Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Who on the Minnesota Vikings should be pointing fingers after Lions loss?

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Matthew Coller and Brian Murphy dig through the ashes of the Minnesota Vikings' loss to the Detroit Lions to figure out what happened in the Motor City Meltdown and what's next for this struggling franchise. Matthew forces Brian to talk him into either Mike Zimmer, Rick Spielman or Kirk Cousins having a case to stick around and then they play the finger pointing game in which each person blames somebody else for their woes. The Vikings play Pittsburgh next. Could that be it for Zimmer if they lose? Get your tickets at TickPick.com/Insider Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to remind you before we get started, the TickPick is the exclusive ticketing partner of Purple Insider and the Blue Wire Network. TickPick should be your first choice to buy football tickets because they save fans money by never charging service fees ever. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and it's time for Monday Morning Murph. Brian Murphy, you dropped another gem on purpleinsider.substack.com if you want to check it out. The Motown Meltdown, and you pulled no punches in writing about what happened between the Minnesota Vikings

and Detroit Lions, so I want you to talk to me about what you're thinking now that the Vikings have dropped to 5-7. They've won 12 of their last 29 games, by the way, since their playoff win against the New Orleans Saints in the 2019 season. And seats are not hot, Murph. Seats are blazing hot at this moment. So give me your thoughts. Well, I agree. I think they should be. I mean, you don't come back. You don't have the credibility to preach resilience and no hint of aggression, no hint of pressure, no sense of seizing the moment. Just hoping the clock would run out and you could slither out of town with a victory, and you got burnt.

And Mike Zimmer's defense and that gooey soft secondary, they had their mega ego daggered by Jared Goff and the previously winless Detroit Lions on the final play of the season. There's no coming back for that. We can talk scenarios and health, and this team is dead. This regime is dead. This era is dead. It's time to turn the page. Do you think that Vikings fans are waking up today really upset about what happened yesterday or almost in a way relieved? Now, I'm not saying that people root against their team. I think there are some people who sort of see the bigger picture and understand

that a loss that is like getting hit with a sledgehammer can ultimately be good for your franchise that can result in the changes that were necessary for this franchise to go in a better direction because where you are now like there there's i don't want to like just be reading stats all the time of like well they've only won this many games and this is your quarterback's record and this and this and this and this and this. But the reality is, I mean, we are talking about two years now of just atrocious football. People will say like, oh, well, you're in the middle and so forth. But if you haven't even cleared 500, you're not in the middle. You're at the bottom. You're not all the way at the bottom, but you're at the bottom. You were 1-5 at one point.

You're 5 last year. You're 5-7 right now. You're looking up at teams who have backup quarterbacks and coaches that they want to fire and teams that are rebuilding who are ahead of you, like Philadelphia's thrown in their backup quarterback and they get a win against a really bad team. This is rock bottom for this franchise right now, and it's the lowest point that they have been at since 2013 to where it doesn't feel like there's any switch to flip

or move to make or trade or signing or draft pick that can make Cousin Spielman Zimmer work. No, and that's why I headlined my column, you know, the Motown Meltdown, because I think it's really the sad bookend to the Minneapolis Miracle. That was the peak, and it's been, you know, there's been plateaus and a little bit of climbing and a little bit of accomplishment since then, but it's really over the long term been a steady decline. And they are frauds because this is a team that is rudderless and not innovative anymore. It's stale. You've got a head coach who's flailing around coaching against fear. And fear is undefeated in the

alpha male NFL. He is coaching not to lose. He is making decisions that are irrational. He's making decisions that are costing his team yards, downs, points, and it's coming home to roost, and those are inescapable facts. And what you have now is instead of, you know, the reason they're frauds is because Zimmer and Spielman and the organization have been selling a playoff contending product. They've been selling the notion that this patchwork defense, this acquisition, this signing, this new offensive coordinator, this is going to be the solution.

It's not. You're not rebuilding. You're not cleaning the slate. You're not thriving. You're spinning your wheels. The product is overpriced, oversell, oversold. It's past its expiration date right now, and people aren't buying it anymore. So I don't know if Vikings fans are waking up angry as much as they're waking up resigned. And I'm telling you, you could feel it building during the week and over the weekend. Talking to my family in Detroit who follows the Lions with a wink and a nod, reading up on this game and how banged up and vulnerable the Vikings defense was exposed in San Francisco, that Lions are a good running team. They're playing loose because they have nothing to lose.

