Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - When will we know how good the Vikings are?

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

Matthew Coller answers Vikings fan questions prior to Vikings-Bears, including when we'll know how strong the Vikings really are, whether Justin Jefferson is having a good start or not, what's up with Adam Thielen and KJ Osborn and much more... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider presented by Liquid Death. Go to liquiddeath.com slash insider and learn about the Tallboy can, which actually has water. Find out where you can get it near you at liquiddeath.com slash insider. Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here. It has been a very fun week on the show. If you missed Courtney Cronin from ESPN making her valiant return to the show, go back and check that out. Also, the hardcore preview with Will Raggetts. Go take a look at that. And real quick before we get into all your questions, of which I have stacked up over the week. I've got a lot to get to. I'm going to try to put myself on a pitch count for five minutes for each question so I don't go on and on.

And I make sure that I get all of them in that I have in my file or as many as I possibly can here for you guys leading up to Vikings and Bears. But before we do that, just real quick on the injury report, David Montgomery questionable for Chicago. Jalen Johnson is doubtful. Jalen Johnson is a really good player, and this just seems like it should be a get-right game for some things for the Vikings on offense without him in there. I mean, that is a huge loss for the Chicago Bears. And David Montgomery being questionable kind of leaves the door open.

If he's playing, I think that's the one thing that you're concerned about for the Vikings would be does David Montgomery and Herbert, do they run on you for a lot of yardage? And it's possible that they could because they have so far, but that's really the only thing that the Chicago bears offense has going for it. They are the PFF graded worst team in the national football league at the moment. And actually, you know, Khalil Herbert does have a higher running grade or yeah, no, slightly higher running grade by PFF than David Montgomery so far and is averaging six yards to carry and has three other four rushing touchdowns.

But I think that Montgomery is a pretty good player. And so if he's not in there and they're putting it all on Herbert, that will also be pretty tough for them, but also a test for the Vikings and their run defense, which has been very spotty so far. But, I mean, this just seems like it's one of those games, it should be, where Daniil Hunter gets back on track. The offense finds a lot of what it has been looking for over the last couple of weeks, and they come out of U.S. Bank Stadium

talking about how they're 4-1 and one of the best teams in the NFC. I think that's how this game should go, Bank Stadium talking about how they're four and one and one of the best teams in the NFC. I think that's how this game should go. But the last two weeks were a little too close for comfort for this team. It just seems like they had to play poorly to be close with Detroit, poorly to be close with New Orleans. And if they even play an average game, which we haven't really seen yet for them, it's either been great or not so good. And in the not so good games, they won two of them. But even if they play an average game, they're just much better than Chicago. So maybe I'll end

up one day later eating those words. But you know, we'll see. Anyway, let's get into your questions, but of course, open a Diet Dr. Pepper to begin. All right, our first question comes from Scott via email. Do you think that a big reason the Vikings offense is struggling is because Adam Thielen and KJ Osborne are not as good as they used to be? The eye test tells me that if a team has two top wide receivers, the offense is one of the best in the league. Should we have drafted Jamison Williams?

So those are two different questions, I think. KJ Osborne has no reason to be washed because KJ Osborne is young. But maybe we could look at last year and say that he maximized what he has. And that could be the peak of KJ Osborne. Or we could say that there's opportunities out there for Osborne to get the ball and Kirk Cousins just hasn't looked his way or that this system is so much emphasizing the number one wide receiver that it is not really giving the same opportunities to KJ Osborne as potentially last year. I think there's a lot of explanations there, but I don't think that it's KJ Osborne being a fluke.

Having seen him now in back-to-back training camps, he can really catch the ball and make plays, but he's really a pure slot receiver. He isn't somebody that you can put outside and is going to drop some crazy moves on the cornerback or streak down the sideline, just race by somebody. He's more of a get the ball in his hands and let him make some plays. And they just have not been able to do that so far this year. Now, if a receiver is the type of guy that gets like 40 catches in a year, which was what I see KJ Osborne is doing. You're going to have some weeks where he catches seven, eight balls and you're like, wow, KJ

Osborne, what a game. And then there are other weeks and some may come in a row where he doesn't end up on the stat sheet as much. And that's been the case. I also think that they are struggling to figure out how they're going to distribute the football aside from, we want to throw it to Justin Jefferson all the time, which is good. And that's right. That's like, they're not forgetting about the best player on the team. Uh, it does seem though that getting everyone involved and maximizing everybody's potential all at once has not happened for this

team. It's been very sporadic. It's a couple of throws here or there to Adam Thielen at one time, and then goes cold for a while. It's a big play to KJ Osborne. And then the next week, we don't see him really at all. Um, and that might be a product of trying to just get it figured out, or it might be he's not getting the same sort of distribution in this offense as he was before, even though he hasn't changed as a player. I also don't think that maybe coaches look at KJ Osborne as a get the ball in his hands. He can make plays that slot receiver who's running quick underneath stuff and get him the ball because he doesn't run a fast 40 and he's not very big or super, super quick, but he has a natural ability with the ball. And, and I think if you look at Cooper cup as an example, and you go

back and look at his 40 time, which I think was one of the reasons he dropped to the third round and his physical abilities. Um, sometimes having the ball in your hands and making plays and having good vision and natural moves to dodge tacklers and things like that. It's not always connected to what your 40 time is. And that's why Osborne was a good punt returner in college. He didn't punt return well in his first try in the NFL, but in college he was. I think that he does have some good vision and some suddenness to his game that if they tried to work him in a little more on the underneath stuff, that it might offer some easy completions and yards after catch, which is what we saw last year. There were some plays downfield, but there were also short throws that he turned into longer successful plays.

