Can Coaching CHANGE As Minnesota Vikings Offense Struggles?

Can Coaching CHANGE As Minnesota Vikings Offense Struggles?

Sunday’s loss against the Pittsburgh Steelers was a coaching failure from top down. So, do we have to start thinking about changes, adjustments, whatever you want to call them. Welcome to 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 everybody, welcome to the Locked On Vikings podcast where we’re always trying to learn something new. It’s part of the Locked On podcast network your team every day and thank you so much for making Lockdown Vikings your first listen of the day every single day. My hashtag Everydayers. I love you all so very much. Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now, new customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. I’m coming to you today from a hotel in Dublin. That’s where I am. And I’m going to be on the road all week because I’m going to stay on this side of the pond of course for the game in London next Sunday. So if it looks a little different, sounds a little different, that would be why. By the way, um I have met so many very cool people in in uh Dublin. So many of you who’ve come up, said hi, said your listeners that you’re everydayers. Um you all know who you are. Thank you so much for coming and saying hi. I have had an absolutely phenomenal time here. It means so much to me. It really does. Um which is why I’m so happy that today is town hall Tuesday. I get to take questions from all of you. Uh and of course your hot takes later in the show. It is a doomy mailbag. Holy moly. Uh the vibes are have have never been worse. The vibes are worse than they were after week two, which was a much worse loss, which with much more concerning themes because you had a bad game for McCarthy. You had like good players playing poorly. You had things on offense that usually work that didn’t work. this game, the Vikings going down to, you know, two starters on the offensive line. You got Carson Wson there and having troubles there is like a little bit, it should be a little more understandable, I thought. But you guys are like in the pits. It’s crazy. The first question um that I am going to take comes from Ken Love it, who says, “This has been the fifth Island game in a row where the Vikings lay an egg on both sides of the ball. What’s been going on with KOC where it comes to getting this team prepared for these sorts of games?” Um, the Island game thing is interesting. I would say a little bit too harsh to say laying an egg. I think Atlanta they laid an egg. Atlanta they didn’t show up at all, but at least he got one quarter, right? Um, it was not that different from the Bears game. It’s just that the Bears game they actually found a way to convert uh and and and win and they got things going just a hair sooner. So, they had a little extra time and it wasn’t a last minute drive to go ahead, right? They ended up going ahead two scores and they figured it out. In this one, they took advantage of situational stuff a little bit rather than it’s just okay, it’s the beginning of the fourth quarter and they like finally found their rhythm, but they at least showed you some life. And like I was walking away talking to a bunch of people like and I I do think it’s a lot of it is it’s very different to experience a loss in person and talk to people than it is to experience a loss in your living room and then like go on social media where people are going to be a lot more angry and a lot more extreme. And there’s a lot less context to it. When you’re face to face having a conversation with a person and it’s like socially unacceptable to be nearly as insane as you’re going to be on social media. The vibe is going to be a little different. But we all kind of walked away from that thinking, man, that was a bummer of a game, but Jesus, at least they showed some life and it like kind of helped as a salve. Um, you know, we’re all also like on vacation, so it’s hard hard to be too sad, right? So, I don’t know. This one doesn’t bug me as much. Maybe it’s just vacation brain. But um in terms of the island game thing, there might be something to the sort of pressure getting to them, but I think it’s more that the Vikings have just game planned really poorly for stuff. I think they’re in a slump that would probably have mostly happened at noon as well. If I think about the reasons the Vikings are failing, um the disorganization in the huddle and and on the sideline, the um pre- snap shenanigans, injuries on the O line, stuff happening with the quarterback, um you know, a little bit too late in the pants in the run game, th those kinds of things all hurt you at at noon as much as they hurt you at 8:30 p.m. on NBC. So, I’m not sure if I would blame that. I think it’s just like the lizard pattern-seeking brain trying to find something. Um, Justin says, “At what point do we have to start asking if we have a KOC problem? The offense seems to have the same problems at the end of last year where it