Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - When is the next time Vikings fans will feel good about this team?

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

Matthew Coller talks with Brian Murphy and Manny Hill about the Vikings' ugly win over Chicago, what's next and when the next time Vikings fans will feel good about this team will be Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎵 Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here from inside a Chicago hotel. Brian Murphy back in Minnesota. And for our Monday morning, Murph, here's where I want to begin, Murph. When I was growing up, I used to listen to postgame shows after Buffalo Bills wins or losses. And, you know, I used to get upset at the hosts if they weren't excited about a win, no matter what it looked like. Right. And so if they had won the game that the Vikings won yesterday and the hosts were like, that was terrible, I'd be like, what do you mean they won?

I don't know what you're talking about. And so I, I, sometimes I see that still with wins for the Vikings, if it's pretty ugly, but I went back in the comment section of the YouTube and looked at what people were saying about the Vikings win over the bears. And this is where the world has changed because I couldn't find a single person who was saying, what are you guys talking about? Who cares if it was ugly? They got the win. That's all that matters. It was, hey, do you think we could get firsts for Daniil Hunter after another amazing performance?

Hey, what is wrong with this part of the offense, that part of the offense and so forth? So where do you stand on this? They are now two and four, they get a win, but it certainly wasn't convincing for their future season still alive though. Yeah. I mean, they did what they had to do. They bought another week of relevance, you know, going into a Monday night showdown at home against arguably one of the best NFC teams out there. Granted, they had a hiccup yesterday in Cleveland and lost a couple of key starters, which we'll probably get into as well. It's still the San Francisco 49ers.

They're still 5-1. You're still looking at a long uphill climb. I think, you know, the comments matter because context and optics do matter. If the Vikings were 3-1 yesterday or 4-1 yesterday and they won ugly, it would have been, well, just get out of Chicago, escape that house of mirrors because it's always a weird week every time they visit Soldier Field anyway. Be thankful. I mean, they had a run there for 10 years where they couldn't buy a win. They have been winning there lately. Take the ugly win, get home, pocket it, move on to your next big challenge. Well, the problem is the Vikings are barely two

and four. And when you look at their six games in totality, who have they beaten? They've beaten a rookie quarterback in Carolina who was clearly in over his head. And yesterday they ended up beating a division two backup quarterback. So I'm not feeling very good. If anything, the defense rose to the occasion in both of those road wins by making key plays at key moments, pressuring their quarterbacks into making bad decisions. Brian Flores, probably the star of both of those victories. But you're not going to be able to do that against San Francisco, even though Brock Purdy may be regressing to the mean here a little bit. This is still a really, really good seasoned, well-coached football team. You can get away with not being able to move the ball,

not being able to convert on third down, turning it over again at inopportune times. And oh, by the way, now you don't have Justin Jefferson. And we got our first glimpse of what that offense is going to look like without Justin Jefferson yesterday. They could barely get 200 yards, barely sustain any drives. So yeah, I'm of the thinking a win is a win is a win mathematically in the win column.

And what it does is it holds off for at least one more week the gloom and doom. It holds off the sell-off attitude that's going to invade this town if they lose another game here quickly before the trade deadline. And it's going to stir up all that uncertainty about the future with Kirk Cousins, the future without Kirk Cousins. What are you aligning yourselves up for in the draft? What's Justin

Jefferson going to want? When's he going to come back? In what condition will he come back? Will he have an influence in when he comes back, knowing it's a lost season, knowing that he's playing with a lame duck quarterback? All of those things you can put off for at least another week, and it bought some time. i i was not inspired by anything yesterday the only thing i was inspired by is they bought us another week yeah i mean i think that what we've seen before matters to how we view it and i also think that you know there's a meme i don't know if you've ever seen it it's a guy sitting at a table and it always says something different but it says like

change my mind and then people fill in the different things here's here's my opinion change my mind and i went into soldier field thinking change my mind blow this team out and yes i know people have pointed out that they never blow anybody out well that's not a compliment that's a really bad thing for your team. Kind of says a lot about a lot of things. Actually, the fact that you can never, ever blow anybody out since 2019 kind of speaks to the mediocrity of this team. I looked this up and since I think it was since 2020, they have a negative point differential and a team like Buffalo is plus 500 and something. The gap doesn't feel that big on a week-to-week basis, but over the last number of years,

they've been very much the same team over and over with just variance, good luck and bad luck. But overall, their point differential is somewhere hovering around zero. And the great teams are outscoring people and running away from bad teams most of the time. Although Buffalo did not do that against the New York Giants. But most of the time, that's what's happening over a season is they blow teams out like this. And if they wanted to change my mind, they did not. And they did not come anywhere close to doing that. 220 yards against the New York Jets might be like, okay, fine.

But 220 yards against the defense that was one of the absolute most dreadful in the entire NFL, a team that can't pressure the quarterback at all. And yeah, they got a couple of their cornerbacks back. But come on. Like, Kirk Cousins often had a ton of time to throw. And they still were not getting open or not timing out passes correctly or whatever it might have been. And this passing offense, it's clear whether Jefferson's here or not, it's not going to be an elite passing offense and it's not even going to be a remotely

good running offense. And with the defense, we've seen it pummel, you know, bad quarterbacks, and we've seen it struggle against good quarterbacks, which is about what you would expect from a defense that I think is a round average or a little worse than average. So there was nothing to change my mind. And Murph, I know you said it buys them a week, but I think if Kweisi Adafomens is not on the phone this week, then he's being foolish because there are teams that are growing desperate about their own chances that are coming off losses that think they need one more pass rusher or think they need one more receiver. And if somebody calls this week and says, Hey, I'd really like that. Daniel Hunter, that was a great showing against Chicago. How is Casey supposed to say no at this point,

based on what he just saw? No, it'd be malfeasance if he isn't having those conversations. And, you know, so much of the buzz and so much of the chatter is about what will they do with Cousins, right? You know, lame duck, 35. You know, there may be a team out there that's desperate enough to trade away some high assets to get an experienced, productive quarterback to try to catch lightning in a bottle. But this isn't baseball. You know, you don't just grab a right arm off the street, put them in the rotation, and say, go strike out 12 guys and we'll make plays behind you.

Everybody knows in the NFL, offenses are installed in April. Systems are in place for months. Coaching philosophies are baked in. You can't just kind of kite in in the middle of the season and try to learn all that terminology, all those schemes right away in a pressure cooker situation. And that's what Cousins is going to find himself in. And, oh, by the way, we've talked about this as well. He's got a no-trade clause. Why would he, and you to upset, uproot his young family from a comfortable life in Minnesota

to go to a market with searing high expectations and expect him to deliver a Lombardi trophy while learning everything on the fly, while living in a condo all by himself? I mean, so much for Tuesdays at the mall with the kids, I don't see Cousins signing up for that when he can wait a couple of months and play the entire free agent field, pick and choose where he'd like to go, where he'd like to settle his family, what coaching staff he'd feel comfortable with and make a kind of a measured decision. That being said, where a team desperate for a piece, maybe it's a running back, maybe it's a defensive end, a pass rusher. Maybe it's a, I don't know, a veteran safety like a Harrison Smith. You know, those guys might be more attractive for plug and play opportunities at the trade deadline.

Those are the calls that Kwesi may be accepting and should be exploring more because I don't see I don't see a lot of fruit necessarily at the end of the – at the cousin's tree. But what you've seen from the club on both sides of the ball this season and most of last season gives you a pretty good indication of what this team is. You're right. It only buys them another week of chatter that there's hope against San Francisco. But, you know, two and five is going to be just as much mail it in as one and five would have been this week as well. So I don't I don't sense a growing feeling within the locker room or within the market that this this is the stretch of games. This kind of win in Chicago, that kind of win against San Francisco is really going to change the business calculus of where they're at with some of these veteran players what their true value may be it's going to be valuable on October 31st probably more so than it would be on March 1st so Kwasi's got to

make a huge decision and then if you do package something dramatic together what do you sell on the fan base on November 1st that'll be fascinating to watch yeah I think the hard thing for Kweisi D'Afflamenza is his relationship with Kevin O'Connell is very important and if I'm Kevin O'Connell I would be saying probably to Kweisi look we won we've got a chance to beat San Francisco they're a little banged up here and why don't you give me a shot like why don't you let me try to fix some of these things that are going wrong? And I think the fear is that they beat San Francisco because, you know, in the long run over what we've seen that this team is going to be who they're going to be. Uh, if they, even if they beat San Francisco, just knowing the

Minnesota Vikings, they would lose in green Bay the next week and we would ping pong back and forth and back and forth around 500, hoping and praying that they can make the way, and they're like this great turnaround story, and then you fall apart in some game that you're not supposed to lose. And then, by the way, at the end of the season, so Joe Burrow looks like he's sort of fixed, and Cincinnati's on their way, and you play Detroit two of the last three games. Detroit looks like very possibly the strongest team in the entire NFC. I mean, Philadelphia kind of had a meltdown against the Jets.