And it doesn't seem like they've tried to really establish that yet. I think that's a good plan with him. And I think that KJ Osborne should be a guy you look at as someone you want on your team for a long time. His makeup, his character, he's blocked extremely well. Like that's a guy who I think can be a contributor for a while. As far as Adam Thielen goes, jury's out, but the lack of deep stuff to him might just tell us what he's going to be in this offense that in the same way as some other receivers that

don't have blazing speed, you have to transition into a possession receiver, but they need more. They need to target him more. They need to find him more. And Kevin O'Connell has talked about quite a bit. Justin Jefferson is drawing all this attention away from KJ Osborne, Adam Thielen. So why aren't they having success yet is a natural follow-up to that question. And it could just be small sample size and the way the cookie has crumbled so far, or it could continue, but I wouldn't expect Thielen to suddenly get back to 15 yards a catch. I think that we're looking at much more of a 10, 11 yards per catch. I think he'll get going in the red zone at some point. They can't be as bad in the red zone week to week as they were last week. And Thielen was wide open on a couple of plays that he wasn't found. At least

one specifically when they had the third and one and threw it to Johnny Munt, which you've, you know, if you're on Twitter, you've probably seen that talked about quite a bit, but I think both of them, this would be your best argument for why the offense will be better than what we've seen so far is these two guys are probably not going to play this poorly for the whole season. And the same thing goes for Irv Smith jr, who I'm expecting to start to get a little bit more into the game shape that we expected him to be in. So I would not, um, count those guys out completely yet. I just think that they need to solidify what their roles are and Kevin O'Connell needs to be comfortable with it.

And Kirk cousins needs to be comfortable with it. And all of them have admitted that that is not yet the case. Should they have drafted Jamison Williams? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And Jamison Williams might be bad. I don't know, but he also might be great. There's a, there's a potential for that. And one more receiver is just a pretty good model in the NFL. And you mentioned it. I mean, a lot of it comes down to in the league, the weapons that you have, can you block for your quarterback, all those things. And they've stacked up the offensive line with draft picks. And it was kind of right there to say, Thielen is on the older side. Osborne is good, but will he be next level?

I don't know. And there's nothing after that, which was made very clear by the fact that they cut Smith-Marset and they decided that they just didn't believe in Jamison Williams and traded out of that pick. Now, of course, you're going to naturally compare it to the guy that they took. Louis seen wasn't starting, got injured, but I don't even think you have to do that. You just have to go through the logic of it. Um, cause we will compare those two in the long run. Well, you know, they traded out of it. Jameson Williams was Detroit's pick. So what he does is reflected on the Vikings. I don't think it's the reverse though, because Lewis scene was a

good pick where they had their pick. I mean, a guy in the secondary, which they really needed at the time. I don't know that they felt like, um, you know, Josh Metellus was going to be someone who could fill in and just one game. I mean, um, but you could see their logic for picking him best guy on the board. Harrison Smith's older. This is a future, you know, type of franchise player in the secondary. Um, some teams had them ranked much higher, all that stuff. So I think, I think that there's a difference between looking at the Lewis scene pick and separating that between not taking another potential dynamic weapon to add to this offense that they could have had with an understanding of the circumstances that were there, that Thielen was not going to get younger and that KJ Osborne probably wasn't going to become a different player

at age 25 after being a fifth round draft pick. So good question, Scott. That's one we'll think about for a long time, though, the Jamison Williams pick. Next question comes from Moten Andrew on Twitter. Fans only question with the documented early struggles of both the Rams and Vikings offenses, is it safe to say that the NFL has effectively adjusted to the Super Bowl winning McVay-O'Connell scheme? Are defenses playing the Rams and Cubs similarly

to how they're defending Vikings and Jefferson. I don't know exactly. I don't know exactly what the adjustments that they have made in particular, but I think that you are right. I mean, there's some that you can see. When teams are putting five men on the line of scrimmage and one linebacker, that's kinda to deal with some of this stuff. When teams are using different personnel packages, when they're playing the two deep safeties against

this, because they know a lot of those routes run downfield. Um, you know, the bootleg stuff that was really popular for a couple years, the league started sending their edge rushers upfield to meet the quarterback and just forgetting about chasing the run. So you see it all the time. The RPO was supposed to take over the NFL and it did not. You see it all the time where defenses adjust to offenses and that might be some of the case that there's been a lot of copycatting uh going on in the league and so defenses had an opportunity to start catching up

and cause these offenses some problems i don't think that that is the exact issue for either team. In Los Angeles, their offensive line was number one in the NFL in pass blocking last year by PFF. I will right now tell you where it is, but I'm suspecting that it's not good having watched a couple of those Rams games. Oh, it's last. It's last right now. And one thing that I have observed, and this goes to Jared Goff and it goes to Stafford and it goes to Kirk Cousins, is that these are longer developing routes in a lot of cases. It's Cooper Cup got a lot of that underneath stuff. So we thought of it as being some, some quick game, which they did to move the sticks and to get Cooper Cup the ball and make plays.