refuses to do anything easy in the passing game and is subjecting the QB to a ton of pressure trying to constantly hit shot plays. Is there any reason to believe he will actually evolve as a play caller when his plan isn’t working?” So, I I’ve been really critical of KOC for being stubborn about this that they they will go for shots kind of constantly even when it’s not appropriate to do so. And I think Okonnell takes pride in that where it it will be third and one in a situation where you’re not going to go for it and he would still dial up a play action shot play and proudly do so even if it doesn’t work. He would defend that decision and and I guess more power to him. I don’t always agree with it, but I at least see where he is coming from. Um, I think to my live eye, this game had a little bit more easy passing. They played a lot of like spacing concepts. They did a lot of stuff. One of the interceptions that happened was a tip pass intercepted was just like hook curl like it was just or curl flat. Like it was it was just um, you know, nice simple three-step drop stuff for Carson Wentz and the ball got batted. But Wentz was throwing to an open Addison for a first down and would have hit it if um that would have been a really routine throw if it didn’t get tipped and fall right into the hands of an of of a Pittsburgh defender. Um they like I think they did a lot less of the fancy stuff. Now, I still think there’s too much stuff happening from a temporal sense where where I think because he’s trying to protect Carson Wentz. He’s adding a whole bunch of extra stuff that’s just physically difficult to execute. It’s really hard to fake a toss, get your feet set, and then throw an accurate pass all on the right timing. That’s just really difficult to do. It’s going to hopefully misdirect the defense a bunch and make an easier read for him, but it’s going to be physically harder to execute. And so, in an effort to make things easier, he may have made things harder, but I am going to hold to my take that in general, I think this loss should be and the start of this season and how bad the offense has been now. Two games with JJ, two games with Wentz. Um, and the offense has been one of the worst in the league. And I think that a month like that should be humbling for Okonnell. I think that is one where you go back to the drawing board and you say, “Okay, what is working right now? What isn’t?” And you just start tearing out pages of the playbook. You just start said, “This doesn’t work, this doesn’t work, this doesn’t work, this doesn’t work.” If we get into a game in November and that thing is perfect, maybe we’ll revisit it and try to work work on it in the week of practice or something. But I think you just have to start ripping out pages and and hope that you can get something a little better together. The other thing that’s going to happen throughout the week is we’re going to be a little bit on injury watch on Wednesday’s injury report. If J.J. McCarthy practices even in a limited sense, it looks a lot better for him. If he is a DNP on Wednesday, but then practices limited like just one day on Friday, he still probably won’t play. That’s the way that Kevin Oonnell has described the situation for us. But the last two weeks, he has been declared out on like Monday or Tuesday. Like he might actually just be um giving you he might just actually give you this answer by the time you listen to this. So that’s the other thing to like watch there. Um, so in general, yes, I think it should be humbling, although I would push back. I do think that there were some attempts at adjustments for this game. They just kind of backfired. Uh, Manuel has one that I’ve been seeing a lot about. Is it a fireable offense for KOC to turn down Sam Darnold, who has been incredible? Daniel Jones, who’s been incredible. Aaron Rogers, who just diced us up for a young QB, and Carson Wentz, who are statistically the worst QBs in the NFL. I think that’s a pretty bad faith way to put it. Um, Daniel Jones was not going if if Daniel Jones stayed, he was not going to be the starter. He was not going to get a chance to compete for that job. Even if he played outplayed McCarthy, they would have started McCarthy because they believe in him as the future and they do not believe in the long-term future of Daniel Jones. That was just the way that that it was. Um, he is playing great in Indianapolis right now, but that is a decision they made with five years in mind, not five days. And in general, I think it’s it’s so easy after a loss to to to feel like you’re never ever going to see the Vikings win again. Um, but you have to remember that that there is a long-term eye on these things. They were going to go with McCarthy always. Um, Sam Darnold also cost $30 million. Daniel Jones would have cost $15 million. So, you can say goodbye to Jonathan Allen or um, you know, insert exciting free agent that you were really jazzed about here like Will Fry or whoever. you’re also not going to see that or maybe even a big extension that you wanted to see, right? Um you say goodbye to Isaiah Rogers, for example, you might not have seen that. Um so it all comes with costs, right? Uh so no, I do not think it is a fireable offense. I don’t even think it’s one that I would hold against him. I think it made sense to do at the time. