Should the Vikings GIVE UP on J.J. McCarthy? 👀 Louis Riddick suggests to CHILL OUT 🍿 | Get Up

Should the Vikings GIVE UP on J.J. McCarthy? 👀 Louis Riddick suggests to CHILL OUT 🍿 | Get Up

An offseason prediction made by our very own Dominique Foxworth. Are going to win the division. I know I’m alone on this island. Their O line is very talented and I think if you can if you can turn that O line into something close to what they had in Detroit under Ben Johnson, this offense is going to be unstoppable. Okay. So Dominique saw this coming July 17th, not two, but three months ago, you predicted that the Bears were going to win the division. And right now, if the season ended today, you’d be right. Let me show you the NFC playoff field. It is tight as can be. The Eagles currently are on top of the conference at 8-2, followed by the Rams. As Nick predicted, the Bears lead the North, the Buccaneers lead the South, Seahawks, Packers, 49ers are the other teams on the outside looking in. So, let’s look through the entire division with little notes on each of these teams and we’ll dive into them. Starting at the very top with the Bears, Chicago is in first place in the NFC North. Their offense is fourth in the league and the best in the division. And they are resilient to say the least. They have five wins this season when trailing in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter, tied for most by any team in a season since the 1970 merger. Dominique, I think a lot of people based on the teams they’ve played and everything else are asking the question, are these Bears for real? Um, a lot of people are right to be asking that question because I don’t think I believe what I said in July even though that they are in because I watched the football games, Peter Peter in July, he had that hennessy over there on his side. So that’s what and their their defense is thriving on turnovers and Caleb is getting better, but this offense is not consistent in a way. They’re dependent on this rushing attack. Like that’s what this offense is built on is because it’s a level of rushing attack. If you’re asking me, are they better than the Lions? Honestly, I don’t think they’re better than the Lions right now. All right. Or or the Packers maybe for that. Yeah. But but but look, I I think Caleb Williams, what you’re seeing him do right now is exactly what this organization hoped would happen Johnson. When you put him under center, when you let him run play action, his ability to now know where to go with the football when he’s under pressure, when he’s being blitz, look, Brian Flores, heated his rear end up over and over. This guy is top five in uh QBR versus the blitz. Top 10 in QBR versus pressure. Or maybe it’s it’s flipped. Either way, he’s top 10 in both of those categories. That is a huge improvement. You saw what he did just a week ago, how he led this team back. You saw the off schedule plays this guy can make. And I’m telling you, with the way this offensive line is protecting, the way they’re running the football, and the way these wide receivers are catching the ball, this team is dangerous now. They lead the league in interceptions, they lead the league in takeaways, they lead the league in turnover differential. That stuff matters. That stuff’s real. So that’s why they’re winning. That’s why they’re winning. But Caleb’s playing better and better every week. This was just his second win ever in the NFC North. It was Ben Johnson’s first ever NFC North when it was Ryan Poles’s just fourth NFC North division win. So this is all new to them. I get it if you want to be skeptical. They’re winning football and some critical statistics this young man is ascending. So I I don’t want to be skeptical to my friends, family, and wife who are all crazy about the Bears. I said before the season that you will judge their year not based on their win loss record. You will judge their year based on whether or not when the season ends, you know you’ve got the guy. That is happening for sure. Whether they win the division or not, that is happening 100%. Yeah. You you the Bears fans got to be happy irrespective of what the rest of the season looks like. The problem for the Bears, their schedule’s about to get real. It’s It’s about to get real real. And all those numbers that you’re talking about, turnovers, all that kind of stuff, that stuff starts to drift back down. It’s harder to win. This But the success of the season for the Bears is already a plus, bro. This was this is a big time change. But I want to run through all the teams here. So, let’s get to the Vikings next. It was another tough day for JJ McCarthy Sunday in a year where Sam Darnold is playing great. And McCarthy is looking at the opposite side. He’s last in the NFL in total QBR. He’s last in the NFL in completion percentage. He’s thrown more interceptions than touchdowns. Five of his eight interceptions have come when targeting Justin Jefferson Lewis. Obviously, the most important number here is five. That’s how many games he has started. But there are people asking already, is this experiment failing? And I would just go back to that number five that you talked about. It’s five games. He missed his entire rookie