They got a rookie head coach, Dan Campbell, who is just throwing dice everywhere, going for it all the time. He's literally a madman. And you could smell the dread. You could sense it because Vikings fans are conditioned to being overconfident, thinking this is going to plug every leak. God, thankfully that we're playing Detroit. They're 0-10. We've owned Detroit for 50 years. This will be great. There was a sense of foreboding. I felt it. I was telling my family back in Detroit, I'm telling you, this Vikings team's a mess. This could be the week for their first win. And again, it's not just that the Vikings collapsed, it's the manner in which they collapsed

that I think really irritates and confounds Vikings fans everywhere because they were headed toward a disastrous loss, falling behind 20-6 at halftime, looking awful offensively again, regressive again, settling for red zone field goals again. But then, oh, they wake up, they get 18 points very quickly. Jared Goff does what Jared Goff's going to do, which is create an egregious turnover at the worst possible time. And the Vikings, you know, well, they're inching along, inching along. Maybe they'll just go for the field goal. No, they go for the dagger. They actually stuck it in the end zone.

And now you've got a team, a winless team with an awful quarterback with no timeouts and a minute 50 left, and he marches down the field as if you're not even there. I mean, it's inexcusable, and there's no coming back from this loss. There just isn't. And after the game, usually in a horrendous loss like this, Mike Zimmer is pretty fuming, and he just looked like maybe a little shell shocked, but maybe like just resigned.

He resigned. Yeah. There's a, yeah, probably a bunch of different words we could use for it, but it was, it was just like downtrodden and had no answers. And there have been several press conferences this year where things like

this have happened and there were just no answers. This was, Hey Mike, why weren't you sending pressure at Jared Goff who is one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL under pressure? I said yesterday that you just strip sacked him for the go ahead. Right. Right. Right. If, if Jared Goff raced 50 year old drew blood. So I'm not sure who wins. Like he's that slow and that, uh,

unable to move around in the pocket. He needs, like we talk about Kirk Cousins needing a solid platform to throw. Not only does Jared Goff need a solid platform, he needs like five seconds to wind up to throw the ball too. He's the guy that you send a zero pressure after. And remember that game where the Dolphins did that with the, when he was with the Rams, where they just sent blitz after blitz after blitz,

and he couldn't do anything. And so they're playing back, hoping that cam Dantzler and Rashad Breeland can hold it down. I didn't understand that. And it was dink and dunk and dink and dunk. And he completed six of seven passes. Now, if there's 45 seconds left, this is the exact right defense.

Great. But there's a minute and 50 seconds left. He's got all sorts of time to do that. It was six of seven, not counting the spike that he was able to complete before they had the final sort of go at it. And then just to add a little sprinkle at the end, they have a delay of game of all things. They move themselves farther away.

Very lion-esque. Right. And then the Vikings play off coverage to give them free 10 yards to make it a very reasonable pass into the end zone. And call timeout to give them time to regroup. Right. Everything about that, everything about that was mismanaged from Mike Zimmer's side. And here we are today and they rank 30th in defensive yards loud. Like what? I mean, I know they've had injuries. I know they've had tough breaks.

But you can't rank 30th in defense, again, when your coach is a defensive coach, even if you've had these bad breaks. And some of them are self-inflicted bad breaks. And I was thinking about this a lot yesterday, Murph. When we go back through the schedule, we talk about these close losses and how they've been throwing up their hands all year. Ah, there's these close losses. Ah, gosh, gracious us. But think about how they've caused their own close losses repeatedly. They fumble at the end of the Cincinnati game. That's you giving a game away, but also you were down in that game by two scores.

So you didn't play well. Then Arizona, you're up by two scores. You blow it. That's on you also. Cleveland, you scored seven points. What's the bad break? Dallas, you score 16 points. That's on you.

That's not, ah, gracious me. Oh no, bad flip of the coin. I guess we didn't have any luck today. Like, that's on you. And the same with yesterday. You get down 20-6 to the worst team in the stratosphere of pro football. That's your fault. That's not a bad break or unlucky or all these close games.

