Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Will the Vikings snap the Jim Nantz curse vs. Chiefs?

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Matthew Coller starts with a bizarre stat about Jim Nantz calling Vikings games and then gets down a rabbit hole about whether curses in Vikings land are real and the close calls during the Zimmer era. Then talk about Garrett Bradbury and Marcus Davenport being limited in practice and much more... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

everybody welcome to another episode of purple insider matthewar here. And we've got Vikings Chiefs, and we also have a Twins playoff round victory, which is pretty fun. I mean, I haven't followed the Twins very closely, but seeing them celebrate and watching them win these couple games has been pretty enjoyable to watch that team now that they're in the playoffs and actually pitch well

and not be cursed, which made me think about funny Viking related curses. And I got a couple to talk about, but the funniest one was one that producer Jonathan Harrison sent to me about this week and who's calling the game. So I figured we have to talk about this a little bit. And I would love to hear from you guys in the comments, if you believe that the Vikings are cursed in some way, because I I'm always interested to know if people are believers in curses, especially, Hey, like I know the twins aren't in the world series by getting this win, but it's over, right? The streak is over.

Whatever curse was lingering over them for most of my adult life no longer exists. So maybe that will be the same with this very strange Jim Nance-related curse. And so I'm going to read this to you on the post here from our friend Jonathan Harrison, who put it up at bringmethenews.com. This is what he sent me. Jim Nance on the call historically spells doom for the Vikings. I was like, what? What is it?

Huh? Jim Nance? The Vikings have been outscored 171 to 69 over the last six games with Jim Nance calling their games. And the last time they won with Jim Nance on the call was 2013. Why that would be the case, we're going to work on some theories. Let me tell you a quick Jim Nance story. My only Jim Nance story is that I used to be a producer, a radio producer. So I used to have to call our guests when I was working in Buffalo. And so Jim Nance was supposed to be on the air. And the thing is that when you're the producer, the hosts are wondering what's going on over there if you don't get the guests on at the right time.

So I'm struggling and I'm struggling and I'm calling the number that they gave me and I'm not getting through to Jim Nance. I'm going, what is going on? I'm calling the front desk of his hotel. I'm calling his people. What's going on? What's going on? Finally, I get a call back from Jim Nance and I'm like, sorry, Jim, I don't know what was going on there. I'm sorry, we're late. And I know you're on a tight schedule. And Jim was like, it's cool, man. The hotel's been a big pain this week. So it's all good. And then we got him on the air. It was a great interview. And you're always nervous as the producer calling these people, like, are they going to be annoyed at you? Are the hosts going to be upset? So that was the one time he was very patient and very helpful getting on the air that I have dealt with Jim Nance in any way.

So I always appreciated that, though, because when you are the person who's behind the scenes, not everybody's all that nice to you. Like, they don't have any reason to be. So Marv Levy, Jim Nance, you know, a number of sports writers. But, like, those people, I used to have to call them to get them on the air. Thurman Thomas were some of the nicest people in the world. So I figured I'd share that before we talk about Jim Nance's curse. I think that this is funny.

What about Bob? Mystery solved. It's not Jim Nance. 2013, when was the offensive line started going downhill? Is it the curse of Nance or Romo? Well, I imagine he wasn't, he wasn't working with Romo until more recently,

right? The last couple of years. So there would have been Phil Sims on the call. So it's gotta be Jim Nance who has cursed them. I mean, Hunter says, I think the reason is kind of the same as Kirk in prime time. You're playing good teams when Nance is on the call. I think that, uh, Hunter, you you're thinking right

along the same lines as I would be about this Jim Nance curse. Also, I mean, it's only a handful of games, so I don't know how many games you have to go before it's an actual curse. Um, nano Joe thinking around the same way vikings always get embarrassed on national tv games add the kirk factor to it's going to be bad on sunday well we'll talk about that uh i am interested in any of your thoughts and questions about sunday's game against kansas city and why they have a chance why they don't have a chance. I do think that the main reason is that Jim Nance is the A team. He's always going to be calling the best teams. And throughout this time, from 2013 to present,

how many times would the Vikings be the best team? I mean, last year, they had a really good record. I don't remember if Nance called any of the games. Obviously it wouldn't have been any of their wins if he did call any of those games, but a lot of times you're playing somebody who's very good. And sometimes I'm sure it would have been teams from the AFC that maybe you're less familiar with and so forth. And there might

be something to, I've always wondered about this, like this team and when they play and I, and I'm sure it's opponent driven. I'm sure of it, but sometimes it feels like when they play anywhere outside of noon, it's just like, they aren't ready to go or they're a little shaky at the start or maybe it's just the pressure or maybe it's just that you're always just playing someone good i don't know i think that's probably at the center of the curse though but for it to go on this long where throughout that run from 2013 to present they have had so many good teams. I mean, not always great teams, maybe a couple of great teams, but I mean, good teams, though, throughout that time span, 2015, 2017, last year, and to have every time Jim Nance comes

to town, not only are they losing, but they have barely scored points when he's there. So we'll see. Maybe another streak gets broken. I have never been a believer. This is what I want to know from you guys. I have never been a believer in streaks and curses because when I was growing up, the Boston Red Sox curse was talked about nonstop. And you have to be kind of a certain age to remember this,

but it was every year. I grew up in the state of New York. We had Yankee games on all the time on TV. And every time that they would play each other, it was curse of the Bambino. You know, look at all these historic losses that the Boston Red Sox have. They'll never win a World Series.

