Minnesota Vikings Get Right By SMASHING Cincinnati Bengals

Minnesota Vikings Get Right By SMASHING Cincinnati Bengals

How about that for a get-right game? 48-10, the Vikings smack one on the Cincinnati Bengals. We’ll break it all down here on the Locked On Vikings podcast. You are Locked On Vikings, your daily Minnesota Vikings podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Hey hey hey everybody. Welcome to the Locked On Vikings podcast where we’re always trying to learn something new. It’s part of the Lockdown podcast network your team every day. And thank you so much for making Lockdown Vikings your first listen of the day every single day and your first postgame listen as well. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. Like our players, we sweat every detail because when you make every move count, pulling off the unexpected is only the beginning. Stay tuned later for highlights in this week’s Moving the Game Forward. Mazda move and be moved. Today on the show, of course, we have to talk about everything that the Vikings did to the Cincinnati Bengals, a deeply disrespectful dismantling of uh Zack Taylor’s team. A total turnaround from the vibes coming off of that Atlanta game where it felt like the season was like over. Like people were saying that, so should we shut this thing down and start talking about mockdrafts? No. The Vikings are two-1. They’re tied for the division lead with the Green Bay Packers. Uh that is the way the season can go. It’s just a different vibe out there when you can win one week, lose the next week, and it it like the difference between one week and another is quite a bit, you know. Um but how this happened is going to be a fascinating thing to look at over the course of the week and a very fun thing to look at. It’s always much more fun after a win to say, “Okay, how did such an unexpected result go down the line?” I mean, the Vikings were favored in this one. By the way, shout out to Zoe. She beat Ziti in the uh the silver under rabbit picks. You can tune in all on Fridays for that. But when it’s a blowout like this, you have you have to have several factors. It’s never just one guy. If we were to call it one guy, it would be Isaiah Rogers. So, if you missed the game and you’re going, “Oh my god, how did 48 to10 happen?” The answer is in the second quarter, an absolute Isaiah Rogers avalanche. He ends a a drive with an endzone pass break up on T. Higgins by a fingertip. And you’re going, “Wow, what a great play. Hey, nice to see the corner getting involved.” And then a another tip from Harrison Smith lands right in his lap and he houses it with that blazing fast speed that he has. And then shortly after that, a scoop and score on I think it was Noah Fant that he strips. It bounces right back into him. He gets up and then he’s gone again. two touchdowns for Isaiah Rogers and the Vikings led 17-3. He was the only guy that scored u or no, I’m sorry, it was uh 24-3 by that point. That pick six um makes the game 14 to nothing. And then shortly after the scoop in score comes at a huge moment. the Bengals were really driving. Um they had scored the field goal to make it 17 to3 and the Vikings had a field goal back and it was like toward the end of the half that Isaiah Rogers like you have this chance if you’re the Bengals to make it 17 to 10 going into halftime if you can score a touchdown on that drive and they were moving a little bit um but because of some special teams mishaps but that like they had a real chance to make a game out of this and that scoop and score peanut punch. Isaiah Rogers picks it up, houses it, and it’s suddenly 24-3 and the thing is just over. And then I think the gut punch at the end of the half where Will Riker sets a franchise record with a 62 yd field goal to go up 34-3 at halftime. They talked to Zack Taylor. Uh if you were at the game and you didn’t hear this, by the way, this is how I knew, okay, this comeback is not they’re not going to make a comeback effort here because Zack Taylor said, “Yeah, we got a lot of pride to play for.” Like that’s a white flag thing to say, right? That is this game didn’t happen for us and we’re just gonna play for pride from here on out. And Pride, they did generate a little bit. Um they did score a touchdown drive. They moved the ball a little bit against the twos. Um but I mean we had baseball caps at the end of the third quarter. Carson Wentz had the baseball cap on and was done. And we got a whole quarter of Max Bromer who largely didn’t do anything in the game. A couple of drops and there was a fumble and kind of didn’t have an impact one way or another. But I think the key to this game going into this, I talked to James Rene a lot about what are we going to get from these um from these quarterbacks and we we said, you know, hey, turnovers is going to