Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Which young players will push for playing time at training camp?

Episode Date: July 20, 2025

Matthew Coller reacts to the Jordan Addison news and answers your Vikings questions on this FansOnly edition of the podcast.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Coller here. And yes, I am on the road again, but the Minnesota Vikings never sleep. And so we've got some news to talk about with Jordan Addison, but also a bunch of questions just before the Minnesota Vikings hit TCO Performance Center fields for training camps. So why don't we dive right in? Jordan Addison, after months and months of delays and getting dragged out through an entire year of waiting, we finally have a plea deal that Jordan Addison has agreed to.

His representation announced the plea deal the other day, and I'll give you a few of the takeaways from my legal understanding. I am not a lawyer or a legal analyst, but this is from what I have read and understand, which is that the likely delay was probably due to Jordan Addison and his lawyers trying to get a plea deal that would not carry along a suspension from the National Football League, but his particular plea deal that would not carry along a suspension

from the National Football League. But his particular plea deal here likely still does leave him open to the three game suspension that we have projected and predicted since this incident happened, again, a year ago, right before training camp. So it is likely now that Addison will still get suspended. But how long he's suspended, will it actually be those three games is a little

less clear because one of the things that was included from his lawyer and his or agent in the announcement of the plea deal was that he has been doing work over the last year with mothersothers Against Drunk Driving. And another part of it too is that Addison has not had any issues since then, which could matter in a suspension. Now maybe that would only knock it down one game for having contrition and staying clean for a year and doing things community service wise

to try to show that it matters to him what happened and also try to show the league that he doesn't deserve a three-game suspension for this type of incident and rather maybe two or one games. Now we'll see if that argument is actually convincing to Roger Goodell in the National Football League or not, but it does matter as a potential factor for him when that decision on a suspension gets made. The other thing is with Jordan Addison, I hope for him that he personally has learned from this, that his work with Mothers Against Drunk Driving

is not just to try to get a suspension reduced, but that there are very serious takeaways here because having two driving incidents both of which could have resulted in much much worse than what actually happened for Jordan Addison in his first two years is extremely extremely concerning when we've seen what happened with Jeff Gladney who died in a Incident that was not too dissimilar from this and also what happened with Kyrie Jackson. There have been a number of football players who have been involved in incidents involving speed,

involving drunk driving over the years. And Jordan Addison came out without a scratch in his two times of being either pulled over or sighted four different driving incidents and now taking a plea on this one, there can't be a third. You cannot continue to test fate. So the hope is that he has learned from this

and that he has grown from this and he still is, as everyone in the comments always mentions, he is still a young person, but there is no excuse for what happened here and what happened when he was driving 140 miles an hour two years ago, but you can grow from these things. You can learn from these things. And the Minnesota Vikings badly need him to learn from this

and go forward without incident, without getting behind the wheel impaired or without getting behind the wheel and going 140 miles an hour. Because when you think about the trajectory of Jordan Addison, where he comes into the league and immediately shows that he can play, that he has some special ability to track the football,

to get open one on one, and he's got opportunity to do that in a pass first offense, an offense where there's a lot of attention to another receiver, that he can really, really show his ability to beat corners one on one and go up and get it and make contested catches and all those things. And his trajectory is similar to someone like T. Higgins

who just got a huge contract with the Cincinnati Bengals to be the wide receiver two to Jamar Chase. And Addison, that opportunity is right there for him to have another huge year, to get a long-term contract, to be here for a long time with Justin Jefferson, but that has to involve learning from this incident of what happened here over the last two years really, but this incident in particular was, I think,

maybe even worse considering it wasn't the first time and considering what had happened with Kyrie Jackson only days before that. So Addison has to learn. And if he does, then he has the chance to be the Chris Carter to Randy Moss. He has the chance to be one of the better wide receivers in the entire NFL and be here for a very long time.

And the Vikings need that. They need that for JJ McCarthy. They need that for this organization, this passing game, for someone to take the pressure off of Justin Jefferson all the time. So that is a big thing that we will be watching going forward is does he grow from this? Does he put it in the past?

