The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Rams beat Vikings, advance to Divisional Round

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

In a Wild Card Round characterized by one-sided victories, the Rams arguably saved the most impressive for last. They dominated from wire-to-wire in their 27-9 win over the Vikings, scoring on their first drive and taking a 24-3 lead into the locker room at halftime. Now, the Eagles await in the Divisional Round. The Vikings, meanwhile, saw their unlikely 14-win season end with a thud. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen recap the final game of Wild Card Weekend on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Host: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert May's little bonus edition of the Athletic Football Show for you guys. Me and Derek Classen reacted to the Rams Vikings Wild Card game, a doozy of a game. One heck of a performance from the Los Angeles Rams, Matthew Stafford, Sean McVeigh in that offense, and a great night from that young ascending Los Angeles Rams defense. The other side of the coin for the Vikings, a tough night for Sam Darnold, and a tough two-week stretch from Sam Darnold. And I think some hard questions for the Vikings after what has been.

a pretty darn good year. So we dug into all of that with me and Derek. Let's get to it right now. Well, Derek, the last game of Wild Card Weekend, I'll say it was a rich text. There is a lot for us to dig into after that one, even though it was a total blowout. The Rams destroy the Minnesota Vikings in a game that happens in Arizona. Credit to the Rams for the composure they showed in this game, despite everything that has happened to them this week.

This thing didn't feel close from the story. start. It felt like the Rams had the Vikings number throughout this entire day, which felt like an extension in some ways of what they did to them early in the season. We saw the best version of this Rams team twice against the Vikings over the course of this year. And they put together arguably the most impressive performance of Wild Card weekend. I would say like relative to expectation, certainly. Relative to opponent. Yes. Opponent, like how they were like favored and stuff, all of the circumstances, like you said, coming into this game, regardless of whether they were favored or not, it was an incredibly impressive performance on both sides of the ball. I think that's

kind of what shocked me, because even the first time around, the defense got got a little bit, and it was mostly the offense that kind of just carried them through. Certainly not the case today where both sides really, they high rolled again. Like I said about the last game, they got, not fortunate, but they hit their highest gear on every single thing that they were doing, particularly on the offense side of the ball last time. And this time it felt like they did it again on both sides of the ball, where they actually got all the stuff they wanted on offense, particularly with beating the Blitz.

And then on defense, they got the worst game that Sam Darnold has played all season. We will dig into the Sam Darnold of all of this, because obviously that's a huge conversation. I want to start with just the Rams plan on both sides of the ball and what drove their success, especially on offense. I probably should have paid more attention to this when we were doing our preview show. But in real time, when I watched that game, on Thursday night. I remember talking to people on the RAM staff after that game and just being like,

you guys called the best game I've seen you call in a while. Like if you looked at the dials they were pushing, the screens that they were calling, the overall plan that they had on offense, I was very impressed with it. And that carried over to tonight. There are a couple things that I think that, if you think about the game planning aspect of this, that I noticed when I went back and watched the week eight game that we didn't talk that much about in the preview show. And the first thing that came to mind is how often the Rams were under center, even when they were throwing the ball. So when you look at it, the numbers on this, according to true media, when the teams are under center against the Vikings on early downs, they play about 45% cover three and about

20% quarters. So it's about 65% of those two coverages. When you're in shotgun on early downs, it's about 25% cover two, 25% cover two, 25% cover three, and 25% cover 4. It's truly just a Rolodex. And their amount of man coverage they play drops in half. So even with that slight little tweak, we're going to be under center and use a lot of play action and even some straight dropbacks from under center because it's going to limit

the coverage menu of things you can do to us in those moments. That was clearly part of the game plan from the Rams. There are teams that have dot checks where if you're under center, they'll play a certain coverage and check into certain things. So even that is just that was the first thing I noticed on the first couple of couple drives of the game. It's like, oh, they're under center again because they know it limits what the Vikings can do. And I think that general nugget expands to everything that we've seen from the Rams in these couple games where it just feels like McVeigh really does have his finger on the pulse