A lot of people do against Robert Sala's defense, but they're a little bit flawed. San Francisco is, you know, head and shoulders probably above everyone else. But right there is the Detroit Lions. They're five and one. They have been great. Jared Goff is absolutely balling. And for the, you know, whatever number of time Jared Goff not getting credit for being like really, really good and winning games and putting up big offenses. I

don't understand that. But the point is that it's just so hard to see, even if you beat San Francisco, you almost want to do this before you have any chance of pulling a random upset at home that convinces everybody. But if I'm Kevin O'Connell, I'm like, give me a chance to win this game before you trade away all of my players. And normally Murph, I would not care that much about the trade deadline because look, whatever. I mean, what are you getting for people? But when it's Daniel Hunter, I, I, it's hard to see the Kirk thing, but when it's Daniel Hunter and you could get something significant for one of the best pass rushers in the league, and it doesn't look like you're signing him long-term, then you have to make this decision pretty soon because every single week that he plays,

there's an injury risk. And there's also the price goes down because whoever buys him gets fewer weeks of Daniel Hunter for this year. So I don't think because of the dynamic, they can make a move right now, but I think it's logical to talk about doing it after what we saw yesterday. Well, certainly logical. And if you strip out all of the emotion and sort of the marketing aspect of it,

it probably makes the most sense to entertain offers now. And as you're right, you almost don't go down the fool's rabbit hole of beating San Francisco and creating false hope for what we're pretty well convinced is, at best, a 9-8 slog that gets you a wild card in an early exit. Because as you mentioned, it seems like Detroit has tightened its grip on the NFC North, and the Vikings don't play Detroit until the final two of the last three weeks. And at that point, it's probably already going to be in the bag. I mean, you may be battling for a wildcard spot,

but you're not going to be battling for the division title. All of that in a vacuum is true. I'd love to know what your sales pitch is to the locker room and the market in general. If you trade away Daniil Hunter this week, you may get maximum value for him. And in the long run, it may be the most prudent move. But you've got to come up with something better than competitive rebuild. And you've got to come up with something that's going to convince that locker room to be just more than professional pride. And now you're going to have to convince Justin Jefferson that, you know, you're on the IR here for four weeks. We expect you back on November 10th or 12th or whatever the date is and lay it

all out there for the right to finish, you know, six and 11. So, and, and by the way, we wanted to sign you before the season, but now we really believe in you more. So come to the table with an open mind and hang on. We've got a draft plan. We're not really necessarily ready to share with you or the public, but just trust in us. I'm just speaking off the cuff here. These are the things that the ripple effects of those prudent decisions.

They're more than just roster intrigue, and they're more than just building for 2024 and 2025. There's a psychological aspect of this that you've got to lay out there and you got to be transparent and honest with your paying audience. And you got to be transparent and honest with your superstar who's about to make a huge decision about his future and where he wants to spend the next four to five years. Yeah. With Jefferson guaranteed money heals a lot of wounds, I think. And there will be a lot of guaranteed money that gets put on the table for him this off season. That one, I refuse to push any panic meters at all until we have to, or buttons or look at meters or whatever, uh, until we absolutely have to,

until he is publicly demanding a trade or something like that. I'm not that concerned about that element of it or even honestly, like the locker room or what the public thinks, because I think the public thinks they're not good and they should probably be doing stuff like this. But it's really, we saw what happened with Zimmer and Spielman and the coach and GM relationship. I think that's a very important relationship to have these guys on the same page. And even though we all rolled our eyes at culture of collaboration, what you don't want is culture of head-butting, a culture of complete disagreement where the coach thinks that he's the general manager and he should be calling shots.

And the old, you know, Bill Parcells, get my groceries, you know, sort of thing. If Kevin O'Connell doesn't believe in Kwasi's roster building, then we've got ourselves some sort of trouble. From yesterday's game, Murph, the big discussion in the press box, and you know how it could be. After a game, three hours after a game, the stadium's empty. There's four of us in Soldier Field hoping not to get locked in the building or whatever and the conversations that go on then but the big one is uh i'll only reveal this percentage of those conversations which is uh what is the deal with this offense i mean okay no jefferson but you're playing the worst defense like just an absolutely horrendous defense.

Is there something that you look at that you see? Because people bring up, is it coaching? Is it Kirk is losing his fastball? Is it TJ Hawkinson is overrated and everybody around Jefferson ends up overrated because Jefferson takes all the attention? Is it Madison's fault? Is it the guards fault? Like 220 yards is a red flag against the Chicago bears. It's not just, oh, well, they didn't have their day. It was miserable. They had two first downs in the entire second half. That's what you

do against the 85 bears, not the 2023 bears. Well, I think if you look at it, it's one of those where it's probably everything. And I am not an X's and O's guy or a schematic kind of guy that can point to anything, even if I rewatch the game several times. But what I look at and what I listen to Kevin O'Connell after the game talking about blown assignments from our veteran guys, our experienced players. There's kind of a lackadaisical attitude there that spreads throughout the line. I mean, you can pick out any game and say the interior line blocking was awful. You can pick out any game and say that turnover at that moment short-circuited the entire offense and jolted it. You could look at their inability yesterday to sustain drives and pick

up third downs against one of the worst third down defenses on the planet. That was what was frustrating. The worst timed penalties, some of which were suspect. I mean, let's be honest, that grounding call against Cousins, I'm not one to complain about officiating, but that was horrific. The pass that he overthrew C.J. Hamm on that final, you know, late in the fourth quarter, I mean, that could have made things a lot easier if they'd have been able to sustain that drive and snuff the clock. Instead, they're handing it back to Chicago. And if it's not, you know, our wayward hero from Shepherd University running the show, and it was Fields that got the ball with two minutes left. We may be talking about the death knell today as opposed to we got another week of relevance. But I've looked at it

from a totality. It's no running game, poor protection, awful turnovers at the worst moments, bad penalties, and an inability to pick up first downs. That's been problematic throughout the season, which says it's systemic. It says it's really not maybe that correctable. And it says this is kind of who they are. I mean, if you put up 220 yards against the Chicago Bears, I don't know what people think they're going to do Monday night at home. And oh, by the way, they're 0-3 at home this season as well. I mean, they've, the fans and 0-4 going back to the playoff game against the Giants. I mean, the've, they've the fans and oh, and four going back to the

playoff game against the giants. I mean, the fans have showed up and done their part and delivered the Vikings. Can't seem to do that at home. I mean, this is their last, last stand for the 2023 season is Monday night, but offensively you mentioned it. I mean, you can go down a list of, of there's a multitude of sins that they've committed throughout the season that seem to rear their heads at the worst possible times in the first quarter, in the fourth quarter, you know, when you're trying to build a lead and build momentum and build confidence, and when you're trying to put games away, and they haven't been able to do that, and they've lost because of that. There's been, you know, you had communication issues against the Chargers at the goal line, you know, Cousins' inability to decide to make a, you know, a freelance decision

on his own or, you know, play it safe so he doesn't get in trouble with the coaches. You know, there's all these little nuances that you keep hearing and you're like, well, somebody's got to step up and lead. Somebody's got to step up and make a huge play at the right time. It'd be nice to get a 15-yard run on, you know, third and 14. It'd be nice to get T.J. Hawkinson to kind of earn the contract that he made no bones about during training camp he wanted. Jordan Addison's looked fine and good. He dropped a key pass yesterday. But I just, as you mentioned, these are all issues that aren't new.