They're too cursed, yada, yada, yada. And then one time they had a great team and they just won it's like oh well i guess this isn't a real thing then i mean right now i mean not that we were ever supposed to really think that there were some sports gods pulling the puppet strings but i would say if there's a franchise that has an argument in football, I mean, of course, the Chargers do. The New York Jets probably. What did they do? Sold their soul to get the Super Bowl with Joe Namath and skyrocket the NFL to where it is today?

Maybe that happened. But this is a good question. Having grown up in Buffalo, the Scott Nor norwood the wide right yes yeah that's another one like if there's a someone who would believe in curses it would be me based on the places that i've gone and not only scott norwood but the buffalo bills losing four straight super bowls absolutely will never ever happen again in a million years and with the vikings there's this same sort of thing where they've won more than any other franchise that doesn't have a super bowl so congratulations for getting picked for that um i i think that sports are just so weird and can be so random

at times that there is no explanation uh how many franchises have ever lost a single quarterback in his young prime to a knee injury? And they have two. Oh, the curse of Bobby Lane is a good one for the lions. And we'll see where that shows up at some point. So I do enjoy curses. I enjoy strange streaks. The fact that they haven't won with Jim Nance. As soon as Jonathan Harrison sent me that article, I was like, this is perfect. We got to talk about this, especially kind of in the middle of the week. And, you know, we're going to ramp up from here to the game. And, hey, maybe there will be a Taylor Swift curse, right? That the Kansas City Chiefs will never win again after Taylor Swift did a promotional tour by coming to football stadiums and having them show her on TV or dated Travis Kelsey.

I'm not really sure. I guess it depends on who you're asking. But the way that, yes, out of context me, I enjoy curses. Thank you, Craig. What I mean is I enjoy talking about them. I enjoy oddities in sports and weird things. I don't like feel great that all of you had to go maybe some of large chunks of your lives without the Minnesota twins winning a single playoff baseball game. I don't feel great about that, but I had nothing to do with it. If they had me pitch, they really would have lost. Although they went with Randy Dobnak, who was

an Uber driver, so maybe that was closer than you'd expect. But the point just being that it's fascinating to me to try to look for what are these explanations for these things happening. And Minnesota as a state, what are the odds that the Timberwolves could draft as high as they have so many times and never get over that hump? And what are the odds that the Minnesota wild and the twins would be really good franchises with lots of good players and get into the playoffs and then never get past that. The disgruntled superstar curse is interesting as well. But all of these things, I mean, the field goal from Gary Anderson is the one where if you're talking about curses and someone says to you, I don't believe in them,

no chance, then how did Gary miss that kick? And that's certainly one of them. Going to Philadelphia on the road. The other team's starting quarterback is out. You got a chance to win and then, you know, fall apart in Philadelphia. Like there's so many things that have happened that you have to wonder how, how could it all happen to one franchise? And I think about that constantly with the Vikings. And I think about how you guys view that as well and how the fact that the Vikings have not won a Super Bowl has rested over this fan base for so long. I mean, how do you have the purple people eaters? You have Fran Tarkenton on the team and then the team becomes incredible after he's traded. And then he comes back and it's

good enough to get there, but not quite as good as it was before. And you lose in the Superbowl. I mean, only this team through every decade, only this team, Wade Wilson is on the doorstep of taking the Vikings to the 87 Superbowl. Only this team, Brett Favre. I mean, you know them all. But I mean, think about the game that the Vikings had in 2009 against the Saints. They outplayed the Saints by miles and they fumbled the ball away. And there's the historic bounty gate. Like, again, this is absolutely true that, you know, from what irrelevant YouTuber says, that every team that hasn't won a Super Bowl has a curse that their respective fans know about and other fan bases don't. I think that that is true, that if you go to wherever and you say, hey, what curse do you have?

And they'll say, you know, whatever the curse of whatever guy they didn't draft or something. And that's definitely true. But where the Vikings are different is that a lot of those teams you're talking about have just been very bad. Like the Detroit Lions. They've just been bad. They made bad choices, bad management, bad players. That's not the case here. These teams have been very good through every decade and have a better record than most other teams in the league, just in general for their whole history. That's what makes it so interesting to me and also so bizarre. And I'm sure for all of you, very frustrating. But, uh, and the reason to think that Yorkhurst is that when you look at that list of the best records of all time for all teams,

I think that they're the only team in the top 10 that does not have a Super Bowl. That's where it separates them from like the Lions or the Jets or the Jaguars or teams that are just not good, at least in my mind. Matthew says, what about the collar curse leaves Buffalo? They get Josh Allen moves to Minnesota on the day. Teddy injures his knee. If, if there had not been a history here, Matt, then maybe you could blame it on me if there had not, but there has been. And also in Buffalo, don't forget, they're still talking about being cursed because they had a chance to go to the AFC Championship with 13 seconds left in a game, and the guy the Vikings are playing this week

decided to go full legend in that 13 seconds and get Kansas City into field goal position, makes the field goal, wins the game. They've got a pretty good argument that they're still cursed. Also, here's a crazy thing about Buffalo, and this is why it's weird with the Minnesota wild, because the wild are in the playoffs all the time and they never have this lucky run or one where they just get hot and play well and go deep in the playoffs since what? Oh, three to the, to the conference finals. But in Buffalo,

when I started working there was when they played the flyers and I believe the 2011 playoffs. And that was the last time they were in the playoffs and they've continued to miss them every year since I've been gone. So you can't blame me, but these streaks are wild. I mean, you'd think that teams would just accidentally win a playoff series, that another goalie would get hurt, or something would happen the same way,