of how to attack this defense specifically. And you saw that happen again tonight. That is such a fascinating point about the under center versus shotgun stuff. But it kind of makes sense because it goes a little bit back to what we talked about with this is a Vikings defense that wants to be in lighter fronts. And they want to see lighter offenses. So it makes sense that when they're in shotgun, they can get, or when offenses are in shotgun, they can get into a little bit more of some of the weird stuff and be a little bit more of an amorphous defense that they, they have wanted to be in what Brian Flores has been for a lot of his tenure in Minnesota. I think this also goes back to the fact that Matthew Stafford so obviously can win in every

different way. And I think against the Brian Flores defense, that is unbelievably valuable. Like he's been, he hasn't been good under pressure this year. But when he's been blitzed, he's been pretty good. And boy, you saw it in this game. He was 14 of 18 when blitzed in this game, which is absurd. For 178 and two touchdowns. Dude, he was frying them. And the thing is, we've kind of talked about beating a defense like Brian Flores.

You either have to be unbelievably efficient underneath, kind of the way that Justin Herbert was when they played them last year, where he's just cooking them with five-yard routes all the time. or you have to just chuck it over the top. The thing about Matthew Stafford is he's been around long enough and is a smart enough quarterback to do all the underneath stuff. And Sean McVeigh will give him good answers than he did in this game. But he's also insane enough to make some of those throws where you've got to pin it right under a cover to safety, or you've got to go make the whole shot,

or you've got to make this crazy throw right over Blake Cashman's shoulder when you're chucking it to Tyler Higby. Like the fact that he can oscillate between doing the veteran take the checkdown type stuff versus just being completely unhinged a little bit in those moments, I probably didn't take into full account that he can be that kind of quarterback against this particular defense. When he's cooking like this, there are very few quarterbacks in the league that are more fun to watch.

And he was on one tonight. And I think the Blitz thing is a very important thing to point out. The other stat I did mention in the preview show that I was saying was a Jaden Daniels stat, but actually it might be a Matthew Stafford stat. The only quarterback with a better EPA per drop back this year again, zone blitzes than Matthew Stafford, was Lamar Jacks, and you saw that today. I mean, the first kind of chunk that they hit to Puka on the opening drive of the game,

that is a zone blitz where he's finding space. The Davis-Allen touchdown, where he replaces the blitzer and it immediately, and they score a touchdown on that play. So the zone blitz is we know that he's very good at attacking that stuff. Where you've been able to get after the Rams a little bit this year is when you play man coverage against them. And that's where the high rolling came in. That's where it felt like every single time in this game,

where they had to hit a throw against tight coverage or cover zero where he was throwing the ball off of his back foot and retreating in the pocket. That back shoulder throw to Cooper Cup against cover zero where he comes back to it. That was the game for the Rams. That is the moment where it was like when he's like this, you just throw your hands up. It's like, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? And so I think that's a perfect way to describe it is that all the things they do well, they did well. And all the things where maybe you can kind of frustrate them a little bit and send them into this mode of volatility where it's a little bit uneven, all of those were going their way.

So when that's happening, what are you going to do against them? And that's kind of how it fell tonight. And that's what is so impressive when it's all clicking for this team. You don't always see them at this level. But when the protection plan is solid, when they get some of those 50-50 coin flip plays and when they're allowed to, when you're playing against a team that does some things you're already, good at exploiting, that's when that combination of McVe and Stafford and the rest of this group, they can become truly terrifying. And I think it's because this is kind of a bad matchup for them. And the man coverage stuff, that being where they were kind of high rolling and getting,

not lucky, but a little bit fortunate that stuff went their way. I think that's a great point because to me, beating all of the zone blitz of stuff, that wasn't lucky. That was good scheming. Matthew Stafford playing out of his mind. The receiver is playing well. But I even said coming into this game. They've had a couple of games this year where against the man coverage stuff, they just happen to have a day where they go five for five and make all those crazy catches. It happened today. And like sometimes again, like you just throw your hands up when those guys go and do that. And it happened to meet it on it every game. The Higbee catch right away. It's just like, oh, here we go. It's just going to be that sort of day. That was kind of the thing is that on the