But when I look at the tape, you see a lot of downfield stuff that requires good blocking. And when there's not good blocking, you had McVay adjust his entire offense to Jared Goff to throw basically bubble screens all the time to Robert Woods the year before they got rid of Goff. And of course they blamed Goff, who I think is a decent quarterback. But no, it was his fault. But their offensive line then the following season got healthy and played really, really well last year. And then this year it hasn't played well. And they lose Andrew Whitworth

to retirement and suddenly Stafford doesn't look comfortable at all. And maybe they'll get that sorted out as the season goes along. But you know, the Vikings are 20th at last check on that ranking. I can look again here. Let's see. Oh, 19th. They've moved up one. So they're 19th on that ranking and pass blocking, which means it's been okay, but it hasn't been perfect. But we know that Cousins tends to speed things up when he feels a little bit of pressure and especially when he's not that confident in it yet. And throwing those downfield looks, the guys really have to be open because he has to throw with anticipation, which we've talked about quite a bit on the show is maybe one of the reasons that he hasn't pulled the trigger on a handful of these throws that look

like they're there so I think when you combine the two things this is the cat and mouse game is certainly the Vikings made no bones about it we're taking a lot of stuff from that Rams offense and then they put a lot of it on tape in week one. And once you put some of it on tape, then everybody's going to game plan for everything you're doing. And that's something that O'Connell has to learn week to week is how teams are adjusting to them. And then he has to adapt.

He has to find what works for his players. More than anything, I just believe that it's a complicated offense that asks a lot of the quarterback and receiver to trust each other and to be on the same page. And as of this moment, as of recording this before the bears game, before Kirk is going to throw for 340 yards or whatever, uh, it just hasn't seemed like they have been in a lot of cases that they just haven't been fully on the same page there's throws that are going to receivers who stop on routes or in irv smith's case the other day he was going on a go route down the sideline cousins threw it as if it was going to be a hitch after kind of hesitating there's just a little bit of hesitation in a lot of players games, but there

are plays there to be had. And I tend to think that they will regress like in a good way where, you know, they're going to improve and find more of those open receivers and be on the same page a little bit more as the season goes along. But that's the test is yes. Defenses have a good idea of how to play Kirk cousins at this point. They've been doing it for a long time and yes, they have had a lot of tape to look at with the Los Angeles Rams and they're ready for this. Knowing that the Rams are as good as they are, their teams are, are, you know, figuring that everyone's going to be stealing these concepts and so forth. But the concepts, at least on tape, look like they should be working, but they just haven't

quite come to fruition yet. Whether they do or not may tell us about Kevin O'Connell, how much he's able to adjust, or it may tell us about Kirk Cousins, whether he's able to rise to the challenge of taking on so much from the Kevin O'Connell and Rams offense. But it's a very, it's a very much valid question is, is some of this stuff been figured out? I do think also that they played a good defense last week against New Orleans, um, that they've got some players there who have been in that system for a long time and that know what they're doing. And they created some pressure at the right moments and the Vikings move the football a lot

and then just didn't get it into the end zone. So the day ends up maybe looking even a little worse than it was, but yeah, I think that's, it's something to watch as the season goes along is just how they kind of maneuver around what defenses are doing to them as they run, like you said, the most trendy offense in the league. Folks, maybe you've been a little confused when you're in the water section of the grocery store and you see what looks like tall boy beer cans. Well, that is water and it's called liquid death, which coincidentally is not only not deadly, but also delicious and comes in mountain spring style or sparkling in three different flavors. Why is water called Liquid Death? Well, because it will brutally murder your thirst first and because they are infinitely recyclable tall boy cans, which are helping to bring death to plastic bottles. Also, Liquid Death donates 10% of their profits from each can sold to help kill

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so go get liquid death at wherever you do your grocery shopping 7-eleven hy-v wherever it might be or check out where you can find it at their store locator tool at liquid death.com slash insider that is liquid death.com slash insider. That is liquid death.com slash insider. All right. Next question comes from always cash on Twitter. Fans only question here. I have a conspiracy theory. Ooh, love a conspiracy theory on fans only on why KOC and Kirk haven't clicked. KOC and KAM, Kweisi Adaflomensa, wanted to dump Kirk, but the Wilfs wouldn't let them. So KOC is running the offense without worrying as much about what Kirk is comfortable with. So as they soft tank for a draft pick, the natural tank is what it's called on this show.

Plus at the end of the year, they can go to the Wilfs and say, see, he's just not good enough to win with. This is mostly tongue in cheek, but to Eric Eager's point about Kevin O'Connell, not running a check down short of the sticks on third downs. Oh yeah.