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. They risked this and they should they have to accept that they took that risk, but I do not believe that they were incorrect to take that risk. We just spent six years watching a QB that’s always been kind of mid be expensive on the roster and we watched it be about 500 a whole bunch. Um, bring back Donatell says, “Is it time to move on from Flores? I’m sure that five turnover performance is repeatable, but going back to last year, the defenses had what one respectable performance out of last seven. I’m pretty sure they’re still the top uh offense or top defense in the league by EPA per play. So, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to be def firing that defensive coordinator.” it it Florida’s defenses are so good at feeling like it’s really bad and then you look at the stats and it’s way better than it was and it’s because it they take a lot of risks to try to generate I I’ll call them defensive explosives, right? Big TFLs, big sacks, big turnovers and stuff. And sometimes you get a really careful quarterback that can avoid all those mistakes and avoid all those disasters. Sometimes you get a Jake Browning and I think more often than not you get the latter. But going up against the Browns, right, there’s Joe Flacco who had a total catastrophe game the last time he played Brian Flores with the Colts. um or like a young quarterback and it’s going to be like a Jake Browning thing. It’s going to be like a totally overwhelmed youngster against all this. So, there’s a lot of different ways that that can go. Um I have a lot more questions and I want to make sure I get to as many of them as possible. So, we will continue moving on here with Town Hall Tuesday on the Locked On Vikings podcast. Today’s episode is brought to you by Mizen and Maine. Fellas, if you look good, you feel good, right? 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The point only gained them like 19 yards of field position.” Um, yeah, there was actually a debate going on about that punt in the stands. Some people thought, “No, it’s way too risky. you can’t set them up in that easy of field goal range if you don’t get it. Just try to pin them deep and make this offense that can’t move the ball go the whole length of the field, which by the way turned out to be pretty good. Um the a pretty good prediction. The onside kick was less controversial though. We were all very confused about that. I think I understand I think if if I’m going to like super galaxy brain and try to be as charitable as possible. If you go for the onside kick, it is guaranteed to be quick, right? Like it is not going to take 8 seconds off. And the Vikings were in a similar situation to the one the Bears were in in week one where you were right there on the two-minute warning and you needed that two-minute warning clock stoppage to have a reasonable shot on the way back. Um there was like 208 left when the Steelers got the ball, I think. So if if that kickoff, god forbid, takes 10 seconds, takes you to two-minute warning, you’re in big trouble. Or even 2011 and then it yeah, it you’re in trouble, right? Um so I think that might have been the thing and then they just didn’t care about the field position. The thing is, you gave them the ball on the 50, they could have had it on the 35. Either way, they go three and out and they punt it to you. You have 15 more yards of field position. So, they sacrificed 15 yards of field position for the guarantee that you were going to that you weren’t going to get a kick return and and have that take the time it took. A, there was enough time for the kick return to happen. I think it I think it would have been totally fine. B, you have a kicker with an absolute howitzer of a leg who can absolutely kick the touchback. You’re supposed to be situational masters. You should trust your players to do that. And see, I think that 15 yards of field position made a pretty big difference because when the Vikings got about as far as they did on that drive, what to like the 45, move that to the the plus 40, you’re already in the range that Will Riker can think about. So, we’re I I think that was way overthought of a decision and it ultimately turned out to be moot. If I’m going to be mad about a coaching thing at the end of that game, it’s that the Vikings put themselves behind 20 yards of penalties and and negative plays in a in a got to have it situation. Carson Wentz cannot take that stupid sack. You cannot have that false start penalty that they blamed the play clock for that delay of game penalty that they blamed the play clock for. You can’t have any of that. You just