Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Will the Vikings see the light and play aggressively after another close call?

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Matthew Coller and Brian Murphy talk about how the Minnesota Vikings waited until things got really dicey to turn on the jets against the Carolina Panthers. Is this a function of their head coach's philosophy or who their quarterback has always been? Do we think something is different this year with Kirk Cousins? Why does every game seem to come down to the very end? How has luck played for and against the Vikings this year and how does this 3-3 start set up for a wild second half of the season? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I 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 monday morning murph episode of purple insider matthew collar along with brian murphy whose column you can read at purpleinsider.substack.com another whiplash win gives the vikings new life three and three. And the walking contradiction that is the Minnesota Vikings, Brian, whiplash their fans through three hours yesterday, as they have through five out of their six games. And I got to say that I'm tired. I mean,

I think I need the bye week as much as Kirk Cousins and Eric Hendricks, who both acknowledge that it is exhausting to play every single game on, quote, the razor's edge. Brian, how are you this morning? Have you recovered from yesterday? Good thing it was a noon game. If that was a night game, I would have had to sleep in. Well, it almost was a night game. It went three hours and 41 minutes. I mean, it was eating into the late games. That might end up being the longest game of the season for NFL time. It just, it went on and on and on. Yeah. I mean, it's just everybody I think can take a collective breath. It's a much needed, it's a perfectly timed by. Usually there's always a, you know, do you want them early? Do you want them in the middle?

Do you want them late? I can't think of a better time for the team, the market to just take a collective breath. They're at three and three. It took them six weeks to get to 500, you know, and all it really does is just buy them relevancy and a chance to really reassess and reimagine. We've seen enough of them to know what they're capable of, and they're capable of great things. Greatness on offense. Greatness on defense.

Clutch moments by your field goal kicker. And then strange misses that maybe he shouldn't have been in a position to have to make anyway. You've got great production from your superstars on offense. Look, if you could have told anybody before the season that Kirk Cousins would have been responsible for putting the Vikings in a position to extend or win five out of six games, that's the kind of money play that people were begging for him to make. Again, it's still October. He needs to deliver November and December to get them into January. But I think that's got to put a lot of people at ease too. And yet for all of that,

there's so many flaws and so many confounding decisions and lapses and just sort of general checking out that this club seems to do that breathes life into teams and especially quarterbacks that have no business breathing life. And yesterday was another prime example of that. Yeah. And so I think that maybe the best way I could talk about it is I just am sort of processing everything that has happened both yesterday and throughout is sort of putting it into some buckets of like what we learned out of yesterday. What is going to be sustainable? What's good? What I don't think they can fix. What I do think they can fix um the biggest takeaway yesterday is uh you can do it friends you can throw to adam phelan and justin jefferson all the time and hey mix in kj osborne as much as you want in say the first quarter and the second quarter um because yesterday as we were watching the first and second quarter now it was clear that there was an edict or a game plan to throw to jefferson and thielen but there were a

lot of bubble screens to them which you know i think made sense considering the man coverage that they were getting played uh if you're if your cornerback is playing man and he's off and there's no safety over there there's a decent chance that justin jefferson or adam thielen catches the ball dodges the guy and gets yardage um but they. There's a decent chance that Justin Jefferson or Adam Thielen catches the ball, dodges the guy, and gets yardage. But they're not the type of receivers that you need to do that with. But at least it was progress to make sure they were involved early and often. And then everything just went stale. They had a great 85-yard drive, and then it was looking at your watch,

waiting for the Vikings offense to show up. And this is a thing that we've seen pretty much every year from this offense is long sections of games where they do not score three and out three and out three and out and then they get down after the blocked punt and this was very much the case if you look at Kirk Cousins numbers last year and Justin Jefferson's numbers that if they got down in the game all of a sudden in in trying to get back into it they would start pushing the ball to those guys and lo and behold success and and so i think is is that your cat brian yeah i'm sorry i i was thinking you know we have rules going on and on i could mute it and move her no we have rules maybe it's providing some drama and you're and you're teeing up this question for me no no uh there's a rule that you have to make an animal pun for your pet if it makes a noise on the podcast so

normally it's dogs in the background but keep that in mind that you now have to make a cat pun um so okay my point my point is just that you know they showed what they were totally capable of against the defense that uh I think was probably overrated but isn't horrible in Carolina. But they waited until they got down in the game, which if you keep doing that, Dak Prescott will put a nail in your coffin and not go whatever Darnold was, five for a million with 43 yards at one point. Like other good teams will close you out.