Eric pointed that out on Twitter that they ran deeper routes on, on a third down and where cousins didn't have a check down. It does seem like they're taking off the Kirk training wheels. It kind of goes back to what was discussed in the off season. If they lean into the Kirk, he either balls out or it's more apparent how limited that he is and making it easier to move on from him next year. Yeah, I have seen already, though, Kevin O'Connell go to the, we're going to run under center, we're going to run the boots, we're going to put C.J. Hamm out in the field,

we're going to establish the run. I mean, it was a lot of Zimmery stuff last week. I mean, running Delvin Cook 20 times for 76 yards is the most Zimmer thing I've ever seen because I think O'Connell understands some of the things he needs to do with Cousins. And I actually give Kevin O'Connell credit for this. Now, I know that this is a conspiracy theory. You're acknowledging that it's tongue in cheek. But I think that there can be truth to what you're saying without them like intentionally tanking Kirk or intentionally putting so much on his

plate that he wouldn't be able to handle it. So they can say, yeah, well, we got to move on from him. I think there's a little bit of both though, because I have been impressed at O'Connell immediately realizing I can't do everything I want, or I have to do some of the things that I know have worked for him in the past. And that is under center running, playing off the run with, with the play action pass. I even asked Kevin O'Connell about this, about cousins under center. And he talked about trying to use it as a weapon that, you know, teams expect you to run under center, but this is a quarterback who is actually really effective under center. So he's made that adjustment right away,

but there's also a part of this that is truth in what you're saying, that they're not trying to pile on so much that he fails on purpose, but they're going to implement their offense that they believe works. And if we get to the end of the year, and I very much doubt this will happen, but if we get to the end of the year and they're nine and eight or eight and nine and cousins has an 87 quarterback rating, they have the easiest conversation to have at that point to say, we need to draft a quarterback to play with Justin Jefferson who can run my full offense. That's, it's probably setting up that way eventually

down the road that that's going to happen. And it's either going to be this year or next year based on the age of Kirk Cousins. I mean, I tweeted about this today about the age of Russell Wilson and whether that's playing into some of his decline. But the expense of Kirk Cousins, the age of Cousins, the weaknesses that he has in his game and whether he can make the throws with his physical skills or make plays out of structure that they want him to make. And I think that they already have predetermined this for the most part, unless he really changes their mind. But that doesn't mean that you try not to have a great season this year. I think that they're playing both sides of the

fence, that O'Connell is going to pull out all the stops he possibly can with this schedule ahead of them and the opportunity ahead of them to throw the ball to Jefferson and ride him all the way deep into the NFC playoffs. That is a real possibility. You can go for it in that way without like changing your long-term plan and knowing what you have there. Now, if they go to the NFC championship, maybe it's a different conversation. If they go to the Superbowl, it's absolutely a different conversation, but even look at San Francisco, they were in the NFC championship. They still said Jimmy Garoppolo is not quite good enough and is going to be too

expensive in the future for us to deal with. Now they're glad they kept him at this moment, but they still made that call. And I think with the Vikings in the long term, they probably have that call and maybe the USA Today article indicated as much. They may have that call figured out already and then they're seeing how far they can ride this. So I think it is smart and I think whatever the opposite is, that humility would be the opposite of arrogance. There's humility in adjusting your offense for your quarterback as opposed to you saying, what? These plays work. You should be able opposite of arrogance. There's humility in adjusting your offense for your quarterback, as opposed to you saying what these plays work, you should be able to run them. I think that bad coaches do that. Bad coaches are like, what? My system is brilliant. What's your problem? And, and I haven't seen that with O'Connell yet. I think he has to do a delicate

dance of sticking with what he thinks works. But also if something clearly isn't clicking with cousins, they're going to have to take that out. And that's what we're going to see over these next couple of weeks. I think at the bi-week and that game against Arizona coming out of the bi-week will be really telling for where this offense is. Next question from LA Vikings fan. How likely does it seem that Viking special teams coach will start, uh, Matt Daniels will start getting consideration for a head coaching position. Special teams has been so strong too early for him to be considered any talk around this. Um, well, Matt Daniels is, is pretty young. So I would say that, um, I'll look it up right now.

How old is Matt Daniels? Is he maybe, uh, 33, Matt Daniels is 33 years old. So he is on the young side. It would be pretty surprising if Matt Daniels went from special teams coordinator to NFL head coach from age 33 to age like, 35 anytime soon. But long-term, yes, I see that. I see that in Matt Daniels. There's just something about certain people that have a presence. They have a leadership element to them. They have people that buy into what they're saying. They know how to connect on

a deeper level. And also the guy went to Duke and he seems to be pretty bright. I mean, the kickoff stuff, I'm working on an article about the kickoff stuff. And by the time you're listening to this, you may have seen the article. Uh, but even the, even the idea to kick the ball off into the corner, having done the research, having seen that that works, and getting the guys to buy into that. Like, hey, we're going to try something here, and it really rests on you executing it. Because if we don't execute it, it's going to be a big problem. But if we do, we are going to really help our defense, which is actually what has happened by expected points added. They have had every ball that has been returned has been below the expected points added of

