Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Will the Vikings look for Irv Smith Jr. replacements elsewhere? Should they be more creative with running backs? Will Kirk Cousins play in the preseason?

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

Kevin O'Connell explained how Irv Smith Jr. got hurt and didn't completely dismiss the idea of looking outside the building for tight end help if they aren't happy with Johnny Mundt and Zach Davidson. Kirk Cousins talks about why he likes Davidson and O'Connell explains how he's communicating with veteran players. Matthew Coller also answers questions about camp battles and whether Kirk Cousins should play in the preseason.  -- For more of Matthew's Vikings coverage, head to purpleinsider.substack.com For bonus discussions, interview clips, and more videos, check out https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPlykdpWMksmWlyELYDxbnw  Interact with us on Twitter! twitter.com/purple_insider  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and we've got press conferences to look at and plenty of fan questions to answer as I'm recording this on the Vikings day off on Thursday, so we will not have another practice to analyze. The Vikings are at padded practice number two, but I am excited as tonight there will be a football game with the Hall of Fame game and I know that by the time you get to about the second quarter there's no players you recognize in the Hall of Fame game but at very least it tells us football is here more football is on the way but let's start out by talking about some of the things that I took away from the last day's press conferences, starting with

Irv Smith Jr. and his injury. And Kevin O'Connell explained how Irv Smith Jr. got hurt. It's actually on a kind of a simple, just, you know, everyday type of block and just the way guys are fitting their hands and, you know, practicing hard the way he was. And obviously they are on the other side. That stuff's going to happen from time to time. And just a simple play that happens every single year in this league. And if it was another position where, you know,

catching the football wasn't such a necessity for a guy like Irv, we might tape that thing up and get him right back out there. But we wanted to fix it, use this time smartly, and make sure we give Irv the best chance to have a great 2022 season you're going to be hearing the names zach davidson and johnny muntz quite a bit and kevin o'connell also talked about their outlook what they're going to be asking of the backup tight ends and also he did not entirely close the door to the idea that the vikings could potentially bring in someone else if they don't like what

they see. Yeah, I think you come into camp with some good numbers for a reason, just in case, you know, not really knowing exactly where Irv or Johnny would be coming off of their injuries from last year. So we have some depth there and we got some guys we really want to see kind of handle the different roles. I know with this group, we talked a lot about the role of a tight end, what that really looks like offense to offense in the NFL nowadays. We ask our guys to do a lot, both in the run and pass game. So across the board, from Johnny all the way down, we're going to ask those guys to fill that void that Irv had already kind of created a real good start to training camp. We'll hope he'll pick up right where he left off when he's back but good opportunity for those guys to apply themselves yeah we'll

continue to uh kind of look at that if we feel like at any point in time uh we want to do that we'll we'll i'll get with quace and his staff and and we'll talk about that but as of right now we'd like to see uh mainly day-to-day at this point before we move on to our next clip i wanted to mention that something that i've just started to observe here and i thought was going to be the case and they talked about it as if it was going to be the case but we don't believe it until we see it is taking a more scientific and diligent approach to player health and understanding that there is a long-term here and a 17 game season here and player careers here that you have to be very cautious and deliberate about the way you go about who should have surgery, what you're asking players to play through, how you sit out veterans,

or even when you take certain injuries more serious than you take others the fact that kenny wongwu is day to day and they're not trying to push him out there to play through whatever he's dealing with the quote soft tissue issue it seems like they understand that a lot of times it's better to dial somebody back for the long term as opposed to saying get back out there and i think if i were to guess educated guess i would say that players probably wanted this as opposed to the previous era that when they had these meetings that mark wilf has talked about and the players have talked about with ownership and they said what do we want here for our next coach for our next culture i think part of it was let's not just haphazardly decide who's going back out there

and who's not let's use every bit of data and things like that to make our decisions as opposed to hey the head coach really wants his guy back out there. So let's make sure that he gets on the field or the head coach has gotten tired of somebody missing time and wants him to play. I don't think that's going to be the case. And if you look at the Rams, I know I've brought this up before, but the Rams were the cutting edge team and they saw results because of it. And if we look so far now,

there has been, yes, an Irv Smith injury, but look at the defensive side of the ball. Everyone is starting. And if you look so far now, there has been, yes, an Irv Smith injury, but look at the defensive side of the ball. Everyone is starting. And if you asked me, what's going to be the biggest determining factor of whether the Minnesota Vikings have a good defense, for example, it's that everybody plays because if everybody is healthy out on the field for this team, they have good players at every

position. If you go one layer down, and this is, I know the case for most teams that are projected to be in the middle, that one of the reasons they're projected to be in the middle is because if you go one layer down, it's not as good. So the better they can handle these things, the more they'll get out of it long-term, as opposed to, I thought was a kind of haphazard sounding approach from the previous regime. Well, this, this one is much sharper and I think they will see, you know, some of the benefits of that. So anyway, I know that a lot of you are curious about Zach Davidson because Kirk

Cousins said that Zach Davidson nearly ran 21 miles an hour and he he did run a 4'6", 40 at 6'7", so an athletic freak who is very raw. But Kirk Cousins talked about being excited about seeing his development, and at practice on Wednesday, there was a lot of ups and downs for Zach Davidson. There was a pass that bounced off his hands that turned into an interception. There was a couple of nice catches. And I think that's what we're dealing with here is we're watching somebody develop.