This strategy to be aggressive with those two receivers has to happen early, early and earlier in games to be aggressive. And as if, you know, Adam Thielen needed to give you another reminder of how clutch he is. I mean, the catch he made, the touchdown catch, which should have put the game away in regulation. I mean, stretching out, keeping both feet in, very Chris Carter-esque, battling the sun, making a clutch play. Yeah, I don't know what the exact number of catches he had, 126 yards, though.

So why are you forsaking him? Why does that happen? That is inexcusable to happen. And you're right, because now you've got the meat grinder portion of the schedule. You've got the bye, but now you've got Dallas coming in. Then you go to Baltimore, which looks better and better every week. The Chargers don't sleep on them. West Coast trip always, always challenging. All to set up a home game against Green Bay, who, you know, at five and one, I don't think anybody remembers how ugly they were in week one. I don't see. You know, it's urgency and desperation are great motivators. And when the Vikings are pushed to the brink, they have attended.

They have resiliency in them. I give them that. They don't melt down. They don't fall apart. The block punt for a touchdown that Carolina had that just completely breathed new life, the Vikings played angrily after that. 16 points they rolled up. But for a couple of random fourth down conversions at the end, we wouldn't even be talking about overtime. But we did have to talk about overtime. And I think you had tweeted this out at one point, too. I don't want to hear anything about bad breaks. They won the coin toss and marched down the field.

That's a hell of a break. So it's entertaining. It's unscripted brilliance. And I don't know how much more folks can take of it, but, you know, I mean, I guess lean into it, because I said before the season it was going to be a roller coaster ride, on and off the field, we've had a few off-field hiccups, and I don't want to curse anybody, but, you know, the big old bad c-word has not really invaded the locker room like it has other teams, and it's still lurking out there. So now they're going to scatter for the bye.

So who knows where half of these guys are going to be? So there's so much more that's going to happen, but they did exactly what they had to do. They took care of the bottom feeders, Detroit and Carolina. I mean, Carolina is three and three, but they feel like a one and two and four type team. They took care of what they had to. All that does is set you up now for the real season. And now we're going to know exactly what they're like. We're going to know exactly who they are by Thanksgiving weekend. Would you say that it feels like the Vikings have nine lives? Would you say that when the offense.

That's my job to come up with the metaphor, right? I know I was waiting. I was waiting for this. Like when the offense brings its claws out, it can really. Yeah. Or, you know, they're a moody team, you know, that they don't give you unconditional love like a dog. They only love you when they feel like it. Is that a good cat metaphor for

you uh yes definitely uh so now on the defensive side of things these last couple of weeks have um really pumped up their stats and uh baker mayfield was injured and played as poorly as you could play and then uh jared goff was jared goff and we saw him struggle again yesterday that's just not working in det. And he has no receivers. Both of his receivers got hurt against the Vikings. And then the receivers for the Carolina Panthers, you know, they looked like when you throw a ball at a, at a cat and it sort of grasps at it and it hits it in the face.

I was thinking more of a stone wall. It was just, I've never seen so many drops in my life. So they've gotten some assistance. Uh, but when the Vikings needed a huge stop against Detroit, they didn't get it when they needed a huge stop against Carolina, they didn't get it. And so this is again, the walking contradiction that seems to be the Vikings is that I think you largely believe that the defense can do its job and can be good. And yesterday, Carolina should have taken a page out of what Seattle did last night against the Pittsburgh Steelers, where they just abandoned the pass in the second half of the game and just started running every play.

And if Carolina had done that, there were times where they would break off a six, seven yard run. And you thought, oh, now they figured it out. The Vikings defense can't stop the run. And then they would throw three straight incompletions off of their receivers helmets or something. Call timeout every other play or twice in a row. And so I the Vikings still have a run defense that couldn't really even stop the Carolina yesterday when Carolina wanted to. And again, in a close game, not running, please don't ever tell me that you want Joe Brady as your next head coach.

