Drew Magary has questions about the handling of J.J. McCarthy

Drew Magary has questions about the handling of J.J. McCarthy

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by FanDuel. Matthew Coller here and welcoming back to the show from defector Drew McGary. Now, normally Drew, I sit in this seat and ask other people questions, but my understanding is that you have questions about the Vikings that you want to talk to me about. So, we’re going to flip it around. Flip the seats. You ask questions and I’ll give you answers. I’m the captain now. So, what’s going on, man? How are you? You know what? You know what I realized this weekend was that uh you know, obviously the team needed a buy. Uh but you know who else needed to buy? Fans needed to buy because it was like that was five weeks of just, you know, it it gave us it it gave well, okay, I I’ll talk about fans like me. It gave me a moment to sort of sit back and sort of assess what the team had done, you know, going three and two, uh, with all of the crap. Do you edit out crap? Uh, usually leave in crap, but other ones might get clipped. All right. All right. All right. Well, I’ll I’ll try to I’ll try to ease the body out. Anyway, um, you know that they all the crap that they had to deal with, they still managed to get to three and two, and that is its own accomplishment. And there’s a there’s a potential that they that what they’ve endured will galvanize them uh as we get into the the next few months. But that’s like you know that can be that you know that’s a bit sore polyianaish given what we know about the quarterback situation. Um, so I don’t want to ask you I I I don’t want to talk about things I think you’ve all we’ve already discussed, you know, like as in, you know, when should JJ come back and, you know, should Carson Wentz keep playing if he keeps winning and all that stuff. Like I really want to get into more of what Kevin O what’s in Kevin Oonnell’s head. What does he want? Because there’s a few things. One is that when JJ his fiance his fiance had the kid and he missed practice the week before Atlanta he missed what Thursday and Friday was it? Just Thursday. Yeah. Okay. Well, he missed that Thursday practice. We know uh that Okonnell was mad about that because he’s mentioned it a few times. Like it’s I you know and look I’m as enlightened as any guy. So, I I would never get I would never, you know, I would never begrudge one of my co-workers if they missed time for paternity leave, especially if it’s one day, right? But he was clearly mad. And I think that what happened after McCarthy got hurt is that I think that Okano was determined to not let him take the field until both his knee and his brain were good to go. And I think he was pointed about it with JJ. I think he pulled him aside and said, “You need to get your head on right, otherwise I’m not going to play you.” Because he knows that Carson Wentz is a time bomb, right? Like Carson Wentz has done some nice things over the past few weeks, but like he’s not Sam Darnold. He’s going to It’s always better to bench him before he screws you over, right? Um, and so I’m wondering what KOC is looking for in JJ, but also what he’s looking for in a quarterback in general is he’s searching for I’m ask I’m asking you I’m asking you like 5,000 questions at once, but really is is he looking for a quarterback that’s the one that he always wished he could have been? does and is there a quarterback who satisfies that ambition of his? Well, let me go back to uh the point about him missing the practice. I I’ve wondered if that was just brought up as more of a an explanation for what happened that maybe he didn’t factor enough when going into that game like that. Most quarterbacks could probably miss a Thursday who had played a million games. If Carson Wentz didn’t have a Thursday, he would be fine. But for someone like JJ McCarthy that he needed that like there was a lot working against him that week I thought was maybe part of the point uh w with it’s been brought up a million times but missing players and then missing a practice and coming off an emotional Monday Night Football and things like that like all of that added up. Uh, but to your point about what he’s thinking and what’s in his head right now, uh, well, I think that there’s probably a lot of quarterbacks from Kevin Oonnell’s past that are in his head right now that have been pushed too soon and that have failed because of it and ended up succeeding on other teams. I mean, Kevin Oonnell believed in Daniel Jones and I did not as the what? Like, what are we talking about here, right? I still don’t. I mean, that’s fair enough, but like he’s clearly proven that I mean to this point that he can lead a team to a lot of wins and and the wheels might come off and he might not win the Super Bowl, but still a good enough quarterback to start. And we’re seeing Darnold succeed. We’re seeing Baker Mayfield succeed all with different teams. Even M. Jones has played really good football. And I think it has to be his biggest fear to push JJ McCarthy too fast and not or ignore some of the markers that he wants him to reach in order to be ready to start and say, “All right, well, I feel too much pressure because we drafted him. I feel too much pressure from the leadership that this was our plan all along. Our plan was not to play Carson Wentz.” And then have him fail because of it and then have him lose confidence. uh frustration in the locker room, fingerpointing, all that sort of stuff that Okonnell’s seen it happen a million times before and he doesn’t want to be the person that fails the quarterback when that’s his most quotable uh line about organizations failing quarterbacks. And as far as what Okonnell was looking for in terms of his dream quarterback, uh I think that guy plays for the New England Patriots. But that’s not that’s not that’s not zero doubt. That’s not life though, right? you don’t get to have your dream quarterback. Uh, but I think what he wants to be able to do for his quarterback is to set up a situation where the quarterback only has to make a handful of great plays every game and you have a chance to beat any team in the league. That’s that’s a Kyle Shanahan. That’s a Shawn McVey type of