Now, how far they come along very fast during training camp is going to be hard to say. But this time where Irv Smith is out is giving an opportunity for Zach Davidson to play with Kirk Cousins and to get better more quickly than he would be on the second or third team. an opportunity for Zach Davidson to play with Kirk Cousins and to get better more quickly than he would be on the second or third team? Yeah, I think with Zach, it's really exciting because I

see a lot of ability in him. And so you see a high ceiling and a desire to work and get better. And so it's exciting to work with a guy like that, where you see all this potential down the road, similar to how I felt about Tyler Conklin three, four years ago. You want to see that development happen, and it's going to. With Johnny, it's fun because he was in this system. So there's times where I'm leaning on him to tell me what he's feeling or seeing because he knows it better than I do because of his experience. He had a phenomenal catch in one of our early practices a week ago on a high ball that he came down with and showed his athleticism so um those two guys

will lean on a lot and uh we ask a lot of our tight ends it's a unique position and um you know they got their work cut out for them okay so I was talking about players and what they wanted from the new coaching staff and one of those of course, as has been made very clear by the players and the new ownership and the coaching staff, is communication. And you've probably gotten tired of the communication and collaboration bit already, but I did think that this was interesting

where Kevin O'Connell talked about what that's actually like with someone like Adam Thielen. And I think that Adam Thielen in years past, now he wasn't willing to go truth to all rumors. He wasn't demanding trades, but you could see in his body language, you can hear in the way that he talked that he had thoughts that he wanted to share. And of course he did not share them publicly, but you got that feeling that he felt

like there was more there with the offense and now kevin o'connell is working with players like adam thielen on the details of this offense to make it the best it can be his willingness to at this point in his career really be all in on what we're doing with him how we see him being at his best in our offense. And, and obviously the coolest part about it is then the feedback that, you know, him, he's able to talk to me about, Hey, you know, I know we're coaching this like this. Have you thought about this route stem or this top of the route or, uh, and then that's where, you know, sometimes, you know, you say to yourself, thank goodness we got players like that. Cause what you said is better than what I said, let's do it that way way and other times we're going to stick with my way but either way uh we have that conversation and

communication and the fact that he feels like that JJ uh KJ our other wideouts they feel like they can talk to not only myself but Wes Keenan and we get that sort of feedback from our guys it only helps uh us be at our best when we need to uh you know compete against the defense every day okay before I get to your questions we have to uh you know compete against the defense every day okay before i get to your questions we have to do this because when everybody's talking about a fullback i have to bring you what they're saying about said fullback so every year people come down reporters come down from bemidji or from duluth and they ask about cj ham. Hamm. This is a camp tradition, and every year, the analysis of C.J. Hamm seems to get even more and more in detail. At first, it was kind of like, yeah, well, he's on the practice squad

and seems like a good kid, but now that he's been in the league for this long, they can say more specific things about what he's done and where he fits in, and it was a question before camp from a lot of fans of like, Hey, are they going to use this fullback anymore? Or is this the end of the CJ ham era? And of course there are others who say Kirk will check down to this man, no matter what. Um, so maybe less enthusiastic about the fullback, but another answer from Kevin O'Connell that was in detail about how he actually views CJ Ham. So, I mean, this is our brand here with fullback analysis. So here's Kevin O'Connell.

What I like to do offensively absolutely fits with having a player like that for really two reasons. CJ can handle a lot. He's really able to take much more on his plate than the traditional fullback. A, because he mentally can handle it, but then B, I think he's a dynamic player. I mean, to have the strength he has in the run game, the understanding, to be able to do some unique run game concepts with him, and then ultimately use him as a weapon in the pass game. You know, very few people, when we break the huddle in number 18 and 19, and some of our guys are running and breaking the huddle,

and some of the other backs we can put him in the game with, paired with Irv and Johnny and the rest of our tight ends, you know, it's hard to just feature CJ defensively of, hey, we've got to stop that guy. So what we're going to do is we're going to use that, and we're going to try to activate CJ in a lot of ways. But nonetheless, you've got to be able to do the basic jobs of playing fullback which is not an easy thing to do in this league and cj does that really really well it's funny because of

