to apologize for calling the fans a bunch of thumbsuckers last week because they curled up after losing to Detroit and, you know, all hope was not lost, right? There was still a path, perhaps, if not to the Super Bowl, maybe to the NFC Championship game, maybe do a rematch in Detroit. You know, I wanted to buck everybody up a little bit and say, hey, you know, this is still going.

It's not awake yet. And all the Vikings did was validate everybody's worst fears and worst, you know, reflexive fatalism. So here we are. I'm giving in. I'm acknowledging, you know, fans, you're allowed to be let down and feel let down and choke down the bitterness. I don't know how long you want to hold on down and feel let down and and choke down the bitterness i don't know how long you want to hold on to it because i hate to break up the the pity party but

this is still a pretty good team in pretty good shape so it was just a mess to watch though yesterday and last week well manny you and i spent a lot of time this season urging fans to ride the wave and see where this all takes you and the thing for me is that I have always and will always follow the numbers on a team. And throughout the season, the numbers on the Minnesota Vikings said top 10 offense, top 10 defense. And what that means to me is you've got as good a chance as anybody, especially when you win 14 games. They outscored their opponents by 100 points, which was always my baseline for, are you a legitimate contender? If you get to plus 100 point differential,

a top-notch offense, top-notch defense, the regular season, then you go into the playoffs as a serious contender. And I will remain in that camp of thinking that they should have been, but on Friday or Saturday, whenever I did the podcast with Andrew Kramer, one of the phrases that I used was styles make fights. And this was the worst style team to play with a vicious, vicious defensive line. And I also think one of the five best coaches

to walk the earth in the last 20 years, Sean McVay, who seemed to know every single answer that Kevin O'Connell was going to have to their pass rush and was two steps ahead. And actually what's been interesting to look at is some of the people, the independent film analysts like Dan Orlovsky, former NFL quarterback, Nate Tice, the son of Mike Tice, who played quarterback at Wisconsin and had also coached as well. And a lot of those guys came away saying, I don't know what Sam Darnold was supposed

to do on a lot of those sacks. And I looked at the video breakdowns they did and said, they've got a point here. I think Sean McVay ran Kevin O'Connell out of the desert. And I think that they were absolutely built to be the hardest team for the Minnesota Vikings to go against in the playoffs outside of Detroit. And Manny, sometimes that's what the playoffs come down to is just who you get matched up with. This was the worst team for them to go against. It kind of as I was watching the game last night, it kind of gave me Mike Tyson, Michael Spinks fight vibes of just like, you know, I was so young when that fight happened. But I remember my mom telling me the story of, you know, we all went over to my uncle's house to who had ordered the pay-per-view for that fight.

And, you know, Mike Tyson's walking out to the ring and Michael Spinks is walking out to the ring. And a couple of people are like, oh, let me run upstairs and pop a new bag of popcorn before the fight starts. And then they go up and they pop the bag of popcorn and they come back downstairs with the bowl of popcorn. And the fight is already over. And Michael Buffer or whoever is already announcing Mike Tyson as the winner of the fight. That's kind of what that game last night felt as it relates to the entire season of, you know, you're getting hyped up and you're feeling good about where you're at. You know, it's like the Vikings were Michael Spinks. They felt really good about, yeah, I'm fighting the heavyweight champ. And, you know, the Rams aren't really like the heavyweight champ.

They were an underdog in this game. But, you know, you're getting amped up. You're ready for this playoff game. You've had a great season. And then smack, the Tyson right hook hits you and you go back into the ropes and you're out and it's over. Just like that. You just blink and everything that you've seen for the entire season,

the 14 wins, the great performance against the Packers by Sam Darnold just a couple of weeks ago. I mean, think about that. We are two weeks removed from Sam Darnold looking incredible against the Packers. And, you know, he goes back into the locker room after the game and the guys are dousing him with water and they're lifting him up and everything's like, wow, this is really happening for this guy. And then the Detroit games happens.

And then last night happens. And it's just over, just like that. Everything just really changes. That's this league, man. And it's crazy how good you can feel about how things are going. And then things can just change just like that, depending on the type of matchup. Detroit obviously was a bad matchup for the Vikings. And certainly the Rams and the two matchups this year have been just a bad matchup

as well. And inside the locker room there in Glendale, there was a lot of shock and I think you could really see it on Kevin O'Connell's face. He did look like a fighter that walked into the ring and just got knocked out on the first drive. When I called my wife last night after the game, she said that first pass for Matthew Stafford that went down the middle for 20 yards. That was like McVay just being like, come get it. We did this to you last time.

We're going to do it to you again. And Murph, of course, every we'll get to the quarterback. I promise. And everyone wants to talk about the quarterback and make the declarations on Sam Darnold, get them out of town, go to JJ McCarthy. I get all that. And we'll discuss the nuances of that momentarily. But I also think that when you look at the coaching job from last night,

very similar strategies in the first game, very similar results to the first time that they played the Rams and to the Rams credit, I believe they finished the season eight and two down the stretch. And they were a really good defense down the stretch. They beat San Francisco. They beat the Jets. They beat the Arizona Cardinals. So their defense did find it toward the end of the season. And maybe they were different from the team that started out, what, one and four, a lot

more, a lot stronger than your usual 10 win team. But I also think that on both sides of the ball, you could say, was this a playoff caliber coaching, uh, you know, job that was done by Kevin O'Connell and Brian Flores schematically, because I have to think if there's not very many options, if no options, and there's no blocking scheme that's slowing them down. And on the other side, there's blitz after blitz after blitz and success after success after success from one of the best quarterbacks in the league against the blitz. You have to ask the question, should something else have been done here than going back to the same strategies that failed

back in October? Yeah, there wasn't really a lot of adjustments going on on either side of the ball and you can, you know, Darnold's inaccuracies carried over from Detroit, his happy feet in the pocket carried over from Detroit. Yes, the interior line got ragdolled and pushed back into him. I mean, there were at least two passes I remember where Darnold's arm was hitting one of his offensive linemen's head. But boy, did he create his own messes back there too. And there were times where it was agonizing to literally watch him run into a sack or spin himself into a sack because he didn't know what to do. And I'd really love to see how this is autopsy. And I'm sure it's started already.

I'm not enough of a football mind to know, was it mechanical? Was it mental? Was he seeing things he has not seen all season? Were routes taking too long to develop for particular downs that kept him in the pocket, running around looking for one open receiver when he either could have been finding a check down or dumping the ball off or, hell, tossing it into the seats. That's what I'm really more curious about is how much of this was O'Connell suddenly being handed the pumpkin that we all feared that Darnold would turn into in the last two weeks and was incapable of really correcting that, either from a mental or a physical standpoint in the last six or seven days.