and it has not. And the same thing kind of goes for the Vikings when they get to the playoffs. Think about last year in Philadelphia, what happened to Brock Purdy. I don't know if San Francisco wins that game, but the Vikings never seem to get that lucky break that gives them the chance to go deep in the playoffs and get to the Super Bowl. And, you know, I don't know. This is an interesting one. The Sean Payton cursed after the Super Bowl bounty gate. New Orleans fans, if they didn't have that one,

they would have as good or better of an argument for being cursed, considering how good the Dome Patrol was in the 80s, how many times they seemed to get close. There was a time where Wade Wilson lit them up in the playoffs. And then the Mike Dick, the Ricky Williams setting their franchise back, all that stuff. They win the one Super Bowl,

then all of a sudden, okay, it's fine. They're great. But to your point, I mean, how about the Nickel Roby Coleman pass interference that wasn't that changed the rule for an entire year in the playoffs? How about them against the Vikings both times, both times against the Vikings on last second plays, one a little more spectacular than the other, but both, I mean, how many times does a team ever lose in a walk-off playoff game and the Saints had it happen twice against the same team? So there are a lot, to the point earlier,

there are a lot of teams that would talk about their own curses in part because there are 32 teams and there's only like five to seven quarterbacks every year who are above everybody else that usually win all the super bowls like we were talking about with um you know tom brady the other day we were discussing how like hey how many tanking teams have won the super bowl? And it's like, well, no one's won the super bowl because Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes and Peyton Manning and Drew Brees, like they won them all and Ben Roethlisberger. So Bob says bad decisions have been deeper ownership, GM moves, quarterback selections.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that is like, because they're your team, you can trace each failed season to this decision, that decision, and so forth. You certainly can't. But also, they didn't do anything management-wise to have Dante Culpepper's knee blow up. If Dante Culpepper is healthy and is still the quarterback in 2009 like the with how good that team was maybe right uh and teddy bridgewater it's hard to say but if teddy continued to progress the way that he was through his first two years and then by 2017 they were able to spend the cap space and continue to build around it because remember 20 million dollars in cap space in 17 went to sam bradford

so that would have been a lot and bridgewater was still on his contract so he was still on the on the team's books that's 20 million dollars they could have made that team stronger with and then who knows what happens you know the wheels presumably were not going to fall off a quarterback who was a first round pick and more talented and And I don't think anything that's happened with Teddy since he's returned is evidence about what he would have been because it's such a catastrophic injury. But I mean, clearly he was on the rise going into that season. That's where it is luck. And yeah, the ownership, the early two thousands ownership, I do not think there's anything really particularly cursed about like the wilf ownership and how they've handled things recently like i don't think they've caused these huge

mistakes i mean some of you could say yes that they wouldn't tank or whatever and they were right there for andrew luck and i i still think that's even a little cursed that they were right there for Andrew Luck and they get this kind of random win and they don't end up getting it. But I mean, Teddy Bridgewater's knee, Sam Bradford's knee, I mean, this is a great point. Sam Bradford's knee going out in 2017. What are the odds of that? How many quarterbacks in the whole league have had injuries that are that catastrophic that end careers or end full seasons like not that many especially with teams that are great i mean what

happened to the jets is exactly what happened to the vikings in 2017 and i still don't understand why the jets didn't try to trade for case keenenum. Hey, he's done it before. So anyway, interested in your guys' thoughts about curses and things like that. And Bob, you're saying that Bridgewater was never going to win a Super Bowl. They were in the NFC championship with Case Keenum. They were one game from this and they were winning and Keenum threw an interception and then things

unraveled. But the way that that season in 2017 played out, I mean, there, there is a chance there that is greater than they had with case Keenum to potentially beat Philadelphia in Philly. If Teddy Bridgewater is the quarterback, there's also maybe a bit of a better chance based on they had everything go their way that year aside from the Bradford injury but the schedule every you know how everything played out there were even a couple losses where where Keenum played poorly and the defense was still great and that maybe they could have won like against Detroit that year against Pittsburgh that year so I'm not saying put a ring on Bridgewater. I'm saying that that directly caused, and again, 20 million in cap space

had to go to Bradford. So they would have been stronger and with a better quarterback going into that game. So I don't know. You can say all day long, Teddy wasn't good enough, but I think we saw a quarterback

who is a career backup in Case Keenum be able to take that team to the NFC Championship. So I'm not going to buy that. I mean, I think that Bridgewater at the time, not after the knee injury, as a healthy quarterback, is much more talented and was ascending into his third season in 2016 and then would have been in his fourth season in 2017. I think it would have been, you know what, I think a comparison there for the Teddy, and we've gone like way down the rabbit hole here, but for Teddy, I think the comparison would have been what Jalen Hurts has done with Philly,

where Jalen Hurts kind of had a rocky start to his career where he's kind of up and down and so forth. But I think he was ascending with the roster around him. And you got to remember early in his career, no offensive line, also no receivers. No, I mean, no receivers at all. And then that's when Diggs, that's when Thielen emerged after he got hurt. So I don't think you could just take his stats or say that he had mediocre arm talent or something like that. I don't think you can really apply what was going on versus what was going to be. But, you know, look, the minute I got here,