Does it end up being something that is forgotten about ultimately in the long run versus does it crop up again? And that is entirely up to Jordan Addison. And I'm sure that you guys wanna talk about as well. Well, what happens when he gets suspended? Who's gonna be the next man up on the depth chart? Well, we gotta see first I, who is playing in training camp. Is it, you know, Rondale Moore is wide receiver four.

Is Ty Felton showing something? Is it Lucky Jackson? Is it Thayer Thomas? I think that we'll have a good sense of it through the first week or two of training camp. And I don't know when the suspension will come down. So, well, really, I think when the suspension comes down, have a chance to break down

what it's going to look like for a game, two games, three games without Jordan Addison. But as we go into training camp right now, we don't have those answers. Those are kind of the main candidates, but you never know when somebody else can pop up and you never know when somebody else can show up. And the name that came to mind for me was Keenan Allen, who is still a free agent, and Keenan Allen has crushed the Minnesota Vikings over the years. But if you're him, you're probably kinda hanging out and waiting for an opportunity to join a team,

sort of like Stephon Gilmore last year. You get to a certain age, you don't need a whole lot of training camp anymore, and maybe Keenan Allen, if they are not very thrilled with what's going on behind Jordan Addison, whether that's Naylor not taking the next step, or Felton not being ready, or Rondale Moore not physically being ready after that terrible injury that he suffered last year,

or not feeling confident that anybody else behind them can take that step forward, then maybe they do look to someone like Keenan Allen and make a phone call there and see if he's available. That's just something I'm speculating on, throwing out there as a possibility, because we did see that from this team a couple of times under the Quasi-Adolfo-Mensa and KOC era,

where they did go out and get Dalton Reisner, they did go out and get Fabian Moreau and Stefan Gilmore in the middle of camp. They are not a team that ever seems to be set with the roster. They're always willing to look outside the building. So I guess that will depend on how those guys perform behind really Jalen Naylor on the depth chart

and Jalen Naylor included, because if he doesn't have the training camp that they're expecting, then that also might put a little bit more pressure on them to look elsewhere. But we'll get into that a lot more. If and when Jordan Addison is suspended. Again, I am still expecting that he will be

based on this plea deal, but the Wheel of Justice of Roger Goodell, you never 100% know. All right, let's get into some fans only questions here that you guys have sent. We'll start with, Alenium Forever on Twitter says, I'm curious about some of the young guys. Will either Dwight McClother, Bo Richter,

Gabe Murphy, or LDR, Levi Drake Rodriguez, push for playing time? And then, Kobe King, what can we expect from him? Is he a roster guy this year, or someone that they might try to sneak onto the practice squad? So, for the 53-man roster that I just made over at the newsletter, purpleinsider.football,

very easy to remember, go sign up for that. It's time for training camp. And real quick, real quick plug before I answer the question, what I'm doing this year is a little different on the newsletter. I am making a camp journal every single day where I'm taking you through my day out at training camp,

the press conferences, takeaways, everything I see at practice and around after practice and what we hear from players, coaches, sometimes it's the GM talking, whatever it might be. You guys will get an in-depth look at that over at purpleinsider.football. So just throwing that out there. Anyway, as far as Kobe King goes,

let's start with that one. I had him on the 53-man roster that I made initially with the linebackers being Brian Ossomwa, Blake Cashman, I don't know why I started with Ossomaw, Ossomaw, Cashman, Ivan Pace Jr., Eric Wilson, and Kobe King. And there's a couple of reasons for that. I mean, number one is that he played special teams

in college, which you don't always see, but he did a little of that at Penn State and said that he is willing to do it and he's familiar with how special teams work. So I think that experience might help him get on the roster right away. This is a year where there has to be a lot of focus on those special teamers.