kicking the ball out of the back of the end zone. So they've executed it extremely well. It's been coached extremely well. And then you just get a feeling for somebody who's a little on the creative side, has all the leadership qualities, has all the intelligence and look at someone like John Harbaugh, who is a special teams coach and has become in my mind, one of the best NFL head coaches ever. Uh, when you look at his track record and, and still to me is at the cutting edge of all NFL head coaches which you know sometimes his fourth downs are going to fail but still I think if you're drafting coaches a former special

teams guy John Harbaugh is going to go toward the top of that list and special teams what's interesting about that is you are more of a manager of many phases of the game. It's kickoff, it's field goal, it's punt, it's kick return. There's a lot of different moving parts as the special teams coordinator. And I think a lot of teams are just like, hey, don't mess it up. But Matt Daniels has really taken this thing and made it his and given it his own stamp. And that's something you see of guys who become head coaches. Yeah. I think that eventually this is somebody who needs to be talked about with that type of, with that type of hype. I do think that I don't think it should always just be offensive

coordinators because sometimes they're good and sometimes they're Nate Hackett. Sometimes they're bad. You know, it's just, I don't know that there's ever been a correlation between offensive guys work, defensive guys work, whatever. And there's a few examples of the special teams, but I think the special teams guy sees everything. He sees the clock, the game management, all that stuff that he's involved with that gives him a really interesting perspective on the potential to lead. And really what a head coaching position is, is just leadership. It's leading a lot of different

people. We love to talk about, well, this offensive minded guy, he's got the perfect scheme and everything else. So we need to hire him, but you're a manager. You're managing so many people and Matt Daniels just knows how to get bring people together even the idea of giving these guys hats that say special teams for every guy that's on special teams you might kind of roll your eyes a little but I also think he's saying don't look at special teams like it's second fiddle look at it like this should be what you take pride in and I think it's reflective of that in the performances of the players. And when you have players buying into what you're saying,

that's when you catch the attention of people who are looking for their next head coach. And again, I mean, the guy went to Duke, so pretty, pretty bright guy, very impressed with Matt Daniels. Uh, all right. Next question from Jeff says by any major uh any measure justin jefferson is struggling with the way teams are playing him he's not getting enough separation for kirk cousins to target him as before the frustration has been showing on the field or red flags to me and that seems as though he's blaming coaches or play calling or kirk when he ought to be looking to work with everyone and find ways to get open. In other words, it's mostly on him. Would you agree? I don't really agree with anything you said there, including the first part about any measure. He's not struggling by any measure at

all. I mean, last year through the same number of games, he had fewer yards. And right now, I mean, going into this week, the only receiver with over 400 yards, ironically was Stefan digs and Justin Jefferson has 393 in yards per game. This is the highest mark of his career. He also has a higher catch percentage than last year as well. So then the numbers on him, uh, are just as good as they've ever been. I think it's the order of operations because he had two down games in a row sandwiched by two phenomenal games. Um, but that's going to happen. Like there, there are down games for star receivers who end up with a hundred catches all the time. Uh, I, I, I see him getting

open on the film and cousins not getting them the ball, which means to me that, you know, he's going to get it eventually on some of those plays. There's always going to be those Kirk times where he doesn't get the ball there. Um, that would happen with any quarterback, but, uh, yeah, the frustration part. Now that's interesting. The frustration part is interesting because Kevin O'Connell told him to stop showing the world he was frustrated. And I actually asked Adam Thielen about that. And Thielen said, basically, look, it's crazy game out there.

And everyone gets frustrated during a game sometimes. And when a wide receiver shows it, everyone's going to look, Oh, is he mad at the quarterback? Does he hate the scheme? What's the problem? What's going on? And what Thielen said, as long as they can come over to the sideline and work out what happened, then it's fine. Like to have people be frustrated. You don't want KJ Hamler throwing his helmet after Russell Wilson doesn't find him. And you don't want feeling and cousins yelling at each other and pointing on the sideline and having a screaming match. You want them to be able to resolve the issues. But I think it's unfair to Justin

Jefferson that every time he shows any emotion during a game, you get Jefferson's going to demand a trade. Like stop with that. Like, yes, wide receivers have long been frustrated with Kirk cousins, not just throwing it up to them at this point. Everybody knows he's not going to do it. Uh, but when you look at his numbers from last year, he started out with a lot of short passes, started pushing the ball down the field a little more later in the season. Um, but yeah, I, I don't think that, I don't think that anything is Jefferson against the lions had a bad game. He dropped a couple of passes that he normally catches. And that one, I would say, yeah, he didn't really look like himself that day,

but the rest of the season has been totally fine for Justin Jefferson. Jefferson is not really an issue here for me. Clearly they could get the ball to him. They've been able to do that in two out of the four games and they've won both of those games. And he's just been huge in the offense. It's really, can you distribute it to everyone and have a consistently effective offense?