first drive, you saw them do everything. You have the Pukunakua into zone coverage thing, like you just said, beating the Blitz. You have the Higbee tight window throw that's like, Oh man, are they going to catch all those today? And then even the design that gets them into the end zone is awesome. They do like a little rollout to the left hand side. Stafford fakes it to the right side. And typically you have your back just sit there and protect or he's going to, you know, leak out to the side that he was running to on his play fake.

Instead, he like wiggles through the middle of the offensive line and sits over where the ball was snapped and catches a touchdown there. It's just like when you get them doing the beating the blitz, making the crazy catches and then Stafford having or Sean McVeigh having a moment. What do you do? Like it set the table for the entire game. I'm smiling for those people who are not watching this on video because the odds were off the board in Vegas of you bringing up that play over the course of this game.

I knew you were going to. It was beautiful. Because you brought up that Karen Williams play in the Red Zone when we were doing the previous show. And the design of that was gorgeous. But again, it's an area where we've seen that they already got after the Vikings with that sort of idea. It's a little bit different, right? When it's a play action boot in the red zone, but trying to get after the linebackers in that way, they already threw that sort of touchdown

earlier in the season. So I think all of that, those are great points. And I think that's exactly what we saw from them today. The defense is what maybe was a little bit surprising. And I think that the Sam Daryl meltdown is absolutely part of this and we will talk about that. But I think that you have to give a lot of credit to the Rams for the plan they came into this game with. Two things I feel like we're kind of at the center of this. The pass rush got after it. And we mentioned on the preview show that when this Rams team gets a sack on a drive, they are top five in points per drive. When they don't, they were bottom three. Well, they finish this game with nine sacks. So that's going to go a long way and getting where you want to go. And I think the game

plan feeds into that a little bit. Two things that really stood out to me. One, the Rams this season, played 14% cover 1, which was one of the lower rates in the entire league. It's like a bottom 5 rate. They played it 30% today. It was the coverage they played the most in this game per next gen. Darnold finishes 4 of 12 for 64 yards with an interception and three sacks against those cover 1 looks. And why I think that was important, they disrupted timing because they were playing so much man coverage and it was a little bit of a curveball. So I think that on the back end, and what they were doing on the front end and just the front in general, the amount of

late line movement, the amount of stunts, the amount of twists, they really got after the Vikings offensive line throughout this game. We mentioned that that Vikings offensive line, especially the left side, that was going to come up big in this game. They were going to have to have a really good night against this front for the Vikings offense to have the sort of outing they wanted, and they didn't. That front feasted for the Rams this entire game. So I think the game plan on both the front end and the back end and the execution of it combined with what we saw from Darnold, that's how you see everything start to unravel a little bit for the Vikings offense. The coverage stuff is the most shocking to me because you could have sold me on the front just has a

crazy day, right? But the coverage, I think, them mixing it up the way that they did and those guys playing the way that they did for a majority of this game, kind of making Sam Darnold, wait that extra beat to want to make a lot of these throws really until like the fourth quarter when the game was kind of out of hand and it didn't matter anymore. I thought that was super important. To me, up front, it obviously wasn't quite as, it didn't feel as insane in the moment as what Houston was doing to the Chargers, but it was pretty dang close. And the reason I say that is they were winning a lot of their one-on-ones, especially early. And then the other thing I noticed early is a lot of the Vikings love to get into these tight formations where they have like

a tight offset stacked one side or they have a single tied end to one side and he's tied to the formation. A good thing to do against that is to blitz the hell out of that side, especially if they're doing that into the short side of the field, because the corner just has less of an area to cover before he gets to the quarterback. There were multiple times in this game where the Rams sent blitzes from the boundary corner into those short side things, and we're able to get to Sam Darnold immediately. So you win some of your one-on-ones, you get some of your line stunts and stuff that you were saying. The late setting, the front, I think, was the most interesting part there. they did a really good job with that.