I thought that was a very poorly called game by Joe Brady. Still, though, the numbers you come out with are the opposing quarterback went 17 for 41, which is just, know you did you did a great job in that case uh you picked him off you strip sacked him delvin tomlinson i think has been a very good addition to this team and he's shown more pass rush chops than we thought that he had and yet i feel like we still don't know really about this defense because when they played kyler murray they got shredded up and down. And since then, we have not seen them play someone of that caliber. And Dak Prescott is coming. Justin Herbert is coming. Aaron Rodgers is on the way.

I think that we are yet to find out what they can really do on defense. Lamar Jackson is coming. Lamar Jackson. right, yes. Right, and I think because of the herky-jerky way, and that's a terrible way to say it, but the way the offense just – the offense continually puts the defense in bad situations. The defense will respond occasionally in those situations, but also lapse in key situations. I mean, I don't think there was anybody on the planet that thought Sam Darnold was going to complete a fourth and 10 in the last couple of minutes to extend and ultimately finish a 96-yard drive that not only that needed to happen,

but they had to convert the two points. I think everybody at that point thought the inevitable was coming. So you wonder, you go, yeah, here's a defense that created three turnovers, four sacks, really overwhelmed and outmuscled and outthought, you know, a quarterback on a team that looked like it was in over its head. I mean, the receivers couldn't make plays until, well, that last drive they decided to catch the ball. Christian McCaffrey's on the sideline. I think Fox put up the graphic that Darnold is, is he what, 0-3 or 0-4 without McCaffrey? I don't know what the exact number is, but it's not good. So you have all of these things that set you up for an ability to finish. And I think that's what

people are wondering is why doesn't this team seem to have that killer instinct? And you can do that with a 12 play, 80 yard clock consuming drive in the third quarter, the fourth quarter. You can do it with a defining three and out. Neither side of the ball seems to want to or be able to deliver that dagger. And special teams too. Look, you know, Joseph, Greg Joseph has had a remarkable season already in that he has made several clutch kicks and missed several clutch kicks that haven't they've only cost him one game but they've cost a lot of anxiety and then out of nowhere you've got the block punt for a touchdown and it's like again we talk about whack-a-mole and there's another whack-a-mole that came up that nobody could anticipate and pound down. The lack of a complete game on all three phases is both maddening and also contributing to this wildly entertaining place that the Vikings have found themselves. And this is where I think that you earn your own destiny when it comes to madness because madness exists in football and will always exist. I mean,

think about last night's game when you're Gino Smith and Ben Roethlisberger, one of you is old and completely broken. The other one is a bad backup quarterback. Well, what, what determines the win? DK Metcalf doesn't go out of bounds and there's a fumble. And then they need a long kick from Pittsburgh's kicker to win the game or to tie the game, then win it. You know, like that's what it comes down to when neither offense was good enough to put the other team away. And with the Vikings, the offense is good enough to put teams away, but they often don't play in a manner in which they realize

we have to put you away. And I think this is part of the best season they've had under Zimmer. They didn't do this either a lot of times, but the defense just won it anyway. Like I'm thinking of 2017, the game in Atlanta where they kept Atlanta in the game, but it didn't matter. Who cares if you kept them in the game? You were the number one defense. You weren't going to lose in the end, right?

But this is not a number one defense. This is a good defense. Maybe it ends the year 12th or something like that. Once they play all the good quarterbacks, this is a defense that's fallible. And so you have to offensively put those nails in coffins. You cannot, for example, kick to 25 yard field goals. That is ridiculous. In today's NFL, there's just no excuse at all for kicking 25-yard field goals

when you have no less than three superstar players as weapons, another one who's really good, so make it four players you could give the ball to, and a quarterback who's playing as well as any quarterback in the NFL right now. If Kirk Cousins was really struggling, I would understand Zimmer checking up and saying, okay, let's just like you and I played golf the other day. Let's four iron it out there into the fairway as I was doing rather than hitting my drive into the trees. But Kirk Cousins is playing great. His receivers are getting open. Delvin Cook looked explosive yesterday and you kick field goals on fourth and four and fourth and two for 25 yards. And then you're, Oh man,

close game at the end shocker. You had a chance to be up to put 14 up there. And even if you only convert one of two, you still have more points. I mean, these are the things like, it's not really like analytics. It's just, this is today's NFL. And here's who you see. You want to know who you see falling behind in this? Bill Belichick. Watch yesterday's game.