situation. Uh, really I really with Shanahan, we see this all the time from Brock Party. Make three great throws in a game and I’ll give you the rest because I’ve got the wide receivers. I’ve got the scheme. All you have to do is get that football out of your hands. And I’m sure when he went back and watched the tape against Atlanta, it drove him crazy that it was there. Now, not every play, and there was a lot of mistakes by other people, and it wasn’t the best called game, but the plays were there to be made, and the ball just wasn’t coming out. And I think that he saw the footwork gone wrong, the timing gone wrong, all these things where he’s saying, “I can give this to you, but I can’t throw it for you.” So he wants to see in practice those things come along otherwise it’s not going to work. But I don’t think that McCarthy would be the hey I dreamed it up in a lab. But I also think that he has a lot of markers of quarterbacks who have won a lot of games in the NFL before. Yes. Uh the thing the the question I want to ask you off of that is is he being too cautious because you can’t have everything be just right and we saw that right in the Atlanta game. And so there may never be a a perfect time to get him in there and ultimately and you’ve said this before he just has to play right. So my, you know, I my concern is that he is being so hands-on and frankly so much of a micromanager that that he’s not understanding that he has to let McCarthy go out there. He has to let McCarthy fail and he has to let McCarthy get to a point where he has command not only of, you know, the the calls at the line and all that stuff, but ownership of the offense itself, right? You cannot have a quarterback who, you know, I don’t think you can win a Super Bowl with a quarterback where you’re talking in their headset all the way until until the time cuts off, right? Until the 15-second cut off. I just don’t think that that’s eventually you have to have a quarterback who has a has a mind of their own. And the only way to get that mind of your own, I think is to to play the game, to have experience, and to say, “Okay, okay, I know like not everyone’s going to be instant like Tom Brady, like a magic processor who gets it right away.” You you need time and you need to fail. And I wonder, my concern is that um Okonnell is so so worried about some little uh slip up sort of ruining JJ forever that he doesn’t let him play through those things. Does that make sense? It does. Uh and I guess the problem there is that he just hasn’t been healthy enough to play and and how like how do you do that? How do you let him play through failure? like they weren’t going to bench him after the Atlanta game. He was going to play against Cincinnati. But then I sent you the I sent you the soft benching text after that. I was like, “That’s a soft benching.” And you were like, “Well,” and I think you were humoring me like, “Could be, but and it’s it wasn’t.” He It wasn’t. He had an ankle injury. Now, uh, could he have possibly played if he was Patrick Mahomes the following week against Pittsburgh or against Cleveland with that ankle? Probably. But I don’t I’m not a doctor. I haven’t assessed him. It’s just that when you say he has to be 100% in order to get back out there, like I don’t know how many NFL players by the middle of the season could say, I am 100% for next week’s contest. But but I think for a young quarterback, his point was, I need that ankle to work when he takes off to run because sometimes he’s not going to see it and he’s going to have to run. And that also is a major part of his value. And one of the reasons that I’ve talked about how I, you know, there is a ceiling on Wentz, but we don’t know the ceiling on McCarthy in part because uh he is a playmaker. So I but I don’t think that he was babying him from the point of the offense. And that’s where it is very difficult to be Kevin Okonnell because when JJ McCarthy struggles, we’re like, well, why didn’t you just do a different thing offensively? But then we don’t want the training wheels on. We want him to be able to run the whole offense because he’s been practicing it all summer. And I tend to agree when Okonnell says you have to have the whole offense in order to really succeed, right? You can’t just kind of know half of it and stick with that and then be fine, right? If uh Wait, but I I want I want to stop you there because is that true? Like I I think that that is putting the cart before the horse a little bit, right? Because why not, you know, why not give them I I don’t want to say dumb down because that’s not what it is. You’re you’re just sort of I would say you’re limiting the menu a little bit, right? You you you cut down the menu a little bit and you give them chances to succeed and then you build on that bit by bit. You add in you say, “Okay, well, you did this, now you can do that.” As opposed to saying, “Okay, well, I want you to I don’t know.” To me, it’s like taking AP calculus before you’ve, you know, taken like remedial algebra or something like that. You got to get sort of the basic stuff down. And you’re right, he hasn’t been healthy enough just to be out and do that. He he, you know, he managed to do it in the fourth quarter of that Chicago game and we saw sort of the potential there. But, um, you know, I think that it’s weird. I I think if you you’re almost assuming that if you’re going to play him with the full offense, then you’re assuming that he’s kind of a finished product when he’s starting off running that offense. And he’s not going to be. That’s not going to be the case. Like Drake May just had his coming out party the other week, right? And it took him how many starts to get there? 