Who knows what to do with them? Like, yeah, but you're forcing yourself to come back from down two scores. I think they've earned all of the losses that they have this year. It hasn't been just unlucky bounces entirely. And I think that is what, if you're a Vikings fan, you wake up angry at this season is it, this should have been better. This should have been better than what it is right now. A loss to Detroit should not have completely spoiled your season.

It would have been disappointing, but there were so many other opportunities, but it was miscoaching. It was poor quarterback play. Hey, look, the offensive line did that thing again where they do the thing and allow the sacks. It's just been such a group effort to get to where they are to underachieve for how much they've underachieved. Well, and maybe Zimmer will be asked about this today because I'm not sure if he was yesterday or if he was,

it wasn't a very in-depth explanation for why the massive reshuffling on the offensive line to fill one position and the impact that that had on pass protection yesterday why that decision was made to create more chaos as opposed to mitigating chaos uh that's a pure coaching decision um where was you know adam thielen goes out on the first series with an ankle injury and still justin jeff MIA. Now he eventually racked up a ton of yards because he was the only person they actually decided to get the ball to. It took a long time to get there. Why did it take a long time to get there again?

The two point conversions, they were chasing points. It's the old cliche, don't chase points now. The two extra points would have not made it a deficit. And, but it wasn't even just the missed extra points and sneak, as cement-footed as Cousins' would have been a little innovative. Hand the ball off up the middle and watching it fail twice. Why is there so much stasis and why is there so much lack of innovative outside-the-box thinking? And the only time that that out-of-the-box thinking happens, it's out of desperation, and it's out of Zimmer grasping for momentum, grasping to light a spark, grasping to chase points, and it inevitably fails. I mean, these are all manageable situations.

The offensive game plan, the defensive prevent at the end, which was, I mean, these are all manageable situations. The offensive game plan, the defensive prevent at the end, which was, I mean, that's just negligence. That's negligent coaching. And it's just not working. And it's not, they're selling buckets of sand to people in the desert right now. I don't know what they're trying to promise, but it's just not there. And you're right. I think Zimmer was obviously disappointed and devastated. You could see when the camera would pan to him on the sidelines in the fourth quarter. I mean, I thought he was passing kidney stones. You knew every ounce of his survival was tied to that offensive drive at the end to go ahead and the defensive meltdown

at the back end. And I think in his heart of hearts, I think he realizes it's done. They're going to go through the motions here. And look, they may very well beat Pittsburgh on Thursday night. They may very well beat the Bears in Chicago. I don't see it happening at this point because these past two weeks were going to be the prove-it games, and they couldn't. But they're going to lurch around and linger around. They haven't quit on him yet as a roster. So I think you're just going to lurch around to a 7-10, 8-9 type finish that leaves you with the inevitable choice of moving on. So, you know, the next five weeks are going to be kind of depressing probably and not very productive

unless there's the, you know, Centella chance that they will, you know, run the table or go four in one and prove all of us wrong. But there's so much evidence stacked up right now. Why should anybody invest their time or emotion in the possibility of the next five weeks? Right. The conversation has shifted on this day to what is happening next with this entire franchise. And you're just looking at your watch and waiting for us to get there and that's what's going to happen with these next five weeks unless like you said they run the table but running the table means beating chicago twice which they never do uh chicago is horrendous they're in the same play i mean these two teams are looking in the mirror matt nagy owns the vikings yeah uh and

hey andy dalton might be starting for them. Andy Dalton beat you last year. When you have the worst defense in the NFL or bottom three defense, you're not going into any game thinking, oh, we can cruise to a victory because- Jared Goff just beat them. Right. Yeah. Jared Goff beat you.

Cooper Rush beat you. Like anything is possible. And you have to play also the Ramsams who i don't believe in as a super bowl contender but i think is a heck of a lot better than this vikings team right now and then you have to go to lambo i mean you just there's no room for error whatsoever and this is why when you go one in three and then everyone out there laughs at us oh guys did you not check that there's 17 games on the schedule. What are you guys dumb?