this quote i walked up to i think it was maybe kevin seifert talking with somebody and they were saying you know boy these guys really love the full. Like who are the best fullbacks or should there be fullbacks in the hall of fame? I was like, Larry centers, Sam Gash, Lorenzo Neal, Max strong, John Ritchie. Let's go. And then I tackled the tackling dummy. Okay. No, that, that didn't happen. I would probably hurt myself. That was like when KJ Osborne the other day, he was talking about blocking and he said, you know, blocking's easy. Even reporters could figure it out. It's like, no, no, sir. We couldn't, we could not figure out how to block because we would hurt ourselves instantly. The number of things that football players do that if a normal person did, they would immediately go to the hospital. But these guys just pop back up. Uh, it never ceases to amaze me because just with training camp,

you're right there on the sideline. And so you get to see everything up close, even just like leaping 40 inches in the air and crashing down to the ground and then just like popping back up because football men in shape anyway. Uh, all right, let's get to some fan questions here. We've got a lot to get to. The file is very much full, but you could still send your questions.

Purpleinsider.com at the contact us or send me a tweet or direct message and I'll put it in the queue and make sure we get to it. But let me, of course, open a Diet Dr. Pepper here first. All right, let us fire away. Wait, sorry, I had it all the way at the bottom. I got to scroll back up my apologies for the delay and then we'll get into uh all of your questions we'll try to rapid fire them as I did before but I'll try to take breaths in between I went back and listened to that when I was doing rapid fire the other day it was like could you guys tell them into football because uh I was just blasting

through these these questions so let me take a sip here and then we'll go. Okay, this comes from Sam via the email. He says, fans only question here, have you noticed any interesting offensive formations or has it been pretty straight up so far? I've been thinking about how the Packers like to use Jones and Dillon at the same time by bumping Jones into the slot and putting him in motion a lot. I'm hoping to see some creativity from O'Connell to give different players different opportunities.

We've talked about mixing up the receiver group based on who might be a better fit for a certain concept, but why stop there when you have such a quality running back in Madison and speedster in Kenny Wong will PS. How fun would it be to have a wishbone or similar bygone formation with ham cook and Kenny Wong Wu. I'm into that idea. And I think for every once in a while, if you throw in something that the NFL doesn't use anymore, I do think defenses are like,

what? And you guys know that I talk about kind of the comparisons between football and chess, because I like watching chess games on YouTube and playing on chess.com and things like that. And it is interesting that this will happen in chess from time to time where an opening will have been used in the 1800s or 1940s or something that kind of became passe. And then a grandmaster will bring it back and try to make some tweaks to it and use a computer engine to figure out how it could work because they know that their opponent probably has not looked at this opening that hasn't been used since 1950 and there's something to that and

andy reed loves to do this andy reed seems to love to go back to Michigan versus Navy in 1952 or whatever and find some clip and try to run the play or have that formation. No, they have not been showing us that in training camp, nor will they because they don't want anyone to know about it. That would be something that when they close practices to the media and to the public that they would game plan some of those things in. So it's possible that we'll see some creativity there. I don't know. We don't want to say everything that McVay does is like O'Connell. I don't know that McVay does a ton of that. I don't think he's like Chip Kelly ish in the way that he's going to try to break the rules and things like that. And he's kind of very traditional in using three receiver sets,

making it all look the same, using bunches, condensed formations, which means no receivers way out wide. And of course, we've seen a lot of that. Running backs lining up at receiver and then motioning seems to be a pretty common thing. And all of these are elements that have been used by Vikings coaches before. It's just how much. So what McVay did with these things is he kind of took them to the extreme. So it's not like Gary Kubiak didn't use motion,

but he could have used it more. And Sean McVay proved that by using it the most in the league. And Shanahan uses it the most in the league. And that's just building on the bones of a great offense with Gary Kubiak and adding these little elements to it. So yeah, we've seen a lot of that. And I think we will see a lot of running backs lining up at receiver motioning back into the backfield to try to get a look at the defense. These are just positive things that you can do to help out your quarterback in any way possible. The thing that I saw some last year and am interested at

more of the adaptations is defenses seem to figure out how to kind of deal with this stuff that they knew from the year before, when we had this massive explosion of Shanahan style offenses and play actions and motions and bootlegs that they started to develop things to counteract those a little bit. And now we're going to, you know, it's this constant game that never ends that makes football so fascinating is the league knows about this stuff. So how does Kevin O'Connell add additional layers to it that will make it very interesting? And with Kenny Wong Wu, I'm a little concerned about the injury because going into this, as you guys know, I felt like this is his time. And from the first couple of practices,

he looked lightning fast as you would expect, but then having to sit out and Alexander Madison, if we're talking about availability is the best ability, the guy is always available. So he and Delvin cook now kind of getting most of the reps and Ty Chandler mixing in a little bit here or there. But if Wong Wu isn't healthy to take some of these practices and can't stay healthy throughout training camp, preseason, and into the season, as he wasn't last year for the first half of the year, it's going to be a lot harder for them to count on him

to try to mix and match these things. But I do get the sense that they want to use the running backs in a way that is going to give them tells about the defense or is not going to show things to the defense from just their formation. So, yeah, I think that modernizing this whole thing or leaning into those modern elements more is something that the Vikings are doing. I have not seen any of Madison and Cook on the field at the same time. I never understood why we didn't see Jarek McKinnon and Cook or Latavius Murray and Cook after McKinnon left. We didn't see that, and I never understood why because those were two good players. But I don't know that that's a thing that NFL teams do a lot anymore. We were joking about the fullbacks.