And then bringing some of those blitzes, they just, they had Sam Darnold thinking on every single play. And Kevin O'Connell typically on the other side has done a good job of not making Sam Darnold have to think all that much. And I think that's why this game kind of ended up the way that it did. The Akele-Wetherspoon strip sack is obviously like the game swinging play. And I'm wondering, so if you look at the formation on that play, it's like a trip set with a nub to the left side.

So the tight end is in line with trips to the right side. So Wetherspoon is alone on that side. And the Rams are playing cover two. And initially, Hawkinson ships. And so I'm wondering when he sees Hawkinson ship, is that when he adds on? Is that actually a call blitz or is he doing that in real time based on how the play is unfolding? If it's the latter, it's more impressive. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter.

It's the game that ends up, it's the play that ends up swinging the game for the Rams. I honestly think it was called because if you look at the rest of the coverage, they also drop two of their defensive front players out and they bring a guy from the trip side. Like, it's the most bat-s insane Tampa 2, sim pressure that you could bring. And, like, you know, we can make the jokes of like, oh, you made Sam Darnel Tedsman there. I think a majority of quarterbacks would have got beaten with that. That is like a Brent Venables peak. Like, why are you calling this type of blitz? And they got home with it.

A lot of credit to Chris Shula, you know, who is in his first year as a defensive coordinator, very young defense, a defense that I have to imagine. I'm going to look this up while we're talking. I have to imagine it is. is the cheapest defense in the NFL this season based on cap spending. Looking at it right now. Is it by a lot? The chiefs are 31st at $82 million. Where do you think the Rams are at 32nd?

So I know on the broadcast they said this team had the most rookie snaps, which leads me to believe it's very low. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Okay. So that's that's 2025. Okay, so let's look at 2020. It's the same idea.

So that's 2025 that I was looking at. The Panthers are at 31st at 67 million, an active camp spending on their defense by the time the season was over. Where do you think the Rams are at 32nd? Man, because of how many rookies I'm going to say like 29? It's $40 million. So that is $26 million less than the next, than the team in 31st.

Every other team in the NFL is at least $75 million. And the Rams are at $40 million in cap spending on their defense this year. That is completely outrageous. I guess I forgot to account for the fact that they took Jared Verst so high. And so even though he's a rookie, he's still making a decent amount of money. But still, it's completely insane. You compare that to what do you think the Steelers are at? If the Rams are at $40 million.

I mean, it's got to be like one. I'll say $100. I'll say $100. A hundred and a hundred and thirty-seven million dollars. Oh, my God. So the Steelers are spending a- Where does that rank? First, by far.

Oh, okay. So the Steelers are 137 and the Rams are at 39 this year in cap spending by the end of this season. So credit to those guys and credit to the way that those young guys were playing by the end of this game. It's a hell of the showing by that group and easy to get excited about the arrow and where that is pointed for that unit specifically. We have a lot of time to talk about this.

I'm already fascinated by the Rams offense against the Eagles defense matchup. Very, very, very. different sort of team. You know, the Rams are getting blitzed on 65% of dropbacks today. The Eagles are a bottom three blitz rate team in the NFL. And so it's a very different challenge, but one, I'm excited to see them try to figure out. All right, before we get to the Vikings side of this, we're going to take a quick break. Let's get to the Viking side of this.

It's just a meltdown of epic proportion on several different levels. I mean, by the midpoint, by early in the fourth quarter, even when they're down by 18 points, it just felt like they'd kind of given up on the game. And I kind of understand how you arrive in that moment when the quarterback is playing that way and everything is unraveling to such a degree. You lose Brian O'Neill in the fourth quarter. They clearly are thinking about that as they're trying to call those last couple drives. There's a lot of screens. Like everything just became completely untethered by the time you got to the end of this game.