It's like, yeah, but that means no mistakes. The rest of the way, no injuries, the rest of the way. And we, that's what I talk about when we're saying you earned your position here, because as the season goes along, you might run into a game where Eric Kendrick suddenly comes up with an injury that happens to every team all the time in the middle. I mean, how about San Francisco, San Francisco loses to Seattle. They were without Fred Warner. They were without Debo Samuel. So two of the best players in the NFL, this happens to teams. That's why you have to win the games that you're supposed to win and not give them away earlier in the season. Uh, I wanted to mention just since you brought

up the offensive line, that if everyone, just since you brought up the offensive line, that if everyone was wondering, you already intuitively know this. This fan base, Murph, is like the matrix. They can just see everything before it happens in little zeros and ones. They know this is going to be the case before I say it. Ole Udo was the lowest graded pass blocker by PFF, obviously, right? Like there's you before it happened. Everyone knew that that was going to be the case. I don't understand that decision, but we need to look at something a little bit bigger here. Was this all foreseeable?

And I don't even mean right now, like, oh, going into Detroit was a foreseeable. Like anyone who's watched this team knows that that was of course possible but i mean 2019 they win the playoff game against new orleans they make the decision to keep everybody including extending kirk cousins now you can feel whatever way you want to feel about his play this season you can look at whatever numbers you like and so forth. The bottom line on Kirk Cousins is they have doled out a lot of money for no winning. Like that's the bottom line. You can debate all other pieces of Kirk Cousins. Does he throw a good fade route? Like sure does, but who cares? Like you have just lost and lost and lost and lost. I think when you go back to that moment and you get this big win in New Orleans and you

go to San Francisco and he throws for like 130 yards and they're just checking down when they're down 17 points at the end of the game. And you're looking at a defense that was not going to stay together and saying, you're going to have to rebuild that whole thing on defense with almost nothing to work with. And then they go into that off season and extend Zimmer, extend Cousins, extend Rick Spielman, trade for Yannick and Gawkway, extend Anthony Harris, like do all these moves that don't really make sense for a rebuild. That to me is the moment where you should look back and go, that was an inflection point in the franchise. That's where you could have seen all of this happening

because you knew they were going to be desperate and you knew they were going to be scratching and clawing for their jobs. And this has happened so many other times, Murph. It happened in Atlanta with Dan Quinn. It happened in Cincinnati with Marvin Lewis. This is how these things go. And not having the foresight to see this entire franchise is going to have to overhaul its roster.

And these guys, they're the ones you're trusting to do it after failing with Kirk Cousins to get where you wanted to go. And they decided, stay the course. And that's why when you say they got what they deserved, that was the wrong decision. And clearly that has played out that way. Well, it was the wrong decision and And clearly that has played out that way. Well, it was the wrong decision and it wasn't made with a lot of humility either. It was a sense of, we know what we're doing. We don't care what that background, we don't care what that context means. We don't care how risky these moves are. We know better than you. And

that's what this has exuded for the last year and a half. You spend that kind of money on a franchise quarterback and get one playoff win out of it and then a complete pratfall the next week. These decisions need to have consequences. Rick Spielman's first round draft history in the last, what, four or five years. I mean, yeah, you got Justin Jefferson. What else is showing for this right now? Where else is the depth? Where else is the ingenuity?

Jeff Gladney was, you know, hey, we know he's fine. We looked into his heart. You know, we know what we've got here. Well, no, you don't. You've got a domestic abuser now who's probably never going to play in the league again, or at least anytime soon. That's where I think the fan base is really curious, and we all are, is what are the Wilfs thinking?

Because not like what were they thinking, how dare they do this? It's what are they thinking right now? What is their – do they have a finger on the pulse of what is obvious? Do they have a sense of what is boiling over right now? And, you know, look, I don't – I didn't – you know, it's all the whole, yeah, well, if Zimmer loses, he shouldn't get on the plane to come home. Well, here's the deal. They got a short turnaround.

They got a Thursday night game. They're still mathematically in it. It doesn't really make a lot of pragmatic sense to fire him this morning. They're going to let this play out to the end of the season, and then they're going to have to reevaluate. And I'd love to be fly on the wall for the conversation with Zimmer, with Spielman, separately or together, in which they're pleading their case for why they should stick around. And I'd love to hear what those talking points are, because I can't understand how that could resonate anymore

with an ownership group that has spent the money, displayed a ton of loyalty, and not meddled. But they have an angry fan base right now that is not buying it anymore. So, you know, I think you're going to see a ton of terrible towels at U.S. Bank Stadium Thursday night. Similar to the Halloween night game with Dallas. I think people are checked out. And they're going to just unload their tickets as much as they can possibly do it. And if those that do show up, the loyalists at the first sign of trouble are going to turn very quickly.