I mean, you used to see teams with a fullback and a running back back there and kind of the like split pros form formation or whatever it was called on Madden used to see that all the time with two running backs back there, the four, the full fullback you don't see that a whole lot anymore um it's mostly one running back sets and we'll see how much they mix in cj ham as well so far as you heard kevin o'connell mentioned they've been doing that uh quite a bit folks training camp is here and there's no better way to represent your purple fandom by going to sodastick.com and checking out all their Minnesota sports-inspired goods. The best football designs, in my opinion, are Randy Moss' disgusting act and the purple people-eaters look.

But look, there's lots more for you to check out at sodastick.com. S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. T-shirts, hoodies, hats, whatever you're looking for. Use the promo code purple insider at checkout for 15% off your purchase. All right. Next question. Here comes Ian via the email says I'm on the same page as you, as far as not playing starters in the preseason, but do you think the coaches might see value in playing cousins to get a good look at wide receivers like Wilson, Smith, Marset, Osborne with a competent quarterback?

Do you think that Mannion and Mond will give them enough to make a decision on those guys? I think that there probably is value to that. And that's why those guys, particularly Wilson and Smith, Marset, KJ Osborne has made it super clear. He is wide receiver three. No one's taking that job. He came back incredibly prepared to play, which doesn't surprise me. I mean, I remember talking to Lance Leipold, who recruited K.J. Osborne out of high school.

K.J. went to, I think, IMG Academy, which is kind of like, hey, are you going to be really good at football? Maybe you should come here and try to get recruited. And he was always told that he wasn't quite fast enough. And Lance Leipold told me the day he got drafted adamantly, this guy is going to make your team. I promise you. And he's going to make a difference. And I was like, okay, well, you're, you know, you're his college coach and everything else. Uh, but cause he w he went to university of Buffalo first and that's how I connected with Lance Leipold. And then he went to University of Buffalo first and that's how I connected with Lance Leipold and then he went to Miami after that and he said this guy is going to do everything

that you're ever going to ask him to do and he's very very very smart and very very very smart with athletic enough playmaker enough catch the ball enough like those things are going to add up to a good player and KJ Osborne he's's looking like, you know, people ask about the next step, like not the next step, but he's doing it again, which is what you're really looking for. So he's not going to have to worry about it. I wouldn't even be surprised if KJ Osborne doesn't play almost at all in the preseason. So you're talking about other guys, Wilson, Smith, Mar said, I don't think it's a good idea to play cousins at all because they've looked okay in training camp.

And I think one of the reasons that Mike Zimmer wanted to play Cousins in the third preseason game last year was because the offense was struggling so much in training camp practices and just say, let's get more reps. Let's get more reps. And he almost got Cousins smacked in that game. Like, remember, they didn't block for a blitz up the middle and Cousins got hit. And like, this can't be happening. Why do you have him out there right now getting, you know, hit this hard in preseason games?

I think it would be a mistake to play Cousins at any point. But what you're saying has validity that if Mond and Mannion cannot deliver guys the football, it is much harder to evaluate them. And that's part of the value of having a competent backup quarterback is that in practices and in preseason and in training camp, you can really get guys a good look. So far, you see a lot of passes that aren't super accurate throws that aren't coming on time. You see Sean Mannion throwing a lot of short passes and not trying to push it down the field to his receivers and it's not a very good evaluation tool which I

think is why a lot of these guys have mixed in with the ones that we've seen everybody you mentioned Smith-Marset, Wilson, and BC Johnson they've been getting time with Kirk Cousins probably in part for that reason, also to limit reps for Jefferson and Adam Thielen. But it's hard to tell, like, are those guys like, you know, rising or falling if the quarterbacks aren't delivering the ball? I think that's a valid point that you're making, but it's way more valuable to not risk Kirk Cousins at all in any way, anybody falling on his ankle, throwing a pass where he hits his finger on somebody's helmet. If they looked horrendous with the first team, I might say,

yeah, you might have to do this. Like I saw that Atlanta is going to play, you know, Marcus Mariota a lot in, in preseason. It's like, well, you kind of have to, he's joining that team and doesn't know anybody doesn doesn't know the offense, and you're trying to get him up to speed. With Cousins, he's worked with all these players before. He's looking okay in training camp practices. I think that it's probably just best to be safe than sorry. And even if you're not 100% sure on Wilson versus Smith-Marset,

which I'm not really sure either. Smith-Marset mastering the details. Wilson still having some in the tank. I don't know which way they'll go there. Seems like B.C. Johnson is going to be on the team, especially since Cousins has gone out of his way like three times already to praise B.C. Johnson at the podium, almost sort of saying, like, I want him to be a part of this receiver group.