On the other side, Brian Flores made it clear he was going to blitz. And when Flores gets burned on blitzes, we know how much space there is with that veteran secondary out in the middle of a field. And we know what Jared Goff and Matthew Stafford did in October. And we know what they did in the last two weeks to diagnose those soft spots, to exploit them. And it just felt like that hot knife through butter in that first drive, I really felt like the game was gone.

I mean, there were whiffs of 41 donut, Manny, the way it got out of hand so quickly. Two different teams, two different rosters, 25 years apart. This team much better, I thought, than the 2000 version. But the way this game fell apart on them so quickly and how unprepared they looked to respond to that really had me thinking back to 41 donut. And if if the rams didn't take their foot off the accelerator it could have been 41.9 uh the rams chose to to kind of control the clock there at the end so when i'm looking at the numbers back sam darnold was pressured on 54 percent of his dropbacks bad is 40 that blew 40 out the water. And even at the end of the game, he's not getting pressured quite as much. So those numbers were worse earlier in the game and the offensive

tackles were just as poor as you could have been. And I felt bad for Brian O'Neill getting hurt at the end of the game. Cause he's been such a great player for them and a tremendous captain, but he allowed seven pressures in the game. And Cam Robinson gave up a number I've never seen before. 12 quarterback pressures. Jared first got seven of them. Cam Robinson fell apart toward the end of the season in ways that are totally shocking based on his career. He's always been an above average pass blocker and a struggling run blocker throughout his career. But over the last four weeks, he had ranked 53rd out of 60 by PFF and pass blocking. It was actually something I wrote about right before the game, sort of under the radar factors is that Cam

Robinson was struggling. And I think what opposing teams figured out was that he and Blake Randall could never figure out when they play games, when they rush inside and have somebody loop around and things like that. And then just one-on-one, I don't know if he got tired from a long season getting traded or what happened, or if he's just an inconsistent player and everybody got used to Christian Derrissaw. But when you hear a stat like your left tackle gave up 12 quarterback pressures it took me back more to the sam uh bradford times where sam bradford truly had no chance whatsoever and what bradford would do is just check it down remember kyle rudolph had like 700 catches in 2016 but it was the same

effect and the thing that koc pointed out after the game about Darnold was that throughout the season, he would try, if there was a rush, to scramble. He would try to go back and loop around, and sometimes that would what worked for him all season. And he was a top 10 quarterback under pressure during the season. The problem was so many people were getting beat at once that he couldn't just avoid the first rusher and then go make a play. Instead it was avoid the first rusher. Oh, here comes the second and the third and the fourth. And at the end of the day day he's under a dog pile so even as poorly as Darnold played when you start to pick apart the layers of what happened the fact that they could not block this team Manny really was the main cause for Sam Darnold performing the way that he did it becomes a domino effect because you know we've already we already saw the week before against

Detroit where Sam got pressured a little bit and it just kind of rattled him you know the the atmosphere of the crowd and I know that it was a majority Vikings fans at State Farm Stadium last last night but it was still a road environment there was still pretty good contingency of Rams fans there when the Rams made plays the that their their fans got loud and made things happen. And, you know, that sort of thing. So it's sort of the combination of Sam dealing with sort of the road atmosphere, a non-U.S. Bank Stadium atmosphere. And then the pressure comes from Jared first and that Rams defensive front. And then he's not, it's so overwhelming that he's not able to do some of the things like you said, that,

that got him into areas of success during the course of the season. And then he's overthrowing guys. He's missing receivers that are open. We saw on the strip sack that that verse picked up and ran back for touchdown. I mean, I think it was TJ Hawkinson was wide open. There was nobody within like 15 yards of him. And if Sam just sees him and delivers the ball,

that's probably a 35, 40 yard gain. Cause there was literally nobody within the vicinity of TJ Hawkinson. So all of that stuff just sort of piles up. And then you start to wonder like, is Sam the type of guy that can sort of overcome those sorts of things, or is it just going to be a bad night for him? And then that's where you kind of look maybe towards Kevin O'Connell and say, all right, you got to find a way. Your quarterback's in a bad way right now. Gotten off to a bad start.

He's missing open receivers. He's under a lot of pressure. You've got to find a way to adjust to try and make things simpler for him to get him back on track because right now he's off the rails right now. It's really bad. And they just weren't really able to do that. And the end result is you get blown out by three scores and your season is over. They threw four screen passes. They went one for four with one yard against the team

that was blitzing the heck out of them and winning at the line of scrimmage so much. I guess they weren't sending all blitzes, but they were winning and winning and winning up front. And to not be able to negate that with a consistent run game, which they went away from pretty fast, even when the game was close, to not negate it with the screen game.

These are consistent things over three years of not having answers when the quarterback is being pressured. However, it's also very much Sam Darnold for not being able to get the ball out of his hands somewhere. And there was a drive in this game where he checked it down,

checked it down, checked it down. And actually they did pretty well. They broke some tackles. CJ ham had a nice catch and ran for seven, eight yards. It's just not who he is. And I get the thing about this game is I can think of a bunch of examples in the playoffs throughout playoff history, where it's looked very similar for the quarterback, no matter who it was. Justin Herbert is the most recent where Will Anderson and Daniil Hunter in that D line, they just ate him alive. That was a great year for him. It was a really good season for Herbert, probably the best of his career in terms of efficiency and just got blown off the map because his O line could not handle that D line. Some of the more famous ones would be my homes in the 2020 Super

bowl against Tampa Bay, where his line was banged up, just, just completely shredded. He was pressured 60% of the time, Brady versus the giants, both of those. That's what this looked like for Sam Darnold. So then the guy gets off, he's not throwing accurately. He's speeding up and it just all comes crumbling down. Now, Murph, here's the question that everyone is asking is how much do you weigh two performances that were this poor with the Vikings overall decision on Sam Darnold? I know that the chat, every chat, every social media, MySpace, LinkedIn, Wolf, YouTube, all of them, every single one.

Yeah. Every single social media that has ever existed decided last night, this is over. Get rid of him. Don't ever speak the name Sam Darnold ever again in Minnesota. I don't know if you feel the same way or if you think that maybe there's an overvaluing of one game versus the bigger body of work. Well, it's really two games and it's two money games and it's really hard to overlook that. Yes, there were the 14 wins, but nobody's

going to really remember how he rallied and played well against Tennessee after an awful game in Jacksonville. They're going to remember what happened when he walked into Ford Field. And then eight days later, despite having a neutral site sort of spoon fed to them, they weren't able to take advantage. I think it's going to come to look, everybody's emotional right now. And it's too raw, including in that front office. I mean, they're going to make a measured decision. I'm not certain. I think the performances last night and last week in Detroit devalued Darnold,

no question. I mean, look, he's not going to be panhandling, but he flushed tens of millions of dollars down the toilet just because of his performance the last two weeks. But he's still going to get a contract offer. The supply and demand economics of this league for experienced quarterbacks are going to dictate somebody's going to overpay for him. I mean, the Falcons overpaid for Kirk Cousins and the Vikings let him walk.