You may see, you may hear some chants. You may hear some loud booing. It's a night game. The liquor is going to be flowing. It could be a very, very hostile crowd. They are not going to, you know, Ziggy and Mark Wilf are not going to be immune to that. They're going to hear that, see and Mark Wilf are not going to be immune to that they're going to hear that see that feel that um as they so it you know it doesn't behoove them to come out and give Zimmer a limp vote of confidence or to come out and say we expect better it's not going to do anything but it would be nice to know that they are contemplating this hard and

really what they're looking for here in the next five weeks out of their management team to really get a sense into their thinking. And we just don't know that. Hey, everybody, Minnesota football is in full swing and there is no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the internet for Minnesota football tickets because TickPick, that is T-I-C-K-P-I-C-K, is the original no-fee ticket site. It's the only one you'll ever need as your go-to for football tickets. TickPick got rid of all those awful service fees that the other ticket sites charge, which allows them to guarantee the best prices on all of your tickets. TickPick got rid of all those awful service fees that the other ticket sites charge, which allows them to guarantee the best prices on all of your tickets. Don't believe it. If you can find better prices on the same seats on another site, TickPick will give you 110% of the difference. Now we've had lots of exciting games at US Bank Stadium this year. There are still more to go, including Los Angeles coming here. It's always interesting when Chicago comes to town. So you're games at us bank stadium this year there are still more to go including los angeles coming

here it's always interesting when chicago comes to town so you're going to want to go to tickpick.com and check it out and make sure it's tickpick.com slash insider because you can save ten dollars on your first order for minnesota tickets that's tickpick.com slash insider. Okay, let's play that game then. I will be the Wilfs, and you will be different people and try to make your case to stick around or why this should keep going. And I don't even mean stick around for like the next five years. I mean just not be fired after this season or within the next couple of weeks, as soon as their playoff odds go to a slight little blip, because if they

lose to Pittsburgh, do you watch Pittsburgh against Baltimore? It's a violent team. They're not perfect and their quarterback is super washed, but you want to talk about a team that actually does fight. This is the refrain from Zimmer. We're fighters. We're fighters. I don't know. I'm not so sure. But Pittsburgh comes off of this horrendous loss to Cincinnati. Okay, Pittsburgh's done. They're washed.

Under Mike Tomlin, they are never done because he is one of the greatest coaches, I think, in NFL history. He has gone through this with a regression from Roethlisberger that has gone up the side of a cliff. He had a season where Duck Hodges, whoever that is, was playing quarterback for him. They go 500. Like he has proven to be that good short week turnaround here. They'll continue to fight. They have TJ Watt, by the way, Cam Hayward, by the way. So I'm going to be picking Pittsburgh. Um, but let's, let's even talk about what those cases are though, Because I think, or maybe you could answer it this way. If you're going to that room, I'm Mark and Ziggy, and you're saying, all right, I should stick around. Who has the best case here between the triumvirate of power of Kirk Cousins, Rick Spielman, and Mike Zimmer?

Who could go to ownership and say, no, I'm the one that should stay on the island? I'm going to just, again, just freestyling here. I'm going to go with Kirk Cousins because I think he's got the financial leverage to make the case that unless you trade me, you're going to be swallowing a lot of money. You've already paid me a lot of money. You're going to be swallowing a lot more. I'm not saying that's the right move for the franchise to keep him. I think he has the most leverage to stay because he can wrap himself statistically in production and productive numbers. He can wrap himself in his durability. He can wrap himself in his squeaky clean image in a world of troublemakers.