When you look at the kick return and how much the kick return might get ramped up this year, how many more returns means a lot more tackles for special teamers. You don't really want to have Ivan Pace Jr. out there making a lot of tackles for special teamers. You don't really want to have Ivan Pace Jr. out there making a lot of tackles on special teams. You'd rather have somebody like Kobe King. I also think that he has a size and profile

that's a little different than anything that they've had for years. And he is really more of the bruising, big, tough type of linebacker that you can rotate in in certain situations where you might not want to use other guys for those spots or you want to add an extra linebacker to the mix. So I would not be very surprised if he makes the roster as a special teamer and has a very occasional type of role on the defense in certain run stuffing situations.

That's if things go well for him in training camp. As we know, you never really know, they drafted a guy in the sixth round one time, Brian Cole, who was cut before even the end of training camp. They were so sure that they didn't want him on the team that they cut him before training camp even ended. So sixth rounders, I mean look, Josh Metellus was cut once upon a time as a sixth

rounder as well. You just never really know until we actually get there in training camp. Or was he a fifth rounder, Josh Metellus? Let me fact check. I thought it was sixth. But you know, you just, when it gets to that fifth, sixth, seventh round, no, it was sixth. I had that right. You just don't know about those guys. And usually they don't get plucked by other teams and they end up on the practice squad and they can develop there. But my expectation right now is that Kobe King can make the roster.

As far as McClothern, Richter, Murphy, and LDR, every one of them has an opportunity here. Now I think the least amount of opportunity is going to be Dwight McClothern, assuming that the secondary remains healthy because Isaiah Rogers, Mackay Blackman are clearly the guys that they want alongside Byron Murphy Jr. They had really liked Mackay Blackman in 2023 and he was set to be their starter last year. That's how they ended up with Fabian Moreau and Stefan Gilmore was him going out,

or really hurt them, and they had to go out and scramble to get replacements because they weren't super thrilled with the guys behind him, but Blackman and Rogers, I think are kind of battling for that CB2 type of role, or it could be more of a rotation. I guess we're gonna have to find that out, but it seems like that is how it's going to be, and maybe right now Blackman is the guy who plays the Shaq Griffin role,

where it's a little bit less on the snap count, but he's in a nickel situations, that would be my current projection, but that would leave McClothern as, I would say, a rotational player, but they don't really rotate the corners. You look at the snap counts in the secondary over the last couple years, the corners and safeties, I mean, the last couple years, the corners and safeties. I mean, the top three corners, the top three safeties, those guys are gonna do the majority of the playing.

It's not like they really toss in CB5 every once in a while. But, McLothern is fighting for CB4 with someone like Jeff Okuda and Ambrie Thomas, two guys that were draft picks and have not really stuck with their teams. San Francisco for Ambrie Thomas in the third round and of course Jeff Okuda, one of the highest draft picks you're going to find is a free agent bouncing around, but a very high pick in 2020 of the Detroit Lions. So those two guys are there along with Dwight MacGlothern, but he has a chance to show that he should be CB4. And I'm not sure if we will exactly know

who is CB4 and CB5 until there is some sort of injury. But if things go the way that they want them to go health-wise, it will be MacGlothern pretty much stapled to the bench. Richter and Murphy are two guys that could work their way into some playing time. And we've seen this from that type of position.

We've mentioned Patrick Jones, Jahad Ward. They have found ways to use those types of rotational pass rushers where they throw them in in certain situations. And I wouldn't be shocked if either Richter or Murphy earned one of those jobs. Kind of the Jahad Ward type of role where you're just working in.