They punted on fourth and less than four, four different times. New England did yesterday. And guess what happened? Dak Prescott made him pay for it. That's what will happen in the NFL with offenses being as explosive or capable of traveling 96 yards. When you check up and run twice and try for a 47 or 49 yard field goal whatever it was yeah you guys might miss it like those are hard field goals it's almost 50 yards away and apparently it was windy like i i mean i just feel like if you get what you ask for you

you a punt being blocked for a touchdown won't matter if you have finished your drives your own drives with touchdowns and if you have pushed the needle on fourth down and been aggressive then you're going to have a chance and mike mccarthy by the way did the same thing you're seeing certain coaches separate themselves from the pack when it comes to the aggressive nature that's required now and the vikings are not doing that we're okay first of all let, let's go back to the golf reference because, you know, now that you got me thinking about your four iron conservative play, the Vikings have to rely on the way I played, which was I puff up my chest here and tell everybody that on the long par five on number five at Highland National, when you put yourself in the sand like I did, and then you bury it from about 25 yards off the green and put it in the hole for the birdie,

that's kind of how the Vikings are living, huh? Do you see how I tied that? One of the great golf shots. Greatest shot of my golf career life, folks. I holed out from the bunker for a birdie, and I had no business doing that. And I kind of feel like that is a little bit of a metaphor for where things are at with the Vikings. I often wonder with the offensive sort of lurching and curious lapses, is this, is this a lack of urgency in the huddle, a lack of urgency in the play calling,

a lack of urgency in the play calling. A lack of urgency in the head coach allowing the offensive coordinator to step on the accelerator. These are questions that were kind of addressed internally last week, or it sounded like they were. And if you look at their numbers, you're like, well, the pep talk worked. The self-examination worked. The autopsy of everything they had been doing produced results. I mean, 571 yards of total offense. They hadn't put that many yards up since Dante Culpepper was slinging in 2004. And it's the third most in franchise history.

That's nothing to sneeze at, you know, after 60 years worth of history. So they are, when they are capable, they can, they can churn. And there are shades of the 98 Vikings, but the 98 Vikings finished. The 98 Vikings had a very mediocre or worse defense, but they bludgeoned you to death with 40 points a game. And they bludgeoned you with, with just, you know, rainmaking type plays that, that really demoralize the team. The Vikings don't necessarily do that. Or if they do demoralize a team, it only lasts a minute or two, because then there's a, there's an answer that is provided because there's a defensive lap. So you're the football guy. You tell me, where do you think this is lacking? Is it

a sense of urgency that, hey, there was post-game talk about after Carolina roared back with that blocked punt that, you know, Cousins and the offense were on the sidelines saying this aggression, as the dude would say, will not stand and we are going to put it together. And they did. I mean, that was as innovative and aggressive of a drive as they've had all season to answer for that block punt, and then they ended up getting two touchdowns and a field goal after all of that and seemingly had the game in hand. So if you take that snapshot, why is that not there all game? Why is that not there in the first quarter when you can put a team away or by halftime? Why are there always these sort of lapses? And again, does that come from a lack, you know, you got the offensive line going out on a screenplay, four linemen missed

the only block that mattered for Dalvin Cook and it couldn't happen. Do you have, you know, an ill-timed penalty? Do you have a lack of aggressive play calling or do you have you know an ill-timed penalty do you have a lack of aggressive play calling or do you have an a lack lack of an aggressive head coach who doesn't feel comfortable to jam the accelerator through the air well i also hold that all to you yeah i think part of it too is kirk cousins and who he is that like this has sort of always been him that we've watched him for a really long time now and when he gets down in a game and he really starts going after it and being aggressive, he is as good as anybody in the league. But oftentimes when he's trying to play it safe, we'll see. And he missed the throw early to Justin Jefferson, where Jefferson's wide open for a 40-something yard touchdown.