19, 20, something like that. Um and you know, and Drake May is a freak and a a better athlete than than JJ and all that stuff. And you know, I have no doubt that we’d be talking about Super Bowls right now if Drake was the quarterback. But I I I think that I I I worry about again, I worry about micromanagement because I think that Kevin has a very very distinct vision for what he wants this offense to be and how he wants it run and he’s never going to deviate from that. And I’d like to know if that is okay. like can I can I handle basically having Orson Wells as my head coach and it has to be he wants Final Cut everything has to be to his vision and you got to trust his vision uh because it can’t be any other way. Well, I think with Okonnell trying to figure out how much of the offense he can run. He does need a sample size of the guy playing football because he was learning it for two years. I mean, there two entire off seasons and the only sample that you had was JJ McCarthy running the offense in practice and very very tiny bits of the offense in preeason. But we’re talking about whatever seven throws in the preseason uh this year and then it was just in practice day after day. And if you feel like he’s getting it and he understands it in practice, then you’re going to go out and call the offense assuming that he’s got it. And then when you’re facing real defenses who can kill you, it is a lot different for JJ McCarthy. And then you mentioned you miss a practice in the middle of the week. You’re coming off of a short week, which I think is hard for any team. You win an emotional game on Monday Night Football and then have to play the next week on national TV again. Like that’s working against a young quarterback. But we we need way more than 41 passes to really understand can he get down the entire offense. And I do tend to agree with you though because it’s been a critique of mine over the years. I mean going back to when Josh Dobs was here where you’re throwing a lot of uh information and pass volume at Josh Dobs who is three and 12 in his career and maybe you need to just throw some screens, right? And I but I do think that uh the game against Cleveland was instructive in a lot of ways because it’s like yeah why weren’t you doing that to start the season but because he would have assumed that he had the whole offense down from training camp and then in against Chicago. Now here’s the thing against the Chicago game is that I thought McCarthy actually did pretty well overall with his seeing the field and his decision-making. It was a few drop passes, right? Didn’t throw the ball away. It was really only the Atlanta game where it looked completely off and discombobulated and all of that. So we are again dealing with just hey one game it looked pretty good and some things went wrong you know Justin school gave up some pressures the next game a lot of things went wrong and it was mostly centered at the quarterback and that and what do we do with that information because it’s so little to know but I do think that if Okonnell looks back at the way that he handled Wentz against Cleveland there should be a lot of that a lot of easy button type of stuff and a maybe a lot less of, hey, you have to do four or five different things at the line of scrimmage and then build on that and build on that. But look, you’re three and two. You look at the NFC North, it’s flawed. It’s good, but it’s flawed. And you look at the Eagles, they’re kind of crumbling. The Chargers are all injured. The Lions just kind of showed you that maybe that winning streak was against some teams that were a lot worse than we thought they were going to be. So, you Well, and all their DBs died. Yes. Right. Right. So you have to you have and this is why you get paid so much and get a a huge contract extension as the head coach because you got to navigate your way through this team being three and two is right in the second tier mix or maybe even could be in the first tier if they started playing really well and were healthy. But you also have to do everything you can to set up JJ McCarthy for what he’s capable of doing. I think uh you’re right and obviously my reaction and another fans reaction to to this first month I think is colored by the fact that we had been waiting you know essentially three years for this plan to sort of come into effect and in some ways waiting a lifetime because the last franchise quarterback the team really dra drafted and like had a significant hope and investment in was was Dante Co Pepper. um you know Christian Ponder and and Teddy Bridgewwater they were at the lower end of the first round and they were almost kind of flyers like hey you know maybe this guy will work out and then he then he doesn’t but with McCarthy it was you know and I I’ll say it again I I thought that his debut was sort of the most anticipated debut of an athlete in Minnesota history. Although I think someone said Joe Mau and I said okay yeah sure that’s fine. Um, so when you have that much expectation going into the season, it you feel like you’ve been patient enough and you don’t you shouldn’t have to be patient anymore. So now we’re at this point where and this was this was more pronounced prior to the buy where it’s okay well we haven’t seen enough of them. We he might need a bit more time and it’s like I’ve been waiting now. I want now I want my candy now. Well, let me add to that because even uh and when you have every training camp practice being broken down by me and Zolgad in uh detail on huge long podcasts and I listen to all of them. Exactly. And uh you know we are a little bit of part of the problem here because it feels like you’ve been building and building and building and building with all of that as well. Not just you know what I do blame you. You’ve overhyped them. It’s all your fault. Never talking to you. I apologize. I Yeah, I had one question for you because um there’s another thing I texted to you. Uh is there because we Okay, we have Philly on Sunday, but then turn right around. You got to fly to LA and we know what happened on the short week in LA last year. So, would it actually be prudent? And I I don’t like this idea, but let’s say let’s say McCarthy can do the whole full practice this week and Oh my god. Yay. Good. He’s ready. But like just one more sort of like booster seat thing where you start Wentz, you feed him to the Wolves in Phil against Philadelphia and then that way you start JJ against the Chargers. That way neither quarterback has to suffer uh the vagaries of the short week. Is that a good idea or who gives it? Uh, I think that it makes sense logically speaking because you would be asking a lot of McCarthy and generally speaking, I mean this is broadly I feel like veteran experienced quarterbacks on those Thursday nights