Yeah, I think that it's, it's probably better to take your best guess on wide receiver five rather than taking any risk with cousins. But this could be another situation where we look back and go, you know, could it have been better? Like I, I went on a rant earlier this off season about how the reason you don't have a better quarterback, backup quarterback, is because of money. But maybe, maybe there was somebody that could have been a little bit better than this, or maybe making the Mond bet wasn't the best idea. We'll see, though, as he goes along, if he improves. But right now, everything is just slow. Everything is just behind. And that does make it hard for the wide receivers to get the football on time.

And that usually is what Mannion has been pretty good at in previous camps, but not really so much. Actually, surprisingly, Jake Browning was very good at that. He didn't have an NFL arm, but he was good at just getting the ball out there when it was supposed to be thrown. I think it's a valid point you're making. I wouldn't go as far to play Cousins in preseason games. You'd rather just see him start week one. This question comes from at DDPKLL. Will we see, and do you think it's even a good idea to throw the ones and twos full 11 on 11? Oh, ones at the twos full 11 on 11. So ones versus twos. I think it would be good for Booth and Evans

to compete in game-type situations against JJ and Thielen, or a Harrison Phillips against Reed as the number two center, and really see what these twos have. Yep, they're doing that. I've noticed that this is something that I have not seen a team do before,

but they are doing, where they're having the second team versus the first team. Now, it's not a lot, but it is for this particular series or that drill or something that they've been putting that out there. I agree with you that seeing what Reed looks like at center has suddenly become a thing that you want and getting the rookie corners out there to get

reps against Adam Thielen. Justin Jefferson is something that might hold some value. So even though I have very rarely, if not never seen this from Mike Zimmer in the practices, it does seem like Kevin O'Connell sees some value in that. So you're right on. Yep. They agree with you. On to the next question at JASnyder123. Will Irv be more of a wide receiver three than a true inline tight end under the new scheme or does Osborne have wide receiver three locked up would be nice for some camp competition at that spot with how much they'll use wide receiver threes, right? Um, Irv Smith is going to be all over the field, assuming he's ready for week one, but you know,

his season is not over because of the thumb injury so yeah i don't think he'll be the wide receiver three he was wide receiver three essentially when he was playing behind kyle rudolph that they had rudolph as the inline tight end and he would be out there as a slot receiver or outside receiver and just be like a giant wide receiver three he will be in line a lot though. Uh, and I don't think they're going to use them entirely like Tyler Higbee and Kevin O'Connell mentioned the downfield ability is different between him and Tyler Higbee for the Rams. But, uh, Tyler Higbee was not a guy that was in the slot or outside all that often. I think that will be different,

but I also don't think that we're going to see an insane amount of it that they want these run plays to look like the up with these formations say you got two guys on each side and it's like condensed meaning there's no deep outside wide receiver you don't have to have Irv Smith right like down with his hand in the dirt but you can have them next to each other so they're running routes that are kind of behind each other to throw off the corners or make it difficult to press like these little details that you can do with somebody who moves around like Irv Smith or who is versatile like Irv Smith. And I mentioned KJ Osborne is locked up wide receiver three. I don't think there's much question about that, but having guys behind him, someone

needs to kind of step up so they have a little more versatility. What I think they want is Amir Smith-Marset to be somebody that they can throw in and be a deep wide receiver, but they also have to be able to trust him to get the other details right before they can believe that he's going to be that guy. So far, I don't know that we've really seen that. I tend to look for like how many times does a player run off the field and a coach kind of approaches them right away. Like, Hey, you needed to do this or needed to do that to understand where they stand. And Smith-Marset is getting some reps with the ones and with the twos, it's like him and BC Johnson the most, and then Albert Wilson, the next, I think. And so there's a sign that, you know, they might like Amir Smith-Marset's skill set. They just don't have him maybe yet in a real rotation where he's got some big role. But I think that's what they want is him to be coming out of the slot,

running deep passes or clearing out or giving him a chance for a big play. It's just they have to be able to believe in him to do that. This comes from at Jack Jack Skoll on Twitter. Does it look like this offense is giving Kirk Cousins more control at the line of scrimmage? I have no way to tell that to tell you the truth. I mean, it doesn't look different right now. I mean, Cousins is calling out things and getting to the line of scrimmage in these uptempo situations and saying different words and shouting out, Hey, this, say that, and calling out, you know, assignments or blocking