And I'm going to go deal with my dog right now because, obviously, he's been insulted by how they've been playing as well. Well, you're right. Jordan Addison has shown a lot of dog in him. Okay. Am I late for the rim shot okay am i late for the rim shot i'm late for the rim too come on because that deserved that that deserved everything that that dead air that we just had there yeah well uh he's uh addison you know he's like a dog chasing a frisbee out there just going up and making plays um no honestly but at least that's entertaining. One thing that I, sometimes they do that at halftime where they have dogs chasing for his season.

Yes, awesome. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, absolutely. And best to your dog as well. I really like your dog. But the offense, I think in the future, one thing that they need to make sure they have when they pick a different quarterback is

somebody who is going to be a true like leader of the offense and I mean like spits a little fire out of his face because and this goes for the whole team really but it's the off if they're going to have Brian Flores he's going to lead that defense and he's going to be that guy. But I think Kevin O'Connell is overwhelmingly positive. And I respect that, that maybe this is like a Ted Lasso world for everybody. And that's what they want. They want super positive coaches and all that inside the locker room though, you have to have some people who can say this is not good enough. And I have always kind of thought you need somebody who throws the Microsoft surface on the ground when it's not going well, and maybe gets in some people's faces is not good enough. And I have always kind of thought you need somebody who throws the Microsoft surface on the ground when it's not going well and maybe gets into people's faces from time to time

and shows that sort of fire that they're going to take over the ship now. And it's not just all on the coach to be the leader all the time. And with O'Connell saying sort of steady and positive and that kind of thing, there has to be a little bit of balancing that out of like, this is not acceptable. And, you know, it's got to get together and it's got to get together right now because they don't have that type of leader on offense aside from Justin Jefferson. And there's only so much a wide receiver can do. So that did strike me yesterday about just kind of the future of where they're going to go with Kevin O'Connell. Before we wrap, Murph, how do you think this thing plays out? Do you think that they lose to San Francisco?

They have another game before the trade deadline, which is against Green Bay. They could be 3-5 at the deadline, which makes for an interesting conversation between the GM and head coach, where one of them I think will want to sell and the other one will want to try to get back in the playoff race from, you know, the depths of three and five. Where do you think it goes? Well, I don't see them winning Monday night against San Francisco. Now let's hear, you know, how bad Christian McCaffrey and Debo Samuel are really hurt and what their statuses are going to be. That's going to be one ticked-off team after leaving a win on the table in Cleveland

because they missed a 40-yard field goal at the end. It's still got a hell of a defense, and it's still one of the premier coaches in the league. They're still 5-1. I'll still take Brock Purdy right now in a big moment over Kirk Cousins, at least from what I've seen in the last year and a half. So there's that. You're right. They do. Let's say they go into Green Bay and take down their arch rivals. I think, again, what does it look like? What does the loss to San Francisco look like? Does it look like the loss to Dallas last year or does it look like the loss to the Chargers or the Buccaneers or where they're but for, as we said,

one play here, but for one play there. How do they manage the expectations of what this game means? Because if they come out looking like they did in Chicago against San Francisco in what essentially is their season-defining game, that makes up my mind as well. And you're right, the lack of the surface thrower, the helmet pounder, the guy MF and his teammates up and down the sideline, that's normally your quarterback. Well, that's not going to be Cousins.

We know that's not going to be Cousins. Gosh darn it, it's never going to be Cousins, and nor should we expect it to be. But you're right, where is that other alpha male? I could see Harrison Smith on the defensive side. And if he ever stood up in a locker room and had something to say, I think he would command the floor. So yeah, if they do lose to San Francisco, what does it look like? If they go to Green Bay and win, what does that look like? You know, that might put a final cross of the T

and dot of the I on your closing argument, at least for Kevin O'Connell. But at the end of the day, Kwasi was brought here to make the tough analytical decisions that his predecessor either refused to or was unable to. This is the cold-blooded assassin in the boardroom you need at that right moment. And you got to maximize your value at that point. Because I don't think three and five looks any better right now than two and four. And you're running out of time at that point. And now you got to see what, what offers are on the table and do what's best for the franchise.

I think they'll give it till then. But if they lose to San Francisco, the way I always looked at it was they needed to upset Kansas city or San Francisco for Kevin O'Connell to really make that argument. And I, it's hard to see that being there. But as always, we'll see how it goes and we will be reacting. It's going to be Tuesday morning, Murph, for next week after Monday night football. But always, always enjoy talking with you, Murph, on a Monday morning.

And we will do it again soon, sir. Thanks for your time. Yeah. Safe travels. We'll see you soon. Folks, there is no busier time for me than the fall, and that means I'm always running out the door and grabbing fast food on the way to cover football.

Well, Factor is helping me stop doing that. Factor has convenient meals for my jam-packed days. They are America's number one ready-to-eat meal kit, and they can help you feel up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with chef-prepared, dietitian-approved, ready-to-eat meals delivered straight to your door. You'll save time, eat well, and stay on track with your healthy lifestyle. Adjust your stride this autumn without missing a step. You could choose from 35 weekly flavor-packed, fresh, never-frozen meals that promote a healthy lifestyle and meet your meal preferences already in just two minutes. Relish all the best of autumn with fall flavors. They're limited-time

only, hearty, comforting meals featuring seasonal veggies like cranberry pecan chicken and apple Dijon pork chops pork chops again ready in just two minutes they'll satisfy your fall cravings during the busy season without any hassle try their dietician approved calorie smart meals around or less than 550 calories per serving or protein plus meals with 30 grams of protein or more per serving. Head to factormeals.com slash purple50 and use the code purple50 to get 50% off. That is code purple50 at factormeals.com slash purple50 to get 50% off. Hey, everybody. We are back here live once again on YouTube. And unfortunately, yesterday we tried to go live from Chicago, but the Soldier Field there on the youtube page or of course as always

on itunes spotify wherever you get your podcast and so forth but we are here again to talk about one of our most um disliked games to watch maybe in the history of our lives watching football matthew collar manny hill as always and i was chuckling a little bit just before we went on manny because uh our friend jonathan har, who sets up the broadcast and everything else, and I told him what title I was going to use. And the title was going to be, Do You Feel Good About the Vikings' Win Over Chicago? Which I changed it to. But it just said, Do You Feel Good About the Vikings? And I thought, when has this ever been? Yes. I think we're going to just get a bunch of people saying no, no, no. So I changed it to,

do you feel good about the Vikings win over Chicago? And I have to say that I still think most people's answer is going to be no, but I would like to get your perspective on this Manny, because the consensus coming out of the game, I think from the reporters who covered it was wolf, not convinced my mind isn't changed. You're the same team as you were, but you won somehow by six points because whoever Bajent is, is why? Cause he turned the ball over twice do you feel differently is that can you talk me into feeling any differently about that game other than

ah okay no I can't I mean that was, oh man, that was bad yesterday. That was some of the worst football I've ever watched in there, at least in a, at least in a really long time. And it's frustrating because at some point you have to look at what the Vikings have and what the bears have and where the two teams are. And you have to think like, even without Justin Jefferson, the Vikings should, should have been able to go into Chicago you know I mean all of the the history of Soldier Field being kind of a house of

horrors historically for the Vikings like yeah all of that stuff aside like the Vikings should have gone in and and took care of business and dominated that game the Bears are not good you know they're still a ways away I think from, from contending. They're, you know, they don't, I don't think they know who their quarterback is going to be next year because it ain't going to be Justin Fields. I can tell you that right now. He's bad. He's bad. I'm just ready to, like, completely write off Justin Fields at this point. I'm just not sold. That was not good. And then I don't even, I don't even understand, like where did Tyson Bajent come from? I'd never heard of him.

And how is he the number two quarterback for the Chicago Bears going into yesterday's game? How did that happen? I don't even know what school he went to. Never heard of him up until he came into the game yesterday. It was, that was just really, really bad football. And my eyes hurt for having watched that entire game yesterday. He went to Shepherd University, which no disrespect to anybody who graduated from Shepherd University.

I went to the State University of Brockport, which no one has ever heard of either. So I relate to people like this. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody in the media industry went to Northwestern, Missouri, Syracuse. And here's me. Oh, where'd you go to college? University of Brockport. It doesn't matter. Whatever. You never heard of it. That's how this Beijing guy is like, oh, yeah, where'd you go? Like Michigan, Ohio State, USC, Shepard. Where? What?

Who? Okay. And the funny part was that he had a chance to win and he probably should have. He's got a first down. He set up. And even the fact that DJ Moore is probably the right read on that play. And if the guy didn't go to Shepherd University and had a good enough arm to throw it up over DJ Moore, he catches a touchdown. And we're talking about an iconic loss at Soldier Field.