season. He started five games. Now, you cannot you cannot discount the fact that for about 57 minutes and 30 seconds against in this game, he was awful. He looked scared in the pocket. His mechanics were all over the place. He was air mailing passes where you’re sitting there going, “You have a clean pocket, dude. Just put it on the receiver.” And then he let him down the field to a touchdown drive and made some big time throws. He has got to become more consistent. You have to give him more time. They traded up to the 10th pick overall. You cannot make a sweeping generalization about his career off of five starts. You just can’t. But he has to get better. That’s fair. But the inaccuracy is alarming, right, Nick? I mean, the m the misses are really bad. You think in Minnesota they could get the clock operator to always make it less than two minutes in a tie ball game and just and just trick him into thinking that this is a clutch moment all the time. Because what happens to him in those situations over the course of this five games has been impressive. But if you chop those ends of the game off and look at this, you would be it’d be reasonable to say, “Oh, we might have made a mistake.” Because the accuracy is really concerning problem. And the fact that I know that progress isn’t always linear, but that it doesn’t seem like he’s getting better is I think the concerning part until you get into a clutch situation and all of a sudden he blacks out. Yeah. I I I think you got to be patient with this. I mean, listen, and if if you’re the one good thing, you just saw Sam Don go against the Rams again and it didn’t look good. So if you’re the Vikings, you I be 10 and one or whatever it is. You still got to run through the same horses to get to where you want to get to. Maybe McCarthy puts you over the top in the future. The trouble is, and Peter, you have been saying this all year, there were so many factors at play that not his fault, but based upon the class he was drafted in and what they gave up and all who was in the room, right, and who else was drafted in that class, those are two enormous mountains to overcome. And unless he was to be a runaway success, this was going to be a failure. And here we are, guys. If Deon Duivere doesn’t return a kick 50 yards, they win. and we’re saying JJ’s Mr. Clutch. It’s that thin a margin now. Five games. Five games. That part of it is for sure. We can’t make any uh decisions about the entirety of his career. But from this season’s perspective, it’s been rocky. I want to go to Green Bay next. Jordan Love, if you look at the box score Sunday, had sort of a pedestrian day under 200 yards, just over 50% completion, but he was missing Tucker Craft. Josh Jacobs exited earlier in the game and his receivers dropped officially four balls. It felt more than that. If you exclude drops, his day actually looks better. A season low 4% of his throws were offtarget. The doubters with this win on Sunday. I don’t think so. Listen, this is not Jordan Love. This is just reality of where we are in this. They they just haven’t beat they beat the Lions in week one. The next best team they beat is the Steelers, y’all. You listen. Hmbo gave me this. Love beat Cincinnati 32nd defense. Tied Dallas 31st. Beat the Giants 29th. Beat the Commanders 28. beat the Cardinals 25th. Like, you got to play who’s on the schedule, but he’s not tearing it up playing some of the bottom the bottom defenses in our game. And here’s the bottom line. You paid Jordan Love to be the dude. To be the dude, right now, you can’t control the drops, but but the inconsistency that we see play, that part for him has to be everybody’s got to be able to count that guy is not going to be the problem. And that’s that’s my issue with and Jordan Love is in this category that we reward these quarterbacks when they get to a certain point, but the reward that we give them is we’re going to grade you on a different scale. Amen. Jordan Love can’t prove anything to us against the Giants in the middle of the season. It’s already been proven. We already know that you’re capable of this. What Jordan Love has to do is like that next level, those bigger games, and so he’s not going to silence any doubters until he does it against the Eagles or he does it in the playoffs against one of these bigger teams. Right. Unless you’re a really deep in the weeds football fan or a Packers message where like you don’t recognize some of these names he’s throwing to the Savon Williams and the Boone Meltons. These are not your household names, not what he was dealt with. So, I will give him a lot of credit for yes, the drops happen, but also rising above all the injuries on that offense and playing really well on Sunday. There’s there’s no question about that. Look, I I always look I understand that level of competition matters, okay, in context matters. That’s what we’re talking about, right? But some of Jordan Love’s decisions on Sunday were spectacular. Some of the ball placement was spectacular. I don’t care if you’re throwing against me or if you’re throwing against Deion Sanders. The ball placement was what it was. Yeah. It’s just can he make this a repeatable thing, a consistent thing? That’s what drives