And I think the quarterback is at the center of it. But there's not a lot to like about what the Vikings put forth in this game. And they're not the team that had their, entire situation completely, you know, thrown into a mess over the last couple weeks. This was before we get into all of the Sam Darnold stuff, because Sam Darnold played a very bad game, but I don't want to make it about the only Sam Darnel completely melting down game. I do think Kevin O'Connell called one of his worst games of the season. I also think what we talked about with them not being able to run the ball all that well, like

they had stretches at times where it looked okay, but this is still not a team that fundamentally can run the ball when they want to. And early on in the game, when the Rams were stacking the box, they weren't running the ball that well. Later in the game, they were able to do it a little bit because the Rams eased off a little bit. But generally, it was to me not something that they were able to lean on consistently, even if they wanted to. It doesn't help when you're down on the scoreboard because the Rams were obviously putting up

some points early. And that was part of the problem. But the other thing to me is there were just moments in this game where it felt like they did not give Darnold some of the easy answers that. I think that he was used to. Like there was, I remember there being, I think it was maybe the fourth and two that they tried to convert at midfield where Darnel ends up taking a sack. He opens the play by looking to his left side to try to find Jordan Addison in the flat. Addison kind of gets jammed.

He trips up. And so Darnold has to come off of his first read. Fine, stuff happens. It was Jefferson. Jefferson. Yeah. But every other route is that like 12, 15 yards. Yeah.

You only need a handful. Like, why are we being so aggressive here? And like, I understand that conceptually, that's what a lot of their drop back passing concepts are. And that's what they've been good at for a lot of the year. And then being a quick game offense is not typically what they've been. But it just felt like they didn't meet the moment. And that, to me, was like a good encapsulation of all of that. On that play, the Rams are in an overload front with three guys to the right side.

They run a twist with Kobe Turner with the right guard in the center. He gets home for a sack almost immediately, as Sam. Donald was coming off of Justin Jefferson in the flat. So it's that combination of either coverage or some sort of misstep in the timing because Jefferson slips. And by the time you're on to something else, there's somebody in your lap. The number that I think is worth pointing out because I think that some people are going to be like, well, you know, you're going to talk about how Sam Donald melted down.

And you didn't really do that with Justin Herbert yesterday. We mentioned this on that broadcast or on that show last night. 31% quick pressure rate for Justin Herbert last night, 12% early in the fourth quarter. quarter for Sam Donald. There was a lot of holding onto the ball. And his head was spinning. And over the course of that game, it's hard not to feel bad for him as it keeps going. That was my first thought. As that kept going, it was just like, man, this is a guy who has been really quiet all year, just wanted to put his head down, understood this was best for his career. I think even as he got a little bit more attention as the season went along,

he was a little bit uncomfortable with it. Like, think about that moment where they're carrying him in the locker room. I don't think he really wanted that to happen. And I think he's been pretty quiet as all this has happened. And so for this to go the way that it has over the last two weeks, that's the first thought I have. It's just like it feels it's hard to watch. Like it was hard to watch this game happen for Donald and for this offense. And to me it wasn't just because it was this game. He kind of had not this bad of a meltdown, but he melted down a little bit in the final game of the season where they were able to go play for the one. He'd like he played probably his two worst games of the season on the game that could have got you the one seat in a buy,

and your game in the playoffs where you're on the road because you lost that game that didn't get you the buy. Like it's just, I did start to feel bad after about it was. So some of the sacks where he's just immediately getting popped by those like corner blitzes, that's just great defensive. That's whatever. That's me. I wasn't like, oh, this is where I feel bad and he's spinning.

Right. That just is going to happen to you sometimes. It was the ones where, like you said, it's not a quick pressure. he's holding on to the ball for four and a half seconds, and he takes the late sack instead of throwing it away. Those were the ones. Or even there were earlier parts in the season when he was playing well, where he would scramble outside of the pocket and go make something happen.