But no, I don't think that there's a major issue with Jefferson at this moment that we knew that defenses were going to adjust the way they play to him. They had to make an adjustment back last week. They tried to have Marshawn Lattimore shut him down and he beat him in a key moment. Receiving goes in streaks like home runs sometimes where it's a big game, a little bit of a down game. Like people aren't catching exactly what would you have to get to get, you know, if you had 1700 yards would be a hundred yards a game. Well, no one catches exactly a hundred yards a game, which by the way, that's almost what Jefferson is on pace for. If you like those

type of statistics right now, he's almost on pace for a hundred yards a game. And, and I can also confirm that Jeff's email and I, and Jeff, I love you, man. I know Jeff emails a lot and is a big fan of the show and I really appreciate all the support. So I'm not trying to dunk on you, Jeff. It's just that the numbers say, and you sent this email after the new Orleans game, which is why I was kind of surprised by it. I don't think that Jefferson's role is going to be a huge issue here. And I think he's going to have those moments during games

and you have to let him have some of those moments. But communicating with Kevin O'Connell about that is probably important. I just think it's really about the rest of the offense. Can they run the ball? Can they get the ball to KJ Osborne? Can Irv Smith get rolling? Can they block a little better in the interior? These are the big questions of the offense. I don't think that Jefferson's doing anything differently. And I don't think that, um, I don't think he really has anything to talk about with himself

that he should be doing a whole lot differently. It's just getting on the same page as Kirk Cousins in a lot of instances. Let's see. Okay. Alan from Delaware here, email. Given that Kirk Cousins isn't very mobile, should the Vikings ever consider drafting or developing a wildcat quarterback separate from the backup quarterback? New Orleans seems to make it work.

Taysom Hill. Thanks for the great work. Thank you, Alan. You know, Taysom Hill's a hard guy to find. That's the one thing about that. Like, is it in theory, is it a good idea? Yeah, it's a good idea. But remember they tried to do it with

a Jarek McKinnon and he tried to throw the ball once and it was almost picked off. He had a couple of successful wildcat runs, but it wasn't really something they could rely a whole lot on. Um, I liked it though. I liked the idea of taking someone like Jarek McKinnon, who had played a little bit of quarterback in a option system and then saying like, Oh, this guy's in and he can make a play because it's something totally different and it's good in the red zone. And you can line the guy up at receiver and run him in and have him be the wildcat quarterback. Yeah. It's just, you remember like when Taysom Hill had a good year for the Saints and was effective

in that role. And then every player in the draft who came out, that was a running quarterback. They, the analysts talked about, could this guy be like a Taysom Hill for that team? I can't find another Taysom Hill on another team. If you know of one, let me know, but I haven't seen one. Is it an advantage if you could have someone like that? Sure. Yeah. If you have someone even as a gadget receiver who could come back under center and make a play or do a trick play or something like that, where you toss him the ball and he throws

it. Certainly. Yeah. And if they can find that player in college football and develop them, then great. But normally you have to do other things. You can't just be the backup Wildcat quarterback. You have to be a special teamer, which Taysom Hill is great at. You have to be a tight end, a receiver, a running back. And if you're drafting someone as a quarterback, it's just very rare that they can do other things. Every once in a while, every once in a while, you'll have that guy who is something else after he plays receiver,

or I'm sorry, after he plays quarterback, and then he goes to receiver or defense. Every once in a while, you see that in the NFL, but not too often. So the answer is, should they keep their eyes out for somebody who can do something like that because it's an extra option. Yeah. Um, also the future might be a running quarterback anyway, so that could be another thing to bring up here, but it's, it's been a weapon for them for a long time and it's kind of made their offense unique. And I like it just that, that kind of player who can do a lot of different things. All right. This one comes from a Mitzi via email. She says, we talk a lot about the head coach coordinators and players performance compared to last year, but what, uh, but at what

point do we attribute those differences to position coaches? How much do we think the O-lines improvement is due to new coaches? Likewise, how much do we think the O-line's improvement is due to new coaches? Likewise, how much do we think the run game struggles are due to not having Kennedy Palomalu, who seemed to be loved by the entire running back room? Yeah, that's a really great question that I think is almost impossible to answer outside of the offensive line coach. So when it comes to receivers or running backs, like think about this, the Vikings receivers last year were probably top five unit in the NFL last year.

And they have the same position coach. And this year they're kind of struggling so far long-term. It'll probably be okay, but they're struggling a little bit so far. It's still the same wide receiver coach in Keenan McArdle. Is it his fault? Probably not. Um, offensive line coaches have actually been proven to over a long period of time, increase the performance of their players, not by leaps and bounds where you're making guys into hall of famers, but it was sort of centered around Dante Starnecchia, who was the offensive line coach for the Patriots. And he was kind of like one of those legendary longtime offensive line coaches. And you could see where players were performing better when they were under him than anybody else in the longterm. So that definitely has an impact and Chris Cooper might be better. I mean, remember last year, the whole debacle with Phil Rauscher having to take over and Rick Denison at

the last minute, not getting vaccinated. So he had to work from home, but I mean, how much can you really teach offensive linemen from home? That's pretty tricky there. Uh, that I think played into it. I also think when Tony Sperano passed away, that was a huge deal for them. I mean, that guy meant a lot to those offensive linemen, these position coaches, as you said, with Kennedy, Paul Amalu, they become very close with the players. I mean, they, a lot of times they become like the closest confidant and the coaching staff to their players. And those coaches kind of represent their players in the meetings with the head coaches and say, here's how my guys are

feeling. They're that go between the players and the head coach is a really important role. But so much of that happens behind the scenes, whether it's coaching up the players in a practice, whether it's going to the coach and saying, we need to adjust X, Y, and Z, whether it's scouting in the draft and giving their opinion on certain players that will fit or not fit. The position coaches are hugely important, but on the outside, we just don't know who's good and who's not. We really don't. And so that's why it's hard to say, but I think with an offensive line, you can point to some improvements being connected to that guy because usually where that shows up is just how on the same page they are.