have a pretty darn big advantage and that is Justin Herbert, that is not JJ McCarthy. The one thing that you risk there, especially with Jaylen Carter banged up, Quinan Mitchell banged up, the secondary not playing well, what you risk is Carson Wentz going for 290 yards, three touchdowns, and then you are not benching Carson Wentz for JJ McCarthy, right? I could bench Carson Wentz. I know that you could bench. Well, and this is but this is where it becomes kind of a political type of thing within the locker room for Kevin Oonnell as well is if you do play Carson Wentz this week. Well, first of all, it signals after he laid out the expectations and the markers that McCarthy had to hit, it sort of signals that he didn’t reach those after he already laid it out there. But also, if let’s say Justin Jefferson gets nine catches for 143 yards against the Eagles and they win the game 2724. Wentz has a game-winning drive. Riker kicks it from 67 yards away uh to win because there’s no TV wire in the way. And I like how you’re talking to me right now. Oh. Uh Carson, you’re benched. No way. No way you can’t do that. You can’t do that. you’d be much you’d be much better off just playing McCarthy. And look, the NFL is hard. There’s no two weeks where you’re just going to go, “Ah, you know, it’s these are the easy games. They’re playing state, so like here we go.” Like, it just doesn’t work that way. No, you’re right. I I I contradicted myself with that proposal anyway. And I I want to see him sooner rather than later. Even if he sucks, I want, you know, I think now we’re at the the portion of the season where Yeah. I I still want to win the Super Bowl this season, but the priority is making sure that what we have behind center is something that’s going to last. And you know, that’s that’s not going to happen with Carson Wentz starting the entire season. That that’s for sure. Like he’s not going to have some it’s not going to be like Baker Mayfield. Like Baker Mayfield’s a great story right now, but that’s not Yeah, that’s not going to happen with Carson Wentz. He’s 30 years old. He’s dumb as a brick. He likes to turn over the football. like it’s and so, you know, I I don’t want to keep him in in there any longer. No, regardless of if he performs well, like that’s very nice and he grew up a Vikings fan. Yay. And all that, but I I would rather have I would rather have McCarthy in there, you know, to make sure that this thing is set to go as we go forward because we know that this roster will not look the same in the coming years. like Aaron Jones is probably gonna probably gonna get cut in this in this off seasonason if Zay Scott stops fumbling the ball because Zay’s really good, right? That he can do the Aaron Rogers stuff. We saw we saw wheel routes that he was doing. Um so the idea that we can have turnover elsewhere on the roster because of cap reasons or underperformance or whatever um while still having this one bedrock uh at quarterback. That’s sort of the most important thing. That’s what’s important in Buffalo. It’s what’s important in Kansas City. important everywhere else. And so I I’ I’d like to see that. And I think one uh one key element of all of that uh unfortunately is is Addison because you know I don’t know and maybe you have more details on this about you know his sort of AWOL moment in London but obviously really really bad to do that right after you’ve come back from suspension for drunk driving after your own teammate was killed by a drunk driver. Um, but you know, you it was clear and you guys said it in training camp and it showed in like the training camp the four training camp videos that they get to release that he had a rapport with Addison that was undeniable and and Addison is just an incredibly brilliant brilliant receiver and like Jud’s already like we should just trade him in the in the offseason. I’m and I’m not ready to go there yet particularly with the fifthear option. I’m almost I’m more of the mind of okay exercise the fifth year option and say to him okay you need to you know if you need to be clear for the next year otherwise no money like he can’t like I’m sure I’m sure Oonnell just absolutely lit into him after he missed that walkth through and you know went awall and all that stuff in London but you know it’s pretty clear that you know getting chewed out doesn’t really mean a ton to Addison it’s going to be about money so It’s going to be whether or not it dawns on him, hey, I would like to make money and I’d like to go to the Hall of Fame one day, so I better stop being a And I I I he’s so good that I’m, you know, if this were, you know, like Jaylen Naylor or something like that, I’d be like, “Okay, yeah, you can probably cut him, right?” Uh good. Yeah, good is usually a big part of the evaluation when we’re talking about these decisions. Also, I mean, Okonnell loves the guy. Uh, it’s kind of kind of drafted him, you know, like I saw I saw him strong armed quasy in the draft room. But I think I think Jordan Addison is as good as many number one wide receivers in the NFL. It’s that he’s the second guy, but he dominates the second guy role in the same way. Maybe not quite to the level of Chris Carter, but I mean, he really does. And the go up and get it catches, you could put the football just about anywhere. And you’re right to say though, and this is a point about trying to use those two games of McCarthy to evaluate where he is truly at is the receiver that he was in the best shape with. Now, that is football and like you can’t just say, “Oh, yeah, you could just turn the ball over and get sacked and fumble and everything.” Of course, you can’t. Baker Mayfield was playing with receiver four, five, and six yesterday and won the football game. So, you have to win through injuries, suspensions, whatever. So, you don’t you don’t get any free passes for that. But it is a factor that he played so well in training camp with Addison. The joint practices, those two guys dominated the New England Patriots and then you just are like, well, you know, that guy who’s amazing who you were uh, you know, in perfect sync with, you don’t get to play with him. Instead, you get to play with guys that you basically never practiced with that. I think I want to