And he could probably say, okay, look, if you're going to burn it down and start over, that's fine. But I have been in this league for 10 years and I've, I have a track record that you can, you can look at. The track record doesn't produce victories. The track record shows he's clutch occasionally, but usually only conveniently. He's not clutch when it matters most. But because of his contract, because of what's already been invested,

among those three, I think he has the best case to put forward. Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman, I think, have to be linked at this point. I don't think Rick Spielman has earned the right and has the credibility to hire another coach. I don't think Mike Zimmer has the credibility after eight seasons, the last two of which have been really, really a quick downhill spiral. I don't think he has the credibility to make the case for another shot at rebuilding,

reimagining, and taking this team to the next level. They peaked with the miracle, and they bottomed out with the meltdown. And I don't think there's any way around any of that. Fact base. Yeah. I think with Mike Zimmer, if the Jacksonville Jaguars fired Urban Meyer and hired Mike Zimmer, that would be a really great move because they've got a lot of young players.

He could still be an NFL coach if he wants to be. A team that's like a year or two away, like this team was in 2014 for Mike Zimmer, would be, I think, a good fit. And on the rise, but you just need – like they have the talent, but you just need a better coach. Maybe the Jaguars aren't the perfect example, but you know what I mean. A team that's underachieving but is good but needs a better coach. Okay, like that, he could go there.

I think if you're going into the Wilfs, the one who has the hardest argument though is Rick Spielman, because you're asking Rick. So like, let's talk about these first round picks. Like what happened with this guy, with this guy, with this guy, let's have, let's talk about these, these trades of a fourth round pick for Chris Herndon and a second round pick for Yannick Ngakwe. Let's talk about the Kirk extension

and how that wasn't really a fit for the roster. Let's talk about the offensive line. No, let's really talk about the offensive line and how it's possible for a franchise to go seven years without a good one. Like did someone break a mirror or something in 2013 and you could just never have a good offensive line for seven years? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about this philosophy of trying to just pick up wide receivers. Hey, DeeDee Westbrook, what a year. Like pick up wide receivers at the very last second. Let's talk about these development projects that you guys have loved so much,

but none of them have bared fruit. I mean, you're talking about James Lynch, Armand Watts, DJ Wanam. Like, these guys are just guys. They could be on the Lions. Like, there's no difference there. And I think that that one is the hardest to say. If you build a roster good enough for Kirk Cousins, he can probably make the playoffs.

I am skeptical that he could win the Super Bowl, but he can make the playoffs. If you build a roster good enough for Mike Zimmer, he can make the playoffs. We've seen him do it with multiple quarterbacks. So who's building the roster? And let's actually, here's another way to play this game, Murph. And what's the standard?

Right. Yeah, right. What, like it no no we just had these bad breaks like well okay bad breaks might take you from if you're a good team 12 and three uh wait 12 and five to 10 and seven not to five and seven uh let's do this though here's a little game for you let's let's play a finger pointing game. I want you as Kirk Cousins to point the finger at Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer, and then we'll point them around. That's how I want to do this.

So you are Kirk Cousins. You point the finger at Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer. Rick, when are you going to get me a left tackle I can trust? When are you going to get me a line that will allow me to thrive in the perfect pocket that you know I can thrive in? Because otherwise I'm not going to be able to succeed. Why have you set me up to fail? Mike Zimmer, why are you only coming around in our fourth year of existence to want to break bread on Thursdays and talk offensive football and philosophy

and leadership? Why didn't you let me into your graces and your trust when we first met? Why are you saddling me with a third offensive coordinator who still can't seem to get out of his own way. Why are you setting me up to fail? That's what I got for you. Okay. You want Kirk Cousins to look in the mirror? Because I don't think he's capable of self-reflection or self-awareness or self-analysis. Not something that he really does. Maybe it's unfair for me to have mentioned that he was smiling and, you know, giving out

handshakes after that game to the lions, but it's like, man, I just have a tough time thinking that the league's greatest competitors are doing that after that kind of loss. Uh, anyway, so I was looking up what I was trying to figure out was if I can throw this dagger, if I'm them, if that's right. Okay. Yes, yes, yes. I can. can. When the Vikings have been trailing this year, trailing, okay. So now I'm going to Mike Zimmer and I'm going to point the finger at Kirk, okay. Kirk Cousins, once again, has more yards passing this year when trailing and has 105 quarterback rating, 11 touchdowns, two picks, win trailing. A 67 completion percentage and his highest yards per attempt, win losing.

Murph, this is the same as last year. This is the same as what we saw yesterday. Get down by two scores, start the fire, and then come put the fire out and then look around and go, hey, I had a good box score. I played pretty well today. That's what Mike Zimmer has been dealing with now for two years. There have been so many games that have been decided not on the final drive. That's what we focus on all the time.