And he just overthrows him. And that happens sometimes when you're launching it down the field. But I think it's a trend for Cousins that we will see the opening drive oftentimes is pretty good, but there will be just these long periods of time where you fall behind. And as long as the defense keeps you in the game, you're not going to end up losing and having to come back from you know two or three scores but I mean you think about like the Denver game a couple of years ago where they came back from 20 but it felt so much like even last year

against Carolina where it was it came down to a final kick and their guy missed it but it was the same sort of deal where they made some mistakes they got got behind, they had three and outs, and then all of a sudden, oh, now it's time to play. Now it's time to push it. And I think that's kind of like who he is more than it is play calling or Zimmer's mentality or anything else. But I also think that from Zimmer's perspective, that maybe he doesn't see sort of the broader picture of how to win necessarily. Like, I think that he is okay with a game going methodically through and sort of we punt to you,

you punt to us and we get the field position and we sort of build on each drive and that kind of thing. And when you line up for a field goal from 25 yards, you're saying like, oh, let's, let's get some points. Let's get this show on the road and just sort of kind of get this game moving and get us up in the game. Um, I think that that's a way from growing up in the nineties and, uh, watching football through the early two thousands as well, that most football games were played. But I think that now, uh, the more aggressive teams are saying we have to put up

touchdowns. 25 yard field goals just won't do like you should only be kicking field goals if it's fourth and 14 and you're kind of way back. And that's the only way for you to get points. But I think that that's sort of how he sees the broader picture of how to win a football games to sort of grind that field position, run a bunch of times, and then set up passing plays later in the game. And this can all work if you have a great defense and the defense has played mostly great the last three weeks. Will they play great going forward? I think that's the question. Are you going to change how their head coach views winning a football game? And I think from the Belichick example,

and you can use a lot of other examples too. I mean, Mike McCarthy was around for a long time. It doesn't have to exist for everybody. John Harbaugh is the most aggressive guy out there on fourth down, but you know, Marvin Lewis, when he was a coach, it was the same sort of thing. I think Zimmer kind of falls into that category of like, you have to basically just trust your quarterback and trust your passing

offense to put you to put you up in as many ways as you can and sometimes it will go wrong but you have to be okay with that and know that you'll get those back so what you're saying is mike zimmer is really knish from rounders right he's just grinding out that alimony and that rent money and you know just living day to day and what you really want is you want Mike McD going into Teddy KGB's den and shoving all his chips right on top of his Oreos. Right. And making it happen. And maybe you, maybe you lose big, but at the end, maybe you win big, you know, can I, can I string this out? I love rounders. So I'm just going to keep going with that. But yeah, I, I, what,

but what Zimmer can do, the old school thinking, will probably work against Detroit at home, where you just kind of lean on a team until they fail. It can work against a backpedaling injury, kind of flailing around team like Carolina. Should have worked against Cincinnati, almost worked against Cincinnati. But these are layups on the schedule. I mean, these are pushovers. You're not going to do that against Dak Prescott and the Cowboys. You're not going to be able to do that against Lamar Jackson in Baltimore. You're not going to go out to LA and grind out a win

against the Chargers and Justin Herbert. You're not going to do that at home against Aaron Rodgers. I mean, you think Aaron Rodgers was trolling Bears fans at Soldier Field? Wait till he comes here and wants to put up, you know, maybe pad his resume for a second act in Minnesota, i.e., you know, the Favre era. And, you know, the little gamesmanship between Zimmer and Rodgers going back, you know, 13 years as defensive coordinator versus star quarterback versus head coach versus division rival star quarterback. These are the games that you have

to just say, okay, let's go for something here. Let's, you know, it's sensing the moment. And I think that the default mechanism for, for Zimmer, as you, as you say, is let's just, let's just play the odds like we always have. And I don't think that's a formula for success in 2021. It may be against some also-rans, but is he going to be able to convince himself when the crowd's roaring on fourth and four at the eight-yard line to go for it? Is he going to send out Greg Joseph for the easy three?

Is he going to be able to, you know, so much of what his coaching philosophy is, is baked in. He's 65. He's been in the league for 25 years. He's been with the Vikings for eight. And he's stubborn by nature. Is he going to suddenly, you know, become this contemporary, you know, throw caution to the wind guy. You think he, some things would convince him to do that.