It does bring up, though, a comment here from Carl, who says the last time I felt good about the Vikings was with far beat the tar out of Dallas. He sure did to go to new Orleans in, in the playoffs there. When is, when are the times, when are the times that Vikings fans recently have felt good about the Vikings?

Because I don't think that that is truly the last good time. Would it be here's a, here's one I would say when when they signed Kirk Cousins would be one. The day they signed Kirk Cousins, I think a lot of Vikings fans understood why they were moving on from Case Keenum because it was kind of a one-year wonder type of thing. And the idea made sense. Now there was maybe some debates that we were involved in with Vikings fans at the time that people still haven't let go. And it pertains to me and this show about not thinking that was a great idea. But, you know, I get it, why they did it, because they had such a great football team.

And that day when they signed Kirk Cousins might be the last time potentially beating the New Orleans Saints. That was a great day for them and going out to San Francisco with a chance. And I thought they had a chance going out to San Francisco to win that game, maybe like a 60, 40, and they did not the Buffalo game. Like there have been times over the last five, six years that i think there was plenty of reason to feel good about the vikings it's just not enough times i think am i missing some there manny well i'll even go back to the year before they signed kirk cousins um you know even before the the minneapolis miracle went over the. But you remember this week one against the saints in 2017,

or Sam Bradford comes in and just lights up the lights up. The saints throws for over 300 yards. He looks fantastic. The offense is clicking. Dalvin cook is, you know, is a rookie making his pro debut and he's kind of dazzling the fans and the defense looks fantastic against true breezerees and the Saints you know that was I think that was a time too where there was like legitimate people were like oh yeah this team Bradford's got a whole year under his belt with the Vikings and this system yeah this team is this team is ready to go and you know who knows how that how that season would have turned out

if Sam would have been able to stay healthy instead instead of it being case keenum but yeah i mean i think you'd have to go back you know outside of the examples that we've given you'd have to go back i think quite a few years maybe maybe you go back to 2009 when when farve went into green bay and beat the packers um i think there was still a lot of excitement about, you know, that as well. Because, you know, you beat a division rival. Favre gets kind of his second revenge win over the Packers that year. And I think they had moved to like 6-0 at that point. And we were probably viewed as the best team in the NFC at that point,

them and the Saints. Yeah, man. Otherwise, yeah, you're going back quite a few years to find a time where I think people felt really, really good about the club. I can think of a few more in 2017. One would be when they beat the Rams, when the Rams came here and they kind of beat down that number one offense that finished, I believe, number one in the entire NFL. And then here's another moment where Vikings fans probably felt great. And of

course, as so often happens, got kicked in the teeth right after this. But when Matt Ryan floats a pass to Julio Jones in the end zone against the Philadelphia Eagles and Julio mistimes his jump. Can't come down with the ball and the Eagles win that game with Nick Foles. The thought was certainly that going to Philly to play Nick Foles was advantageous as opposed to playing Matt Ryan and a team that had been to the Superbowl the year before. Now that was probably my opinion and a terrible opinion as it turned out to be a truly awful terrible opinion i underestimated what it's like to go to philly for one because that was my second year as a reporter covering the vikings beat so traveling with the team when i was in buffalo before i didn't travel with the bills or things like that so i had never been to philly before and after i

saw it now i understand it why and i looked at the numbers in this and for an article for week two, that Philly's defense is way better in Philly than they are away, which most defenses are by some margin. That defense is way more nasty, especially when it comes to pressuring the quarterback, which ultimately led to the case interception and so forth that their, their defense is way more nasty at Philly. And you can see why with the crowd and their participation in the atmosphere is what you could call it. But when Julio drops that ball, my feeling was, wow, they're going to play the lucky team here. Although they had, I've had the Minneapolis miracle, but they're going to play the lucky team here. Although they had, I've had the Minneapolis miracle, but they're going to play this sort of lucky team that got away with it.

There was a play in the Philly game where Foles throws an interception that bounces off a Falcon right into the hands of an Eagle for a big first down in that game. It's like that, that was just a stupid lucky win. This team's not even good with Nick Foles. This is great for the Vikings. I arrived at the stadium that day expecting to cover a home Super Bowl. And I think a lot of people also did. But the Cousins era has been so many stops and starts of, hey, maybe. And then, oh, no, no, sorry. There's even last year they beat Buffalo. Whoa. All right. I'm sure I did the postgame podcast and said Super Bowl contender. They have to be at nine and one. Like you can call them lucky all you want, but you're nine and one.

And you just beat a great team. And then immediately kicked in the face by Dallas. Oh, never mind. Sorry. You're far too flawed. That is how if this goes where we still think it's going, which is like seven and 10, eight and nine, that's going to define the Kirk Cousins era for me. It certainly wasn't all garbage, but there were way too few moments, including like yesterday, who can feel good about that? Way too few moments where you just felt good only for a fleeting moment about this team, or you know what I mean, right? Way too few moments where you actually felt really good and got to sustain that feeling.

It was kind of these little blips and not like a consistent, a lot of great moment after moment throughout this era. Absolutely. And I think the key word when you look back at the previous five years and now this year with the Kirk Cousins era is just a lot of frustration. You know, a lot of just like, you feel like this team should be better than what they are. And to your point, they give you a little bit of glimpse of, you know, okay, yeah, right, yeah, this is what it's supposed to look like. This is what this offense is supposed to look like. All right, hey, the defense has got some stops.

This is what, you know, Mike Zimmer's defense is supposed to look like. And then it just, they just find a way to just suck the life out of you, man. And it's really the definition of this entire era. Even in a season last year, like you mentioned, a season in which they win the division running away. They win 13 games. You get the home playoff game against a Giants team that's not really good. You're feeling pretty good about the matchup that you have in the playoffs and then Daniel Jones just comes in and just tortures your defense because

because Ed Donatell is coordinating your defense and that's why it happened um yeah and and it just it it really kind of I think that that playoff loss to the Giants last year too really just took the wind completely out of the sails of the entire Kirk cousins era. I think it's just really like one last sort of like bleep you to the fans. We got you again in terms of like the football gods, so to speak, telling Vikings fans like, Oh, you thought this team was really good. Nope. We're bringing it back to reality.

This is the same thing that we've been seeing for the previous handful of years. And so, yeah, it truly defines the era, man. It's really frustrating. And also more sick irony from that, which is if Brian Flores is the defensive coordinator last year, you are probably talking about beating Daniel Jones in that playoff game. And then, you know, who knows after that, maybe it wouldn't have made a huge difference because you're going out to play San Francisco

or maybe you hurt Brock Purdy and you never know. What I've seen of Brian Flores' defense is it just makes sense. How they use players makes sense. How they scheme against opposing teams makes sense. Even when they've gotten beaten on it the only time where i was a little confused was philadelphia where there wasn't an adjustment but then you go but what adjustment like based on the personnel they were throwing some bigger

personnel out there later the game still getting run over that was to me just a huge disadvantage but even when you looked at the chargers game they kept a lot of things in front of them and they almost caused some turnovers. But guys didn't catch the ball when it came their way and things like that. But I understood it, which was to keep everything in front of them and try to make Justin Herbert complete 40 passes. And he just did. had a good day but you know not a great day not an unbelievable day and then the bad quarterbacks have been abused so you have to wonder considering that if daniel jones being among the bad quarterbacks would have been abused by that defense and maybe i was thinking of this today this is just a total off-ramp to where what we were talking about but josh patelis is good at football and they just let him sit there last year. He just sat on the sideline and like ran after punts. Well, Chan and Sullivan played football in front of me and I don't know why. And he gave up more passes into his coverage than any other nickel corner

in the entire NFL. Well, good player impact player, Josh Patelus who had one of the plays of the day yesterday sat there and watched so not great not great uh good point though going back to uh when were Vikings fans last happy or feeling good when Blair Walsh was lining up a 27 yard field goal think about going into that and I've had people say to me that season a lot of a lot of the team thought we can really go on a deep run if you if you get that field goal because of the way they were playing the early part of the season they had that bad loss to san francisco it's kind of uneven and then they get rolled and then they go to green bay and that defense was good really good and they abuse aaron rogers and the packers down there teddy's doing

kind of just enough just enough to get a ball to kyle rudolph to set them up for that field goal and then you never get to see any more of the teddy bridgewater era in minnesota after that but as he's lining up the field goal there's this and this is the charlie brown effect and if anybody went to the history museum to see the Charles Schultz thing, there's a lot of thinking of the Vikings when you're looking at the peanuts pull the football away.