be the key to the game. Of course, turnovers was the key to the game. Jake Browning with two interceptions. Um there were two fumbles that the they were so loose with the football. The Bengals were there were fumbles everywhere. The Vikings fell on some of them and didn’t fall on some of them. Um, but the pressure that the Vikings got on Jake Browning really turned him into a total pumpkin. The Jake Browning that found a way to move the ball meticulously down the field against the Vikings two years ago to for that crazy um overtime debacle game that happened in Cincinnati a couple years ago with the the the T. Higgins just totally mossing Mai Blackman at the end zone. You remember that one? Um, this was a totally different thing. They made him run. They made him make plays. They forced Jake Browning to be Patrick Mahomes. He had to be running around throwing off platform all day long throwing these back foot, you know, heave it up kind of things. They said, Jake Browning, if you get to be Patrick Mahomes today, you can win. And Patrick Mahomes, he is not. And therefore, the Vikings get it. But there there’s so many other things defensively that I want to talk about in this one. And I really do think the defense gets a lot more credit than the offense in this one. Not that the offense had a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, especially the run game. There was a ton of great stuff going on in the run game. And it’s sort of the lack of complexity in that run game that really made it such an impressive day. And I’ll get to that in a sec. But, uh, defensively, I just got off the squad show and kind of made this argument that while Isaiah Rogers is going to get NFC player, defensive player of the week and he’s going to get, you know, all these all this attention all week and rightfully so, he had a phenomenal game and even outside of those splash plays, he had a good game covering Jamar Chase and T. Higgins. Um, so he deserves all of that credit. But I am going to probably spend more time thinking about how that Dline wallto-wall blew the absolute pants off of the the Bengals O line. The Bengals O line by and large was a better unit than we had seen before. I that was one of the things I asked James about was like, “Hey, do you feel good about this unit?” And he said like better than in the past, right? Maybe not great about them, but like better than in the past. You got Rynisner who’s like Daltton Risyner who’s who is unfortunately this sort of lightning rod in Cincinnati right now because the pressure that ended up giving Joe Burrow the injury uh was on him and he gets absolutely worked again here. But like they felt okay about I mean you remember how you felt about Daltton Risner. He’s not the best guy in the in in the group but you’re not trying to launch him into the sun but that’s kind of exactly what like Jaylen Redmond did to him. Um, and with Jayvon Hargrave going out in this game, he had a chest contusion and Kevin Oonnell said he could have come back in this one if they needed him to, but because of the score, they didn’t bother with that. By the way, if you noticed that Christian Darasaw was out um for a bunch of the second half, never fear, that was kind of the same thing there. They said, “We got all the snaps we needed out of him and we’re going to kind of let things chill out with him still because he’s still not entirely um you know, he’s still in the recovery process for that ACL injury, but he was well enough to play, but maybe not well enough to push it. That’s okay. Um, there was some report going on about snap count stuff with him and Harrison Smith. Harrison Smith was on a pitch count. He rotated in and out and then basically got the baseball cap at the end. And the same thing happened with Derasaw except he he played wireto wire until the game was out of hand and they said, “Okay, we’re good with you.” But they could have he could have probably would have finished the game if they if if the game were close. Um, and so that’s where those guys are at heading into Ireland to play the Steelers. But sorry, injury news tangent. Um, with with Hargrave going out, you needed a step up game from Redmond and Levi Drake Rodriguez. Jonathan Allen had some really nice run stops. He ate a lot of doubles. Jonathan Allen had to do a lot of dirty work in this game. I don’t think he showed up as much in the stat sheet, but the the Bengals were really focusing on him and everyone else. That means you have to step up and win your one-on- ons. This is what was not happening last year in those games the Vikings lost against these McVey style offenses. This is the best the Vikings have done defensively against a McVey style offense I think like ever. Unless you want to count there’s probably some uh broken offense somewhere that you can technically