He wasn't even doing that a lot in this game where he was a little bit more like anchored to the pocket in a way that I just, it was confusing. It was genuinely confusing given how he had played for a majority of the season. There's that third and eight one in the second half, and he's just holding on to it and sitting and bouncing in the pocket. And Addison's open. they're sending Addison on a wheel route down the right side line. He's open, and Hawkinson's also open over the ball.

And so there are some moments where it's like, where do you want him to go? He was not coming off of things very quickly in this game. He was hanging on to stuff way too long. And when your protection plan and just your guys compared to theirs up front, you're at a disadvantage. You can't play that way. Like you just cannot hang on to the ball for that long. And it got to a point where it really did feel like everything started to unravel.

And that brings us. to a pretty interesting conversation about what happens next for the Vikings. Because we discussed this, I don't know, probably four or six weeks ago, about how this might go for Minnesota. And I was always of the opinion that it would have to be pretty undeniable for them to stick with Darnold, not because of games like this, but just because of the opportunity cost that comes along with retaining him after you did what you did for J.J. McCarthy. The Vikings are slated to have like $65-ish million in cap space this year, depending on where the cap goes. The franchise tag is $41 million. Are you going to eat, and that's the problem with the tag,

is that, yeah, theoretically it's less than a long-term contract extension, but there's no funny money involved here. You can't spread things out. You can't have a low-cap hit in year one. You're taking it all in one season. And if you're Cresia doof-Mensen, you've done everything you can to get on a rookie quarterback timeline and to try to use some of that excess, those excess resources to build up the rest of your roster, to spend on interior offensive linemen, to spend on some interior defensive linemen. Harrison Smith and Cam Bidom are both free agents this offseason?

Are you going to spend $40 million on Sam Darnold? Or are you going to say the outcomes between Sam Darnold and J.J. McCarthy, even with what we saw from Sam Darnold this year, in my mind, are going to be close enough that. we can't justify paying both of them at the same time. And I still kind of believe that's where they should land, not because of this game, but just because of everything that they've done to plan for what comes next after Kirk Cusis. I think that's probably the right approach.

I still think even for as bad as these last two games are, Darnold certainly played well enough to get paid by somebody. Exactly. I don't know if it's going to be the Vikings like, what he did this year is better than whatever Daniel Jones ever did. And Daniel Jones ended up getting paid. And I know that's not the sexiest argument. But like, I think he's on the tier quarterback that Baker Mayfield has been this year. And Baker Mayfield is a guy who is in this like mid tier range of quarterback contract. So by somebody, I think he should get paid, whether or not

it's going to be the Vikings. I think is interesting because I do think what they got out of him is both they obviously a happy accident. They didn't think he was going to be starting the entire season. And I I don't think they thought they would win 13 games with him and be the team that they ended up being. And I also, I think why it's complicated is I do think that the Vikings set themselves up well for this rookie window. And I thought JJ McCarthy was a decent prospect. I would be shocked next year if McCarthy is as good as what Donald did this year.

And obviously for young quarterbacks, you're playing for the long term, right? But I would be shocked if he was as good as Donald was this season, especially coming off the injury, right? It's a fascinating conversation to have, though. Does he need to be for him to be the right choice? And I think the answer is no. Because if you're playing for the long term, right. Yes.

I think you should be playing for 2026 no matter what because there's still some real holes with the rest of this roster. And you have a lot of financial wiggle room to fill some of those holes if you move on from Donald. Let's just play this out. Let's say he gets the Baker-Mayfield contract. Exactly. Three years, 100 million, which I think is probably fair for what he has done. I think paying him in the Baker-Geno range of things based on this season would be totally justifiable by some team that needs an answer to a quarterback.

The way that the Bucks did Baker's contract, he had a $7 million cap hit in 2024. So you could keep the 2025 number down, but the money's got to go somewhere. And so if you're going to move on from him after one year, if that's the likely outcome, it would be a $33 million dead cap hit if you gave him the Baker-Mayfield contract. So somewhere along the way here, you have to rob Peter to pay Paul as part of this process. And I just don't know if for the Vikings specifically, that is worth it. For one of these other teams that does not have a ready-made answer at quarterback, it absolutely is.