Somebody's going to offer to overpay Sam Darnold again as well. So I think it's really going to be more about economics and then what makes most sense for how the Vikings are going to move forward with J.J. McCarthy and Daniel Jones. Is this now a scenario where Jones kind of moves into the bridge quarterback role that Darnold was supposed to play this season while McCarthy, is it going to be a training camp competition? Are they going to just hand the role to McCarthy? Where's his knee at?

You know, let's not forget, he wasn't on the field all year. He lost a year of development. So he's kind of a rookie slash second-year player going into next season. So how are they going to want to structure that development? Because let's be honest, there's still offensive weapons. I mean, Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, TJ Hawkinson, Aaron Jones, assuming he comes back. I mean, this is a team that can still produce and be a powerhouse in the NFC North. So I don't know if it's as simple as

saying, you know, Darnold missed his opportunities and clearly did not rise to the occasion the last two weeks. He needs to be ostracized. I think it's going to come down to who comes after him, what the Vikings really want. I don't see him settling for a backup role here if he can get starter money and an opportunity elsewhere. But I also think he's probably been humbled by the entire experience. What's going to be the best fit for him? I think it's going to come down more to the money situation than it is. We can't have a guy who played like that the last two games in the building anymore. The whole thing is, is challenging for me because when we try to evaluate situations in through my eyes, I always look at it as what's the whole sample size. What is the bigger sample as opposed to just what I just saw?

What I just saw was absolutely miserable. Could not have been much worse over the last two weeks. And again, that's a lot of purple insider dollars to fly to Detroit and to fly to Phoenix for absolutely nothing. So no one's more annoyed at the lack of good football than me. But at the same time, even if we include these two games, he played 18 total games and how many of them were really good? 13. And that's, that's a lot of very good quarterback play that puts your team in a position to go into the playoffs with metrics that suggest that you are a legitimate contender, that's hard to just walk away from

and then ask the next guy who, as you mentioned, has not had a single practice yet during an NFL season outside of training camp to then say, hey, the franchise is all yours. And I just have a very tough time looking at Daniel Jones and talking myself into, well, that's a fine bridge if McCarthy isn't ready because he was so much worse in his recent performance and so much more injured than Sam Darnold, who his recent performance with Carolina had been good in 2022. It's just no one cared because they were Carolina and they were out of it. But that was the sample size the Vikings were working with. The most recent Jones play

isn't even better than Nick Mullins. So I don't look at any. He's also a free agent, too. He can sign wherever he wants. So if he has a chance to compete for a starting spot, he probably will do that instead. And the Vikings got themselves

a tiny little comp pick by putting him on the active roster. Hey, it's clever. It's good. That's that's a good job there. They're going to need all the draft picks they can get. But I look at the bigger sample and say it might make some sense for the Vikings to do the best thing for McCarthy, which would be to give him more space and more

time and be able to still live in a competitive world with Sam Darnold. I'm looking at this now through what is the best thing for JJ McCarthy, just as much as anything else. And that's where the tag comes in. But Manny, the question is, could you tag Sam Darnold if this is what they want to do? And then also put the money into this roster that is clearly needed in KOC's offense. It's just obvious. He's never going to be able to play with mediocre offensive line. It got them in 2022, the fourth and eight check down their left guard gets destroyed. That's, that's just a fact that whole season, that interior line got killed. And this year they're going to get Darnold back. That was not Darnold, a Darisaw.

That was a terrible injury that ultimately got them at the end. But left guard wasn't good enough. Right guard survived, but was not good enough. Center, not good enough. Halfway through the season, it was going fine. And then it fell off at the end again for Garrett Bradbury. Could they use Darnold as a bridge still for next year to see if McCarthy's ready to go and still fix the roster with, if they use the tag or do you not view that as being possible?

Boy, it's a great question because ultimately the investment in J and JJ McCarthy is there. And you want to, to your point, you want to do what's best for his development. And it's, it's a, it's kind of a double-edged sword because if you let Sam walk and you go into next year with the thought of, let's say, okay, let's say they do bring back Daniel Jones and they let him and J.J. McCarthy just compete for the starter job.

All right, well, J.J. wins that competition. He's starting week one, 2025. Have you done enough in the offseason to bolster up the interior of that offensive line? Because you put J.J. McCarthy in and he's ready to go, or at least you think he's ready to go because he's beat out Daniel Jones for a quarterback competition, which is setting a low bar, I think. You've still got to be able to protect him and protect your investment into him,

into his development, because you can't start J.J. McCarthy in 2025 with the same or similar build of an offensive line that you had this year. You know, Sam was able to navigate through it at times throughout most of the year, but we even saw late in the year when things started to fall apart up front that that didn't bode well for Sam either.

And what do you think is going to happen if you put a 22-year-old quarterback who's never thrown a pass in the NFL into that same sort of situation? So if you do let Sam walk and that $43 million, whatever the franchise tag cap hit would be, you use that. You got to use that to bolster up the offensive line. You're going to have to, you know, that means like a guy like Trey Smith, who I don't know if the Chiefs are going to bring him back or not. He's got to be a top target for you, and you got to close the deal on it.

You got to make that happen. You know, that's going to be something that they're going to have to face or you can go the route of you bring sam back and you bring him back on that franchise tag if that works out for you and you can let jj develop continue to develop behind the scenes and then you can kind of slow cook and build this roster so then when the time comes comes for when JJ is ready to play, it's a really good setup and a really good situation for him. And he's fully developed into a quarterback that's ready to play the moment that time comes.

So it's going to be – there's going to be a ton of questions that Kwesi and KOC are going to have to ask themselves of like what is the right route to go here because J.J. McCarthy is now become with the sort of meltdown with Sam J.J.'s become kind of the most important piece

now going forward of like if this is the guy you got to develop him and you got to develop him right because if you don't and you screw things up with him now you're talking about coaches maybe being out of a job and then the team having to go and draft dip into the draft in a couple of years to take another quarterback and that's not where they want to be real quick just i just i want to to manny's point where we're talking about darnold is you know know, the Vikings have feelings and beliefs about Darnold, but the rest of the NFL is going to have their own feelings and beliefs, particularly after these two performances, as far as setting the trade market for what

a franchise tag may even be worth. Besides, what are you buying for $43 million? Because his value may be plummeting as we speak. And then the free agent market as well. The Vikings aren't necessarily in control of that. They may feel like they're in control and may feel like they want – they have a specific opinion of Darnold because he was here all year and won 14 games.