Now it might change, that role might disappear because of Jonathan Allen, Javon Hargrave. They might want to go with a different type of look with the interior pressure when they get to third downs, but at least there is a shot for both of those guys. Mostly though they'll be focused, I think, on special teams. And then with Levi Drake Rodriguez, out of all the guys you named,

I think he has the chance to create the most playing time because they don't want Allen and Hargrave and Harrison Phillips to all have to play 800 or 900 snaps. They want rotation on that interior, and LDR, I think, has a unique power to him. And that's why I think that he could, and we'll see what happens, but I think he could mix in

in the Harrison Phillips spot in the middle, as opposed to maybe being a pass rusher, which is what we would have expected when he came out of college. But his size and strength, he's 300, maybe even a little bit more now in terms of weight, and he has kind of a sturdiness to him, a strength to him where he can move bodies,

and I think that he's got a chance there to carve out a role where when Harrison Phillips needs a rest, LDR goes in and we see a lot of him, but that will depend on how everybody else works in to that position as well. So we'll see. A lot to find out about the depth of this team. I think as far as starters go, there's probably not a ton to learn in terms of battles, but one person gets injured, one person gets banged up, and all of a sudden we're going to find out a lot about the depth that they have.

Okay, another question about the depth here comes from CRGaming3 on Twitter. I noticed that Jay Ward, oh, I noticed Jay Ward with the first and second team in a clip where Isaiah Rogers is guarding Addison, I assume this is a social media team clip that they put out or a highlight reel, is he the next in line box safety being developed? And if for some reason we don't sign Josh Metellus,

is he being trained to do that role? So a few different things there. One, I would warn a little bit against trying to have takeaways based on highlight videos. They're great. The team does an incredible job of putting those together. The music and the slow motion and all the stuff that they do. I watch every one that they put out as well,

but I wouldn't use it too often to try to figure out clues about the lineup and who's gonna play and who's here or there, especially with a group that will mix and match or somebody needs a rest on the sideline, another player goes in, and I think probably from what you saw, it was Minicamp where Josh Metellus was,

and maybe this is your connection, so I'm not criticizing you asking about it, but just sort of a PSA. Don't make too much all the time of the highlight reels that end up getting put out there, but with Jay Ward, he was filling in for Josh Metellus sometimes during minicamp because Metellus was not doing the full speed stuff

because he's in the middle of a contract negotiation, which no word as of yet on a new contract for Josh Metellus. I'm sure that that will come up in our conversation with the head coach and GM before the players hit the field. So we'll have our annual press conference on Tuesday, and then Wednesday we're out there watching practices, as long as I have my days right. When I'm traveling, I struggle with that.

But that will come up if they're not announcing an extension, which is also very possible. And there was the one year with TJ Hockenson where we showed up to a regular scheduled press conference, and then they just announced, TJ Hockenson has got a contract extension. They didn't even leak it out there to anybody. So, you know, we'll see about how that comes about.

I am still expecting that the best thing for both sides, for Metellus and for the Vikings, is to work out a contract extension. It's not the easiest one to figure out, but when we look at all of their key players over the last couple years, we've had a lot of, oh, you know, could they trade Jefferson? Is Hockenson being too selfish,

asking for X number of dollars? And they've always found ways to get these contracts done. So I'm thinking that they will follow that path with one of their captains in Metellus and make that situation right because he is severely underpaid when you consider that he signed his contract before he had back-to-back seasons of either a thousand or very close to a thousand snaps. It was a very smart signing that saved

them some cap space but also cost Josh Metellus versus what he's actually worth, so I'm sure he's trying to recoup some of that as well. Anyway, but your question was really focused on Jay Ward. I'm intrigued by Jay Ward as somebody who is following a similar path and the thing that I look for when we talk about this type of player and even Metellus was this guy, Kim Bynum was this guy, is what does he do before he takes that step of getting opportunity and get on the field?

Is he a key special teams player? Because I know from our perspective, whether you're in the stadium or watching on TV, it's very hard to tell. Is a safety who's running down to make tackles doing a great job or not? Unless he's blowing up plays, it's hard to tell. You gotta really study it on the film

But they know it inside the building when somebody is really getting it We've seen this from Theo Jackson where he's been on special teams and he's been behind the scenes and they Really like what they see and we're just starting to understand how much they liked what they saw When they signed him to an extension and when they're giving him this chance to play alongside Harrison Smith potentially. We'll see how those reps get worked out. But a lot of times we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes

and how much they like or don't like a player until we start seeing that guy in the field. And maybe that's J Ward. But when we look at the practices in mini camp, there's really nobody else behind Jay Ward with any experience at safety to be able to fill in. So he would have to be that guy. I could see it though.