you just cannot afford to have it at all. So those are the coaching things that I think you really should be focusing on. second-guessing these kinds of decisions about like fourth down these operational decisions is the most accessible coaching thing and it’s the one that gets talked about the most but I do not believe like by the media I think it’s one of the things that’s like gets disproportionate attention from the media versus like in the actual buildings uh just a man says to the naked eye this season Jaylen Naylor seems to have taken a step forward in terms of what he can control on the field although generally poor offensive plays that there’s not much tangible production at what point does it become a serious consideration to extend him or is his skill set and status as wide receiver three always going to naturally lead toward a rookie contract, especially with Ty Felton being drafted. So, I think the the part of the point of drafting Ty Felton was so that he could take over for Jaylen Naylor next year. So, it comes down to um do you feel like he’s going to be able to do that? I think there’s a huge question mark. Do you feel like Jaylen Naylor is going to be worth more than you know your your KJ Osborne or Jarius Wright who kind of do filter through those guys? Very rarely get second contracts. Usually, let them let them make their money somewhere else and draft a new one. We’ll see what that is. It’s It’s kind of a tough hurdle for him to get. I think the production has to come and actually count. Just getting open isn’t enough. As unfair as that is, and I do think it’s unfair, but it is kind of the way it goes. Um, okay. So, there’s a whole bunch of questions here that are super doomy. Anonymous is the one that I’m going to go after here, who says, uh, so what? We have to just pray that JJ McCarthy isn’t exactly who he has been once he comes back this season or and the next three are going to be praying to sneak it or this season and the next three are going to be praying to sneak into the wild card. Get a grip, my friend. Okay, pull it together. You’re in public. Okay, nut up. It’s Get a grip. This is insane. A couple things on this. For one, yes, we have to hope that JJ McCarthy uh is not the same quarterback in his first two games that he is for the rest of his career. I need you to go through quarterbacks that have failed and succeeded and tell me even the ones that have failed have changed significantly from their first two two games to their next two. I think hoping for that is not outside of the realm of possibility at all. Let’s just watch that play out before we assume it’s going to be bad because we’re in a bad mood because the Vikings lost a football game and you had to get up at 8:30 to watch it. All right, chill out there. there. And two, if you’re starting to predict their record in 2029 because they failed a 20 to because they fell a 2 and two on September 28th of 2025, get a grip, my friend. You have lost the plot. It is time for some of you to log off social media and go outside. It is not good for your brains. Feed him a sandwich says, “So the Vikings just won’t ever beat a team that’s a single pound larger than them.” Uh, I I think you you’re probably being too absolute, but yes, they are going to be at a disadvantage against good, powerful rushing teams, unfortunately. I would put both the Packers and Lions in that category, assuming everybody important to that is healthy, which they aren’t right now, but in general, um, that’s unfortunate. We’ll see how that goes with those matchups. But I do think Flores has to find a way to address that issue that isn’t um like blitz more that isn’t that that or it isn’t hey just hope that guys like do their fits better um because there are some guys that just can’t get off that block like Jayvon Hargrave or Ivan Pace that just can’t get off the block quickly enough uh and then the roles are there but yeah I mean getting lit up by Ken Kenneth Gainwell it was one thing when it was Bejian Robinson and you’re like okay he’s really good but getting lit by Kenneth Gainwell there. There’s a structural issue. Um, and I do think that structural issue comes down to yeah, guys are too light, but you go to war with the horses you have. You have to figure it out. You can’t just die to all of these. So, we’ll see. Um, Green Bay Tears addict has an interesting one. Is isn’t it isn’t an excuse that covers all the issues, but how much of the offensive disorganization can be attributed to having to deal with the Flores defense all off season? You know, this has been a thing that like Kurt Cousins complained about with Mike Zimmer that like because there was pressure and sack all the time, they like didn’t get enough reps to really pull things together. Um, I think that there’s probably some merit to it because, you know, they when actual offensive people like Kevin Oonnell has talked about this too, like this is kind of a known thing, but I do think that it’s probably a lame excuse for