I realized that there were always people who were never going to believe in Teddy Ridgewater, and we don't need to go through that. But I think I understand he's not as much of an athlete as Jalen hurts. I'm saying, look at the comparison of like a Jared Goff going to a super bowl. Is he not similar to Jared Goff? Same sort of thing with the roster. That's the point. And again, they're in the NFC championship with a career backup in case Keenum. It's going to be hard to convince me that a more talented quarterback

in his prime with 20 more million dollars in cap space would not have had a better chance. So anyway, this right here, this discussion is why curses intrigue me, right? Because of stuff like this, because they always lead back to really fascinating what ifs and unfortunately that's kind of what you have at the moment and uh tang brings us up uh that uh you know the offensive line 2016 got so hurt that year uh they had a great defense you wonder after they went five and oh if they had held up what would have happened there so a lot i mean that's vik history. We don't have to do that for the whole rest of the show. Um, but I, I definitely wanted to bring that up. You know what Hunter, the soldier for field curse, which we studied, uh, once Paul Hoda, Wannick, you guys remember him. He studied that once about just the point spreads and how often they even covered

against the bears. And it was so astronomically on the side of a curse that that was another interesting one. But the bears have been so awful recently that they have been able to get wins there, but don't jinx it. You're saying that one's been broken. I don't know yet. Only it's only a couple of years. They're going there next week. I'll be there at soldier field. We're going to find out. We're definitely going to find out. So yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is, this is right, right here. T Kubler. I mean, Teddy Bridgewater was about to win a playoff game for a team that was rolling that year in the second half of the season and had just gone to Lambeau and beat the Packers and a real defensive minded type of game.

And they miss a 27 yard field goal. That's one that gets brought up to me by people with the Vikings with their, because I know this, of course, Zimmer never let it go. But like, I think people with the team, not so much anymore because everything's been changed around, but they look at that as the team was improving and was ready to win multiple playoff games. And then they miss a 27 yard field goal. And again, what are the odds? What are the odds of a 27 yard field goal? Uh, I also, I have debunked this one tang about the backup quarterbacks. Uh, I, I did this once. See this, you guys know I've been here a

while now. So I looked at this once about all the backup quarterbacks versus the Vikings and then what the league winning percentage is for backup quarterbacks. And you had to eyeball it a little bit with what's a backup, but it was about the same. But the thing is that it was about 25%. So you remember those games, the league's backups win about one out of every four. But if you lose one out of every four, it feels like, how did we lose the Matt Moore? But you didn't lose to like David Blau or whatever. So yeah, that's, yeah, that's really one that I don't buy into, but the one that's weird to me, and we'll see where this one goes the rest of this season and into the future. But there was a, there's a St. Thomas professor who follows

purple insider, who sent me a bunch of data about field goals against the Vikings, because doesn't it seem like every field goal kicker has their best day ever and kicks their longest kick ever this year alone. There's been numerous 55-plus kicks against the Vikings, and there was one last week. I forget. Was it 55? Somewhere in there. Cooper Rush would definitely be along the lore of losing to backups,

for sure, Tang. That's what I mean is that they're memorable when you do, and you don't remember when you beat them. But the kicking is very bizarre because opponents have a legitimately higher percentage of making field goals against the Vikings over their history than almost every other team in the league. And that's not just because of a dome, because that was what I thought like, oh, okay, well it's even then it's even on the road.

They were in the top, uh then it's even on the road. They were in the top, uh, top 10 for on the road. So they go to green Bay and field goal kickers make it there. Ryan, I guess, Ryan Longwell, Mason Crosby, maybe that's why maybe it's that Detroit had like Matt Prater and Jason Hanson and green Bay had a Crosby and Longwell. Maybe that swings the odds a little, but it certainly seems like every opposing field goal kicker makes it all the time. Real quick pause, and then we're going to get into some stuff from actually out with the Vikings today. I was out at TCO Performance Center.

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All right. So what do you guys want to know about Vikings and Kansas City Chiefs? I will say it's a little bit odd that Kevin O'Connell is still playing coy about the interior offensive line. But when I went back and watched the game on the all 22 film, I have to say, so Ed Ingram made a terrible mistake and got roasted and caused that interception. So that was a huge problem. And offensive line play is always about the plays you don't make. It's always about the mistakes, right? So Brian O'Neill is great on 98% of plays and the worst right tackle in the league is good on 94%.

And that's a huge difference because that's tons of negative plays that happen, right? And with that considered, you can't say outside of the huge mistake he made, it was fine. That is the truth. But the thing is that their run blocking was so good last week that, and really the last two weeks, but definitely last week that I could see them continuing to go with this offensive line combination and not playing Dalton Reisner until it's too late or they're too frustrated. One of the things that we knew about Dalton Reisner was that he's not considered to be a great run blocker, and Ingram the last two weeks has been legitimately very good in the run blocking.

I'm not trying to say they shouldn't replace him. I'm trying to understand why they might not. And that could be part of that reason is, you know, to have the run blocking element. And now they have a run attack that they did not have. And so it might be hard for their offensive line coach and for Kevin O'Connell to say, all right,

let's make this harder on ourselves by putting someone in who doesn't understand our scheme right after Ingram has been good the last two weeks. And maybe they're saying since he's been good, this bides time for Reisner to continue to get opportunities. They also mentioned Blake Brandel as part of somebody who was mixing in. So they're clearly not totally sold. And when Kevin O'Connell was asked about this whole thing, he said that ideally you would just have five guys practicing all five all the time. And it's not ideal to have guys mixing in. So clearly they're still thinking about it,

but they have not made this decision to the point where they're going to say, Hey, Dalton Reisner plays this week. That's the update right there. Also with, uh, when it comes to, yeah,

this is, this is a good point. Tang that run blocking looks good against bad defenses. You're completely right. And I was thinking about this very point today, because when you compare how they played against the best of the best, which is Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, that freaky offensive or defensive line for Philly, they're getting beat badly.