The rest of the league may be, yeah, but, you know, week 18 in the wild card told us all we need to know about him being able to handle the big moments. So the franchise tag may sound intriguing. I just don't know what the return is going to be because this market has just got to be so volatile right now for Darnold. Folks, I found something that I didn't know how badly I needed it. It's called Rocket Money. Like everybody else, I've got many subscriptions to different apps and websites

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slash purple insider today. That's rocket money.com slash purple insider rocket money.com slash purple insider. Well, I mean, for the franchise tag, the plan would be this. It would be to tag Darnold and have him compete with J.J. McCarthy through training camp and not move him and not move him and if J.J. McCarthy looks ready to go then there's going to be a quarterback needy team I promise you there will be there always is there always has been there is what one quarterback in the draft maybe two two this year. And, uh, they're trying to sell on other guys that we know are not going to be picked in the first round that that's going to leave about seven to eight teams who are going to be standing around with nobody to dance with. And somebody

tweeted out the list of free agent quarterbacks for next year. And yeah, you don't want any part of this. So if the Vikings franchise tag him, they could either, I mean, if someone came with a couple of first round picks in the off season, of course, that may have hurt his value enough in these last two games to not get multiple draft picks for him. But what the Philadelphia Eagles did in 2016, and the Vikings were on the wrong side of this ultimately, but what they did was they had Carson Wentz and they had Sam Bradford and they had them compete and then once it became clear that they wanted to roll with Carson Wentz and the Vikings had their quarterback got hurt they traded him for a first round pick and they rolled with Wentz and they went to the Super Bowl in 2017 and everybody lived happily

ever after in Philadelphia but the Vikings can split the difference that way. And they could also structure future contracts the same way they did this year with their free agents, with Van Ginkle, with Grenard and Cashman. So they could sign. Everyone wants Trey Smith really badly. I get it. He's a beast. So let's just say Trey Smith, he's going to want $27 million a year. He's worth it, but you can structure those things out to where it's a $13 million cap hit in the first year or something like that. And then it goes up once JJ McCarthy is in there on the rookie deal. And that's always been my point. I've noticed some people have tried to spin this around to team this or team that, which is utter nonsense. It's just been, it's plausible to do this. Teams

do it all the time where you've got a structure of, I mean, even the Rams, the way that they worked out Matthew Stafford's deal when he arrived in Los Angeles, I think he made, I don't know, 12 million bucks or something on the cap that year that they went to the Superbowl. It went up later and they redid his deal later, but that would allow you to kind of split the difference because I think that there's a lot of pressure that comes along with winning 14 games and then handing it off to someone who didn't have college experience either. That was the biggest issue. And my biggest question, by the way, and also again, to clarify for the 5,000th time, I was never anti JJ McCarthy,

not even anywhere in the remote, close to that. My big thing. And I brought this up to Quacey when he came on this show, the general manager of the Vikings. I said, my concern about McCarthy was a lack of sample size. And he said, me too. And so they had to quell that by doing their research on him and meeting with him and training camp matters and the preseason game matters. But there's still a sample size issue with McCarthy that the guy hasn't played a lot of football. He had one big year at Michigan. He had one big training camp with the Vikings. And now you're like, go lead a 14 win team. It's just a lot. And I'm curious about your guys' reaction. I mean, last night, Kevin O'Connell definitely went out of his way

to not put much of the blame onto Sam Darnold and then stopped mid answer at one point to say, I hope you guys remember how good he was this year. And we're only here because of him. If you think, let's say O'Connell was the only person was this year. And we're only here because of him. If you think, let's say O'Connell was the only person making this decision. We'll go with Murph then Manny on this one. If O'Connell is the only guy making this decision, Murph, how do you think that he would want to do it?

Well, he's got a, you know, he's clearly got a soft spot for Sam because of what they've gone through together and how he was able to build him back up. And yeah, he did help deliver 14 wins. That's why a head coach is never usually empowered to make these decisions unless you're Bill Belichick or you have total control of the roster because there is that emotional connection. And it might not be able to see things as clearly. And, you know, Kwesi and the front officer, they're looking three to five years

down the road. Kevin O'Connell's looking to win the next day. So there's a little bit of a conflict there. I wouldn't be shocked if he lobbied Sam hard to stay. And I wouldn't be surprised if Darnold really considered that because of the position he's in. What I'm a little concerned about with bringing him back, not so much because he failed on the big stage, which was clearly the case, but what does that mean for J.J. McCarthy if he's competing and does win, let's say, a training camp competition with a guy who won 14 games? He's also going to be the one that's going to have a guy who won 14 games breathing down his neck on the sideline or a fan base trigger happy to be like, they're one in three. Maybe you go back to Sam and you win 10 games and keep developing McCarthy. Is that a healthy situation for McCarthy to be in? Because he was drafted with the idea

that he compete for a starting role and maybe get it or who knows how the season would go, maybe start taking snaps in midseason. That all went away. If you're bringing him back healthy, you're bringing Darnold back, you're opening it up to competition and McCarthy wins that. Is he really free of that competition or is he going to have that looking over the shoulder kind of sensation? How do they want to manage McCarthy going over forward so as you as we mentioned all year round there's so many layers to it uh beyond performance and finance there's a political

component to it as well but um I I would expect O'Connell would do what he can to have as many talented arms in that room as he as he can it just might not work financially and it might not work for Darnold financially what do you think Manny yeah it's interesting because I I just wonder I guess from my perspective I just wonder how ready JJ is actually going to be when that time comes when training camp comes around because he's coming off of you know it's not an acl but it's it's a meniscus and it's something that he got he was put on ir for the entire season for and then we saw him on the sidelines in detroit and he looked like i mean all due respect to him he looked like a 17 year-year-old kid. He honestly did. He looked like he had lost a lot of weight just because of what he had been kind of going through with the recovery and the rehab and all that stuff.

And also that he's going to turn, I don't know, I know his birthday is in January. His birthday is this month. I don't know exactly what day it is, but he's going to turn 22 just within the next couple of weeks here. And so I always kind of wonder, does he need to be rushed out there at this point, considering what he's gone through over the last year, considering the fact that he really did not play a lot of college football? And when he did play, he was also not really asked to do a lot physically on that Michigan team that was so loaded that ran the ball and played great defense with all the talent that they had.

And he was just kind of a guy that managed that offense. And he had the intangibles. He led that locker room very well. He was a great leader on that team. But he wasn't really asked to. Jim Harbaugh never asked him to drop back 40 times and throw for 350 yards against Ohio State and against Alabama and again in the national championship game. When he was asked to do things, he did it pretty well, but it wasn't sort of that workload was never really on him.