see him play with Jordan Edison in order. And and of course, Deraw. Um, no, but I that’s the thing is that’s the thing that’s that’s that I’m hung up on with Addison. I think it’s that if McCarthy flourishes this year, it will be because a lot of it will be because of Addison, right? And obviously Jefferson is a big factor here, but kind of any veteran quarterback can lob it up to just Justin Jefferson and he go gets it, right? as opposed to Addison, there is the potential there for he for him and for McCarthy to grow together as a sort of tandem you want, right? A sort of Stafford to Megatron or whatever, you know, you want that you want that dynamic. And so the idea that the idea that he would that McCarthy would end up flourishing this year because he gets the ball to Addison and then we have to say, “Yeah, but we can’t really have Addison around anymore because he’s a dick.” Like that’s, you know, I think that’s a real rhubarb of a pickle of a jam. It is. Well, and it really comes down to Jordan Addison himself. Uh there’s no there’s no controlling situations like that. I mean, coaches think that they can. Teammates think that they can. Jefferson was saying, you know, it’s on me. I have to be better. No, no, it’s not. I mean, at some point, like he’s an adult, and we can only really judge this on what happens going forward. And it is, but it is so so tonedeaf to have something happen over there right after you’ve missed three games, just like it was tonedeaf to get a DUI after your teammate passes away in a drunk driving accident. And I think that that’s Jordan Addison. On the other side of it, Jordan Addison is not a bad teammate and he shows up ready to play every single week and performs just like he did in London. And he’s a professional. It’s so weird. And through right through history, you have always seen this pop up with a lot of different teams of guys who are aloof or guys who have off-field issues and teams have to make their decisions. uh the Vikings would far far prefer for him to get on the straight and narrow. Uh but it might be something that you’re constantly if you’re the head coach going to bed wondering if you’re going to get a phone call with him. So I would agree that uh with Jud that you can’t uh sign him to the huge extension even after one more blip on the radar. That’s just too much. Uh but the fifth year option is there for the Vikings to give them time and space. So they don’t have to make this decision right now with Addison. Right now, they need Addison to play with JJ McCarthy and for him to be good. And then that’s a thing that you’re going to look at the whole picture with Addison at the end of the year and try to make a decision. But that being tossed into the mix of this season that was already like kind of dramatic enough with all the things that they’ve been dealing with. Yeah. A drama. They They didn’t need that. They did not need that. No. No. And the other thing is that I really love watching him play. Like he’s he’s so fun. He’s a such a fun player. He’s a little flighty. Well, look, the Chiefs are going to welcome Rasheed Rice back with open arms, and he’s an even worse driver. So, you know, it’s it it’s one of those things, but I um I like I said, I’m of the mind that, you know, there’s no pressure on the Vikings to to extend him this off season. Right. Right. And you cannot make, you know, it’s something I’ve learned just in life. You cannot if you want someone to do something, they have to want to do it. It’s like, you know, it’s like if you’re if you’re an alcoholic as I was, you have to want to get better. No one like you can have stage interventions and you can do all that stuff, but that the point of those processes is to get it through to somebody to get them to have the desire, right, to improve themselves. And so, you know, with with Addison, words don’t really matter anymore. The only thing that matters is is performance and then money. So, you know, maybe it maybe that light goes on sometime within this season and next, but you and I, we have no idea. You can’t put money on that. That can’t be your fan duel question of the day. Be like, it would be a mess, you know. Well, what else you got? What else you got? What else you thinking? What other questions? We can we can talk about other things except for the quarterback situation. No, I I do I want I want to talk about the run defense because that’s going to matter enormously next week. Yeah. Um and the week after that because we know about the Eagles and their run game and we know about what Saquon Barkley can do to this team because he did it and I saw it in person in a playoff game and it was not very fun. Uh, so I know I I feel that Hargrave and Allen have been somewhat of a we knew that they weren’t terribly good run defenders coming in, but I don’t feel like I there’s been enough on the other side of it from a a pressure rate. And I think PFF grades might tell a different story there um to, you know, to counterbalance, but we know that Jaylen Redmond was coming in on earlier downs. Yeah. Right. And so I’m wondering, are there more significant moves they need to make apart from getting Cashman back? You know, that’s sort of Are there more significant moves they need to make in these two weeks on defense to stop that bleeding? So, uh, to your point, the two worst graded run defenders on the team by PFF are Jayvon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen. And in terms of the pass rush grades, uh, Harg Graves is very good. Allen’s is very pedestrian. Uh, 62.2. Now, his pass rush win rate, I did look that up, uh, is okay. Uh, it’s more like top 20ish, but it’s certainly not elite. Now, that goes along with caveats as well, because how many over this season true situations that you went and got Jonathan Allen and Jayvon Hargrave have they really been in? I mean, when you think about the first game, they were and they were both great in the first game chasing around Caleb Williams, but then Michael Pennix never had to throw the ball. They just ran it all day with Bejian Robinson. Uh Cincinnati, I mean, who cares, right? They were so far ahead in that game that they’re playing uh backups into the fourth quarter. And then even against Cleveland, like they were