count that I’m not thinking of. But like this was a drumming and it was because Dallas Turner was winning his one-on- ons when they tried to kick Dallas Turner out. He would fold that edge in and then Jonathan Gernard who was also winning a one-on-one could chase it down. I want you to watch if you want a perfect example of this. First play of the second half, the Vikings come out on defense. The Bengals try to run zone toward Dallas Turner. They are trying to take him and say, “We noticed you look a little skinny on tape. We’re going to kick you out.” He folds that thing out. There is nowhere for the running back to go. And Jonathan Grard beats the tackle in a swim move and he’s going to get all the glory for that. But that does not happen if Dallas Turner doesn’t win his rep. I thought Turner was one of the more pleasant surprises of the game to me. Turner did not have a good day against the Falcons in my opinion. I think I thought he did okay, but like we need more from him and he had his moments just like everybody else in that game where he was the culprit of a big run play. So to see him show up and just eat his wedies and just like be totally unblockable in the backfield all the time. He was the pressuring Dlineman on a big uh interception in the second half for Josh Matelis as the avalanche just kind of kept rolling. I was really, really pleased with Dallas Turner in this one. And that’s not to take away from Levi Drake Rodriguez or Redmond or um Ivan Pace who was everywhere in this one. A lot of guys just won one-on-one battles. Jonathan Allen did a lot of dirty work and it worked. Hold him to 10 points and they only got to score once the twos went in. There’s so much more to break down in this one. So many more good things. How do we feel about Carson Wentz? What about the run game? We’ll get into that next on the Lockown Vikings podcast. Today’s Lockdown Vikings episode is brought to you by Prize Picks. It’s the best way to play daily fantasy football. Making the right call can actually pay off. So, if you love to be right about stuff, for example, with bold prediction, which hit, I’ll get to that later in the week. Um, you can go check out prize picks. 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If you want to see more about that Dallas Turner or Isaiah Rogers game, I’m almost certainly doing those two uh on my Patreon page, patreon.com/lukebrun NFL. But let’s move on to the offense. And I I think the offense has had a more interesting day as much as the defense had a dominant day, but ultimately the answer is everyone did good. Great job, pats on the back. and you kind of and that there’s not much else to break down about it there. The the the offense I thought had an interesting day, but here’s a question that everybody asked going into the game. What if Carson Wentz plays really well? What if the Vikings blow out the Bengals and and the offense looks better? Don’t you kind of have to roll with Carson Wentz? And I I think the standard going into this game was the same as it was for Sam Darnold where yeah, there is a world where he plays so well that the Vikings win the Super Bowl and then you kind of have to stick with it. But anything short of that, they are not going to buy into a reclamation project as their long-term answer for at quarterback. And I think the standard was always going to be the same with Wentz. I don’t think Wentz had that good of a day. He didn’t screw up. And that’s the difference here. Again, I I thinking back to the crossover with James. You walk into this game and both teams have a backup in. Whose backup ruins the day for them? Well, that answer turns into the Bengals. and it’s not the Vikings. So, kind of by just throwing his hands up and letting this game be about somebody else, it’s um a a good day for Carson Wentz in that way. It was, if you remember the old Kurt Cousins Chaos Meter, I would put these kinds of games in the gray. They would be games where like, look, he didn’t do that well. He didn’t do that poorly. It was just sort of conservative. Mostly, you’re a handoff machine, and this game happens to this game happened to you. You weren’t here. you were just sort of in the passenger seat and watching everything else unfold. And that’s exactly what you wanted out of a backup quarterback. So, I’m pleased with that with Wentz as a backup. But, if you’re going to start making this point about, well, you know, hey, when did JJ McCarthy score 48 points? Uh, or however many was actually on offense or however many you want to credit to the offense because there were short fields after turnovers and stuff, too. Even after you adjust for all that, it’s probably still a better offensive output than what you saw versus the Bears and certainly versus the Falcons and you go, “Well, you know, didn’t the offense?” If you’re