But that ends up happening. And then there's that whole thing. But here's another question off of that. When's the next time Vikings fans will be good? Is it later this year when they make the playoffs because they have come storming back? Seems a tad unlikely, but maybe,

maybe that's your answer. Is it draft night? Is it the first game of next season when new draft, the quarterback plays, like, do they have to be winning with new drafted quarterback like when is the last time the next time vikings fans will feel good about their team i think that it's going to be on draft night next now next spring when the vikings trade up to get drake may that's when

i think it's going to be now is that is that really going to happen? I don't know. We'll see. Who knows? But I think if for the next time for it to actually, you know, happen for people to be really excited about where the team is at, I think it would be something, if they do something like that, if they end up with like, let's say the 10th or 11th pick in the draft and they use enough draft capital to move up to like the number two or number three pick in the draft and they're able to get a drake may or if somebody stupidly passes on caleb williams and then he's right there for the taking and they you know they pull the trigger on that pick, I think you're going to get a lot of really, really excited fans ready to kind of usher in a new era with a new young quarterback

that's really highly touted and ready to go. And then you're going to get Justin Jefferson back and all of that stuff. I think it would really... Because fans typically, even if you're a team that did not win the Superbowl or haven't won the Superbowl in recent years, when you, when you're at that point where you're drafting a new quarterback,

like in the first round, especially if it's in like the top 10 fans are always chomping at the bit for that. Even if your team won two games a season before you're drafting a young quarterback, fans are always feeling really, really good about where you're at and where you're headed. So I think if they do something like that next spring,

I think fans will be really pumped and really excited. So Miles agrees with you on that, says, I just need a new quarterback that would at least represent hope for me that we've got a chance at winning in the future no matter what they do with the quarterback situation there will be if if it is trade up for drake may which might be impossible if he is the number one overall pick i'll be curious to see if that discussion starts to happen there is a thing going on with caleb williams where he is trying way too hard to be Patrick Mahomes all the time and is not just dropping back and throwing the ball. And he has

as great of raw skill as anybody we've seen in the last 10 years. But the thing about the prospects that were considered generational of my lifetime being Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, Trevor Lawrence are the three and Jamarcus Russell then goes in there as well as the guys who are considered generational. Jamarcus Russell just had off-field issues that could not be solved. But the other guys were very much of the, they play the complete quarterback game in college like they are NFL quarterbacks.

And with Caleb Williams, you're not really seeing that you are seeing spectacular running throws and runs that he could be an impact player, but it has to give you the and I know where he's coming off his worst game, Peyton Manning through four picks in a game. One time, Andrew Luck screwed up spider to why banana, which went down in history with John Gruden. So it does does happen and he's a college quarterback and he's still a young player but there's just this like element of why is it all taking so long uh for him to process where the ball's supposed to go or why is he trying so hard um and it might be in his head i gotta win the win the Heisman. I got to make a great play on, on every play. And I can't just sit back here and take the easy stuff, but either way, even if, you know,

whether it's him, whether it's Drake may, whether it's Quinn Ewers, who I'm very interested in because he's got that big Matthew Stafford arm that I think, um, uh, you know, Kevin O'Connell might really like, he can really throw the football. Shadur Sanders, we've talked about, uh. You know, he throws 400 yards and five touchdowns the other day, makes one mistake and loses the game because he has the worst defense of all time, but still a tremendous prospect. Draft night is a great answer, but I still believe on draft night, there will be a lot of people, no matter what they do in picking the quarterback,

who say this guy is going to be the next Christian Ponder, no matter what they do in picking the quarterback who say, this guy's going to be the next Christian ponder, no matter who it is, no matter what happens, that ponder thing lingers over people. Why don't you show me him winning the Superbowl first, then I'll believe in him. I mean, I got a message from a listener who I appreciate a guy named Seth, who sent me a DM about this stat that was going around about quarterbacks who had been recently drafted, not winning the super bowl. And I said, Brady and my homes have won all the super bowls. So, you know, I'd take Tua, I'd take Herbert, I'd take Burrow, I'd take Lawrence, I'd say, you know, I ran through the whole list and I was just like, you know, those guys winning all the Super Bowls is the problem. But I do think that that still is, is you can still smell it.

Anytime you start to talk about drafting a quarterback of the, like, what, what if it's a bust? What if it goes wrong? Then what happens? Then we're screwed forever. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, Dan Marino went to the Super Bowl, his second year in the NFL and never went back after that and played 17 years in the league and is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. I don't think the Dolphins have any regrets, you know, because he didn't get to another Super Bowl with him but I think I don't think they regret taking him obviously you know with that with that pick in 83 because he only got to the one Super Bowl and never went back but but anyway yeah I mean Christian Ponder I I think I think Vikings fans have to just kind of settle down a little bit Christian Ponder is it, it was a once, you know, first of all,

how many times have the Vikings actually, like, drafted quarterbacks in the first round? It's not happened very often. And when you talk about quarterbacks that were drafted in the first round that were bad, Christian Ponder is the only one that really comes up. You know, they drafted Dante Culpepper in the first round, and Dante was pretty good, you know, for a handful of years before, you know,

before Randy Moss left and then he had the gruesome knee injury and then Dante was never the same after that. Same thing with Teddy. Teddy was pretty damn good. And he was at that point in 2016 where he was going to take that next step. I think a lot of people felt like that,

that he was really going to elevate his game to a new level. And then he got hurt and he's never been in the same sense. It's great that he's still in the league, but he's very clearly has not been the same quarterback post-injury than he was beforehand. So the Vikings don't have a long, this is not the Chicago Bears or the Cleveland Browns where they have this long history of just drafting bad quarterbacks. And some of that stuff too, I think comes from not only were the quarterbacks not good, but the overall situations with those franchises were not good. There wasn't a lot of infrastructure for the quarterback to be successful. There wasn't a lot of stability, you know, in the front offices of, you know, the Browns for so, you know, for so many years. And I think that really contributed to a lot of those quarterbacks failing that were drafted really high. The Vikings don't really seem to have that, you know, they've always seemed to be a pretty well, you know,

overall well-run organization that, you know, treats their players pretty well and is pretty highly regarded around the league in terms of just like how they treat their players and stability in the front office and everything like that. So I don't, I do think a lot of fans should just take the Christian Ponder stuff and just launch it into the sun because you're basically talking about one example of the Vikings taking a quarterback in the first round

and it not working out because that's the only time it's ever really happened if you really think about it right i mean they've barely ever done it and that's part of the sample size and i will never believe that anything has to do with the jets or the bears drafting these bust quarterbacks aside from the simple fact of bad situations a lot of times and bad luck and okay, a really bad decision drafting Trubisky, but they were not the only people who said that Trubisky was the better quarterback. You go back, look at your favorite draft analyst rankings. You're going to find a lot of them had Mitch Trubisky ahead of Patrick Mahomes. That was not my personal opinion at the

time, but I've also been wrong about quite a few of these before. And even this year, two out of the three guys look good. Anthony Richardson is hurt, but really looked like he could play. CJ Stroud looks like a GD star. I mean, just whoa. Like I'm watching some of the highlights from yesterday, and I'm like, these are throws, man. And they're going to Nico Collins.

I mean, if you can get another receiver or two and maybe some linemen healthy on that team that man could throw the football but i remember hearing during draft time that a lot of teams had the one two three almost equal and it was all kind of a matter of preference but bryce Young looks really bad he had a couple of decent throws the other day but looks pretty pretty bad so far has the worst team and we don't know where that's going to go and so the only thing you could do is throw your dart take your chance but you can't win if you don't play and so that's what they have to do here eventually and the day that they draft that person as someone said it will represent miles said it

will represent hope for this team which i totally agree with and i also think you're very right about the circumstance that christian ponder came into and then the dude lost confidence started blaming god if i remember and it just went off the rails what was not the most like hard-nosed type of guy who would just fight through it. And you can destroy confidence in a player pretty easily. Having just the Jefferson here should work well in favor of that. And also two of the best tackles in the league. So they've, they're giving themselves a chance and which quarterback works out for next year.