or whatever he might be calling out. But as far as how much command he has at the line of scrimmage, this is certainly not going to be a Peyton Manning situation where he's calling the plays and running them too, or anything like that. I think it's possible, but we haven't really heard how that's going to go. And I, in a training camp practice have no way to figure out, is he going to have more command at the line of scrimmage? He's not standing there. Like I said, like Manning yelling, Omaha, Omaha, and making all these different adjustments. He's running the plays, but it's also really early and they're trying to figure out like which plays

work for them, which concepts work for them, master the details of how Kevin O'Connell wants it done. I don't know that giving Kirk cousins way more at the line of scrimmage is really the way giving him a million different checks and things. I remember Mike Zimmer saying that he didn't like that about John D Filippo's offense, that it just gave cousins a lot of different things to think about pre-snap as opposed to

simplifying it. And we kind of swing back and forth. It's almost like this. When you have a nice coach and they don't win, you want a mean coach. If you have a mean coach and they don't win, you want a nice coach. It's like this with quarterbacks at the line of scrimmage if it's not really working then we say whatever the opposite is do that so oh it's too complicated for him we need to simplify it or oh we need to give him more command at the line of scrimmage my guess is it will be probably similar to what it was before where kevin o'connell is going to want a lot of control over how this goes but Um, but of course he's going to call in multiple plays to the headset and cousins will have the chance to audible out. I think that's probably standard NFL stuff that he'll have not like a particular, you're incomplete

command of this, but also not a, we're going to treat you like a rookie. We would. Um, all right, this comes from at heart of oak is kirk getting better at staying with his first read longer or still coming off predictably going to his second read meaning more passes for jefferson if he stays with the first read this would be another one that i don't know how to tell you an answer to i'm sorry for that happening twice in a row kirk cousins throws to his first read at about an average rate in the NFL. And this is what I love about PFF data is that I can tell you a detail on this, that I don't think that Kirk Cousins comes off his first read too soon.

I think that he stays on it and throws it at an average level in the NFL, but it's executing the first read. It's having somebody open. It's having a willingness to let loose sometimes when a throw isn't there. And Kevin O'Connell mentioned the other day, he was kind of asked about, remember that story that cousins told about how, uh, O'Connell and he were working through the details of, Hey, stay with this as opposed to moving on to your next read and that kind of thing. And O'Connell said kind of a

specific about, we want you to stick with it and throw it down the field rather than going to the second read and throwing it short. And it just reminded me of all the quotes of years past of people begging Kirk Cousins to push the ball down the field, whether it was Jay Gruden saying, you know, I can't scheme everybody open or Mike Zimmer saying, you know, I don't care if he throws an interception. I wanted to push it down the field. And Kevin O'Connell can do a lot, but he cannot change fundamentally who Kirk Cousins is. And that sort of made me think, well, we're still going to have some of those disagreements on you should have pushed it down the field. You should have thrown a contested ball, that type of thing. I don't think that's going to change, but I, I don't have a way unless they were giving me the plays or unless I could spot the concepts

quick enough to have some idea. But even then I can't for sure. Like if they gave me the plays and said, this is the first read. And then I watched, I could tell you normally you can kind of see it of like, is there a hitch? Does he move his head? Where's he looking that stuff? Um, but is he doing it more? Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure because he already was doing it a lot as, you know, a quarterback that was at an average rate of throwing to his first read. Uh, let's see, move on to S McCullough five. What's been the most interesting position battle so far in camp. I'm sure everyone wants to know about offensive line and cornerback battles, but have these materialized? Well, I was expecting along with everybody else in the world that there would be a right guard battle. And there is simply not

Jesse Davis is your right guard. Unless I am shocked, unless they're throwing Jesse Davis out there just to see if there's anything left in them. And then they're going to cut them at the end and play Ed Ingram. I mean, I would be very surprised with the way things are going. If they are not starting Jesse Davis week one, so long as he is healthy, he has been uncontested. I mean, he's the only guy who's taken first team reps any of the days that he's been healthy. Nobody else has mixed in. It's not like he's switching on and off with Chris Reed. And now it seems that they want Chris Reed to be the backup center or potentially starting center. I don't want to quite go there yet, but Chris Reed is not competing with him for that position. So I would say that

as far as position battles go and interesting, it's interesting that there isn't one there. Corner is absolutely the most interesting for me because of Andrew Booth Jr. and how well he's played so far. Cam Dantzler looks like he's had his ups and downs, but it's, I think, looks pretty good. Patrick Petersonerson seems fine we're going to find that one out as the season goes along but he's looked totally fine hasn't looked noticeably slower or struggling or injured or anything like that so i i kind of expect at this moment a similar patrick peterson so how much can andrew booth jr force them to play him in actual games? And how does he look in these preseason games after putting his name on the map during these training camp practices? Those are good questions.