running and running and running and running. So, uh, there just wasn’t a lot of those like true passing downs where you’re saying it’s third and eight, the game’s on the line, they need these guys. Uh, at the same time, Jaylen Redmond is performing at a very high level. He’s got 10 pressures so far. Jonathan Allen has 11 and the gap in their PFF grades is is pretty high. I think also in the eye test, we’ve noticed Jaylen Redmond a lot more. So, I think that the immediate answer is that they need to just play Hargrave a lot more as a situational pass rusher and not so much as a three down type of player and have Levi Drake and have Redmond next to him at all times. The other thing is I noticed against Cleveland, I did not feel like they got destroyed in the run game by Cleveland because of the defensive tackles because they did make that switch and Hargrave was more just pass rushing. I thought it was because of the downhill tackling from the safety position and from the linebacker position where Eric Wilson is a really good player, but he gets washed out by bigger guards and centers. And where I think the player that they’re really missing this year big time is Cam Bino. That he was great at flying downhill and making tackles, that is really not Theo Jackson’s game. And when you’re missing Harrison Smith, who’s all-time great at that I’m gonna fly into a gap and grab a guy. I I think that that adjustment has been pretty big for them uh to because really two of Quincon Judkins biggest runs, he’s one-on-one with Theo Jackson and just smokes him because Judkins is an unbelievable athlete. But Binham had a real innate sense for where a guy was going to cut juke. He was fast because he was a former corner. And I just think that they’ve been missing some of those guys that have been out. Van Ginkle as well. He’s a better run defender than Dallas Turner. I I think that they’ve got the rotation. They’ve got the players. I don’t think they have to add players. They’ve just got to adjust the rotation and then get some guys back. Yeah. Because without Smith um you know playing the entire game that forces both Jackson and Mattelis to kind of play out of position, right? Like Yeah. Yep. No, that’s right. Theo should be Theo should be the strong safety. Mattel should be the Rover. And then Smith should be back there sort of covering all that stuff. Well, and the other thing is too that I mean when you’re talking about like how uh Cam Binham used to play, it was a it was much more defined of like Binham has this role and Harry has this role and Matelis is moving around in the box, but now you’re asking Matelis to play a lot more in the back end. Let me I can get you the number on that. Matelis last year very rarely played in a free safety role. this year he’s played more in the free safety role by far than in the box. Like that’s that’s just a big adjustment for somebody who was so good as a box safety, right? And has he underperformed by the numbers in playing back there? Uh he’s been okay. I mean, there’s not been there hasn’t been many targets overall and he’s been good. Like he got a pick. He has two pass breakups. So in coverage, he’s been good. Um, but I think that the run his run defense has not graded as well because I think he’s better as that box guy sorting through things and making tackles than he is being all the way back and then having to run downhill and get into a gap. I think it is weird they haven’t had any real firefights this season like and they’re not going to with the they’re not going to have it with the Eagles because the Eagles hate passing the ball. So, right. Uh, I I did have another question for you and uh I’ll do it I’ll put it in purple insider ease. Am I crazy? Oh, okay. Or has Ivan Pace kind of sucked this year? Uh, you know, I think a big part of that, and I do agree with you that uh he is their lowest graded regular player with over 150 snaps. I think that there’s a few things at play. Number one is Ivan Pace’s best skill is blitzing. He’s he is just a little, you know, badger there when it comes to flying in and running into running backs who don’t expect a guy their size to hit them that hard. And I think he’s hard to see because he’s so small and he’s just reckless abandon. Well, similarly to the thing with Hargrave and Allen, there haven’t been a lot of passes against this team because teams have been running or playing backup quarterbacks or whatever. I think that’s factored in. I also think that having Cashman next to him helps with the run defense. And last year when you had Tillery and Bullard and their only jobs were just to stick a guy and then create a gap for the linebacker. That’s way different than where you see Allen and Hargrave are trying to stop the run on the way to the quarterback. So they’re rushing the quarterback and then hey, if I grab the running back, whatever. that puts a lot more strain on the linebackers, which may end up meaning that Eric Wilson’s going to have to play more when Blake Cashman comes back. But I I I think it speaks to when you make that shift from, hey, we’re going to stop the run only with those defensive tackles to, hey, actually, we’re going to go after the passer because last year when we were up 14 points in the fourth quarter, we needed DTS who could get after the quarterback. like they built this to play a certain way and they haven’t been in scenarios where they’ve gotten to play that way and I think that that’s hurt a lot of players performance. Yeah, it’s weird. It’s it’s been an odd season. And of course, like I said before, I was not I did not want an odd season. I’m sick of odd seasons. Where’s Where’s my ass at, man? I don’t have enough time for that. Let me uh let me ask you a question because you mentioned, you know, we always have the FanDuel question of the day. So, uh, the Vikings right now are minus 160 on FanDuel to win at least eight games, but they are plus 250 to win at least 10 games. So, I think we can pretty well put together uh the range that FanDuel expects the Vikings uh in terms of wins. Where where is your expectation? like is it still set at that plus 250 or more for them to win 10 games or have you shifted to more of the favored uh eightgame type of scenario? I am as a 10- win