going to hold things up to that standard, you probably want to see a little bit less of a conservative offense. You want to see Carson Wentz hold the ball a little bit less. Um, I would not be surprised to learn that the routes were still taking too long to develop. It was even pointed out in the broadcast once with Tony Romo and that was the same thing that McCarthy was dealing with. So, there’s a little bit of like, okay, it doesn’t matter who you put at quarterback. They can’t throw the thing. The route hasn’t broken off yet. The route’s not even close to breaking off and nothing has developed. Quarterback cannot throw. I still think that issue exists with the with the Vikings offense. It’s just that the O line dominated just as much as the Dline did. The Vikings O line had an absolutely massive day in pass protection and in the run game. Um, Michael Jurgens as a backup center. I think that’s maybe the third one I do. I’m really curious to see if h how well Michael Jurgens played. Um it just it keeps rattling around in my head that the beat has basically called him the center of the future. Basically said that they see him as an eventual starter someday and while they do have a veteran right now in Ryan Kelly, he will not last forever and their plan is essentially to throw Michael Jurgens in there. So when Ryan Kelly leaves, they’re not going to treat center as a need because they have Michael Jurgens. Are they correct to do that? And I I did a whole video at Patreon uh which is free to watch right now about Jurgens in in the preseason and if he kind of lives up to that to that uh mantle, which I kind of think he did. I think he had a really nice preseason. And from my initial watch, I believe the same thing is true here. It seemed like he had a really nice day. There was one uh there were a couple of snap count issues. There were a couple of of times he didn’t like pick up a stunt correctly. He gave up a sack to Carson Wentz. Carson Wentz was sacked several times in this one and that’s not good. That still means that there’s problems with the offense. But in the run game, I think you’re going to see a lot of stuff from Jurgens that you like. But of course, the return of Christian Darasaw is a huge headline here. Um, probably bigger than that, that Darasaw comes back, basically just shuts the water off on Trey Hendrickson, who was supposed to be the sort of driving force of the Bengals defense in this game. And the Vikings run zone all the time. Um, I I don’t want to get too into the run game yet. We we’ll circle back to it. But what I want to say about Wentz that is positive and if you do make the decision to not play JJ McCarthy for, you know, the for the months of of November, even though he’s healthy, it would be because Carson Wentz properly ran the huddle. There were still communication issues. There were 13 penalties on the Vikings today. Um I I don’t know have it in front of me how many were on the offense, but you still had false starts. You still had an illegal formation. you still had issues communicated communicationwise. Um, but they broke the huddle at a normal time and the offense suddenly looked a lot better. There’s a reason for that. That that operational stuff really matters and that’s the one thing that you’re not getting with McCarthy. The thing is McCarthy will get that down eventually. That is not going to be the case for JJ McCarthy three years from now. If it is, we can fire everybody in Minnesota. If if if they picked a quarterback that’s so bad at getting the huddle that he’s still breaking the huddle at at 5 seconds, you know, all the way in into his his third year as a starter in the league. Sure. Well, then then we can do that. But that’s just what you get with a veteran versus a young player. The thing about Wentz is they didn’t really trust him to make too many difficult throws. In fact, I thought Bro Brosmer had the hardest throw of the day, a dart into a a really tight window into Adam Thelen that was perfectly thrown but dropped. But Wentz just had to, you know, flip the ball out to some slants, run some basics, run some stuff you knew he knew how to do, stuff that, you know, he learned when he was with the Rams. And um, you know, kind of none of the like extra little wrinkles and extra very Kevin O’Connelly stuff that happened that you saw JJ McCarthy doing. JJ McCarthy, everything was like a double move. Everything was a subversion on what you’re used to seeing from this offense. um the like everything felt like it was trying to to like juke you out and this was a much simpler version of the downfield stuff. They just ran the staples. That’s what I was asking for before I knew what J that JJ McCarthy had high ankle sprain and would be out and it worked better. And what I want to see is for the Vikings to put JJ McCarthy back