I could see him being someone who's got a couple of years of experience and learning and playing special teams and then suddenly emerges if there is an opportunity. The one thing he's gonna be dealing with with this team, assuming they get it all worked out with Metellus, but even if they don't, he's gonna play this year, is that these are some remarkably healthy dudes. I mean, Harrison Smith will knock on some fake wood,

whatever my hotel desk is made of here, but Harrison Smith has been remarkably healthy through his career and Josh Metellus has had no issues either. It might be difficult for Ward to get on the field, but you're pointing it a little toward Metellus, I would look at it toward after Harrison Smith retires. I mean, if Harrison Smith retires following this season,

then they will be looking for somebody to elevate and I don't think safety is a position that they want to invest a huge amount of money in, as we saw from them not resigning Cambynum. They love Cambynum, but that's more of an economic thing. If they have to have some key players with contracts that are getting bigger, Jefferson's, Darasa's, Jonathan Grenard, Van Ginkle got an extension,

can only spend so much money. So I'd be surprised if they went into the free agent market next year, especially if they feel like they have someone who is right here in J Ward. So a big camp for him to kind of show them that they can have confidence in him coming into a game if they need him to do it,

or maybe that he is a guy for the future. So he is one to watch for sure. All right, next question comes from Zach. He says, you mentioned on one of your recent podcasts that you had a sense going into the 2018 season that the team had weird vibes. I'm newer to the show, so I'm not sure what you're referring to. And I'm curious, you said D Filippo wasn't happy and Kirk wasn't happy. Can you tell the story of that training camp? Sure. So a couple different things. One thing is very sad,

which was right before the 2018 season, Tony Spirano, their great offensive line coach, was enormous for the Vikings in 2017. One of the unsung heroes of that year, but remember how well the offensive line played that year. He was also a go-to guy for Mike Zimmer and was sort of a confidant, somebody who helped Zimmer a lot that year in 2017.

And he passed away suddenly before the season, which threw them into a lot of disarray. I mean, they didn't have another offensive line coach. And if you're looking at all the coaches, and this is no disrespect to anybody else who coaches a position, offensive line coach is its own thing. It is extremely important, extremely valuable. There's one guy in a building and his assistants who really understands offensive line play.

And a lot of times when you have a great, a line coach, they become father figure, uncle figure to the players. They become very, very close with those guys. And for them to lose Tony Spirano, I think really was difficult for everybody. And you saw the disarray of that offensive line during that training camp. They also had some injuries on that line in camp

and Brian O'Neill had not yet emerged. So it was Rashad Hills starting and there was just a lot of problems with the blocking in that training camp and I remember that, and that doesn't even get into the DeFilippo thing, which I'll talk about in a second, but that it really started there with DeFilippo wanted to play this shotgun offense, Kirk Cousins is in charge of everything back there.

Motions, shifts, different checks and changes and all this stuff. And he was trying to do it with an offensive line that was taped together and that wasn't able to practice together a lot. And that had Rashad Hill, who is a great swing tackle but was not a starting tackle in the league, trying to go out there from the very start

until Brian O'Neal came in. So it looked really messy during those training camp practices because they couldn't block anything and Mike Zimmer was not holding back the dogs, which was the other part of it. It really started the tension during mini camp that year where Kirk Cousins became so frustrated

with Mike Zimmer throwing at the advanced level of the defense at him during a mini camp practice, which we think about now Kevin O'Connell's not even doing 11 on 11s full speed and here was Zimmer running his full defense at Kirk Cousins in his first attempt at ever running the Vikings offense and he was so frustrated that's when Kirk threw the ball into the road at TCO Performance Center. And then after called it a pity party with the offense being frustrated.