So they're run blocking pretty well so far this year by the numbers. I mean, that, that speaks well of the offensive line coach. I think if someone just gets trucked and beat, well, there's nothing the offensive line coach can do, but if they're coordinated together as a unit, if they're picking up stunts and twists up front, uh, really well, they're communicating really well. Like those things they're developing players are getting better. Like those things say a lot. I think about an offensive line coach. That's the only one from the outside that I would feel any type of confidence talking about. And even then it's still a little dicey because it's always the talent. And that's what

I would say about the running back room as well is yeah, no, they definitely love Kennedy Palomaro. That was a tight relationship, but I think that the running game is just secondary in this offense and that could be part of it. And what could also be part of it is just age coming for Delvin cook, uh, him being beat up. Like there's so many factors that go into it. That one's hard to say, but that is a tremendous question. That is a tremendously difficult question to answer, but it's a, it's a really smart question is like, how can we connect? Did they lose people behind the scenes that may have impacted what they're doing? Um, and in some cases we can kind of guess and in others we can't,

uh, this comes from Joe W fans only question. I feel like Matt Lafleur had a rocky start to his coaching too, but was winning. How does KOC's first quarter compare to Matt LaFleur's? Well, I can look at that. I don't remember that being the case. Maybe I'm just misremembering, as Roger Clemens once said. And I do know that their offense did not like explode and Rogers didn't win the MVP in his first year in 2019, they had the 15th ranked offense in 2019 and the ninth ranked defense. And they ended up going 13 and three. So clearly he didn't struggle that much uh let me let me take a look here uh as far as yeah yeah i

don't know um they started out three and one just like the vikings their only loss was a seven point loss to philly though then they ended up going seven and one yeah yeah pretty pretty hard to find any issues here they they went seven and one start, and there's a lot of big numbers here that they put up. 42 against the Raiders, 31 against the Chiefs, 27 against Denver, 27 against Philly in that stretch. You know, they had some really bad games that dragged down their numbers. They had a couple of, like, major stinkers. One game against the Chargers where they had 184 total yards. And then two weeks later against San Francisco, 198 total

yards, but the rest, I mean, they were putting up 20 plus all the time. Yeah. I mean, I know that that, that was definitely part of the narrative because there was an adjustment for Aaron Rodgers, but I also think that you saw a much more comfortable Aaron Rodgers in that year where there was a transition between fully getting the offense. He only averaged seven yards per pass attempt, which is, you know, kind of unusual for him a little bit. Quarterback rating under a hundred. Wasn't quite the MVP, just barely over 4,000 yards. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think there was a bit of a transition there and, and I expected that myself with this. I mean, the way that the players talked about O'Connell's offense, I did expect a transition

and a transition phase and to escape that at three and one, I think is, is really good for them, but now it's what happens next. So as I was just talking about with Matt LaFleur, and if you want to make that comparison, um, it is Aaron Rogers. So it's hard to compare anything in that way, but they really started to take off after the first quarter of the season, they won the next four games, put up big numbers. They had a 440 yardyard offensive day against Detroit, although, you know, you and I could do that. But they just had, like, big games in the second quarter of that season. And then to end that season, they just won against everybody.

There were some close games, but they just won and won. So, yeah, that'll be, I think think the number one thing that we're really focusing on is just how this next quarter of the season goes because the opportunity is there. So will they take advantage of it and go on a run like green Bay did in Matt LaFleur's first year? Uh, this one comes from SD Spencer on Twitter. Um, let's see, will we think Justin Fields is just like case Keenum with more draft stock in five years? Uh, I don't know. Probably not. I mean, I think Justin Fields is either

going to suddenly get it and be really great or never get it at all. And I'm leaning toward never get it at all because he's so far away right now, but those are the only options and what Chicago tries to do after this. Now, that is a great question because if fields continues on this road, they have to draft a quarterback. So do they trade fields away? Do they let there be a competition and see what happens? Or do they wait another year because their roster really isn't ready to win to draft a quarterback, but I don't see how you could have, and I think they'll have a top five to seven draft pick. I don't see how you could have a top five to seven draft pick and not take a quarterback in a draft that has so many good options. Um, but yeah, I don't, I think that

fields doesn't really even profile as a backup long-term if, because he isn't somebody that can just execute an offense case. Keenum could just execute an offense, um, case Keenum right now, if the question was meant like his case Keenenum better? Yeah, right now Case Keenum is much better than Justin Fields. His own backup is probably better, Trevor Simeon, at this moment. I mean, they're putting up historically bad numbers. And Chicago, this is the thing about them, though. Because they didn't lean all into this, they don't have to be nervous about it. If it doesn't work out with Fields, on to the next one. And that's the position they've put about it. If it doesn't work out with fields onto the next one.