under center and start with that stuff. And yeah, it’s going to be a little easier to figure out, but you still need that defense to communicate. Like bow is a good concept. That’s the one where it’s a little arrow to usually like the tight end runs a a quick little curl and then you have a basic behind it. And this is like the concept so many times when you see those like middle of the field throws to Justin Jefferson. We saw another one that goes for a huge gain as Justin Jefferson um you know barrels through defenders. That’s a good concept. It’s a concept that beats a lot of coverages. It it punishes middlefield open coverages which the Vikings see a ton of because of Jefferson. That’s what I want to see. And maybe they’ll they’ll keep things a little simpler with Wentz. But I here’s what I think this game tells you. I do think there are permanent changes to the offense that come from this game because it went really well. But I but it’s not switching out the quarterback. That would be, I think, a very naive way to do this. That would be a very short-sighted way to do this. You need the young guy to to go through his growing pains and and to get the operational stuff down and to run a simpler offense. You’d need to keep that offense a little simpler. And I’m not talking about vanilla. They’re not just doing stick spacing and slants. That That’s I mean, they did score a touchdown on stick to Josh Oliver, but and and then another touchdown on a slant. So maybe I’m backing myself into a corner here, but they moved the ball a lot on their staple concepts through the air. Um I just want to put JJ McCarthy, let’s give him this easy version. Why did Why did JJ McCarthy have to run the double move? Everything is so unbelievably overengineered. 10 motions in a can and like why did McCarthy We gave McCarthy that but we give Carson Wentz the veteran the easy mode version and the easy mode version was easier to run and he ran it. Um, there are a couple of concerns to me still with with some disorganization and you still saw like you saw Jurgens take a really nasty L on a stunt and give up a sack and you saw some of the sort of mistiming stuff that’s still going on, but I think you found a version of the offense that the other 10 guys looked a lot better doing. And whoever you put under center, they’re going to have an easier time. And and for me, things should be easy for your quarterback and then you need to try to make them hard for the defense in that order. If things are too hard for your quarterback to run, the defense can be a million potatoes and you’re still not going to move the ball. But really, I think offensively, part of the reason that Carson Wentz isn’t gonna get a ton of credit for this game is because the run game was absolutely insane. And why that happened is really cool because very little happened. Let me explain next on the Lockdown Vikings podcast. This episode is brought to you by Mazda’s Moving the Game Forward. For those who believe it’s not just about playing the game, it’s about redefining it. There are moments that do more than just put points on the board. They move crowds, move culture, and they keep moving the game forward. I think this one’s kind of easy. You got to give that moment to something Isaiah Rogers did. The uh pick six was a big one that puts them up 14 to nothing. But I think the one that stops this game from being that that that goes beyond being a play and more into being like a moment that changes the world is the scoop and score. And Isaiah Rogers got less help on that, right? A tip, drill, interception, and then being fast. That’s really cool. But it’s something entirely different to punch the ball out, pick it up yourself, and then go be fast and score. He did that all on his own. Whatever happened to the other 10 players on that game didn’t matter. defensive lineman could have a terrible uh pass rush. It doesn’t matter on that one. It’s now touchdown Vikings. When when you follow what moves you, the unexpected is only the beginning. And just like there’s more to every highlight, there’s more to a Mazda vehicle. Mazda, move and be moved. This episode is also brought to you by FanDuel, America’s number one sports book. The NFL season is here and FanDuel is making sure you are ready with a can’tmiss offer. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. So you could do something like taking a uh if you catch this before Sunday Night Football, you could do something like a Chiefs money line. It’s like not it’s very very short odds against the New York Giants, but assuming that that the Chiefs actually win, you can turn $5 into 300 in bonus bets to use across the app. 60 to1 odds on even a short uh a short odds money line or something similar, something you feel really really really confident in. So, if you’re ready to play, download the FanDuel app now by visiting fanuel.com to get started. That’s fuel.com to place your first $5 bet. Moving on, the Lockdown Vikings podcast. It’s my favorite thing to talk about. It’s the run game. Um, this was one of the cooler like run game dominance things I’ve seen and in in some time and the reason is the Vikings spammed their vanilla calls. This was my live eye. Maybe we’ll watch the tape and there was a little bit more going on. But because of the way the game script was, especially in the second half, the Vikings weren’t pulling out weird stops. They weren’t designing run games. You’re not walking away from this one. Like I’m contrasting it with like some of those Lions games the last couple years where you’d walk away and be like Ben Johnson drew up this really cool run scheme and they ran for 250 yards, you know, and Sonic and Knuckles and all that. But but you would see that like they would go zone once and then they would go counter the other way and then they would make it look like counter, but it really be zone and and then there’s a trap in there and they would run all this really cool stuff and you’d be like, “Wow, what a great like whiteboard way.” And everybody did their jobs and executed properly and it’s boy, that’s so hard to defend. It’s so much more demoralizing. Like I loved that. That that Lions stuff was really really cool. As much as I I don’t want to give the Lions credit. That was cool. Run game. As a defense, getting punched in the mouth on vanilla mid zone over and over and over again is so much more demoralizing. They are going to lose their minds on Monday when they see what I think I saw, which was outside of mixing up the formations a little bit, this was like high school offense. This was like we run it this way, zone left, zone right, that’s it. Maybe a motion in there or something like that. But the simplicity of it is so impossible to crack when you’re executing it so well that all of those plays are turning into explosives. The game script really made it so that the Vikings called it more simply than I bet they planned to. And that’s excellent, too, because now you keep a whole bunch of other stuff that you prepared in your back pocket. Um, and there was actually a cool Kurt Cousins quote about this a couple years ago where he talked about I think it was after the the Colts comeback where he talked about like making halftime adjustments and sometimes the adjustment is, hey, remember this thing we practiced two weeks ago but we didn’t use we’re going to run it now. Do you guys remember how to do this? We’re going to run it now. And having those things prepared and then not needing them and putting the tape out on them can sort of compound. That’s why these blowout wins can be so nice and why um you know teams won’t call any of the all the stuff that they prepared in a game. They’ll keep that in their back pocket now. And so so it’s really really cool and this is not a criticism at all that it was that simple. It’s the opposite. It’s that they ran their vanilla stuff and their vanilla stuff worked so you didn’t need any bells and whistles. That’s the worst case scenario for the defense and best case scenario for the offense when you’re running just mid zone. And mid zone is so the difference between mid zone and like outside zone or inside zone, right? This is still your classic zone blocking. And if you don’t know what that is, it’s where you know you get you you’re basically uh defending a gap instead of trying to get a player and who you’re who you’re supposed to block changes as the defense moves around. So there’s a lot of communication. There’s a lot of technique to it. Um, but basically what you think about with like a a zone toss to the outside. Everybody’s trying to get to the play side of their guy and seal him off. In mid zone, you don’t ask the tackle to do that. You say, “Hey, if he slants inside you, then do that and it’ll become outside zone.” But really, you’re going to kick that guy out and widen him. And then we’re going to hopefully have this really big B gap between you and the guard. And the guard is going to go up to the linebacker, and then the center is going to reach whatever DTackle is on that side. And this is what the Vikings wanted to do with Kevin O’Connell when they had Garrett Bradberry. Hey, you’re going to scoop the guy every single time. Good luck. Ryan Kelly can do that. Michael Jurgens did that really well today as well. So, they could still do that. Um, and so to give credit to the O line, you’re giving very specific kudos for what these guys kind of did all day. Michael Jurgens doing a bunch of reach blocks all day is a hard job. And if it worked out as well as I thought I saw it did, this rules. That is an awesome, awesome, awesome game. And I’m super willing to forgive the