No idea, but that will be the next day that vikings fans feel good about themselves unless just the jefferson signs an extension before that day then uh then we'll see uh i want to talk to you about your top five teams i also want to get to a few comments as well to read but first you know we're going to talk about manny we're going to talk about some pizza yeah you got to make little caesars the official pizza sponsor of the NFL part of your game day. Order online during their pizza pizza pregame one hour before NFL games.

Get ready for some football and fun. Choose your favorite Little Caesars pizza or pick the toppings you crave. Either way you win. And speaking of winning, everyone scores with convenient delivery of their in-store pizza portal pickup.

So grab some friends and enjoy a few slices at the tastiest hour Everyone scores with convenient delivery of their in-store pizza portal pickup. So grab some friends and enjoy a few slices at the tastiest hour before kickoff. Pizza, pizza, Manny. And also, our show is presented by PrizePix, although it has become a big part of the show as well with our weekly PrizePix segment. And this week, not a good showing from me. Not a good showing at all. In fact, I went 0 for 3. I expected Kirk Cousins and Justin Fields to throw for a lot more yards.

I was the wrongest I have ever been. And I missed on that one. I also expected Jordan Addison to have more receiving yards than 54.5. Also wrong. We'll get him next week. We'll do that on Wednesday night, I think, or maybe tomorrow where we go through our prize picks. And the reason I like it so much is that a, it does not cost an arm and a leg. So 10 bucks can, if you are more successful than me

turn into 250 very quickly, all you have to do is pick more or less on yardage totals for somewhere between two and six players. We usually do three, but you look at the player more or less on yardage totals for somewhere between two and six players. We usually do three, but you look at the player more or less and you could do kickers. You could do touchdowns. You can do a lot of different things. You just pick more or less. And then you're playing, go to prize picks.com slash purple,

use the code purple to get a first deposit match up to a hundred dollars prize picks.com code purple daily fantasy sports made easy all right um this this is good in the comments i i enjoyed this hunter said is this matthew's way of saying caleb williams is overrated and then has he answered the question for him uh saying caleb williams sure has the josh allen got to make this play gene. That's how I feel. What did you think watching him play terribly? I think Hesi described it exactly how I feel. I don't question the physical skills at all.

I just want to sometimes go, just throw it to somebody easy. This game doesn't have to be as hard as you're making it. Yeah, that's kind of what it seemed like. And credit to Notre Dame and Marcus Freeman, I think is a really good Marcus Freeman might not be a great college head coach, but he's a really good defensive mind. And Notre Dame's had a really good defense for a number of years because of him kind of coordinating it. And the guy schemes really well for, you know, for opposing quarterbacks for a long time. And he did it to Caleb Williams on Saturday. And yeah, it did kind of feel like, especially when USC got down by double digits,

it really felt like Caleb was really starting to press and trying to do too much, trying to score two touchdowns on one play. Yeah, I think it's admirable. I think it shows that he's super competitive and that he wants to win. He's going to do whatever it takes to win. Um, but it does kind of feel like, you know, and I don't know if Lincoln Riley is going to do this for the season is over or not, but it does kind of feel like he needs to

be pulled aside and said, Caleb, listen, we've got, we've got weapons. We've got, you know, we. We've got a good surrounding cast around you, at least offensively. Don't know about that defense. But you don't have to do everything. Just be who you are. Don't try to do too much. And just take care of the football. Just don't throw it to the other team um but i i think overall i think caleb williams is going to be fine i'm not super worried about it it is something that i've noticed though like where even even when they beat colorado a couple weeks before and they you know blew the doors out of colorado until the very end of the game um it it did it

did feel like he was there were a few times where he was just trying to do a little bit too much when it wasn't really necessary. And that might just be something that has to get kind of coached out of him when he gets to the next level. But I think he's going to be fine. I think he's going to be terrific. You get him in the right situation, and maybe that's not Chicago. Who knows? I don't know.. You get him in the right situation. And maybe that's not Chicago.

Who knows? I don't know. But you get him in the right situation. And I think he's going to be very successful. And I think the same kind of applies to Drake May, too. I think that he can be successful in Chicago if they still have DJ Moore, which they're going to. Because I think DJ more is legit. And Justin Fields just doesn't know how to find them.

They have players. I mean, this guy, Bajan comes in the game. And aside from the two horrific plays, but even again, I mentioned like DJ more was open and he got the ball to open receivers. I really think it's that Justin fields can't see anything and just

doesn't know what to do back there and there's nothing you can do to solve that uh purple hayes says pennix baby sounds like somebody wants the pennix uh no uh he was a lot of fun to watch he to me has a lot of the doesn't his sidearm release look like someone flipped Philip Rivers? You know, like you're watching Philip Rivers. That's who he reminds me of the leadership qualities, the total command, the accuracy is out of this world. But yet, like he's flinging it sidearm and you kind of like, oh, OK, I don't know. Maybe that's right. I think he is a first round prospect. I mean, that back shoulder throw was extremely legit yeah it was i like

michael pennix jr um you know even like watching him at at indiana uh a few years ago he was he was really good um even like the the the covid year 2020 indiana was one of the better teams in the big 10 that year and i mean personally and mostly because I'm anti Ohio state, I think Indiana should have gotten, should have been able to play in the big 10 championship game that year, even though they had lost Ohio state, but there was a whole nother set of rules that the big 10 kind of changed and kind of made it so that Ohio state could still play in the championship game. But anyway, I digress, but he, he looked really good. And I think the issue with Michael Pennington Jr. has just been he's had so many injuries. He's had, I think, two ACL injuries.

And I think it's really kind of affected his mobility. He's not nearly as mobile as he was, you know, two, three years ago when he was playing at Indiana. But that arm is really good and he's really accurate. And he's he seems to have some really good intangibles in terms of like leadership he's very humble um but very driven as well it seems like um i think if you know again he's another one of those guys that if you get him in the right situation i think he can be really really successful is he going to get drafted in the top 10 i don't know maybe maybe not uh but i could see a scenario where if he gets drafted to you know a pretty good team that's not you know that's like not carolina or arizona you know the team that's not bad um that might just be looking to you know transition to a new quarterback in a couple of years i think that could be a really good spot for him to go.

I like him more than some of the guys who have been first round picks. I never saw it with Kenny Pickett, Mac Jones. I made the argument for, and if you follow our old friend, Chad graph, he was pointing out that the top two receivers on the Patriots, that they were supposed to be there. One and one, a are ranked 76th and 99th by pff so he doesn't have a whole lot to work with there but i still like pennix more than i liked mac jones because i thought he was just throwing to wide open receivers all the time and pennix has shown that he can fit it in windows but you're right the mobility does have to be a factor when we

talk about this as well because it's necessary uh Tang brings up that it's not just Christian Ponder, it's also Tavares Jackson. That is true, that it was not just one guy came in, didn't work out. It was back-to-back that did not end up working in their favor, which I think that's where people started to get the fear of young development quarterbacks. Yeah, I think the thing with T-Jack too, because I thought about that too, the thing with Tavares Jackson,

like he was a second round pick and he was taken at the end of the second round. And so much of that, so much of Tavares Jackson, I thought was more about some, some arrogance from Brad Childress of just like, yeah, I can take any quarterback.