people nuts. But look, there’s a reason why Brian Gudakin rewarded him already cuz he saw it and now it’s up to him and the coaching staff to make sure it becomes something that’s a little bit more leveled out cuz it’s there. I think what Nick said also is an important point to leave it on for the Packers and we’ll get to the Lions is um and it’s not his f when you trade for Micah Parsons at the beginning of the season. You’re saying we have a championship team. We’re not asking Jordan Love to be good. We’re not asking him to throw for a lot of yards against the Giants. We’re saying lead us to a title. I think that’s where the bar is set. All right, the last one is the Lions. And they certainly stayed true to their identity Sunday in Philadelphia. They went for it on fourth down five times. They converted none of them. Yes, it was a blustery, windy night, but the average field position for each of those fourth down attempts was the Eagles 38 yd line. Three of those attempts came within 10 yards of midfield. And Dominique, I’m going to ask you this question leading because I I know you have a fascinating look at this. Do you believe Dan Campbell should continue calling the offensive plays? I don’t think he should. And I I think it’s less about the plays that he’s calling and more about the game management. I think that they’ve always been a team that managed the game well, but in this game, they made mistakes right before halftime. They didn’t make take advantage of the opportunity to call their timeouts to be able to take a chance to score. They went for it. All those fourth downs was fine, but then there’s a fourth and 10 where you absolutely have to go for it and they punt it. Then there’s a fourth and 17 where they’re going to go for it and they should be kicking a field goal. The only reason I kick a field goal is because the Eagles call a timeout. These are mistakes that Dan Campbell doesn’t normally make. And also like the physical nature of this team. I know you’re going up against a really tough defense and a good defensive line, but it felt like through the course of that game, they felt less and less like the Lions. Amen. I think Dan Campi either he needs to uh stop calling the plays or have someone else in charge of like these game management situations cuz those are too many big mistakes for it to be coincidence. I think that’s fascinating. And the physical piece of it, you jumped on. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the physicality, you saw it kind of wayne, right? Like like I think Gibbs got like 12 carries, Montgomery only got six. Like there’s something about when you go play the Lions where your expectation is, we’re going to hit you in the mouth between the tackles. We’re going to play physical with you and it doesn’t matter what the defense is. We don’t it I don’t care if it’s the Eagles. I don’t care who it is. It opens up play action, opens up the middle of the field. It allows all those things to happen because linebackers play differently. That wasn’t there for me. I think I thought to me that was the most glaring thing. I also just whisper one whisper one thing and Duck Jared Goff outside in the wind going to say right. Oh, he had a bad day. That’s all the more reason to do what Jeff is saying. Well, I think it’s fair to say nerd glasses. Take them nerd glasses off, Dan. It’s fair to say that we, you know, we celebrate Jared Goff cuz look what they did against the Commanders in that dome. And look what they’ve done against some of these inferior teams in Arrowhead on a Sunday night. Wasn’t his best against the Packers week one outdoors wasn’t his best. And then this game here, there’s a lot on their shoulders of, hey, Lions, keep it up. Do your thing. I think what we’re what we’re getting back to is kind of exactly what Jeff is alluding to. They have an identity. The fourth down the fourth down propensity to want to go for it is always going to be there. You know, whether it winds up working out or not, that’s just going to be who Dan Campbell is. That’s how they have built this football team. That’s their philosophy. But the physicality and the nature in which they call plays and the way in which they establish themselves, it’s not driven through the quarterback. The quarterback is not the driver here. Exactly. The offensive line and that running game and those backs that will absolutely gas you are the driver. And that wasn’t a factor in this game. And listen, they got injuries up front. I understand it. But the the way you take care of young offensive linemen is to allow them to run the ball because you got to try to fatigue Jaylen Carter’s and I mean like you don’t want those dudes fresh in the third and fourth quarter and they allowed them to stay in it and then they were those

Kimberley A. Martin, Peter Schrager, Domonique Foxworth, Jeff Saturday and Louis Riddick join Mike Greenberg on Get Up to discuss the biggest storylines across the league and revisit some of their hottest preseason takes.

0:00 Hot Take Time Machine
1:20 Are the Chicago Bears for real?
3:53 Tough for J.J. McCarthy
6:28 Jordan Love’s criticism
9:33 Detroit Lions’ 4th down struggles

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