And then you factor all that in, and now all of a sudden he's going to come in and win a training camp competition. Now he might, and he did show some improvement this past offseason with the OTAs, and then the little bit that we saw in the preseason game against the Raiders, there were some flashes of like,

okay, this kid can be pretty good. But I just wonder if coming off of the injury, the rehab, just trying to get his body back into football form, if he's just going to be able to step in and beat out a guy like Sam Darnold, probably beat out Daniel Jones in a competition. But if it's Sam Darnold and Sam's brought back, Sam's got another, has a full year of this offense under his belt. Sam's 27, 28 years old.

He's been around the block a little bit in the league now. I think that's still going to be kind of the question mark as we go into this next season of like, is JJ actually really going to be ready to just take the reins and go and win an actual competition? Or is this something that needs to be slow cooked a little bit more? And let's not forget too, that, you know, he was projected to maybe inherit a team to win six and a half to seven games

with low expectations. Now he's going to be inheriting a 14 win team with fans screaming for a Super Bowl run. That's a whole new atmosphere. And how do the fans react when, like you suggested, Murph, if they start out 1-3 and JJ's not quite playing as well because he's 22, doesn't have a lot of experience, and things just aren't going as cleanly as they did for most of this season like it did for sam how is he going to handle that how are the fans going to handle that you know what i mean that all of that stuff is going to be to murph's point about like you know jj wins the starting job he doesn't get off to a good start now everybody's clamoring for sam you know

10 months after wanting to ship him out of town right away. It's going to be fascinating to watch if that, if that house, that's how it plays out. There's a few additional things I was thinking about. One is how the general manager and head coach might look at this thing differently because I'm sure the GM, Kweisi Dafflomensa, his plan was all along, move on from Kirk, get the rookie quarterback contract and spend that wealth money like crazy and free agency. And he structured a lot of the contracts this year with the idea that they would be moving to a rookie quarterback contract. But if you're Kevin O'Connell from a coach's perspective, these win loss records, they don't come with explanations. They don't have on your pro

football reference seven and nine, but he only seven and 10, but he only went seven and 10 because he had a rookie quarterback because they changed because they were the rookie quarterback contract. That doesn't come along with that. It just says seven and 10. And when the heat comes on for you to get fired or you'd get kept around, they just look at the record, the owners, they don't go back and go, well, we had a lot of excuses for him that year where the additional layer comes in here though, that I was thinking about is that Kevin O'Connell after this season is still, I know he got out coached the last two games in line for what a five-year contract extension, six-year con, whatever it's going to be. He's holding all

the cards. It's going to be a long-term extension. It's going to be a lot of money and it's going to be, he's holding all the cards. It's going to be a long-term extension. It's going to be a lot of money and it's going to be a lot of commitment. This is the best culture in the NFL period. I mean, it might be tied, but it's definitely at the top. And the NFL PA survey proves that the way players respond, the way players want to be here. He is a, just a free agent magnet himself. As we saw from last year with all the day one free agents coming to Minnesota, which would give him a little more leeway than your average coach to have a step back year. So I think about Philadelphia a lot. That's a franchise that's sustained winning through multiple quarterbacks, which is very

impressive. One of the things they had was a step back year. We did expect it to be this year, but they had it with Jalen Hurts in his first year starting. And when they moved on from Carson Wentz, everyone, there was a lot of people, I shouldn't say everyone who said, what are they doing? Wentz is a proven quarterback. Why are they drafting this other kid? Because they knew they needed to spend on the roster and they could build it up around Hertz over a couple of years. They probably didn't expect to be in the Super Bowl so quickly, but they had the year where they went to Tampa Bay. They got killed in the playoffs with Hertz, but they knew that they were onto something. And if that's what next year ends up

being, I think that you could say, all right, well, they're competitive with McCarthy and he's taking them to a place where it looks like he's going to take that next step and they can continue to stack the roster. On the other side of that, and this is why this is such a fascinating subject to dive into, is you have a roster that's not exactly thinking about three years from now. Jonathan Grenard is in his mid twenties. Blake Cashman is in his late twenties. I think Andrew Van Ginkle will be 30 years old. Harrison Phillips is in his late twenties. Who knows who comes back? I mean, Harrison Smith, my guess is that he's not, but that's not reporting. That's just a guess.

But you have veteran Metellus. If they re-sign Murphy or re-sign Bynum, those are veteran players. Jefferson, Addison is now going to be in year three. Derisaw, veteran player on the second contract. O'Neal, veteran player. All the leadership of this team expects to compete for a championship, not necessarily a let's kind of get this kid's feet wet and hope that he's ready to play. After you said, Manny, since they showed it on TV, I always, we'd seen him around the

locker room and seen the weight loss. And I didn't ever want to bring it up because I thought it's just kind of, I don't want to go down that road. But once they showed him on TV, yeah, it's worth bringing up. The guy's going to have to gain 30 pounds back and then learn how to play quarterback again because he hasn't done any dropbacks and throws in a practice scenario since last August. And that's just, it's just a lot.

And I think that if you're the coach, I think Murph, you make a great point. If you are the coach, then you're thinking I need to get back to 14 wins because that's what we did. And I don't know if I want to roll the dice just yet and i also know last thing for me on this is that kevin o'connell values very highly development of quarterbacks and he has said repeatedly on the record i am going to only play this guy when he's ready to play so that might mean it might mean daniel mean Daniel Jones. I don't know, but, uh, I think it very well could mean that he's leaning toward the side of wanting to go to the quarterback

that won 14 games. Now, Murph, I want your opinion on what has to happen because O'Connell was asked last night, well, how close is this team to being a contender? He did not take the bait on that question or try to quantify it somehow. I mean, personally, I think it's hard to do better than top 10 offense, top 10 defense, but we saw where the weaknesses were exposed. Where do they need to be different for him to say we are truly or not say for them to prove that they are truly, because they proved that they weren't in Arizona. I'm going to be paying attention to where they invest this offseason. I think it's obvious, O'Connell even said it, that they got a short at the interior offensive line.