team before the season and then from what I’ve seen uh you know over the first month and I I’ve said this to you before but they have all the hallmarks of a 500 team, right? Talented but inconsistent. That’s a 500 team. So I you I I would say that you know this is an 8 to nine win team and forget about the schedule because strength of the schedule’s crap, right? It doesn’t mean anything. So you know if they’re playing if you’re playing like an eight or nine win team, you’re going to be an eight or nine win team. That’s that’s the way I see it. The only way that changes is obviously if McCarthy turns out to be um you know a late bloomer but a fast one and that Brandle uh turns out to be a revelation at center because I don’t really think that Ryan Kelly should play football again. Yeah. And also the other thing is I you know like I said I was doing my some cursory Google searching and I had not realized that he and his wife had lost a child uh like in 2020 or something like that. So you know I have to think that you know he has had some pretty intense conversations with his wife because if they lost a child and she she doesn’t want to lose her husband too to go on top of that. know, you know, that sort of moral quandry. Um, you know, I I don’t it’s I’m not going to sit here and be like, I need Brian Kelly back right now for me. Like I like I’m a human being. But if but Brandle played equated himself so nicely. I have more confidence in him than in Jurgens. And I think he’ll probably stay at starting center. So the idea that if the offensive line can sort of, you know, get back, you know, sort of get back standing and that helps with Darasaw around and they can they can stop turning the ball over and McCarthy can start delivering on time, then I think that they I think they’re a playoff team, right? Particularly in the NFC because, you know, while we were, you know, while they had the by-week, every other player in the NFL snapped a ligament. So like, so the the bar is not set terribly high, but you can’t have all these bad habits and all the penalties and and all of those things that contribute to you looking like, you know, a mediocre team. You’re going to stay a mediocre team, and I’m going to assume it stays that way until I see otherwise. I think that’s really the best move. I just feel like having spent all summer looking at them in practice and watching and taking every note that I could, I feel like that the version of the team that we saw in training camp that looked like a really good NFL team has not gotten to play. And and and even if we say, “All right, well, Aaron Jones might not be coming back anytime soon or Ryan Kelly, that’s life.” But it’s been more of like 60% of what I expected them to be. And coming out of this buy, we should get to maybe more like 75 or 80% of what we expected them to look like. And it’s no small thing uh to have star players, guys who have Pro Bowls in their past like Brian O’Neal and Aaron Jones and etc. You know, Daras and Addison. I like these are really, really, really good players. So, I think that at some point here very soon, whether it’s this week or against the Chargers or against the Lions in a couple weeks, we will see much closer to the version in training camp than we expected. And then we’ll have a better idea of how good they really are. I feel like I don’t know yet because it’s just not been them on the field. It’s been some of them on the field. And if they can get everyone on the field at the same time, then we’ll have an idea of because I still think that if everyone’s out there and McCarthy is executing like he did in camp, that they can win 10 games because the schedule doesn’t look anywhere near as scary as it did even just three weeks ago. Um, but I I think also that I wouldn’t bet it. I I would say that I they can, but I don’t think it’s the most likely scenario as of right now. No. And yeah, you shouldn’t you shouldn’t bet anyway because you’re probably going to lose. But I I really I I do feel in a lot of ways as if this is the beginning of an entirely new season. Um you know, we had this little mini season for five weeks. And I also I don’t know and I don’t think the Vikings really foresaw what going away for 10 days to Europe. I don’t know how long they were in Europe, but doing that like that is a project. That’s a toll. You’re away from home. And I think I think it was T.J. Hawinson who said he’s like, “Hey, we miss our homes. We miss our bed. We miss our families.” Like all that like no team has done that before. And you know the Vikings were willing to sort of guinea pig themselves so they could avoid having to go to Pittsburgh. They lost to Pittsburgh anyway, right? But um you know how that affected them, you know, like I said, there is a potential for it to be galvanizing, you know, on the back end of the season, but certainly as it was happening, you know, I you don’t know how that’s going to affect players, but I’m sure it had some sort of pronounced effect on them. So I uh I’m very interested to see, you know, a full season here in the United States, more home games than away games, right? I believe that’s correct. and uh and with you know and and with better health. I I I’m I’m still at the point where I’m excited to see what’s next. I’m definitely not running them off. Like if you’re a Ravens fan, you’re screwed. But if or if you’re a Niners fan, like I wrote for SF Gate, like the Niners were screwed like back when like Pery got hurt. Yeah. And then they’ve lost like everyone else since then, too. Like Fred Warner’s ankle went snap, crackle, pop the other day. And so I’m like, “Okay, well now they’re they have to be screwed, right? They have to be screwed.” So I would I would feel that way, you know, if Darasaw tore up his knee again and Brian O’Neal never comes back and it turns out that Van Ginkle has to retire because he has, you know, he has Michael Iran’s neck or something like that. Like all that would be then I would be like, “Okay, well this this has definitely gone off the rails.” But right now, it’s just sort of more sort of Okay, we’ve we had our little we had our little kitty freak out in the beginning of the season. Let’s uh let’s grow up. Okay, before I let you go, uh I feel like