Did Kirk come through on that final drive? No, no. They're decided by did you get down in the game to Jacksonville last year because you no-showed or Carolina because you threw a pick six or earlier this year the no-showed or Carolina because you threw a pick six or earlier this year, the no-show on offense against Cincinnati. And then after the game, what we hear from cousins is, well, look, we had a penalty, got us behind first and 20. What are we supposed to do? Oh man, I know. What are you supposed to, what could possibly happen to, I mean,

if I'm Mike Zimmer and I'm pointing the finger at Kirk, it's like, can you overcome anything? Anything. If I put a piece of paper in front of you, will you trip on it? That is how the Kirk Cousins era has gone. Any obstacle, anyone is missing. The defense isn't playing well. A receiver goes out and it's just like, I can't play football anymore until we're losing down by 14 points. And then they're leaving guys wide open and playing prevent. I mean, if you're Zimmer, bail me out once. Like, go through all these great coaches. Find me one that doesn't get his ass bailed out all the time by his quarterback.

Andy Reid has had this happen with Patrick Mahomes. Andy Reid's getting outcoached in the Super Bowl by the San Francisco 49ers. And Patrick Mahomes makes one of the greatest throws in the history of our planet. And guess what happens? They win the Super Bowl. Andy Reed didn't dial up nothing. In fact, Patrick Mahomes called the play that won the Super Bowl in 2019. I mean, Bill Belichick is a great coach. His team is good again, but Tom Brady, how many times was it that they go into a game against a team like Detroit and, oh man, this guy's banged up or we're not playing well, or, oh, my defensive scheme wasn't that great. And Tom Brady just says, no, don't worry about this. I'm going to put up 400 on this team from

the get-go and we win. Now I know. So you say, oh, it's not fair to compare them to the best quarterbacks. But the best quarterbacks or the cheapest quarterbacks win, right? If you got the second-highest cap hit in the league, and this is, again, with Zimmer, you have the second-highest cap hit in the league. I could win with Teddy Bridgewater when he was cheap and where we could stack all this talent around him. So I think it's a game that we could play all day long because they could all point fingers at each other.

But I think it's truly, if we're doing the pie chart, Murph, it's truly a 33% split to all of them. I mean, maybe more so on the general manager, but the coaching over the last two years I think has deteriorated. I think it's gotten worse over the last couple of years as Zimmer is looking for answers that were there in 2017, but aren't there anymore. Right. And he can also look as he's, you know, begging Kirk Cousins to man up and deliver once in a while, he can turn to his boss and say, but you knew what you were getting in this guy. We knew the statistics

were there, but everybody, his personality, his leadership, his moxie, as it were, the intangibles that all the football people like to tell us that we idiots don't know anything about, they were baked in to Kirk Cousins. He is not going to be Tom Brady. He's not going to be Peyton Manning. He's not going to be Drew Brees. He's not going to be Patrick Mahomes. But you're paying him like that. Maybe Derek Carr.

But you're paying him to be that guy. That decision's on Rick Spielman. Yeah, that's true. This is a great point, though, Murph. Sorry, this is a great point. Kirk Cousins didn't sign this contract himself. Well, you know what I mean? He didn't offer himself that contract.

But he had a gun to his head. Yep. He was offered money to deliver goods he can't. And that's where we're at. And anybody that thinks that that can somehow change because he led a few big drives at the end of games, as you said, after falling behind, they haven't been paying attention. They are who they are, all three of them. And it's the triangle of reckoning.

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lose to Green Bay, get this over with, rip off the band-aid and i keep thinking about brian how exciting the other things can be that come after this as we as we sit and wait for the train to arrive like coaching general manager quarterback like i even say those words i can hear people kind of perk up i got a bunch of tweets today you saw something like who's the candidates who's the can we'll get there folks they just lost to detroit yesterday okay we'll get there they've got a game on thursday people need to get fired in january before the bet you know everything rises to the surface so right but still those are the things that fans are getting excited about now because you have this opportunity to build your franchise in the future in a different way with a different person in charge where you could see like certain teams that have moved on from guys like this and i think about cincinnati where they went through