But Minnesota is not one of those teams. And that's why I feel whether it's on a short extension at a moderate price or the franchise tag, doesn't make sense for this team specifically. And I've always landed on no unless like you win the, you go to the NFC championship game, you go to the Super Bowl. And it's like we can't justify not running this back. That is not where we've landed with this. That's probably the right take is that they needed to prove that the ceiling,

not in the regular season, but in the actual postseason, was insane. And like I said, I still think that I would be shocked if McCarthy next season was as good as what Donald did this year. But there's a world where maybe McCarthy gets some reps in next season and then he develops the following year. They have the money that they didn't use to pay Sam Donald. And maybe in 2026, they can be the team that they want to be that actually can get to the NFC championship.

So I honestly don't know where I land on it. I think this is something that I would have to think about a little bit more, especially with the way that these last two games went. And with, again, McCarthy coming off of the injury. Like, I think that complicates things so, so much. Like, you just don't know what he's going to look like coming off of the injury. And I think if he wasn't coming off the injury, this would be a much simpler conversation. I want to present this case to you.

And just have you weigh these options. Okay. If you give Sam Darnold the franchise tag for $40 million, to what end? Are you going to win the Super Bowl next year with Sam Darnold making $40 million considering some of the other things you still need to address about this roster? You have no draft picks, by the way. You have a first round pick. You've traded away all of your other mid-round picks this last off season to do what you did for J.J.

McCarthy and Dallas Turn. That's also something to consider. I think part of the justification for them trading away a lot of those mid-round picks, is they thought they would walk into the 2025 off season with real cap space for the first time. And so I think that has to be part of the calculus here. So if you give Darnold the tag or if somewhere along the way you're going to pay Sam Darnold the combined $40 million over the next two years, is that slight improvement, or let's say it's a moderate improvement about what J.J. McCarthy would give you.

The gap between those guys, is that more important than giving J.J. McCarthy a year of reps in route to gudging j j mccarthy to the quarterback you need him to be for you to accomplish your goals over the next five years probably not but again it comes back to like i just do not know what he's going to look like coming off of the injury like again if he was fully healthy i think this would be a super easy conversation but um i don't know i just i truly am like stumped by this. I understand that like them, this being a happy accident complicates what they thought was going to end up being a lot of cap space for them in 2025, them shipping off the picks. I will say them shipping off the picks is something I a little bit forgot, which is kind of exacerbated by the fact

that the players, they use those picks on. One, we don't know what McCarthy is and two, Dallas Turner has been kind of a non-factor for them. So I think that actually might be what kind of swathes this away from Donald for me is that because you spent all these picks on the quarterback and then you aren't going to have any other picks to reload the roster. Maybe you do need the Darnold money. So I'm still going to leave the door open for an answer here, but I think you've sold me a little bit that that might be the right direction. I think what you said before is where I land.

I think Sam Darnold is worth paying at the Baker Gino price for some team that does not have an answer. This team hopefully does. That's why you did what you did to draft AJ McCarthy in the first round. I don't want to make this all about Sam Darnold. We've done postmortems for all these other teams that have lost in the wildcard ground. Let's do a little bit more of a team-wide one for the Vikings. As you think about what else this team needs heading into 2025, what would be the priorities for you? DBs who can run. Like,

we saw, we know what Brian Flores wants to be. He wants to play some more of this man coverage stuff. And he tried to a little bit later in the season. And they had success every now and then with it. But I think you saw in this game, it would have been nice if they could have been a little bit better at it in a game like this. And they're old in the secondary, right? Like Harrison Smith, has been around for a really long time. Gilmore has been around for a long time. Josh Mattelis is like an interesting player, but he's also like kind of more of a linebacker than he is a true cover player.