it it’s a question I always have to ask you is just what’s what’s been on as far as the entire NFL, like what’s been sticking in your twisted brain? I’ll I’ll tell you one for me and give you a second to think about it. Uh this kicker thing where Evan McFersonson yesterday hits a 67 yard kick. They iced him and it didn’t count. But that right. But the the the way that people are lining up for 55 yard kicks and they look like chip shots is is just breaking me. Like every like you get the ball at the 30 yard line after the kick return. You complete two passes and your kicker lines up from half the field. I mean I bet the in Europe they are loving this. uh watching those games over in in London and Dublin like yeah the kickers it’s amazing they kick from forever. Uh but it’s I think it’s completely changed how football exists when you can do that because before you had to get to at least the other 30 yard line to have a reasonably good percentage to make the kick. Now if you’re at the 40 and it’s 57 your kicker trots out there like oh this will be easy I’ll just poke it through the old uprights. I don’t I don’t love it. I kind of want to take the kicker balls away from them. Like, no, no more, no more turning these things into a soccer ball. I don’t I don’t agree with you because I think I I don’t think it’s that the kickers have gotten better. I mean, they have gotten better, but I don’t think it’s like this year they magically all became cyborgs, whatever. But I I think that the kickoff rule has much more to do with it than the kickers themselves, right? Because if your average field position, starting field position is going to be at the 35 or the 40. Okay. Okay. Well, now you only have to really go 20 yards and so you really only have to make like you can complete one pass, you know, you can do a 13 seconds, right? You know, and and you can and you can kick and you can kick a game-winning or gamety field goal. Uh and you know, I’m you know, I’m I’m a little football piggy. I like uh I like my scoring like most Americans do. So, I’m I’m fine with that. I I I like that more than I mean I don’t like the sort of cursory you know Chiefs win from last year where you know you know they’re down too but you know they they have the ball within the 10 yard line you know with a minute to go and the other team doesn’t have timeout so you just wait for corny ass Harrison Bucker to come out and make the field goal that the game like that sucks but the idea that um you know field position has a more pronounced effect than it used to because we used to talk because field position battle talk used to be real dinosaur you know, like it used to be like the kind of thing Phil Sims would bring up to Jim Nance like in 200 like nine, you know, or something like that. And you don’t want, you know, you don’t want it to be that pronounced where you’re just sort of you don’t want two teams playing not to lose, right? You want teams that are playing to win. Uh, and I think that this incentivizes teams to to do that. So, I’m okay with that. Uh the things that have been sticking on my mind, one is that a the Packers ain’t they ain’t nothing they you know like like Jordan Love is basically socially acceptable Kirk Cousins. Like that’s as far like I just don’t like I’m not I’m not seeing it with him. The the other thing is that and this is more of a take, but I I want if you go out on fourth down exclusively to try to draw them off sides with the hard count, you are a coward. I hate it. That should I It should be like, you know, how baseball wouldn’t let you uh doesn’t let you like do more than like two pickoff attempts anymore or something like that? I think that’s I saw a roll this chat and they get nailed for it in the playoffs and it’s kind of funny. But uh like I think if you do that more than like twice in a season like you should get docked like a third round twice, you know. And I and the that also goes to uh Aaron Rodgers because every time Aaron Rogers would, you know, would you know chuck it up after a flag, they they would act like he had invented it and then drove me like, “Oh, oh, this is Aaron Rogers specialtity.” Like every quarterback does that, you dick. He’s just Aaron Rogers. He’s good at completing passes and all of that. Well, I I Yeah, the fourth downs though. Uh we have reached fourth down Valhalla this year, right? I mean, there’s they’re changing games. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that I I I like the Lions. Like, they’re in our you know, I got I got to make sure we beat them and all that stuff, but like all my my only beef in the division has really been with the Packers. Like I hated the dick of Bears because Mike Dick was a But like my but like the Lions are fun. Like I like I you know I had a rooting interest in Kansas City on Sunday night, right? Like I should have wanted Kansas City to win, but like the Lions are so fun. I kind of want I want running hook and Yeah. running hook and ladders, running back passes. Yeah, they Yes, they are. They You know what it is? You know what it is? It’s that they’re such a confident team. you know that you can see a team that is just brimming with confidence even when it’s struggling and I think that I’d like that for our team because I’m not sensing that uh right now and that that is regardless of quarterback. But it’s it is funny though that just a couple years ago Dan Campbell getting destroyed for failing on a fourth down that opened the door for San Francisco to come back. Now 32 of 32 head coaches go for that fourth down. We’ve we’ve accelerated so much to that point. Uh well it will be fascinating going forward and uh you know you got an open door here on the show to uh pop in. So uh we will definitely talk again throughout this season as we go through the roller coaster that is the Minnesota Vikings. So Drew McGary defector appreciate you man. This was fun. Thank you. Thank I only swore once. Yay. Technically it was twice but uh good you man. Oh no. All right. Goodbye. Bye football. See you.

Drew Magary of Defector joins the show and flips the script, asking Matthew Coller questions regarding the Vikings’ QB situation, injury issues, and the run defense.

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