And there was just a sense that something was not right with the offense versus the defense. And of course we know that Zimmer was not the biggest fan of Kirk Cousins and his signing and his contract that was going to make it more difficult for him to keep his defense together. So all that tension was building. And then when you saw the offense being installed

and they were putting so much on Kirk Cousins' shoulders, it was just struggling every single day to execute. And by the end of training camp, we wondered is this offense even gonna be any good at all? Now they did come out and play pretty well at the very beginning of the 2018 season before everything hit the fan. Really, it was actually not until a little later

in the season where they were winning a game against the Jets that Di Filippo decided he wasn't going to follow the head coach's orders and continue to run the football, that that's where I think a lot of the tension really exploded. But we figured that there was something not quite right about that off season. And I remember, I'll just add one more thing to the story, that Robert Mays, a friend of mine who works for the Athletic now a great great podcast for the athletic. Robert was out at training camp with myself and Courtney Cronin.

We were all having a conversation and Courtney and I were telling Robert like I think this team is in trouble. Like I think that they're going to be short of expectations here because it does not look like a Super Bowl caliber offensive line and Kirk is not a guy who can make that better, right? And I remember Robert saying, well guys, this is a team that went to the NFC Championship, I think they'll be fine, whatever.

And then Robert tweeted later on, halfway through the season, watching one of their games where they struggled to block and said, okay, all right guys, maybe you were right. So, you know, that's what I remember, that vibe of being pretty rough in that 2018 training camp. And I actually think from year to year, we've been pretty good at using the vibe just overall

as a predictive factor for how things were going to go. Like last year, all right, McCarthy gets hurt. That's not great, all right, McCarthy gets hurt. That's not great, of course, but we had got the sense though, by the end of camp, that Sam Darnold had really gotten it. And I also remember doing a podcast in Berea in Cleveland where I think it was myself and Dane or Alec

or maybe both of them, where we talked about how the defense looked so good that like this team will have a chance to be a lot better than the six and a half over under that they were getting. So that feeling there of watching that training camp take into the regular season of like, hey, Darnold looks comfortable. Hey, the defense looks great.

And then it turned out kind of how we thought it was going to go. So, you know, every year, that's one of my favorite things to track because I feel like it has been predictive of just how is this camp going? How's everybody feeling? 2017 was another one.

Sam Bradford looked great. The defense looked phenomenal. It was like, okay, maybe this team is gonna be good. So we will see how we come out of this training camp as well. All right, next question comes from Ramsey. Ramsey says, given that Ryan Kelly has missed quite a few games in the past few years, are you worried about the backup center position?

Michael Juergens played terribly last preseason, though granted it was his rookie year. I think with Skool, Brandle, and Rouse were fine at O-line depth other than center, what do you expect the Vikings to do there? So one thing that I would throw out there, kinda similar to how I said, like don't always

just use the clips from the highlight reel to make judgments, I would also say that pre-season PFF grade is a nice little snapshot of something, when I know Juergens did not grade very well as a pass protector, but it's not always a very good indicator of how things went. Because quarterbacks trying to set protections, you're playing next to guys who aren't making the team,

you get matched up and you give up a couple pressures. It's a very, very small sample size. I think he played 140 snaps or something like that. So if you give up a couple pressures, even if it's not really your fault, you might grade poorly or whatever, right? It's just, it's a tricky thing over the years. There's been some guys who graded great in the preseason

and couldn't play at all. And there's other guys who have graded poorly and were fine. So we'll see. I wouldn't use that as a way of saying he was terrible in the last preseason. I think what was more telling about Michael Juergens is that he passed Dan Feeney on the roster last year on the depth chart where that was a veteran player

who had played a lot of football in the NFL and they preferred to have the rookie if the center had gone down. They were comfortable with putting him in the game. I think that was pretty telling about where Michael Juergens is at. Now he's not a big guy. So if he has to go in for Ryan Kelly, it will be harder for him in terms of pass protection than Kelly, who is a monster and is one of the best