operational issues that came with him being young and it’s his first start and all that. If he was making those blocks, we got a stew cooking. Darasaw kicking guys out, Brian O’Neal kicking guys out, we expect. Not necessarily against Trey Hendrickson though. That’s awesome. And then against Joseph Osai and those guys too, you get lots of credit. And then for the guards with Donovan Jackson and Will Fry getting up to that second level. Um, this was awesome. This was the the O line as we wanted it to be, minus Ryan Kelly, but Michael Jurgens played well enough where you can still see, okay, this is proof of concept. And the team that gave up nine sacks, like it feels a lot different, even though there were a lot of pass pro issues. I don’t know if I put some of them on the line. I I I definitely don’t put all of them on the O line, but like from the run game, all you’re doing is running the same play over and over to the point where the Bengals had to know it was coming and they just couldn’t stop it. That is a shellacking. I mean, that is absolutely smacking you in the face over and over and over and over again. Um, and and that’s the part that I think excites me the most. Kevin Oonnell’s never really wanted a complex run game. Uh, and this is probably the first game I can even think of in the Kevin Oonnell era where you’re going, “Wow, the run game won this one for them.” And the pass game did fine, but really it was the run game that did everything on offense. Jordan Mason over a 100red yards. Um, and even getting some good play out of Xavier Scott and you got Cam Acres in at the end of the game when all the twos went in. But for me, it’s going to be really hard to repeat this and I think that says something bad about the Bengals and and their defense and and I don’t need to tell you that the Bengals defense has been much malign. You can go listen to locked on Bengals for that. But it’s going to be really hard to repeat that in the run game. And and this is where I guess I’ll leave you, which is don’t overreact to this game. We love it. We are so happy about this, but don’t overreact. Don’t walk into next week against the Steelers thinking, great, the O line rules now and the defense is excellent and and Isaiah Rogers going to pick off Aaron Rogers two times. That’s not how this works. Just like you felt like it was going to be, you know, a 4 and13 season after the Atlanta game, it’s not suddenly going to be a 13-4 season because of this Bengals game. The truth is always somewhere in the middle. And the reason part of the reason for that is the Vikings aren’t going to be able to call vanilla mid zone and just wreck somebody probably ever again this season. That is a pretty rare outcome. It rules. Great job for everybody. I would not ever rely on being able to do it again. Wouldn’t ever rely on being able to get two defensive touchdowns from the same cornerback again. All that other stuff is something that you get a lot of credit for, but is going to be really hard to do again. The next team is a totally new challenge with with totally new skills, totally new good players. Now you got to worry about DK Metaf and Aaron Rogers and TJ Watt and like it’s a totally different thing against the Steelers. Um that takes nothing away from this game at all. You beat a 2 and 0 team 48 to10. Get your flowers, go have a great go have a beer about it. Like be happy, but don’t expect it to happen again. That would I think be a little bit naive. Um, and for the Vikings to have a consistent run game, they are going to have to break out the complex stuff. Well, they got a little bit of that banked, I bet. And that’s really nice. That’s going to help. Um, but you’re probably going to have to break out some more interesting ideas, unless your O line is just going to be, you know, mobbing people all year long, which I would personally love. Um, but the the I guess the the point I’m trying to make is what the Vikings did today up front is special and should be regarded as such. Nothing about that was routine. They did something really, really, really cool and rare and I want to shout that out properly. I will talk to you all on Tuesday. It’s uh town hall Tuesday, so get your questions in, get your hot takes in. You can do a bold prediction for the Steelers game if you want as well. We won’t get to that till Friday though, so you have all the time in the world. All of that is in the Google doc which you can find in the description or show notes to any podcast episode. I will see you all on Tuesday and as always, skull.

It felt down and out, but the Minnesota Vikings bounced back in a big way. The Vikings pounded the Bengals into sand, winning 48-10 in a game where Isaiah Rodgers singlehandedly outscored the entire Cincinnati Bengals

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