I can take this guy from this FCS or, you know, Division I AA school, and I can turn him into Donovan McNabb because that's what I did in Philadelphia. And it just was never really going to happen. And, you know, it wasn't a great offensive system for Tavares Jackson to have success. Didn't have a lot of really good wide receivers you know the offensive line was really good and then you know then you got Adrian Peterson he had a running game um and a defense that was really solid but he didn't have he didn't really have anybody to throw to and so that that didn't really help matters um um either but I

think you know again to me it's about having a plan of drafting a quarterback in the first round and, and really developing that guy, giving him, you know, as many weapons as, as humanly possible, which I think the Vikings would have with the next guy. And I think, I think the next guy will have a lot of success. There's a lot of interesting comments that I want to continue to get to. You guys are doing really well for yourselves tonight here. Nothing like a 19-13 win to spark great conversation from our chat, but that's what's going on. Richard says, if Kweisi does not move players before the deadline,

I'm done with him. What is the point of having an analytics GM if he doesn't make significant moves based on the analytics? I think that the whole thing of this last offseason was a significant What is the point of having an analytics GM if he doesn't make significant moves based on the analytics? I think that the whole thing of this last offseason was a significant bunch of moves based on analytics, which was to take a 13 win team and eliminate a bunch of the star players. I think of that as very analytical because it's about projecting the future, not what you just did. But the NFL almost never operates that way. In my past, I've never seen a team do that before,

where they won that many games and then said, hey, Pro Bowler, Pro Bowler, Pro Bowler. Oh, you want more money? See you later, Delvin Tomlinson. Zedaria Smith, what's that? Cash you're looking for? No, no, no, no, no. We're not finding that here. We're saving that for paying Jefferson, whatever we're going to do in the future with our salary cap. I think of that as a very analytical approach because when you're basing it

on what you're projecting for the future and not chasing the past, that is driven by projections. But I like semi agree. And also would like to point out that there's politics involved in football that if you are quesadilla fomenta and let's say that the best offer for daniel hunter is a third round pick now i think it should be a lot better than that but he is a true rental and sometimes with rentals teams are not willing to give up as much unless they're going to sign the player to an extension but let's just say that it's not that great of an offer and people are trying to rob

quacey blind knowing that he's in that position would you rather make brian floris and kevin o'connell very angry at you if the season is not on ice by trading daniel hunter for a third or just not take that draft pick get the third third back in, you know, a compensatory pick. I'm not sure if he gets one with his dead cap, but let's just assume he does. I don't know. That's a complicated system. You get my point. Like, yes, he should trade away KJ Osborne.

But if your head coach is going to hate you because you've done that, what's more important to you? And the other thing, thing too is the ownership plays into this as well and we used to never talk about that with rick spielman and we realized we should have been talking about that with rick spielman only after he was fired but that matters if the ownership believes that a three and five football team which they could very well be going into the deadline has a chance to turn it around. If you watch Derek Carr, you might believe that. If you watch Desmond Ritter, you might believe that.

If you watch Denver, if you watch the Raiders, you might believe that. So I totally get what you're saying, that they should do that. They should do it today. But there's more involved than just, yeah, well, they should do it because it's smart. A lot of times there's battlegrounds to fight for a general manager that are not as simple as just pushing the numbers button and doing the moves. Hell, they probably should have done it three years ago during the COVID year when they started out one in five. You know, like, let's be honest, they probably should have started selling off players then. Yeah, I'm with you. it is it it is a very complicated

situation and you know the the way that the game is viewed through the eyes of ownership which ultimately they are the ones that make the ultimate you know decisions on you know they they are the ones that uh that really kind of decide everything going forward. And, and they determine like where this team is at, even if it might be a flawed view because they're not, you know, as in tune with, you know, the football, football-y things that go on with an organization. They're the ones that sign the checks and you have to kind of, if they want to hang on and keep trying, you kind of have to, if

you're the GM, you kind of have to do it. Otherwise, sometimes they might just find somebody who will. So it does get a little bit complicated. And I think it kind of goes back to something that you've brought up a few times in the last, you know, I think even starting back with the offseason is that sometimes, you know, the moves that you make are almost kind of forced upon you when you kind of realize, yeah, this is just, this is, it's clear and obvious that it's not going anywhere. Now you and I can look at this team right now and say.

Yeah, it's time to start thinking about the future, finding a new quarterback, letting go some really expensive players that maybe are not a part of your long term future. Moving on from some of those guys trying to get as much back as you can. You know, people like you and I might be able to see that there's probably a lot of fans, I think, that can see that. But if the owners don't see that, if they think that there's still a chance that this team can make the playoffs with a veteran quarterback, with, you know, and especially now, like, I mean, Justin Jefferson hasn't been ruled out for the season. There's still a chance he could come back later in the year. And if there's still that chance, you know, maybe Ziggy and Mark Wilf are looking at, hey, we're only a couple games under.500. We still got a chance.

We're maybe only a game out of a playoff spot on that last playoff spot. We get Justin Jefferson back later in the season. Hey, let's make a push. Let's keep trying to go and keep trying to make a run here. And Kwesi might be looking at that saying, no, this is not really it. But he's got to go along with that, and he's going to do what he needs to do to try and keep the team on a push to try and make the postseason. So in looking at that possibility, when you look at who's at the bottom,

and there's really no reason, in my opinion, to have a seventh playoff team, but it is what it is. The seventh playoff spot right now belongs to the Los Angeles Rams. The Washington Commanders are next, then the Falcons and the Saints. These teams are all three and three. The Packers are two and three. The Vikings arecons and the saints, these teams are all three and three. The Packers are two and three. The Vikings are two and four. It's all those teams. So Rams commanders, Falcon saints, Packers Vikings. Can you beat out all of those teams for that spot? That means nobody else except for you gets hot because they have a lead on you already.

It's not a huge lead, but it's still a lead. And how that plays, you know, like even if you beat out Green Bay, does somebody else get hot? Does Ritter get it together? Do the commanders still keep finding a way? Does, I mean, the Rams make the most sense here because I think they have a lot of talent still on that team, including a very good quarterback, and they've got to jump on you. You've got to beat a lot of teams for one spot.

The odds are not very good that it's you, especially after you scored 19 points and six of that is on defense against the Chicago bears. You got 220 yards against the team that gave up three 88 passing to Sam Howell and was one of the worst defenses in the entire NFL going into yesterday. But what you said, though, leads to an interesting discussion that is also happening in the comments. Now, this is from David says all the good graces O'Connell earned last year starting to be more fleeting with me. There is a disconnect somewhere. And Tang says Kevin O'Connell gets a lot of blame for this season too. Slow play calling, terrible game management.

I don't agree with that. I don't think it's been terrible. I mean, there's some coaches out there who are still terrible at it. I don't think that's the case. The timeout issue, though. Fair enough. So there was the one game. And cute play calling too often has gotten on my nerves.

Let's see. Leonard, I hope that's pronounced correctly. KOC is not a bad coach, but he's actually good and potentially is he actually good and potentially great. The offense has numbers, but is not efficient and dominating at all. And here's what I'm getting at. Manny is when your team, is it very very good and your quarterback refuses to throw the ball more than about four yards on third down, even though the play calls do not call for you to throw to Brandon Powell for four yards on third down. You walk a tightrope every week.

If you make a bad decision, if you use a bad timeout, if you get too cute with play calling, which does happen sometimes, I guess, less trick plays this year, thankfully. I can't think of too many that I despised for this year, but you get the point. It's all exposed. And if you're Kevin O'Connell and you're going to take away, Davenport is now out for a while.

You're going to take away Davenport's out. You're going to take away Hunter. You're going to take away Davenport is now out for a while. You're going to take away Davenport's out. You're going to take away Hunter. You're going to take away Osborne. So now we're talking about who, who the hell knows who's playing wide receiver after that. Uh, Tristan Jackson season, I guess. And is this going to, is this going to make your coach look smarter or dumber? Like everybody knows that, right? And this is where you get the headbutting and you've seen it before. And I've seen it before where, when they're winning, Oh, it's best friends forever.

But when they're losing, it's well, if we could only find the person who decided signing Marcus Davenport was a good idea. If we could only decide who traded away all my players. And that's why we're not competing for the playoffs anymore. You see what I mean? Like, this is a thing.

This is why tanking sounds great. And I love it. And I wish I could hug it and have it be my best friend. Oh, hey, Detroit's good. How'd that happen? That magic land? Oh, no. Tanking is how they're good.

Anyhow, it is ugly and it's hard and it's way harder after you win 13 games. So this, like all of you guys, first impression of Kevin O'Connell is winning 13 games. And now as it's not held up with a weaker roster and some bad luck, whatever you go, well, you know, all these things are starting to get exposed. They will only be further exposed if you reduce the talent on this roster, which Kevin O'Connell could not be happy about. And that's where you do get concerned about if you have headbutting with the GM and the coach, we already had that Manny. It doesn't usually work out great. That's one thing you're trying to avoid.

Absolutely. And I think it's really important for Casey and Kevin O'Connell to be on the same page. It's vital to a franchise's long-term success. And I think you go back to last year, to your point about the winning 13 games, we also have to remember the circumstances of how they won those 13 games. They won all of those close games by one score where a play here or a play there goes differently and they lose those games. You know what I mean? At least like a handful of those games.