I don't know if that's going to happen. So you're going to find yourself probably relying heavily on your defense, a big play from special teams, a big turnover sequence, a lot of momentum that you can't necessarily always count on to eke out week after week these kinds of games. And, you know, the emotional toll it takes on a team as well, I don't think can be understated. I mean, these guys are professionals. They're hard-nosed individuals. They're all alpha males. We get that. But, you know, I believe Kirk Cousins when he says he's exhausted. I believe Kirk Cousins when he says he's exhausted.

I believe Eric Hendricks when he says he's exhausted. Like, I don't know if that's sustainable. The bye may give you some new life. But mentally, this season could grind them down even more so than the inevitable injuries if this kind of, you know, stubbornness persists. Folks, Minnesota football is back, and there's no need to exhaust yourself searching all over the internet for Minnesota football tickets anymore because TickPick, that's T-I-C-K, P-I-C-K, is the original no-fee ticket site and the only one you'll ever need to go for

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but they were able to adjust and Tyler Conklinlin has been mostly good and kj osborne's emergence has made up for that but otherwise i mean delvin cook goes out for a couple games alexander madison's right there and madison just always seems to come through when he's called upon other than that though you know patrick peterson went down turned out to be cramps yesterday their corners have been healthy their defensive line has been healthy outside of Everson Griffin having to miss one game Anthony Barr is back uh Nick Vigil played pretty much just fine in in his place the safeties have been healthy the receivers have been healthy the offensive line uh as far as I could tell has not missed a single snap. They've played all five guys together.

And you're 3-3. And I look at it as you've gotten a lot of good bounces to counteract the missed field goal, which isn't really – I mean, you kind of earned that. They blew a two-score lead against Arizona and then missed the field goal at the end and say, oh, bad luck. Well, you were up by two scores. So, again, another opportunity in another game where you could put the accelerator down and finish the game,

and you didn't, and you kept Arizona in it, and then one mistake, and all of a sudden the other team is back in. And so I think it is very much just seeing the broader picture of, like, you only get so many possessions, and you have to maximize your point output. And whether it's the first quarter or the fourth quarter, you have to do that or the other team will eventually put up points or things will go wrong and bounces will not go your way. And I don't know that that will ever change. The one thing I think Zimmer could adapt here is

stop making it a weekly coin flip this week against cleveland i'm going to be aggressive and go for it on fourth down then the next week i'm going to be conservative and i'm going to kick 25 yard field goals well which is it i mean there i i mean if you're going to play the conservative way um i guess do that all the time but instead it seems just sort of like there's a you know aggressiveness randomizer well shall i go for this fourth down? Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Uh, yes. Randomizer says yes, or whatever the eight ball shake it. Uh, it says, yes, you should go for fourth down. It's been seen very much like that. Um, the other thing that would be a little bit concerning for going forward is when your quarterback plays this well, uh,

for a long stretch of time, which we have seen many times in Kirk Cousins' career, six, eight games of really great football, you wonder about, is there going to be a regression? I want to know what you think, Murph. Do you think that this is a version of Cousins that can sustain through the whole season and he can go toe to toe with the great quarterbacks that are on the way, or are we waiting for the other shoe to drop? Because I think that even against Cleveland, it was really the offensive line that struggled in that game and against Detroit, it was more game plan problematic than so much cousins.

And he's, and then in this game, in the second half, he plays extremely well and the big drives, as you mentioned. But I also think that it's a very, very dicey thing to continue to say, Hey cousins, give us a game winning drive every week. I think that's a lot. And to say, Hey, don't ever throw any interceptions. Don't ever have some tip balls go into the hands of the other team. Because once again, yesterday, a strip sack ends up back in his hands. That's the third time this year that he's been strip sacked and it's bounced right back into his hands. And so I guess I wonder if you like what you think, if there's something different with him or if this is if this is like maybe a different version or slightly different version? Well, it's definitely a slightly different version because I think what, what everybody will say, this is October Kirk, right?

Because he puts up the big numbers in the, in the first third of the season, but is more consistent later on and may deliver a little bit, you know, like that game in new Orleans, the wildcard game, but then fall flat out in San Francisco. But what I'd say is a slightly different version of this is that it's the fourth quarter stuff. It's the clutch drives when need be, especially when all seems lost, whether it's a bad break, a missed field goal, a defensive lapse.