We've kind of been talking about that as a nagging issue for years. I mean, you mentioned going back to the Bradford era. There was know, whether it was injury problems or a lack of cohesion or, you know, 12 guys activated in a particular season, there just didn't, there's never felt like a lot of continuity. Decent at the left tackle position, but not a lot of continuity elsewhere. So that's where a space. The defense is getting older. I know there's a lot of guys that are poised to walk via free agency because their deals have expired or just because of their ages. And you wonder where that retooling is going to come. Is Brian Flores going to stay? You know, I think his star fell a little bit the last couple of weeks because in their four losses, I mean, you know, they've been

out coached on both sides of the ball, out quarterbacked on both sides of the ball. Four losses to two different teams, two teams that are still playing. One is a Super Bowl contender. One may meet them in the NFC Championship game. So that's where they measure themselves, right? I mean, other than that, a couple of quality wins against Green Bay, whose star seems to be falling a little bit, too. A good win against Houston, but the rest was making hay with some inferior opponents all season long. All of that being said, they still won 14 games and it's hard to wrap myself around that because Detroit also did and, or won 15. And it's just like of all years to have

a 14 win season, it had to be the year the Lions, you know, came from the ashes of their failed history for a season of their, you know, a destiny type season and even Green Bay on their heels. It was a tough division to win. I mean, normally they should have won the division with 14 wins and at least gotten a home game, if not a bye. And you can cry all you want about the rules on the division winning and whether or not they should have actually gone on the road. Look, they ended up in Arizona and they still got, you know, ragdolled off the field by the Rams because they were outplayed and outcoached on that particular night. Didn't matter where the game was going to be. In fact, Stafford's had a history of beating the Vikings with the Lions on bad teams, neutral site, bad weather, indoors, outdoors, Mars, doesn't matter. Stafford finds a way, and that's the difference.

The Stafford-Goff-McVay-Campbell dynamic brought a little bit more than the Flores-O'Connell-Darnold dynamic did the last couple weeks. That's where I see it. What about you, Manny? Areas that they need to address the most right away this offseason regardless of what they do at quarterback because I'm sure I'll end up talking about this a million times but if they want to finesse the salary cap they can to make these things happen but um it certainly is a different story if they have 4040 million extra. There's no doubt about that.

But let's just assume that they have enough to spend on whatever they need. Where are the top targets for you? Well, Murph kind of said it already with the interior off the offensive line. That just seems to be a thing for the last, I don't know, 10 years, it feels like. That's always just been a topic of discussion. Guards, center, center position, all of that. But also I'm thinking about on the other side, on the defensive side, Murph mentioned they've got veterans on this defense already.

They might lose a couple of guys. They've got to think about kind of filling some of those holes. If you lose someone like Cam Bynum to free agency and you lose Harrison Smith to retirement, you're going to have to probably invest in the safety position because you don't have a lot of draft capital and you can't use a first round pick on a safety. Probably don't want to do that again, Kwesi, but I digress. And there's also spots, I think, maybe on the defensive line that you might have to think about now you know Jonathan

Bullard, Jerry Tillery they did alright this year I think they did a little better than maybe I was expecting out of them you know in terms of stopping the run but you know I've said this the last couple of years even with Brian Flores as defensive coordinator it'd be nice if they had another guy on the

defensive front interior of the defensive line that can get a little bit of pressure in terms of, in terms of pass rushing situations to take some pressure off of Van Ginkle and Grenard and Dallas Turner eventually, hopefully, you know, so maybe I'm more of an impact player on that in that spot. And you're're also looking at i think you got to look at cornerback as well i mean you know stefan gilmore bless him man he he's a veteran one of the great players at his position for the last decade plus um but i think you just kind of saw like later in the year his age just kind of i, I thought caught up to him a little bit. He did a nice job, I think, for a 34-year-old, you know, really good player. I think he stepped in and played admirably. But, you know, I think you're going to need a real serious impact player

in your secondary at the cornerback spot as well because not only just to sort of upgrade at that position, but also what happens if you lose byron murphy jr to you know free agency now you're kind of thinking about trying to replace him and you're probably still going to need to add another corner now you know you get you get mckay blackman back from injury hopefully you know that can kind of help things as well um but yeah i'm just looking at those spots of that's where you're going to need to see some improvement and some investment. Also, you know, what are you going to do with the running back position?

If Aaron Jones, who's going to be 31 years old, is he going to be an option to bring back? You know, what sort of money do you give him if you do decide to bring him back? You know, Cam Akers, what's his future look like if both of those guys are gone now you're gonna have to think about you know bringing in somebody there'll be somebody out there available but you're gonna have to maybe invest some free agent money into that as well because again you don't have enough draft capital to just like take a swing at a running back in the draft like certainly definitely not in the first round, but even in the middle rounds, you just don't have any draft capital

to take a swing on a guy in like the third or fourth round at that position. You just have other dire needs. So yeah, there's some spots that they're going to have to invest in and try and bolster. And depending on who they lose to free agency, they're going to have to think about replacing

some of those guys as well. And on the defensive side, I think that they lose to free agency, they're going to have to think about replacing some of those guys as well. And on the defensive side, I think that they have to have more talent than they did this year to get similar results because they led the NFL in takeaways. And I do believe that if you have players who take the ball away, skilled players, that you can sustain some of that. But you can't expect to just take it away 30 times again and lead the NFL. That's a stat that's going to regress for sure. And they were also one of the tops of the league in sacks, which again is hard to do because you had Cashman almost fully healthy the whole year and Van Ginkle and Grenard were a hundred percent healthy. Those guys had not played full seasons before like this. So there's, there has to be more depth. There has to be more talent because there will likely be

more injuries than there was this year. When you had a long season, you went to the playoffs. That's just how the league works. And in the secondary Blackman is, is a big element of this, but the decisions on Murphy and Bynum from what I have heard about Cam Bynum is that there is going to be a lot of interest around the league in Cam Bynum. People believe that he is a very smart player. They love the energy that he brings to a team. He's a playmaker. He gets interceptions. He works extremely well with the other safeties. That's a type of player that a defense in need of that position is going to be at the top of a lot of defense in need of that position is going to be at the top of a lot of teams lists so are the vikings going to be willing to invest that much or do

they go to theo jackson but then you got to get the same level of performance from theo jackson and if harrison smith's not there then do you move metellus back and not have the dynamic metellus type of role and all of a sudden you feel well, this is a game of whack-a-mole a little bit trying to fill these spots. Can you go out and get the more expensive cornerback free agent or just even find some players in the second type of tier who are good enough to be significant starters for them or bring back Murphy? But he's got so many interceptions this year that his price with each pick kept going up

and up and up. And I thought he actually had a really good year other than just the interceptions this year that his price with each pick kept going up and up and up. And I thought he actually had a really good year other than just the interceptions. All this stuff is a lot to juggle. And you mentioned the running back position. I also think Murph that the last part of our conversation here needs to be when Kevin O'Connell goes home and he deconstructs this entire season and picks it all apart. And he looks himself in the mirror as he said he is going to do. What does he got to see? What does he have to in your mind?