If you add, you know, if if if you take three or four of those games and flip the script on them in terms of just like one or two plays. Now you're talking about that team being nine and eight and fighting Green Bay and Detroit in week 18 to barely win the division. You know what I mean? And then how are people feeling about it? Then it's like, oh, okay, well, that's 500-ish team. And you go into 2023 and you have some expectations. But if you look up and you're two and four, you're,

you're still disappointed, but you're not, you know, you have, you still have a more of a stronger idea of like where this team is at in terms of, you know, being able to win, to win enough games. But I think when you go from 13 wins down to now it looks like you might win six or seven then it's like everybody's perception kind of changes even though I think a lot of the things that we're kind of seeing with this team were things that we saw last year it was just last year was a better roster and they found a way to win a lot of the games that they have not been able to win this season. And this is the result you have of them being two and four and their two wins are against two of the worst teams in football.

Yes, they are. And boy, are they bad. Boy, are they bad. But yeah, I mean, that's so that's the interesting dynamic that's going on here. And if they end up not deciding to trade all these players because they've gotten to three and five and they feel like they want to make that chase, then I think you can at least understand why, even if we know it to be wrong, because you want to avoid that disagreement and that fighting. And I also thought of another scenario because once calamity starts to creep in Manny, the wheel starts spinning. We both worked with Judd's old dad for so long that we know how to spot calamity from like miles out. Like what if,

what if the numbers like one quarterback, but O'Connell likes another one. And there's just, you know, how to rebuild the roster, where to spend the money, who to spend the draft picks on. And do we get, I mean, this is true from Tommy that Kevin O'Connell has looked very stressed lately. There's no question about it. I mean, he looks that losing is horrible in the NFL. You lose, you lose a couple of games in basketball and they're like, look,

we're good. It'll be fine. Or they're like, we're tanking. Who cares? And everybody's, everybody's on board. Tanking is just, to me, so much harder in football because every week is the end of the world. And it's, uh, it's extremely hard on head coaches. Uh, I shouldn't say it's easy on, on other teams, but I think that there's so much more of an understanding of where a team stands and what they're going to be. I remember Greg Popovich said this, where he went into last year and he's like,

guys, we're probably not making the playoffs. He said this to reporters. We're just probably not making the playoffs. I don't know. Look at this team. They get it. But in football, it's like the careers are short. The coaches get fired fast. There's so much more stress. And, you know, James says this draft is deep enough that they don't need to tank it. To me, trading Daniel Hunter and and KJ Osborne is not tanking. That would be trading Kirk and playing Sean Mannion but like it's not tanking it's simply just doing what you need to do at this moment because you're probably not making the playoffs like that's that's how it is that all teams in all sports when they're not making the playoffs do

anyway this has been a great discussion but there's a couple other things I wanted to get to with you Manny one is now that we've got essentially a third of the season, more of the third, 6.27% of this. Wait, no, that's not right. How, whatever. It doesn't matter. A good chunk of the season through six weeks. I want to know your top and bottom five teams in the national football league. And I will admit to everyone that the reason I asked this question was to see if either one of us put the Vikings in their bottom five. So who do you got? Okay. I'll go through quick. I'll go quick because it's eight 54. And I think we probably want to get out by nine, but my top five I got Kansas city, San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, and then Miami slash Buffalo.

I'm a little bit more concerned about the Buffalo Bills the last couple of weeks. I know we were bigging them up a couple of weeks ago, and at that time, they were looking fantastic. They were beating the brakes out of everybody that they were playing after that week one loss to the Jets. But the last couple of weeks, they haven't looked that great they had the loss um over in europe to jacksonville uh last week and then yesterday last night they kind of you know grinded out a win against a bad giants team um i will say the the thing that has me still feeling pretty good about buffalo though is that defense that defense is fantastic and I think we also know that Josh Allen is still really good hasn't looked great

the last couple of weeks but I think overall he's still really good Stefan Diggs is still really good and I think that offense will figure things out and they'll be fine. So I got them and Miami kind of in that number five spot, sort of wrestling for that five spot. My bottom five, going from 32 to, I guess it would be 28, if my math serves me right. I got Carolina as the worst team in the league. They're just brutal. It's bad.

Bryce Young doesn't look good. The roster is not very good. And now it sounds like Frank Reich is giving up play calling duties out there, which I don't know if that's really going to help matters because Frank, your roster is still terrible. I don't think it's going to change much. I think you're still going to lose a lot of games. So they're the worst team in the league. I got Chicago right behind them. And another team that I've thought about maybe even putting behind Chicago, the New England Patriots, man. It's bad. It's bad. And it might be over for the great Bill Belichick because that roster is terrible. I'm not even sure Mack Jones is that bad. It's just he has nobody to throw to.

The defense, I think, can keep them in games. You know, they've got a couple of nice players over there. Matthew Judon is still really good. But overall, that roster is terrible. And then I've got Denver and Arizona rounding out my bottom five there. Those are two really bad teams as well. Arizona, I don't have Arizona as like the worst team in the league because it kind of feels like they're kind of plucky.

You know what I mean? There's not a lot of talent there, but they seem to play really hard. And, you know, even though they're bad, they're not like excruciating to watch. It's like watching Carolina is like an eyesore it's it's really bad same thing with watching Justin Fields and New England's offense as well but Arizona's kind of like they're kind of fun you don't really know who plays for them but they they've kept some games kind of close and you know they're okay so that is uh my top and bottom five teams in the league so So my order, I'll start with the bottom, is slightly different than yours,

but I think it's a clear group that does not include the Minnesota Vikings because they've beaten two of them, so they can't be there. But I've got the Giants as the worst team in football. I know they just played Buffalo close. I think Buffalo played themselves in that game in a lot of ways. I mean, they fumbled, they turned the ball over, they had penalties. They just, they played a terrible game, but that's the best game of the year by the Giants by far.

They've been outscored by 96 points this year and they don't have their starting quarterback. It's not getting better. It's only getting worse for the Giants. I have New England as the second worst team. That is right. I have New England as worse than the Carolina Panthers because they are just lost. They're just completely lost. They have nothing. And, uh, they have a coach that might be worse than the coach in Carolina. And, uh, even though their roster is slightly better, but it's still super terrible. They

never take the ball away from anybody. They don't get sacks. They don't have any receivers to throw to. It's just awful. They have nothing on that team. Then I have Carolina, Denver, and Chicago. And I actually don't have Arizona in the top five because I think Arizona's been, like you said, more plucky and less calamity, less total dysfunction dysfunction and more of like, Oh, well, you know, they, they tried, they put together a decent performance against some teams. Um, I know the giants only win is against Arizona, but their starting quarterback is out. So I'm going there and it doesn't look like he's coming back soon. The best team is hard. I still think I'm not going to be prisoner of the moment. San Francisco

should have won the game on their worst day, their absolute worst day. They need a 40 yard field goal to beat one of the best defenses of the last five to seven years. So San Francisco is still the team. Kansas city to me is second still over Miami because I trust them more because of my homes, but that's maybe one of the only reasons they have about the same point differential. It's pretty close. So I don't know, but Miami is next after that. And then I will go with the Detroit lions. I think the Detroit lions belong in this conversation for best teams in the national football league. And I struggled. Philadelphia has not been as impressive to me this year.

Buffalo has had their struggles. I mean, what's going on right now in the game? I'm not watching, but like Dallas shouldn't just be thrown out of this discussion because they had some bad losses. as well but i think the top four of san francisco or i guess it is i guess it is but top top five san francisco kansas city miami detroit buffalo i think buffalo still belongs in that discussion so there you go anyway right right at nine o'clock we nailed our out that's that we can really quit whenever we want but it gets weird after nine o'clock people get punch drunk and then it gets crazy in the comments so anyway manny um thursday night i did have on my list of things to talk about thursday night i want to discuss jared goff historical comparables i really want to know who you think historically compares to jared goff we will do that thursday night i am told as of right now, this moment, Wednesday night at eight 30, when we go live on YouTube, that we will have a special guest on the show

at that time, call it a, a great reunion of a, uh, a former NFL player on the show here on Wednesday night. That's the plan as of right now. So make sure you check that out and Manny, I'll, I'll talk to you then and talk to all you guys probably tomorrow night i think we're gonna go live so uh we'll see you all then that's where you say football man you want to say football before we go football