like stuff on the headset. Those are the grown-ups. Those are the guys that aren’t like don’t need to worry about their physicality and are like players have a different mindset. Coaches need to be organized. It’s kind of the only thing. You don’t need to worry about how your ankle feels and catching your wind for the next play when you’re a coach. You just have to be organized. If you can’t do that, again, I think there is a structural issue that you and I, sorry, we’re never going to find out about. We are just aren’t going to know what it is. Um, a whole bunch of people wanted this. So, I I’ll go with DB Cooper, but spelled it like Chris Cooper. Says, “After seeing how unprepared every iteration of the O line has been, are we getting to a point where we need to consider replacing O coach Chris Cooper?” Um, there’s three backups in, man. I think when there’s three backups in, I don’t expect really anyone’s line to be good, even the best lines in the league, if you lose three of your starters, are probably going to go down pretty hard. Um, they are pretty bad at picking up stunts. I think that’s a Blake Brle issue. And then Donovan Jackson being young. want to see him get better. But I think Cooper has a couple of pretty good feathers in his hat of guys kind of getting better as their careers wore on. I think when Chris Cooper got here, Gerick Bradbury got a lot better. Chris Cooper gets I think the lion share of the credit for Christian Derosaw being who he is. I even think Brian O’Neal has had some of his best moments with Chris Cooper. I’m still fine with it. But I think from a broader sense, I don’t we can’t just look at every problem and be like, “Okay, who should be fired?” You can’t ask who to solve every problem. You have to ask why. But too many people are asking who. And this is my general thing here. You see all these problems and you’re asking, “Well, is it because the coach is the wrong guy? Is it because the defensive coordinator is the wrong guy? Is it because the quarterback’s the wrong guy? Is it because the O line guys are the wrong guy? It’s all is so and so the wrong person? Should we replace them?” When everything looks like a nail, it’s because all you have is a hammer. You You have to think a little bit more broadly than that. If the offense is disorganized, they need to figure out and fix the disorganization. And I think this like look, if you’re in your job, and I know it’s different, but you’re in your job or your thing, whatever your thing is, and you find disorganization is your first thought, okay, you you’re fired. You’re out of the thing. No, your first thought is, okay, where’s the miscommunication? Let’s iron this out. And I don’t see why that can’t apply to an NFL team. We just have to successfully do it. And sidelines are famously chaotic places. You should you should ask some people their craziest sideline stories. Um if you ever get to talk to people who have been on an NFL sideline, ask them about that. Trust me, it is it is you’ll get a hilarious story every time. Um and I think just finding a way to to control that chaos is the deal right now. But most of their week right now is dealing with the travel of getting from Ireland to London, figuring out their practice, getting a reasonable week of practice in and like preparing for the Browns. They don’t really have the time to sit down and do a self audit. I do think that’s going to be a huge priority on the by-week. Um, and in general, a lot of the rest of the questions that I haven’t been able to get to um, have been about firing soand so. Should Flores be fired? Should Kevin Oconor be fired? Should Chris Cooper be fired? Get a grip. Relax. They’re two and two. You want to know who’s going to be firing people? The 0 and4 Titans who just got blanked at home by a division rival. That gets people fired. This kind of game was a pretty sad no-show. And we get to be very critical of it. But I’m going to go back to the thing I’ve been saying all year. It’s okay to be critical without going nuclear. You can say that was bad without going comma and therefore fire the person responsible for it. That last premise is one I’m pretty much never going to be on until we start reaching the regular firing thresholds. The Vikings aren’t going to be the first one to fire their head coach this season. Okay? Even if you think that they should. Look around the league, man. There’s a lot more dark situations than this. I want to make sure that I get to the rest of the hot takes as well. So, we’re going to do that next on Locked on Vikings. Today’s episode is brought to you by Rouette Ready. You’ve probably heard of like Viagra or Seialis. Maybe you’ve even tried them. But if you’re looking for something beyond the usual pill, it’s time to meet Rouette Golong. Once again, if you are looking for something beyond the usual pill, take a look at Rouette Golong. It’s not just another ED pill. It’s a total game changer for your confidence and your comfort with that um kind of