Because you mentioned the running backs. I think the most obvious thing is run game coordinator needs to be a position that matters. It needs to be a position for somebody who could do the job because clearly that is not something they have. I think that the way that the offensive line melted at the end of the year, we're probably wondering a little bit about offensive line coach, if that's something that they're going to continue to go with because good offensive line coaches have been statistically proven to elevate the performance of offensive lines in a lot of the biggest games we've seen this offensive line not elevate uh talent is is a huge part of it but also coaching

as well when your team is beat on the same stuff for multiple weeks over and over again so i think there's some of that murph but uh if you were advising kevin o'connell hey here's the list of things that you got to take a real close look at yourself. What would you have on your list? And he's been, you know, he's been reflective when he's talked about some tough times and decisions he's made that maybe your play calls that didn't work out. So he needs to really examine himself bluntly when he looks at particularly the Lions and Rams games in October and obviously the last two weeks. I don't think it's any secret that these two games occurred in tandem almost because I really do believe the Lions in many ways, mentally and physically tenderized the Vikings for the Rams and set them up.

Now there was much more of a mental hurdle to overcome with the Rams because of how badly they played in Detroit. They obviously were competitive against Detroit at U Bank Stadium back in October. But why did he get so outcoached? Why was he unable to make in-game adjustments, halftime adjustments, and encourage Flores to do the same, while McVay and Campbell and Goff and Stafford just really ran roughshod and did what they wanted to do? And that is what I think he needs to look at is, you know, a little bit of in-game management, but also you mentioned a run game coordinator. These coaching staffs are so huge now.

Invest in that if you think that'll make a difference. Invest in your offensive line coach. If you feel like this is one of those championship-type windows, you should spare no expense, but you should also no expense but you should also share no uh share a willingness to delegate that as well and not be a control freak which all head nfl head coaches or most of them tend to do and we it's what's interesting you're talking about the defense you know o'connell's obviously he may have another defensive coordinator to hire so because we're speaking of all these defensive possibilities

changes and personnel and retirements and age and whatever all of that may be totally thrown into disarray if they lose florist to a head coaching position and have a new guy come in with his own philosophy and his own idea for personnel so that will dictate a lot of how O'Connell can kind of, you know, he and Flores were a really good tandem as respected coaches, almost like a co-head coach. Who's he going to bring in now if Flores ends up leaving? So, you know, how he can see how the two of them did so well throughout the year making adjustments,

but in the games that really mattered against the elite teams, the money games, they completely were outmatched and outmaneuvered. What'd you think, Manny? Yeah, I agree with everything Murph said. I mean, I think that there definitely has to be, in the case of KLC, there has to be sort of a self-reflection, and he's done a lot of that. I know he's talked about self-reflection and he's, he's done a lot of that. I know he's talked about self-reflection and, and, you know, holding himself accountable and, and, you know, making the adjustments.

But now I think we're getting to the point now after three seasons, now we gotta, we gotta see it. We really got to see some of the changes, you know, the defensive coordinator position, obviously, you know, nosedive their 2022 season we saw that sort of play out and to kevin's credit he made the change made the necessary change might have been nice to see that change happen at some point during that season to give yourself maybe a better chance to have some postseason success but i digressress. The change was made, and he made a good choice

with bringing in Brian Flores, and we've seen the last two seasons that it's been positive changes. And now I think you have to see, after three seasons now, do we see a little bit more reflection and changes and adjustments necessarily? You don't have to overhaul your entire offense

and completely change your scheme, but do you need to tweak your scheme a little bit to, you know, open up the short passing game a little bit more because of times that we saw, even last night, where, yeah, Sam didn't play well, but it kind of felt like Kevin didn't really do him a lot of favors to try and get him back on track because he was clearly off the rails, as I said earlier tonight.

You know, do you need to implement a little bit more of a short passing game? You know, we saw them try screen passes last night, but they didn't work. OK, how do you find, you know, what do you do to try and make that work so that that can be a really dangerous element to your offense as well? How do you kind of grow and evolve, I think, as a head coach overall? And that doesn't mean that Kevin's a bad head coach. He's had a 13-win and a 14-win season. The guy is not a bad coach.

He's not an idiot. He knows what he's doing, as I've said for several weeks. But even the great coaches that we have seen in this league, from Belichick to Andy Reid to, you know, Tony Dungy to, you know, Bill Walsh and George Seifert and Mike Holmgren and all these guys that won Super Bowl championships, they all at some point had to make some adjustments to what they were doing in order to stay as head coaches and continue to have success, even after they've had success and won Super Bowls and gotten to winning at a high level. So Kevin O'Connell is not immune to that. You know what I mean? For as much success as he's had these first three seasons, he's not immune to that as well.

So I think a lot of that sort of self-reflection, adjustments, tweaking things, and just getting better and continuing to develop. We talk about quarterback development. There's also a development angle with being a head coach in this league as well, of just getting better as you get older and more seasoned in that role. And there was a part of me. Now, O'Connell was asked very directly about the offensive line and gave a direct answer, so I don't want to throw this back in his face.

And it wasn't just the interior. It was just all of it, just gestures at everyone. It was the pass protection, the backfield. It was the tight ends pass protecting. It was absolutely the tackles getting destroyed. It was everybody. And it was of course, Darnold holding onto the ball too long. Everyone was responsible. And it looks so much worse when you actually look at those clips that Dan Orlovsky tweeted out because there weren't answers for Darnold to throw the ball. And like, of course he's hanging onto it too long. But the point that Orlovsky was

making was where, where would you like him to throw it? And then he highlighted some of these plays where the answers were covered up. And I think if you're O'Connell, you can always end up going back to, well, if we had just blocked it up for one more second, if we just gave them one more tick, if we just, if we just, if we just, but at some point in the NFL today, there's a reason why the average depth of target across the league has gone down and the Vikings hasn't, but you better have those answers. The reason it's gone down is because the werewolves on the other side, destroy offensive lines. There's just no great offensive line outside of what Philadelphia. But if you are going to sit there and talk about

how well, well, my offense only works if we have the best offensive line and we have this great interior pocket and we have Derrissaw playing at his best and everything. Well, good luck keeping five guys healthy, keeping five guys together who are all playing at a high level, having no weaknesses that players like Byron Young, Kobe Turner, Jared verse, those guys are going to be true no matter who you have, unless you, the 93 Cowboys are shipped in then maybe, but aside from going back in time, that's probably not going to happen in today's NFL. There has to be an answer.

If a team plays physical man coverage at the line of scrimmage with Jefferson, that can't just eliminate your quick game options. And the other guy on the other side, Sean McVay, there was a year where their whole offensive line got hurt and he switched to a quick pass offense. And they actually won a playoff game when they had no business winning one. And Jared Goff had a broken hand or something that year, and they found a way. And I think that with O'Connell, it's sort of like you can wish for the best offensive line in one hand and do something else in the other, because it just, whatever that saying is, because you're just not going to have it very often where you have a perfect offensive line. And the same goes for having a perfect defense that needs to bail you

out when you can't run the ball and you're having to punt the ball away and just hoping that your top five defense takes the ball away. There needs to be more consistency. We're kind of on three years of even in their best, it's not that consistent. We could put some of it on who the quarterbacks were, but I think also this boomer bust, it's always deep drops. It's always looking down the field and then well yeah i tried to switch some quick game but it didn't work like well that's because you didn't do quick game almost all year long uh and you relied on those deep shots so i think there there is a lot that has to be considered final question for both of you and uh this has been a great great conversation i appreciate you murph adjusting the schedule the talks and ball in the evening.