And that's the position they've put themselves in, but it doesn't look great. Um, okay. Maybe I can get one more in here and hopefully people are listening this far into it. Um, okay. Uh, two, two quick ones, two quick ones. Um, this comes from Mike says, I have a podcast question. How does it work to cover away games? Do teams recognize each other's press passes? Can you walk, uh, walk us through the logistics? I'm interested in that business side. Okay. Yeah, sure. Um, so the PR staff of the Vikings gives a list to the opposing team of the media on their side. That's traveling to the opposing city. So me, Ben Gessling, Andrew Kramer, and they send all the names to the opposing team.

They print out press credentials. They mail them to the Vikings or they email them and print them out. I actually don't know for sure. I think they mail them though, but they send them to the Vikings and then the Vikings PR staff gives them to us and we are responsible for not losing them in route to wherever we're going. Uh, that's how that works. And then when you go to the other team, uh, to their, uh, media entrance, everyone will have the same looking credential because our road credentials will look just like, uh,

all the other ones for the people who have like a temporary one game pass. So that's kind of how that works. Not super complicated, have never really had any problems with it. And let's hope it stays that way. But yeah, yeah, pretty simple. Just the other team gets a list and then they print out all the names and that is it. All right, Dempsey, you get the last question of the day here. Uh, you are what your record says you are. How many games in does that become true? Four games in a lot of records seem to reflect strength of schedule rather than talent or just randomness and luck. Yeah. With all the two and two teams and the bears, like the worst two and two team.

Well, the Falcons are a pretty bad two and two team as well. So yeah, I think your, you are who your record says you are is really an end of the season thing before you could be truly, you know, it's like last year. Well, what if they won those close games? Well, they didn't, you don't get any prizes. Sorry. Like you are what your record says. You're not a playoff team. You know how I know you're not in the playoffs. Very simple. But as far as figuring out where a team is going to go, I really believe that the middle part of the season is the truth telling part that usually teams are still pretty healthy and they've had time enough to adjust because you know, the Vikings aren't the only team doing this. Half the league is doing this where they're saying, well, we weren't on the page, same page with this and defenses have adjusted to that.

And what are we going to do? And so they're all working 24 seven to figure that out. They probably spent the flight back from London trying to figure that out. What didn't work here? How can we adjust it? And these coaches, some of them are bad at their jobs. Most of them are pretty good, though. And that's where you get the teams that start to separate themselves who's actually good who's not that good and the next four to six games will really tell us that and somebody looked at this a few years ago like which quarter of the season tells you the most truth and i believe it was the third quarter that was the most predictive of where teams ended up and how they did in the playoffs. And that makes a lot of sense that down the stretch, things can get weird.

There's week 18 games that don't matter and all sorts of stuff. There's division games which tighten things up a little bit. So this next four games is really big for me because, OK, Chicago is a team they should run through. But, you know, Miami is formidable in a lot of ways, even if Teddy Bridgewater is playing instead of Tua and Arizona has a really good quarterback who can win games on his own. And then you have what the Washington game where that one's going to come along with a lot of pressure. They should really demolish Washington. I think they will. And then after that, things get pretty difficult. Then it probably isn't until then though, I guess, you know what? I want to

take it back. I want to see what happens here, but it could still be a little bit, and I don't want to say complete fool's gold. Cause you don't have to give the wins back. If you get them, you don't have to apologize for them. Um, you don't have to say like, sorry, we beat Chicago 28 to 10. Whoops. I guess it means nothing. Like, no, it means a lot. Cause you're going for the playoffs. Uh, but you're always trying to take it in context where we'll know, is this a real team, like a real contending team or not is when they play those games against, I have to look up the order. If you've made it this far, then you're patient enough for me to call up the Viking schedule to make sure I get the order, right? Let me see when they go up

against it is loading. Okay. Buffalo, November 13th, Dallas at home, and then Patriots at home. That is a very difficult stretch. Those three games. Dallas is legit. They've won here a couple times, or at least the last time with Andy Dalton, but now they have Micah Parsons. He's just tearing people apart. And the Patriots on a short week.

That Patriots team at that point will probably be pretty strong, or not to be underestimated on a short week. So Bills, possibly the best team in the league, Cowboys, Patriots. And then they have the Jets who, you know, might be a team at that point. Lions after that can't be can't be a joke. So that stretch right there, maybe it's like a five game stretch. I'll include the Jets, but then you're going to the Lions as well. You never know what can happen in Detroit. As we saw last year. That will tell us who this team really is because

I think there's still the possibility of maybe the schedule influencing the results until then. Thank you all so much for so many great questions. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and all of our coverage this week leading up to Vikings and Bears. Just a reminder, check out the hot routes podcast, where we talk about the whole league. It's spelled with a Z hot routes, and we will talk to you after Vikings and bears. Thanks everybody.