problem. It combines two doctor trusted medications in one dualaction formula so you can go the distance. The effects can last up to 36 hours so it’s ready when you’re ready and you don’t have to start like penciling stuff into your calendar that you don’t necessarily want to be that scheduled or planned ahead. There’s a little room for little spontaneity, a little romance, you know what I mean? Um, if you can level if you want to level up your confidence in the bedroom, you can head to rouette.com and use promo code lockdown NFL for 15% off of your first order. That’s ruggie t.com. Promo code lockdown NFL. Make sure to use our code so they know that we sent you. Moving on, it is hot take time here on the Locked on Vikings podcast. We have some pretty spicy ones here. Um, I think one I’m gonna start with one that I think is gonna get pe is gonna get this person in trouble. Christian Ponder’s Backyard Pond. Uh, the backup Lemon of the Vikings are actually pretty good. Fans need to wake up and realize these guys are backups, not starters, and mistakes are expected. If the Vikings had eight starters in the O line room, it would be a waste of resources and cap space. Backups are backups for a reason. Um, there’s probably a like very sensible middle ground truth here in that like you should adjust your expectations every time a new backup goes in. And when Justin School goes in because you’re just down to it. Although I think it was a big mistake to uh inactive inactive Walter Rouse, you could have perhaps used Walter Rouse in that instead of school. I still think that that’s an idea. I I think that if they had the luxury of doing so if Donovan Jackson wasn’t out, they would have put Blake Brandle there and it wouldn’t be school. So I do think that in the long term that solution will sort of iron itself out. Like they have the the tools on the roster that are ready. It’s just there’s too many injuries right now. And there’s just when you lose your third O lineman, no team has a good solution. So you need to adjust your expectations and understand that there is just going to be more pressure. And I think you can expect the offense to uh to behave as such. We’ve seen the Vikings have, you know, lead the league in pressures and go up against teams that are just ball out quick all the time. We just saw it last week. Aaron Rogers got the ball out at like 2.27 seconds. He has the fastest time to throw in the lowest a dot in the league. And a lot of it is because of that because Aaron Rogers can’t run away from pressure like he used to. He’s got to get the ball out and he’s fantastic at it. That’s what he’s going to do. Um I also So I’m just going to go back real quick to the guy who wanted like who wanted to regret Aaron Rogers. You don’t want the Vikings to have this offense. This is not the offense. You do you do not want to put Justin Jefferson, Jordan Madison, and TJ. Hawinson in an offense where nobody can run a route past five yards. You don’t want that. You think you want that because they won and we lost. You don’t want that to happen. That may be working great for the Steelers, but you but like their biggest play was a slant that DK Metaf has because he’s DK Metaf. Uh this is not what this team was built to be. You do not want them to try to be that team just because you lost to that team. You got to understand everybody’s got their own thing. Anyways, the 14-yd line that tackle Danny Dimes says, “The 8:30 a.m. Central time game is far and away the superiority time to watch your favorite football team play. When I wake up on Sunday, everything I do until noon is just to make the time go by faster until the Vikings game starts. When the game is at 8:30 a.m., you can roll out of bed, make breakfast, and immediately watch your favorite team. And then when it’s done, you have the whole afternoon at your disposal. Thank you for validating my take that the West Coast is the best coast. We get to watch the uh games start at 10:00 a.m. every day. It rules. Um, one score wins says KOC is starting against the Browns is identical to KOC starting DOS against the Bears. I don’t think I understand. Are you Are you predicting like four interceptions? You should put that in as a bold prediction. I don’t quite understand what you mean by that or just that what the Magic is going to end. The Magic did end. Um, Carson Wentz stared down a million open guys on the very last play. By the way, he he had Justin Jefferson. He could have hit that. Um uh it was actually a really really good play call and he for some reason came off of it. He had a whole bunch of baffling turndowns, not to mention the inaccurate throws and the and the and the turnover worthy stuff. Um Planet of the Kites22 says, “International games need to be more international. American fans traveling to these games defeats the purpose of exposing the game to new people. All it does is make Americans wake up earlier. NFL get another prime time game and pisses off a fan base that loses a home game. And