All good. Future of the Vikings. I want you to give me like a one to ten how positive you are or negative you are, I guess, depending on where you put the one to ten, that they will continue to be a top contender in the NFC one to 10 on a, we'll call it confidence that they will continue. Where would you put that meter Murph? Without answering any question marks about the quarterback position. Just assuming that it's going to get handled.

There will, someone will play quarterback, I promise, for next year. I'm guessing, yeah. 7.8. Okay, why 7.8? Well, I thought you were going to follow up with some other scale question. I just feel like there's enough pieces in place for them, especially offensively. If you are going to break in J.J. McCarthy

and you're going to slow play a little bit, this is a team that can make things happen. He's got receivers that can bail him out. T.J. Hawkinson is obviously an option. He's got opportunities where it's not going to fall a lot on his shoulders offensively, and then how the defense is retooled. There's still some playmakers there, and it's still an attitude. If Flores does come back, there's still kind of an attitude and a state of mind there that is unique. You can't rely on the turnovers, but this particular unit really never fell apart under adversity.

So I feel like they're mentally tough, and that may come into play when you have a rookie quarterback and a tougher schedule next year. Manny? Yeah, I'm about the same as Murph in terms of a number, you know, somewhere in that seven to eight range. And the reason why is I think I think it goes back to something you talked about earlier, Collar, about culture, that I do think that, you know, for the flaws that, you know, maybe a KOC or a Brian Flores or, you know, even a Kwesi may have that maybe people like to nitpick and point out over the last couple of years, I think overall there's a very good vibe and a very good culture within this organization.

I think people, i think players like playing for kevin o'connell and they like playing for brian flores it looks like they like being in the organization and you know they this is all that building yeah they love that building the facilities that they have this is this is a really good setup i think for players to come in and want to actually be here and play you know and then i think would you obviously things kind of ended with a with a pretty quick splat for sam darnold this year but i think when you look at what kevin o'connell was able to do with sam darnold and sort of rehabilitate sam's career and put sam in a position where he can maybe get

another significant contract. If it's not here, it could be, it's going to be with somebody, you know, this was a guy that was labeled as a complete bust and people thought that he shouldn't be starting for anybody. And he came in this year and threw 35 touchdown passes and threw for 4,200 yards and won 14 games. So there is something there and KLC deserves a lot of credit for that. And I think seeing that happen, seeing the rehabilitation of a player like Sam Darnold, I think that it's going to be very intriguing for players going forward who may be free agents. And when they're going, when Kwesi's going out to cook and make signings in free agency,

it's going to be, you know, this is going to be a desirable destination, I think, for free agent players. And I think that's certainly something that they have going for them, especially when it feels like they still have a window over the next handful of years to build themselves, continue to build themselves into a contender. Guys are going to want to come and play here. And I think that's really a positive thing. I'm kind of of two minds on this because my analytic brain wants to say this is a hard year to repeat. And in Vikings history, there have been very few times unless Fran Targeton

was playing quarterback where they had a great season and then the next year were just as good. 99, you know, they went to Jeff George and then had a great regular season overall. Really good. It wasn't as good as the 15 wins in 98, but 09 to 2010, bad. How about, I mean, even making the playoffs in 2012, the vibes were good and all that. And then 2013 total disaster. And then my experience is 2017 to 2018, 2022 to 2023. Each year they regressed pretty badly and missed the playoffs. Some of that of course was

an injury to Kirk cousins and Brett Favre falling off the face of the earth. But that's how this works is if they bring back Sam Darnold, you can't expect 14 wins. You'd put it probably at like 11 is where I would put it, 10 or 11. I think that O'Connell and his relationship with quarterbacks is real. I know that his ability to connect with his players and his leaders is real. And I certainly think that Kweisi Adafomensa understanding timelines, windows, valuing players, moving on from guys at the right time, which he brilliantly did matters. I also know that there isn't at this moment, the next bunch of draft picks that are ready

to step into those big roles and Dallas Turner better be pretty darn good next year because what Jared verse just did to them and what he did this season, if crazy Adolfo Mensah wants to shake uh shake that quasi can't draft thing dallas turner better end up being worth it or that's gonna look silly for them that's just the fact of the matter i i thought dallas did fine in the role that he was asked to play this year but he had eight snaps in this game jared verse had seven pressures and a touchdown so that's not a great look it's not a great look at all. I don't like to do it that way. Well, they could have picked that guy and whatever, and versus a lot older.

And so he's a fully developed player. And Dallas Turner is one of the youngest players in the league, but that better come to fruition fast. Blackman better come to fruition fast. They need these other guys that they've drafted or developed the Levi Drake Rodriguez, the Gabriel Murphy, the whoever the, the Dwight McClither and these guys, they're going to have to work out. Maybe Walter Rouse could be playing guard next year or something. They have to work out or they're going to be in trouble. And when you need a bunch of different things to go, right, it probably won't. So long-term with McCarthy in the pipeline, whenever he's going to play next year or beyond and with as good as he was, as I reported repeatedly from training camp this year,

how JJ McCarthy developed his attitude, his leadership. He showed them he could be a franchise quarterback. So, and Kevin O'Connell believed what he said once McCarthy got hurt. This is our guy. We believe in him. I don't think he was blowing smoke. All that stuff long, long term, like three year plan, I think is very high. But as far as next year, I think they're going to have to make some moves that really move the needle in order to repeat the same level of performance. So great roundtable discussion here with you guys,

Brian Murphy. It has been so much fun to wake up every morning and chat with you. You're always the first person I'm talking to on Mondays after games. You've just been tremendous, tremendous this year, breaking down these 14 wins and the fun ride Manny. You're not done. Well, Murph, you shouldn't be done either. We should be still talking playoffs, right? Yeah. Why not? Okay. Okay. And Manny now on Thursday, you're going to have to pick the rest of the playoffs just without the Vikings in it. But for both of you, you guys are great, great friends. I lean on you guys a ton all year long and you're always there for me. I can't thank you enough for being there for me, adjusting with me schedule wise and whatever else is going on. I so much, so much

appreciate you guys. And thank you so much for that. So we'll continue to talk throughout the playoffs. So much more to come in the off season. I am going to do a lot of fan question episodes. So keep an eyes out for that because there are a lot of questions to be answered so thank you murph thank you manny and uh thank you the big crowd here tonight thank you guys so much for watching and listening along with us take care everybody all right thanks man football you want to say football there you go football see you guys