And the wide receiver is a day-to-day thing about the backups is who's going to be there. Who's going to make plays at this moment. I haven't seen anyone really rise to the challenge, really force the team's hand. Albert Wilson isn't making plays left and right. And Amir Smith-Marset, we just talked about. B.C. Johnson has been fine and reliable as B.C. Johnson always is. So can anybody kind of force their way in there who's got more physical skill than B.C. Johnson?

That one is one I've been watching the most closely. And then it's the defensive linemen behind the starters. And what I've seen is there's just a lot of dudes getting chances. A lot of guys getting second team. A lot of guys even mixing in on first team where I saw James Lynch got a first team rep. Jonathan Bullard got a first team rep. He was the guy from Indianapolis. I mean, there's a lot of different people mixing in. Patrick Jones, of course, that are getting their shot to make some noise. And that might be normally we talk

about how it's practice, practice, practice with almost every position and everything is determined that way. But this one might be on the defensive line who rises to the occasion when it comes to the preseason game. So, you know, kind of, um, all the things around the edges as far as, uh, when it comes to the position battles, but the offensive line one, I thought we would be doing daily tracking of Jesse Davis allowed this many pressures. Chris Reed gave up this sack, just none of that really going on because Jesse Davis has it locked down. Uh, next question comes from rash comes on Twitter. Can Patrick Peterson play the slot? If booth and Dancer push for the outside jobs?

No, I don't think so. I mean, Kenny, Kenny do it. Yes. I'm technically, I'm sure that he could. He's been in the NFL for a very long time, but he is not a guy that I would expect to pull the Terrence Newman. Terrence Newman, I believe is a very special case. I mean, okay. I, maybe I shouldn't be so dismissive of this idea, but I mean, it might depend on what they think of Shannon Sullivan, but Shannon Sullivan has two full years experience as a starter. He would have to be pretty horrendous for this team to say, like, no, we're, we're actually going to change positions for Patrick Peterson from where he's been for his entire life and move him inside. Uh, because this guy is that bad. Like last year, for example,

I've got the PFF data up last year. Patrick Peterson took all of 14 snaps out of the slot 14. Uh, the year before it was a little more, it was 107, but I mean, this guy has never played in the slot. Uh, yeah, I think what, what much more, and even going back to like 2019 68 snaps the entire season. I'll even keep going back 20, 2018. He had a great year. He took 16 snaps and he took a thousand as the outside corner. Like this guy does not play slot corner. Um, so it'd be really stunning if they forced him to learn a new position halfway through camp or something, just because Andrew Booth was playing well. I don't think we have to rush this Andrew Booth thing. Like we, we, when it comes to rookies,

we always want them on the field right away. Oh, this guy's exciting. He's the next great thing. Let's get him out there. But rushing rookies, especially a corner out on the field, I think it's much better to slowly work in Andrew Booth Jr.

And look, guys are going to get hurt. Somebody is going to fall funny and tweak an ankle or pull a hammy or something. And Cam Dantzler will miss two games or Patrick Peterson will miss two games or Shannon Sullivan and someone else will have to move in. I guess that's a question for me is who moves into that spot. If there is an injury to Shannon Sullivan, uh, that I don't have an answer for you right now i think we're gonna have to see that play out but uh you know there will be chances for andrew booth jr to get on

the field so if he plays 350 400 snaps 450 snaps this year and gets chance to develop that's good that's good for the long term because what they're really trying to do is they are trying to set the stage here for a long-term better secondary. That's why they drafted this way is because they know the secondary is huge passing and stopping the pass. And the secondary has been so miserable in recent years that, you know, they drafted these guys, not to completely change them right away but to also be depth right away and and we'll see if uh lewis scene ends up as the number one safety i imagine he will and then you'll feel like pretty good about the depth if lewis scene is your number one safety next to harrison smith or number two i should say and cam bynum is a backup he's probably the backup nickel corner

honestly because he's just the next most talented guy. And then you're rotating Andrew Booth Jr. in. So Patrick Peterson doesn't have to play 70 snaps and maybe he plays 50. Like, I think you're in a pretty good position there. You're in a much better position than you've been in years. This comes from at seven zero on Twitter. Has anybody ever asked Kevin O'Connell about the curse history of Vikings kickers and how it will approach things when adversity happens? Uh, no, we have not asked him

about the cursed history of Vikings kickers. I suppose I'll have to find that out himself. I mean, if you're him, what would you say to that question? Like, Oh man, I'm worried. Like, no, of course not. He's just going to say like, uh, I don't know, man. It's like a new year. I guess we'll see. But I think their kicker is pretty good. Greg Joseph, that might be famous last words. He is, looks really excellent in camp. He went eight for eight with seven straight to end practice. There was another one that finished off a situational drill, kicked one from 58. The whole team cheered him. He seems like he's got a ton of confidence and they may have found themselves just a

good kicker in Greg Joseph. It would certainly be ironic if the Vikings found like two good kickers in a row and like Daniel Carlson, and then they cut him and then they find Greg Joseph, a guy who didn't even have a job and ends up being good as well. but he's certainly booting it as good as he can so what's Kevin O'Connell going to respond with there like well Greg looks great but you know I'm sure we'll lose a game on a kick another thing about the the cursed kicking and this Gary Anderson doesn't apply but you know when you've played so many games where you have these close games with quarterback play that's not blowing people out and seasons that rest on the razor's edge all the time where you

go in nine and eight eight nine ten and seven whatever every missed field goal is a huge deal like i'm sure that along the way there are other teams who have been great that have had kickers miss big field goals and we don't remember them as much unless they were in playoff games because you're not always relying so deeply on that one game, that one kick. And that's been the Vikings in recent years, even going back to 2015 where you're 11 and five, you win the division.