And then they go up against Carolina. That's got one guy who's good in Derek Brown, but Brian Burns is more of an outside edge rusher and they just steamrolled and they don't have great linebackers. They don't have great secondary. They just ran over this bad defense for Carolina that was supposed to be, I thought better, but it has not been. I think that competition has really dictated this of how the offensive line has looked and they might i'm not saying they're getting fooled by that but if they're evaluating how is everybody played and so forth that i i do think that they had to give them an opportunity to save their jobs for one and also with reisner he wouldn't be ready right away and then maybe this is just I don't

know like maybe this was just depth all along and we thought they were just going to replace him or maybe it was kind of a message in part I don't know but I do think that at the first sign of danger where it looks like one of the guards, particularly on the right side is just getting beat over and over again, that they will go to Dalton riser. That would be my expectation, but the whole situation is a little sketchy at the center position. It seems like it's not getting a lot better for Garrett Bradbury, at least as of right now,

because he was limited in practice today. And that's not a great sign to still be limited after they were talking about having a possibility of playing last week. So you would expect that if he was close to playing last week, that he would have come in and been practicing in full this week. It will still be Austin Schlotman. Again, the competition, you have to adjust for it. But Schlotman played well. I mean, I think he's been all right. And there's a little concern in the back of my mind of

Schlotman is actually fit in pretty well here. And if you're now going to go back to bradbury with the back issue how is this going to work out are you going to have to in the middle of a game replace him again so they brought bradbury back because they believed in what they saw from uh last year and they liked schlopman he came back after playing i thought okay last season minimal work. And he's outperformed what I expected from him. I don't know if he could do that over an entire season, but, you know, I guess we'll have to see how this plays out. And when Bradbury gets back still remains a mystery.

And Bob, you are right that there might be some element to when players have an issue, an injury issue, you do get a deal on them. They do cost less, but it's not always the right way to go. Although, hard to say about Marcus Davenport because he was limited today as well. And T. Kubler asks, will Davenport be on the injury report every week the rest of the season? Maybe it's possible based on his history that that could be the case. But if

you're making the argument on their side for signing him, you saw him last week. He was great. I mean, you saw the talent that he has and the reason why they signed him and they did get a deal on him. I think that this is a hard one for me because projecting whether injured players from the past will stay injured, especially when Davenport, what is he, 26, maybe he's turned 27? You would have said he's a fairly young player and could have a longer career. And maybe it's been some bad breaks when it comes to other injuries he's had over his career. And then you see a move and there's a couple of plays that I went back and looked at the tape where Davenport, they tried to block him with a tight end and he grabbed the tight end and threw him

out of the way and made the play. I mean, actually lifted a man off the ground. And then the spin move that he put on was really great. And I also have to give a lot of credit to the, yes, yeah, I understand. I understand the bargain on the injured player was key in the Vikings starting on three. Yeah, I understand that. I understand that. That's why this is hard, though, because. Yes, he was injured and that hurt them. They also could mix in another player at some point who can play.

So it wasn't entirely Davenport's fault, but also the fact that these other guys drafted in the Spielman era, by the way, who did not develop to become even reasonable backups. They also fumbled a lot. So like, there's a lot of things that go into Owen three. It was not caused by Marcus Davenport being injured, but he would have been a factor. And you saw it in last week's game, how good Marcus Davenport can be when he's at 100%. But that's why you get that guy for $10 million and not $19 million or $23 million because he's been hurt. And this was a year to take a shot on someone like that because of where they stood in their timeline. So we can't rewrite the history on Marcus Davenport,

but I do think going into the future when they have to make decisions on players that are going to be big money, they should probably factor in that the injury history as well. And with Garrett Bradbury, backs are hard. Backs are a hard thing. I think that you can question that a bit, but also he's coming off a very good season where he did come back after that injury to play in the playoffs. So I understand why they did that. And if you look at Bradbury and Davenport's, if you look at his or both of those guys last seasons, or I'm sorry, both of those guys contracts after last season, you season, coming in and getting their contracts from the Vikings, they're both very reasonable contracts that at the time they were signed, we said, all right, this makes a lot of sense to sign this guy.

So we can't kind of go back now and be like, well, the guy got hurt again, so obviously the general manager is stupid. Like, well, I think if we look at the comment section after they signed Davenport, we all said, Hey, this is a pretty good, uh, long shot ish at a guy. So, um, they also have Davenport because that's what they could afford. Quarter Mike says that's no, that's totally true. And that's the price. A little bit of dead cap space, moving on from guys, big contracts, things like that, that they're unwinding from going for it in 2022. So the Davenport thing doesn't happen in a bubble. And again, if they had other players and Davenport didn't have to be the center of what you're doing, it also looks quite a bit different. But yeah, I mean, this is like the

yin and the yang of Marcus Davenport, right? It's what everybody's had to deal with, right? With Davenport or well, not everyone, the Saints dealt with with Davenport is when he was playing. Look at the man. He is so big and so fast and he's got moves. And what Brian Flores is doing with him is really terrific. I mean, what Brian Flores is doing with him is great. He put him over the center one time and he caused problems. He was putting them over the guard. He put them on the same side as Daniil Hunter. And they were a problem for the left side of the offensive line for the Carolina Panthers. But he's been hurt and that's what's hard about it. And hey, you mentioned, Tang mentioned Zedaria Smith.