The Vikings could be one in five considering where they the positions they've been put in at the end of games but Cousins has managed to drive them down the field five out of six times and set them up to either force overtime or win the game that's what you want out of your quarterback fourth quarter medal and that will pay that should and could play dip pay dividends in December and January if they can manage to get there uh and and be relevant um so I would feel better about that because that those were sort of the things that everybody looked at now he's got some night games coming up too that's the other handicap right Kirk can't deliver on national tv well Well, the next game coming back,

Halloween night, the crazies will be out, NBC, Dak Prescott, the whole world will be watching. I mean, that'll be another test for him. So in that sense, I think it's slightly different. But I don't really feel at all that the Vikings have been handicapped by quarterback play at any point this season. I really don't. Now, I'm not the expert, and I'm sure there's some deep divers that will point out a few things. But, man, you know, he is the least of their issues. And, you know, he may inevitably have a clunker of a game because all NFL quarterbacks are allowed to do that. I mean, Aaron Rodgers was criminally negligent in week one, but that doesn't mean, you know,

you throw him off the train. I mean, so Cousins is going to have a two or three pick game. Cousins is going to have a 15 for 36 game. It's probably going to happen. He hasn't yet, and I think it's been pretty impressive. So I don't see that changing. I think he may be on a path here to finally wipe away all those doubts. But it's, again, the whack-a-mole. It's the other situations that seemingly crop up, and it's a combination of attitude.

It's a combination of offensive line play, occasional play calling, questionable play calling, lack of attitude. It's a combination of offensive line play, occasional play calling, questionable play calling, lack of aggression, too aggressive, no aggressive identity, as you were pointing out with Zimmer, a special team's lapse here and there, a missed kick. It's always, you know, every team has the whack-a-mole, but there's no whack-a-mole with the quarterback, but there will be at a certain point. So what does that mean for everything else? I haven't seen enough from everything else that convinces me they can overcome a bad game from Cousins. No, that's exactly right, and they did not do it against Cleveland,

and I didn't think it was a bad game from him against Detroit so much as they really decided they were going to win that game 16 to six, and then it almost blew up in their face. But yeah, I mean, when the problem with being three and three at this point of the season, where you've had a lot of winnable games is just how thin the margin is now going forward for that one bad game that shows up from, from here or there. The one thing I would give Kirk cousins credit for is that he's just always Kirk Cousins. Like they're, uh, they can be down or they can be up, or he can come off the worst game and he gets criticized, or he can have his coach call him out in training camp, or he can, you know, whatever it is. And he just is the same thing

week after week after week. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't in terms of his play. But every time you think, like you said, like, oh man, well, this is, they had the block punt and Cousins is going to come out and panic and throw the pick. That is not what happens. Like he seems to always keep them in games. And these last several years have featured an unbelievable amount of games, just like yesterday.

So Murph, great article at purpleinsider.substack.com. Another whiplash win gives the Vikings new life. Also, congratulations again on the shot out of the sand on Friday. It was incredible. Yeah, the victory lap was great. You got to throw the club, stick your hands up in the air. I mean, celebrate. It was this pump.

Yeah. Lundquist was up in the air. I mean, celebrate. It was this pump. Yeah. Lundquist was there for the call. Amazing coincidence. Have you ever seen anything in your life like that? I mean, who'd have thunk he would have been in St. Paul in the middle of a Friday on the next hole and the next hole for that call. It was incredible luck. And the way that it went like around the hole and just like, it was cinematic, right?

The only thing that would have been better is if it hung on the lip, like tiger at 16 at the masters. Yeah, that was it. Otherwise it was all, all drama. Yeah. Well, that's a, and that defines our season as well. All drama so far. So we've got the bi-week and here on the show, it is bi-week bonanza.

So we will continue to go forth and break down every part of this team, preview every part of the second half of the season, or at least our second half of the season post-buy. So I'm excited for everything to come this week. And Murph, I will maybe golf with you again soon and definitely we'll do this again soon. All right, everybody enjoy. Take a breath. Take your dog for a walk. Enjoy the kids. Maybe have a moment with the wife, you know, just put football down for a week.