pass protectors in the league. But the other part of this too is, so I don't know, I just think that there's something that is telling is that the coaches and the offensive line coach decided to have him active on game day, meaning they believed in him more than a veteran who wasn't all that good. But another part of this is, when you say you're worried

about the center depth, I mean 31 teams are probably worried about their center depth. There's just not a lot of great centers in the NFL in general. When you look around, they had to go out and get Ryan Kelly, but maybe there's 12, maybe there's 13 centers in the NFL who actually moved the needle in a positive direction

and everybody else just has to hang on for dear life. So yes, if Ryan Kelly has to miss time, it is a big question mark. Juergens is someone I'm very interested in throughout this training camp to see is he ready to take over if Ryan Kelly does get banged up and has to miss games. Clearly they trusted him enough for that to be the case last year if Garrett Bradbury had gotten hurt, but Kelly's injury history makes that more possible where Bradbury had always been healthy throughout his career.

So I agree that that is a reasonable concern. I also think that it's not like they can go out and get somebody else. There aren't guys just wandering around. Even when the Vikings had Mason Cole, who's not any kind of great center, when they had him as a backup and he actually stepped in, I mean, and did okay,

like that was a great victory for backup centers to have Mason Cole. Austin Schlotman did okay when he came in, but you're never talking about a guy who's gonna be like, oh, good, the backup is in when it comes to the center position. But he's had a year to learn the offense, so he knows it, and we'll see if he's ready to go. But I can't really tell you until I see him.

And probably for a couple weeks with the pads on, then we'll get a feeling about where he's at, get a couple more pre-season games, and we'll go from there. But it's reasonable, considering Ryan Kelly's injury history. Let's get to two more. Let's see, Chrissy says, I want to know about the wide receiver three battle how Naylor and Felton look and how Felton can make an impact as a rookie this year. So with Ty Felton I think that there's going to be a lot of development involved but he's a guy that you could develop on the fly

while still playing a role, because his main two skills are catch and run and go deep and track the football. Well, those are things that are not the most intricate. They're not the most complex. It isn't the things that Justin Jefferson has to do where you're lined up in a bunch formation and you have to read how the linebacker plays his coverage and then you're taking it vertical or you're

checking down underneath or all these different options. Well, a catch and run guy should be a little bit more simple where it's a bubble screen or a regular type of screen or a jet sweep or something like that just to get the football in his hands. Well, that doesn't take a lot of development of route running and of reading defenses and all that stuff, which I think, especially the route running Ty Felton

is going to have to work on. That's why I don't think there is a competition between Felton and Naylor, is when I watched Felton run routes in mini camp, I thought, okay, I could see the speed, and I could definitely see the talent, and he's can track the football down the field, and he's blazing fast, but I don't see the detail yet,

and it's small things. It's like how low you can bend, how smooth your turns are. Are you hitting the brake at full speed, or do you have to kind of slow down first and then turn? Like, it's small things, but luckily we have Jordan Addison and Justin Jefferson running routes to kind of compare to, like, okay, I can see where he's going to need some work before he gets to be a wide receiver three in the league.

Maybe that's next year, but Felton is a guy that has a lot of speed and a lot of talent. So you can put him in and run him deep and have him clear out or take a shot down field to him and still have him contribute to some extent. That's my feeling right now. Again, change my mind, right? Go ahead and as the information changes, I'll change with the information.

So if he comes out and over these last six weeks, he's really mastered their route running techniques and he's awesome, well we might have a different conversation. This is just my expectation for right now that Felton's going to need some more development and as far as the rest of the battle, it's kind of Felton and Rondale Moore in one bucket

and then everybody else in another and you never know when an undrafted free agent is gonna show up. I mean Silas Bolden has gotten the most attention because he's small and he's fast and that makes him interesting. There's another guy named Robert Lewis who made a couple of catches.