Zedaria Smith is a good example of taking a shot on a guy for less price who had an injury history and then the guy is great. So I'm sure they're hits and misses. They're hits and misses. And the same thing for like Andrew Booth Jr. There's guys who have had histories in college of injuries and have come to the NFL and played fine. There's histories where they have not been good at all.

So that's kind of how it goes. When you're playing with very little money in cap space. That's what they're going to try to improve in the future where you're taking less risks like this. Folks, this fall season is an unbelievable time for sports, and I'm always a fan of trying to catch other games when I go on the road to cover football, like baseball, hockey, basketball, just about anything. We'll be right back. You don't have to plan your tickets months out in advance. With GameTime, there are deals on tickets right up to game day. The GameTime guarantee means that you always get the best deal. If you find a better price in the same section or row for less, GameTime will credit you 110%.

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they said today and assuming this is true that they are still rotating in practice says to me that they have not given up on the idea of Dalton Reisner winning that job and taking that job. I agree with you on the playbook. He's been around long enough that he should be able to get the details down in a couple of weeks. We saw TJ Hawkinson in a complicated situation, do it in a single week. And so there's a lot of nuance there for a playbook, for a guard, for sure. But it doesn't take six months to figure out how to play guard. I agree with you there. Red flag ish could be, it could be the conditioning. It could be, you know, the fact that maybe he doesn't look very good run blocking. It's also difficult to get a lot of looks at someone in practice.

It's not like training camp. So in training camp, the practices are pretty intense, even for the Vikings who kind of take it easy, but they're pretty intense. 11 on 11s, contact, defense throwing a lot of things at the offense. Doesn't work that way in the regular season. There's one padded practice a week, and then it's a lot of walking through.

So there's not much you can really do to evaluate him. I think what it has to deal with is Kirk Cousins was pressured five times on, I think, 23 dropbacks or something like that, something close to that. And they ran the football incredibly well against Carolina. I mean, Cam Akers, five runs, 40 yards. They were crushing Carolina. It's hard for a coach to look at those numbers and go, you know what, we got to bench a guy on the offensive line.

Even if we all know it's Carolina, we all know it could be very different with Chris Jones, who has a tendency to line up against the weakest offensive linemen. We all know that. It's just that it's hard to do that as a coach, to say, hey, actually, the offensive line is a unit. Those five were really good this week outside of one play. Well, you're benched.

You know what I mean? That's hard to do. So we'll see. But the fact that O'Connell has not counted it out leaves the door open to the idea that that that that could happen if Ingram is having a tough game. What's your in-season record prediction at this point? Oh, good question. I haven't thought about this. So I'm assuming they're not trading Kirk, right? I don't think that's going to happen.

This seems extremely unlikely. So if they're not trading Kirk and they play it out the rest of the way, I think eight. I think eight wins. They could get to nine. The crazy thing about this schedule is they could go two and five and end up nine and eight because it gets so much easier. But along the way, there has to be some no meltdowns and a big win here or there. There has to be a win at Lambeau. There has to be a win at Lambeau. There has to be a win against Detroit. You can't get swept by them.

But just when you start to play it out, so you get two wins against Chicago, and those are not guarantees, folks, as we talked about earlier about Soldier Field, not guarantees, but let's just say two wins against Chicago. You can beat New Orleans. You can beat Atlanta. You can beat new Orleans. You can beat

Atlanta. You can beat Denver for sure. You can beat Vegas. So that gets you a six. And then you've got the end of the season with Detroit and green Bay. The problem there is you have to win all those games. I just named in order to get to nine or more than that, that's hard to see. Like one of those games, they just won't play well. And it won't be, you know, Bryce young giving you a fumble, like somebody like Russell Wilson might beat you because he's still, you know, playing pretty well. But, you know, he, he might, or you go on the road and you don't know, you know, maybe you fumble again or something. So I think the margin is thin. I think they will have still we talked about over the first couple of weeks of the season with Brian Flores, where I was not at all ready to say Flores doesn't know what he's

doing and so forth. The guy just has such an impressive history that I was more on the tendency to lean toward that. it was the roster they have and the fact that they had an edge rusher position that was giving them nothing with DJ Wanham and with Patrick Jones in terms of pressure. Davenport's a game changer, and the fact is that I think Flores is using him really well, and Flores is clearly using Harrison Smith in the right way.

Total game changer last week. I thought that they schemed against Carolina really well. And any given week, all those looks, all those blitzes can cause an opposing quarterback problems, which does apply even to Patrick Mahomes, because you're looking for that big play, that big sack, that big turnover. And they got that this week. week and you know, they were close a couple of times against Los Angeles, but a Caleb Evans got hit in the face with the ball. But I'm going to, I'm just going to choose at this moment to lean toward, let's not Ed Donatello,

Brian Flores, like let's not conflate those two. The rosters are quite different, but also when he's got his one player that I think they was very excited about in Davenport, it looked totally different. Um, Lee says, uh, PFFs latest 2024 mock draft has the Vikings taking Michigan quarterback. JJ McCarthy takes on the gophers. Will you be scouting? I will be. Yes.