That's great, but you've got to play Seattle and the wild card round and you're playing a close game. Teddy Bridgewater, you know, played OK for it being, you know, negative degrees or whatever that day, but did not take advantage of the fact that Russell Wilson had a bad day and had to set up and rely on a field goal. And there it is like he misses 27. You should make 100 percent of the time. But that's just who the Vikings have been for so many years where you're relying on

that one kick to be the difference between your season, you know, going into the playoffs or, or whatever it might be. Um, that's, that's been the case a lot. So it is, it is a cursed history. There's no question about it. I'm not challenging that notion. I'm just saying that's a part of it. So if they're really good, maybe they won't have to worry as much about these such things. And how he'll handle it, I think, will be... Actually, Mike Zimmer handled it quite well when Greg Joseph missed the kick last year. But in previous years, obviously not so much. I think that O'Connell will handle it differently and maybe just allow his special teams coach

and their group that handles the kickers to be more kind of in control of that. But there's nothing you can really do when your kicker misses key kicks and costs you games. Everybody's going to be upset. And you know, Zimmer of course did not handle it very well, but I never really bought the Zimmer was causing kickers to miss kicks. I think that Dan Bailey was injured and maybe was not telling everyone because he had had injuries before. How do you go from being so good to so bad like that? And they also had the issue with the long snapper and the holding and everything else. But I don't know that Mike Zimmer not liking kickers or Kevin O'Connell loving his kicker is actually going to make a difference. From Steve Thompson, MN on Twitter, which rookie has contributed right away out of the gates?

Andrew Booth Jr. We've talked about quite a bit. I haven't discussed Brian Asamoah as much, but Brian Asamoah is just really fast. He is undersized, so that's part of it, but he's very quick, like explosive. That first step when he drives his foot into the ground, if he's blitzing, you can really see it. And he's getting a lot of reps and moving into the ones every so often. And I think that they like what they see so far for Brian Asamoah, because the obvious answer here is Booth has made the most noise early on. But Asamoah is worth watching that, you know, maybe he could be the third linebacker for this team or working in, in some sort of type of

package. I think that's possible. Last question here. Let's see. Which one do I want? Let's go with this come from Cooper goes Vroom. How lewis seen looking we expect rookie mistakes early on but does he look like he could challenge for the starting spot lewis seen from a physical perspective is a intimidating person he's very big and and muscular and super fast and all those things whether he's getting the right reads down on every play goes under the category of things that are hard for someone to tell from the sideline without knowing what he's supposed to do. What we haven't seen is a whole lot of plays that have been made by Lewis scene that there haven't been like interceptions or past breakups. Um, but I think you need to just

give this one time. My first impression is let's just wait to see because the bar is set pretty high by Cam Bynum. So maybe they're just asking him, Hey, prove that you belong above that guy who can very clearly play. Um, but I kind of expected to see, especially with the second team, more splash plays from Lewis scene right away. We also discussed that part of the problem is the backup quarterbacks are not giving anybody really a chance. They're not throwing the ball down the field very often when they do,

it hasn't been super accurate. And that's where you get those splash plays is you get, you know, one-on-one with a receiver and a safety and the safety goes up and makes play. I'm really interested to see about how scene looks in the preseason and more of a game setting. Um, and, and just what the coaches think will show by when they get them out there, that that's, that is what it is for me with Lewis scene. I don't trust my own eyes enough on the sideline to say, Oh, it looks like you got that assignment, right? Or assignment wrong. I can pick up on things. As I mentioned earlier about watching the coaches go over to a guy pretty often. Do they seem upset with a guy? Are they getting in somebody's face?

Are they, you know, going over things and it looks like somebody got it wrong. Are the safeties looking at each other, throwing their hands up? I haven't seen a ton of that. I think it's just giving him time to master a position that's going to be complicated in this defense. All right. If you enjoy the show, please leave a five-star review. I've noticed that the iTunes chart rankings, we've been going up and up. And I think that's because of you guys, the downloads have been going up and up, which I'll give the Minnesota Vikings credit for being a training camp. But I also want to give you guys credit as well for being so helpful when it comes to leaving those five star reviews on iTunes. That helps other people find the show.

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