And so I think them getting a little bit faster on the back end, that to me would be kind of the next step to really fixing this thing. And then again, probably adding pieces along the interior. I know they fixed it a little bit this offseason and it looked okay, but they still got to run the ball better than they did for a majority of this year. And actually the last point I would make to that, I think Kevin O'Connell needs a little bit of what Sean McVeigh went through, where he had to go through, he had to walk through the desert a little bit to find what he wanted to be in terms of this gap running scheme. So I don't know if it has to be the exact same answers to Sean McVe, but a little bit more development on that front.

Yeah, a little bit of how do we get to our correct answers for how we can be a team that runs the ball in our terms, the same way the really good offenses in the NFL can. The other guy did not mention you talk about corners who can run. Their corner who can run is Byron Murphy. he is also a free agent after this year. So just think about all of these holes that we're talking about and all there are holes that you can theoretically fill in free agency. Interior offensive line, interior defensive line, corner, safety. That's what that $70 million is supposed to be for. That's what you should be able to use that money for because I agree with you.

I think they do need pieces at all of those different spots. The one thing to consider a corner, Mackay Blackman, I believe Tor is ACL coming into this season. so he should be back next year. He was originally slated to be one of the starting outside corners. He gets hurt. So there is somebody on the roster, but your other three main corners this season were Shaq Griffin, Stefan Gilmore, and Byron Murphy, all of whom I believe are going to be free agents after this year.

So it's just there's a lot, there's more work to do than I think it might seem for a defense that was as good as this defense was this year. And I think you can extend that to some other position. groups, including the interior of the offensive why. I absolutely agree with that framing of the defense because for as good as they were and for as they were a little bit formidable and a little bit more solid this year, it's still a defense that gets by by doing some weird stuff up front and just throwing more bodies at the problem than you can answer.

And I think that they would probably like to do a smidge and less of that again. Kind of like just take down another step that they took from this last off season. Last year was they were completely insane. this year was like moderately insane. I think they would like to find another step where they don't have to do that all the time. And part of the reason that I've been treating what they could do with some money to throw around in free agency is that what they did this year in free agency was phenomenal. The pieces they found and how thoughtful they were about what they needed to take this defense to the next step, Van Ginkle, Jonathan Grenard, what they got from Blake Cashman. I think they do have a really good sense of, all right, these are ready made pro.

players, how do I fit that skill set into who I want to be on defense? The only position they didn't really do that with is corner and they kind of ran out of money. Eventually, you can only do so much, especially because this year, they were still paying a little bit of that Kirk Cousins tax. And so this was really supposed to be, they have $3.4 million in dead money on their 2025 books currently. This was supposed to be the year where you cleared all of that and kind of move forward with the vision of the team that you had originally planned. And if this was a team that those guys are fighting for jobs, right? It's like, how we're kind of up against it.

Like, you really want to move into quarterback uncertainty. We've got two 13 win seasons in the books over the last three years. I think there's a little bit of built-in equity for the stakeholders in that building with ownership. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm misreading that situation. It's always more tenuous than you want it to be. You're one bad season from that conversation changing.

But I think the circumstances here and how much self-preservation should be on your minds, rather than optimization, maybe should be a slightly different ratio for this group than it might be for some other teams. All right. That is all we've got for today. We will be back tomorrow. Me and Derek are going to chat about the coaching news that has rolled out over the last couple of days. We're going to do something different. And then Mike Frable got hired, which we haven't talked about at all.

Mike McCarthy got, I guess, fired. I don't really know how I would describe this. We'll figure out how we want to frame that. Mike McCarthy got quasi-fired by the Cowboys, and then immediately it took 10 minutes for the Cowboys to draw out the Mike McCarthy conversation in order to soak up oxygen, and then it took 10 minutes for them to leak out the Dion Sanders thing. It was immediate. So guess what, Jerry, you won. We'll be talking about Dion Sanders potentially going to the Cowboys and tomorrow's athletic football show. I begrudgingly am going to do it.

So we'll dig into all of that. some of the interview news that's happened over the last couple days, a lot of fun stuff to chat about. So please come back and check that out tomorrow. For now, that is all we've got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.