I'm going to the game. Yeah. I want to see Michigan and former Vikings head coach Jim Harbaugh. Just kidding. But I, yes, yeah, we're going to, we're going to be skull searching at that point. Yes, we're going to be, we're taking a look. Now I, it's going to be cold and the score might get out of hand. So I'm not sure I'm staying for all four quarters of JJ McCarthy, but I'm interested to see

him in person to see if I feel like this guy looks like a first round quarterback. I am not a scout, but I'm intrigued. So yeah, I'm going to head down and check it out. Head down to the, what is it? It's some sort of bank, right? Bank stadium, TCF bank is that they change sponsors. I'm sorry to whatever sponsor they have. I don't remember. Uh, Zalene sayseline says if the vikings win eight games it's a complete failure of a season jefferson will be just as pissed as eight win and five win season only difference is with eight wins he gets more kirk and no playoffs now i don't i don't agree with the last part i don't think that they get more Kirk of it's eight.

I think that they, if they miss the playoffs, there's the chances of him returning, go down to almost the blip. If not nothing, it's very, it's very much like Vegas and Derek Carr last year, where he made the playoffs the year before.

So they gave him a little bit of an extension that had a clear out that they could get out of it. However they want. It's just kind of a bogus extension. And then they just moved on when it was time. And what the Raiders, I thought we're going to do because it made complete sense to me to move on from Derek Carr.

What I thought that they were going to do was to trade up and draft one of these quarterbacks. Instead, they did not. And they picked up Jimmy G as opposed to maybe getting CJ Stroud or Anthony Richardson. And who knows what the trades could have been, but they'd look a lot different as a franchise with those guys than they do now. Chuck, what's up, Chuck? Thank you for tweeting out my book today, by the way.

I'm glad that you got it. Football is a numbers game available on Amazon for everybody. But I appreciate that, man. Thanks for doing that. Chuck says, by the who has the better quarterback metric of the remaining matchups, there are actually very few where the Vikings are truly at a major disadvantage, but agree the margin of error is tiny. Well, and it's a good point because I would

have told you, and who knows where this goes from here, but I would have told you Cincinnati. I mean, write that down as a big old giant fat L in Cincinnati. I don't feel that way now that Burroughs playing with half a leg and no offensive line. I really thought that their offensive line was supposed to be improved, but it's been horrible. And he can't move, which is a big part of his game. Jimmy G, who knows if he'll even be healthy at that point. It could be Aiden O'Connell. They can rip off wins, and they probably will. In fact, if you were like a gambling person

and you put down a small amount on the Vikings to make the playoffs still, I mean, it's not impossible. It's not impossible that they could. I don't know if I'm not saying that that's going to happen, but when you look at, as you're talking about, the opposing quarterback schedule, you play Mahomes and you play, about the opposing quarterback schedule, you play my homes and you play, we'll just call it 49ers offense. All right. Well, that's pretty tough, but Kirk

cousins is better than Justin Fields. He's better than Desmond Ritter. It's better than Derek Carr. He's better than this version of Joe Burrow. He's better than this version of Jimmy Garoppolo. I don't know about the past when he was with San Francisco, but he's better than this version of Jimmy Garoppolo. I don't know about the past when he was with San Francisco, but he's better than this version. And, you know, some people would say equal with Goff. I might give Goff the slight edge there, but Jordan Love? I mean, I'm convinced Jordan Love can play NFL quarterback, but I don't think he's as good as Kirk Cousins.

You might have an advantage in almost every single game the rest of the way after this. So you could go two and five and turn it around. But it is an interesting comment to say that it's a failure if they win eight. Because you're probably right. I mean, that one's a hard one to dispute. That is a hard one to dispute, that it would be a failure. I mean, I think that you're right. It is a competitive rebuild.

A-win season is the most competitively rebuilding competitive rebuild. But that is dropping you a little far down the board on the draft and making it harder to get one of the top quarterbacks for sure. I agree. And you guys know I have been very much in the camp of don't worry that much about it because you could trade up and there's going to be a lot of quarterbacks available, but it's also hard to make that case that having a worst draft pick is actually better. It's not. And getting this close to just barely being in the playoffs and missing them is where we were in 2020. It's

where we were in 2021. That's a hard, that's hard. Now, if they turn around the season completely and they go nine and eight and they make the playoffs and who knows when a playoff game, that's some good competitive rebuilding, I think. And then you'll deal with the rest, but you'll feel like you have a really good team for whoever takes over quarterback next, but you also didn't play well enough. So well that you're like extending your current quarterback. That might be the perfect needle to thread. And it'll be kind of a cool like story. I'll be turned around if they own three start. I just think that's tough. I think that's tough for a team that could have their offense sputter

as much as they did against a very bad Carolina team. Uh, Hunter asks, uh, do you have an opinion on LSU quarterback Jaden Daniels? I have seen people who analyze football players for a living say they like him. That's the best I could do. I enjoyed the heck out of that game. They played the other day. I don't have a big opinion on him now because that was the first time I really watched him, and I was flipping back and forth between other games. But he looks like an athlete, and he looks like he could throw accurately. That's the best I got, though. I don't know if he's a first-round pick or not.

It's a little—with their win last week. I haven't been looking super close. I've seen Ewers play. I've seen a lot of Shadur Sanders because it's just everywhere. Really impressed with both of those guys. I've seen enough Drake made a no thumbs up. And of course, Caleb Williams, you know, that's not going to happen. So, uh, but man, he's good though. He is good though. So, uh, Tang says, knowing the

wills, they'll probably just trade for Kyler rather than draft one to stay competitive. So let, let's, let's think about that for a second. And you know, there's a game this weekend, so we're back into front office mode a little bit here, but, um, just, just to flesh that out a bit kyler murray with justin jefferson tj hockinson kevin o'connell daris saw o'neill i don't know i'll give it a shot that's a hell of a lot better than what he had in arizona and in 2021 they won 11 games he was on his way you know in that mvp conversation two-thirds of the way through the season ranked top 10 quarterback. I know that's hard because of the cap hit and all that stuff. But if they were to do that, I'd say, let's go for it.