some tough years i don't think the vikings will have to go through things that hard but like they come out the other side with joe burrow as their quarterback, Los Angeles comes out the other side with Justin Herbert as their quarterback. And like these things can fail. There's no question about that. But you know, someone said, well, what about the jets or what about what it's like? Well, what about Baltimore? What about Kansas city? What about Los Angeles? What about the promising teams in the league who have moved on from coaches and quarterbacks who they were stuck with and came out much better. And I told the story earlier this year of Buffalo when they fired Rex Ryan

and moved on from Tyrod Taylor and got Sean McDermott and Josh Allen. Like there are upgrades to be had here. And that's what we're kind of looking at as we sit and wait for this to come to an end. It's a very weird position to be in. Well, but you got five weeks of lame duck and I don't know how you, you process and digest and try to be entertained by five weeks of lame duck. It's,

it's, it, I don't know what you're selling right now. If you're selling the off season hope, well, it's still speculation at this point because it's really not hard and fast. It seems inevitable that there will be a regime change and Kirk Cousins will be jettisoned in some way. But we're a long way to get there.

And you've still got five weeks to get to a place where these questions will start being answered. And I don't know how the fan base is going to react. I just feel like they've been beat down and they're so resigned right now that I'm not sure what they're being sold. I have no answer for that. Hey, US Bank Stadium at night's pretty cool. You're going, aren't you Murph? You know, I, I feel awful about this in some ways. Well, you know, my, my 10 year old son's a big fan and he's been bugging me all season, even before this season, when are we going to go to a Vikings game? When are we going to go to Vikings game? And I'm like,

I, you know, I'm loath to give the NFL any of my money, but I also thought back to when I was 12 years old for my 12th birthday, my dad got me Monday night tickets to see the Lions and the Giants. This was the Bill Parcells, Lawrence Taylor, just before the Superbowl years, uh, Giants. And this was the Billy Sims, um, Lions and the Silverdome was this big foreboding place out in the suburbs. And it was like, okay, let's do this.

And I had a great experience. It was, it was raucous. I saw drunks getting in fights. I heard a lot of language. I saw the, the, the Viking or the lions did win and I'm glad I went.

So now I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to expose, uh, Ethan to the seedy underbelly of the NFL experience, a night game with an angry crowd looking for blood. I'm going to expose Ethan to the seedy underbelly of the NFL experience, a night game with an angry crowd looking for blood.

But we got fairly inexpensive tickets, so it's like it's not about me. It's about him. He's going to wear his Thielen jersey. He's bitter after yesterday because my family's got bragging rights on him now, my Detroit folks. But I'm going to be interested going to a game as a fan, as I did in LA a few weeks ago. But also, I've never been to US Bank Stadium as a fan. I want to see what this vibe is like.

I want to see what this experience is like and also view it through his eyes. And I should have something interesting to write about Friday morning. Let's put it that way. Tough break for the boy to be wearing the Thielen jersey and Thielen gets hurt. Yeah, I think he's got an old Teddy Bridgewater jersey he can dust off too. Hey, I see a lot of those still. I see a lot of those. A reminder of a time where there was promise. I think is, is what Teddy represents. Stepped in a hole out at a winter park and forever altered the fates of many.

That he did. Well, Murph, it'll be a very interesting. I think that the crowd is a major story. And if they go three and out on the first drive, I think that you are getting the entire place, booing them off the field. And it reminds me, even in preseason, people sensed this in preseason. They started throwing their programs around during the game because the offense was looking so miserable. Even with the starters out there, they were booing, they were getting bored. Like you mentioned that the Cowboys game, they were cheering every Amari Cooper catch during that game. And this, this isn't a surprise. This didn't just show up. Like this has been building this fan frustration and it might come to a head if they get behind in that game at U.S. Bank Stadium. We might have the first time in that stadium where that crowd is

straight up booing this team and jeering them off the field. It might be a reason some people go. So, Brian, your article today, again, Motown Meltdown, is brilliant and wonderful. And I'm glad that we could do this and play some finger-pointing games and so forth. I have a feeling that the next time we talk, there's going to be a lot more to discuss. So I appreciate your time as always, sir.

Special edition Friday morning with Murph? Yeah, Friday morning. Monday morning with Murph is a little more catchy, but let's do it right after the game. All right. Sounds good.