He's from Auburn, he made some plays in mini camp. There's Jashon Jones who last year really stood out to us in training camp and then got cut but was back on the practice squad and maybe he's got a chance to take that step. He seems to catch everything that comes his way so that might be a guy. We've had this happen in the past where whoa okay Chad Beebe is somehow wide receiver three all of the sudden like that that happens sometimes in training camp so I'm looking forward to that as well. Last question, what changes, this is from Ragnord on Twitter,

says what changes in the run game under Keith Carter? So Keith Carter is the assistant offensive line coach who was brought in to help improve the running game based on some of his past history with the Tennessee Titans. Now I would say, like when we call it under Keith Carter, I wouldn't phrase it that way, maybe his influence. I don't think the run game is being just handed over to him. It will still be a group effort with Wes Phillips,

KOC, along with Curtis Modkins, who has been the run game coordinator. So will this group, but I do like the idea of having an offensive line coach be involved in the run game because offensive line coaches understand the details of the blocking, which is the most important part of run game success, is how you block it and how you organize your scheme and how detailed I mentioned with receivers.

While when Rick Denison was this team's offensive line coach, the detail in the run game was incredible from the offensive line and how detailed I mentioned with receivers. Well, you know, when Rick Denison was this team's offensive line coach, the detail in the run game was incredible from the offensive line. And even though they didn't have a lot of talent in 2019 on the O line, they were really, really good at run blocking for Delvin Cook that year. And I think that was coaching.

So maybe his influence can help. When I looked back at Tennessee when he was there working with them, and this is not a guarantee that it carries over, but Derrick Henry was running a lot more outside zone than he was running gap scheme, which let me just detail that outside zone is very similar to what you saw from Delvin Cook, where all the linemen are moving kind of at once in one direction, and then the running back can either hit the outside or he can cut back up inside, and that worked really well for

Delvin Cook, and it worked really well for that line. Whereas when we talk about gap scheme, that's where you're talking about guys like pulling and stuff like that. So a right guard pulling around to the left side and everybody follows him, put in the full back in the eye formation, slam behind, or even these kind of what they call duo runs where you have two guys, double team block, and they try to push apart a gap, that kind of thing.

So those are two different styles of running. They like to call mid zone, I won't even get into the different details on that, but they had a lot of success with the outside zone stuff with Derrick Henry. And I think that that's what we're going to see because when we talk about the running backs, Jordan Mason was playing in a predominantly outside zone scheme for the San Francisco 49ers. And he was really, really good at it, as you saw when he played against the Minnesota Vikings last year. And Aaron Jones, well, think about

where Matt LaFleur came from. Matt LaFleur, coach of the Packers, came from Tennessee and was running that similar type of system. Now, running games have changed. They're a lot more mixed than they used to be where it was like you do this or you do that and that's what we stick to. Now there's a lot more mixing and matching

of these different types of things. But I do think that if we're looking at the running back skills, the athleticism of the offensive line. So it's hard to do the outside zone really effectively. If you have Dalton Reisner and Blake Brandle in there, might be a lot easier with Will Fries and Donovan Jackson, especially Jackson with such a great athletic

profile that he has. So I think we will see a different running scheme this year, not so crazy that we're going to go, oh my gosh, this is so wildly different. But I think it will shape shift a little bit and it really comes down to those guys up front and how they block for how it turns out. So we are just days away, my friends, from Minnesota Vikings training camp beginning. I look forward to daily podcasts, daily live shows, the daily camp journal that's going to come out

on purpleinsider.football. It's gonna be a lot, it's gonna be great. You are going to be in an ocean of Minnesota Vikings content during training camp and I am happy to be a part of that. So thank you again and once again, I'll be at every single practice throughout, joint practices, everything that's out there.

I'll be a part of it. So if you want from the actual people who are seeing what's going on in practice, this is a good place to be. You know that you're going to hear from Dane Mizzetani, the Pioneer Press, the Star Tribune folks, Kevin Seifert, all of us who are out there actually watching practice. So you know, this is the place to be. Thanks again everybody for watching slash listening and I will catch you when I am back

in Minnesota. We'll see you then. Football.