If they couldn't get who they wanted in the draft. That's that's how I feel about that right now. So anyway, well, I got to get you know what? I don't have my I don't have my window up here. I got to, got to call up the, the prize picks. Cause we've got to do that every week. And I enjoy doing it, especially when I went like last week, that went really well for me. So let me get logged in here to prize picks and then we can, uh, make some choices here.

Do we want to do, what do we want to do? Do you want to do running backs? I feel like I haven't done running backs. Do we want to do receivers? Maybe we should do receivers or do we want to do running backs? What do we got here? Let's do some running backs. Okay. Hold on. Let me screen share for all of you watching on YouTube. If you have any more questions, by the way, while I'm getting this set up, throw them in there. We're a couple minutes away from nine o'clock. So if you have weird questions, that would be the time. No Taylor Swift mentions on the show today. Sorry for all of you who came here for that screen share and price picks. So let's see. You got that right.

Okay. Appreciate all of your patience. There we go. So a prize picks have been playing every week here on the show. You've heard me mention it, talk about how it works and such. And after going three for three last week, I'm feeling pretty darn good. Prize pick kick. They have kickers. They do. They have kickers. Wow. Should we do kickers? Let's do kickers. Okay. We're doing kickers. So it's just the combination of the kickers. And if they're going to make more than three and a half, but they don't have the Vikings here, unfortunately for this matchup, let's just do one.

Let's pick one. Who's going to kick more than three and a half field goals. It's gotta be Washington, Chicago, right? It has to be. I am picking that. They will have more than three and a half field goals

between Cario Santos and Joey Sly in the Thursday night game. Great call. Great call. They don't have punters, but that is a great call. Thank you. There's all sorts of options here. I love that. We're going to go with that and we'll see how that plays out. Let's go with rushing yards. Let's see here. They've got lots of quarterbacks involved as well. Mac Jones over or more or less than 11.5 rushing yards. So lots of options. Isaiah Pacheco. This is a good one. Do we want to go more or less against the Vikings for Isaiah Pacheco? 57.5. What do you guys think? I think that they are not going to run the ball that well and that often. And the Jarek McKinnon will probably have a better game. So I'm going to go Pacheco less than 57.5. They do not have a Vikings running back listed here. So let's do receiving yards and see who we got.

Let's see. Is Justin Jefferson available? I'm scrolling and I'm not seeing Jefferson. Oh, there he is for this week over. Let's see. More or less than 104.5. More? Everybody agree on more?

Let's go. Yeah, let's go more. Let's go more. Are you, how you guys think Pacheco is going to get more than 57 yards? I just think that they are going to mix it up with the guys that they run. So I'm going to go more than 104.5 yards for Justin Jefferson. This is going to be a shootout. So that's what we're going with per a price picks.com slash slash purple they're going to do a hundred dollar match up to a hundred dollars for your first deposit so check it out if you want to play along i didn't know they had kickers now that we know they have kickers it's dangerous all right anything weird let's see uh if kirk doesn't stink jj easily gets more than 140 yeah you're right about that.

It's more for Jefferson. That's pretty much the safe pick almost every week. Yeah, I mean, you're right, though, that even having 104 as saying it's too low really speaks to him. I didn't see Addison listed. There's always just a list of players that they have for that week that you pick from. I don't know about, I agree with you, Tang. And I think that what T. Kubler is implying

is that you want to see more Addison. I agree. Last week when you only complete, what did he complete? 12 passes or something? It's hard to get a lot of targets and a lot of yards and everything. When you're running well, you turn it over a couple of times. The other team holds onto the

ball for 40 minutes. But I agree with you guys. I think that Jordan Addison, KJ Osborne, more of them. It seems like it's too much of a one-dimensional offense. This has been great. We had a lot of fun tonight. This was a lot of fun. So I appreciate all you guys showing up as always. I enjoy these Wednesday nights. Tuesdays, sometimes I can pop on. Sometimes I can't, depending on what I'm working on. But Wednesday night, this is our night here to just

chat and have a lot of fun. So I appreciate all of you guys having the curse conversation about Jim Nance. And we'll see if it's Nance and Romo. And you guys were conversation about Jim Nance and we'll see if it's Nance and Romo. Uh, I, and you guys were talking about Jim Nance. I like Jim Nance. I think, um, I don't have like hot takes on broadcasters normally, but I like somebody in the game. Who's not trying way too hard to be in my face, which I think you could say that about Romo and some people like them and

some people don't, but Nance is a play-by-play broadcaster has always been to me, somebody who's calling the game, offering good, exciting calls, a little bit of insight, a little bit of conversation, and it's facilitating a good discussion throughout the game, but is not too much. And I grew up with Pat Summerall, the ultimate, like, I'm going to stay in the back. I'm going to be the smooth guy, you know, Cunningham Moss, like, you know, and how awesome was that? So I like Nance. All right. This is a good time. A lot of fun. We'll see what happens tomorrow night. Manny's back. Lots more NFL talk then with Manny Hill. And I am being better for you listeners on the podcast side about making sure I get it up there with Manny Hill.

And sometimes there are episodes that are on just the podcast side and not also the YouTube side. So subscribe there as well. Thanks, everybody, for your time. Hey, my book. Check check it out if you guys get a chance football's a numbers game i'm going to be obnoxious with that but i think you'll like it all right take care everybody football