for God’s sakes, fix the turf.” So I do not think the turf was an issue. Um the Steelers had no issue with the turf. I believe if you think that there was too much slippage, I would blame the Vikings equipment team. Um, and and like the cleat decisions that the players made, which is on the players, not the equipment team. So, blame the players for that. But the turf I don’t think was a problem at all. And and all the in there were a lot of injuries in this game. None of them were turf related. It’s not like the turf was gnarling up a bunch of knees. It was not. It was contact injuries because it’s a contact sport. Get a grip. Pull up everybody. You’re nosing. Pull up. Okay. Get your head above water and take a big big deep breath of air. Um, to your point, okay, I kind of agree with you, but not in the way that you mean. Um, at the game, I can tell you it was a way more local crowd. It was There were a lot of American tourists. Americans flooded Dublin. Dublin loves it when tourists flood Dublin. Dublin tourism is is a huge industry in Dublin. They want that. Dublin is very, very thrilled with that. I think they’re going to be very happy with the turnout and all the bars are going to be really happy with all of their American bar taps. The game itself, okay, so you know you’re in a European more than an American crowd when the like more deep cut songs get start getting singalongs that would put any Mr. Bright Side or Sweet Caroline in America to shame. The singalongs were amazing and I have to say Irish listeners, if you are here, your crowd ruled so hard. It was so much fun to be a part of that. I felt like I was in the middle of like a diehard soccer game. It was so cool. It was so different. I can tell you I I I didn’t survey everybody, right? So maybe there’s statistics that are going to prove me wrong, but that was not a a chiefly American crowd, okay? It felt way different and in a very cool way. Um I think this absolutely brought a lot of people. By the way, you can see at those games, we we even played the game. You can see every jersey, every team represented, all 32. We made a checklist and we played a little game to kill time while we were to see if we could like find play ice spy and find every jersey. And we did. Texans, it got a little dicey. Texans fans, you got to get it get it together. But but all of those people, the reason is because they’re all European fans that are so jazzed to be able to finally go to a football game that they got a ticket. I know the tickets got crazy expensive and I think that sucks. They got price couched. I think that’s a problem with the secondhand ticket market and and what kind of happens on that. Um, and and I think that is beyond the scope of this podcast, but what I will say is this was not 60,000 or 90,000 Americans flying across. It was a lot of Americans filling up Dublin, but that crowd was absolutely European. The last one I’m going to take comes from Mr. Mayor. Mr. Mayor the Fourth, you have submitted many times to this mailbag this week, and I appreciate it quite a lot. Um, but you are spiraling. Pull up. who says hot take, but I feel like it’s really weird when Americans go to international NFL games. Um, this is another thing about like our why taking all the tickets from the local people, but I I wanted to uh piggyback off of this and say here’s my hot take. Okay, very hot cultural take. If you are an American and you’re here, you got to pack stuff that’s not team memorabilia for the rest of your vacation. Okay, wear a jersey to the game. I did. That’s what everybody does. Go ahead. But out like sometimes people wear a hat and like it’s their hat, right? They’ve got a Vikings hat or a Steelers hat and that’s their hat. But a man, I was in churches today and people were like strolling in in their Justin Jefferson jerseys. It’s weird. Okay, it’s a weird aesthetic. It’s so like you got to you’re just in Dublin now. Okay, we are not fighting to represent or to outnumber each other after the game. You’re on the rest of your vacation. You you gota you you got to just pack your regular clothes. Okay, save the game day stuff for game day. It it is it is so freaking weird to see a bunch of Americans like walking into these like dignified establishments and and they’re going to start skull chanting. It’s so weird, man. It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t feel like fandom. It feels like you’re just out of place. You feel like a fish out of water. Okay, that is my hot take. And because we’re in this segment, you aren’t allowed to be mad at me about it. Okay, that’s my opinion. And you just you you aren’t allowed to respond. So, if you do, um I’m banning you. I will see you tomorrow. And as always, skull.

The Minnesota Vikings offense has been sluggish all season despite a well-regarded QB whisperer of a coach and boatloads of talent. Can the coaching adapt to its new issues? Or is it time to change the coaching?

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