Minnesota Vikings FAILED to simplify things for JJ McCarthy

Minnesota Vikings FAILED to simplify things for JJ McCarthy

it up. Oh no. Purple Daily is daily Vikings entertainment. We just want the Vikings to win a Super Bowl before we die. I will ride with this group. Seriously, man. Please. And away we go. Yeah. You You know what? I’m giving you Jeremiah’s old line crossover. You tried instigator instigator fine for trying to troll us with the dog in the street intro. We did swap it out. We did swap it. It had to happen. You mean at one point you have to look yourself in the mirror and go, “This isn’t working and I should probably do something different.” So, hats off to you guys for being able to have some self-reflection and change something that might change the outcome of how things go here. Crazy thought. Crazy thought. Wow. The Kevin O’Connell quote might be next by the way. Which one? I will ride with this team. Oh, that might be next to go. No. How? Okay, this one right I have the audio of it. How ancient history does this feel right now? I tell you guys I love you. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. I will ride with this group until they don’t let us play anymore. I want to know cuz this if they do win a game against 23 22 22 22 ancient life didn’t have a lot of great. Yeah. Uh well we’re going to get into a bunch of different things here. It’s an O line committee crossover. for our guy Jeremiah Sles, former Viking, six-year NFL offensive uh lineman veteran, founding father of the O line committee, which you can find on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify. Uh uh and a a man who on occasion will drink a beer. Jud, do you have any beer you can recommend to the audience? And Jeremiah, I like absolutely positively. And it’s Padre’s beer. And Jeremiah, here’s why. Padres’s makes beer that tastes like beer. And it’s all they make. I mean, I’m not sure about you, but when I go to have a beer, I don’t want to have be inundated with 27 different types of drinks. Beers that you’re experimenting with. Uh-uh. When it comes to Padres’s, we are talking about just, you know what, we’re talking about offensive lineman type of beer. The Red Chimney, absolutely outstanding. It is hard to find a good red. Not at Padres’s. It It’s not. Uh, their beer also available in more than 200 liquor stores in the metro, Rochester, and Mano. Check out their uh their tap room at the Old Land Nod Factory at the corner of Broadway and Central Avenues Northeast. You line up five Padres’s beers, Jay, and you’re talking about an offensive line of beers. None of this n you know, not this cute quarterback stuff. Uh-uh. We’re talking about running the football. No seltzers on this show. Exactly. Right. We’re talking about running the football. Uhhuh. Well, speaking of, let’s let’s use that as our first topic here with with Jeremiah. So, this was a bit we do our state of the Vikings Tuesday episodes on Purple Daily where we do it’s like a during the season the there’s there’s the 2-hour event line where we immediately react to the game and then there’s the Monday hottest takes where we ratchet up the temperature even more after sleeping on it. But then Tuesday is like the deepest dive kind of dissection of the game and the state of the Vikings. And one thing that’s become obvious, not only this year, but over the four-year sample of Kevin Oonnell, this is one of the most passing extreme offenses and passing extreme head coaches and play callers in the NFL. Since KO took over in 2022, no NFC team has thrown the ball a higher percentage of plays. And and that includes, by the way, this year with mostly rookie firstear quarterbacks doing this with JJ McCarthy and Max Bromer. It’s a top five pass percentage. And two years ago when Cousins got hurt and you had Dobs, you had you had Jiren Hall and Nick Mullins, they were third in passing percentage of play. So my question to you is to what extent does running the ball matter if you want to win a bunch of games, which they they have done over four years. Uh and are are they missing out on something by being such a passing extreme offense? The easy answer is yes. Right. That’s that’s the easy no-brainer answer is yes. But you know, you and I kind of talked about this earlier. Well, why is the answer yes? And I went back and I looked, okay, how did the Eagles win the Super Bowl last year? Oh, they ran the piss out of the football with Saquon Barkley. How did the Chiefs get there a couple years before? Oh, they converted their run game with Isaiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt and found ways to be consistent in running the football. And as you get Oh, bye, Mac. And as you get He’s got a mic. Speaking of running the football effectively, uh microphone little issue there that I’m going to go ahead and ding him. Ding him. Oh, we don’t I might have helped. I might have I think my mic was like crackling. So I That’s Now it sounds Now I think it’s better when you were talking. It was just like popping and over a little bit. I just thought it was your voice. But you know, as you just continue to go on my thought here, um I’m a prof professional. I don’t get distracted. You know, when you look at what wins games in November, what wins games in December, and then specifically as you get into January, it’s clock control. It’s controlling the tempo of the football game. You get to dictate the tempo. You’re not playing shootouts because the last thing you want to do is you can play shootouts in the regular season on a weekend basis because you’re not playing the best of the best every single week. If you want to go, hey, we need to win four here to get to the Super Bowl. the chances of you winning a shootout four games in a row are not super high. And so you have to go into those games going, “Hey, if we’re playing against Dak Prescott, Jaylen Herz, um Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, pick one of the top tier quarterbacks you’re going to face in the in the playoffs, not just from an NFC perspective, from a a whole you want to go, I got to keep that dude off the field, right? If I can keep that dude off the field and I can go and I can control the clock and I can get first downs and stay on the field here, I can dictate the tempo of this football game. When you don’t have that in your bag and you don’t have that as a weapon, you’re really missing out on an entire piece of offense that is not sexy and it’s not cool and it’s not fun and people can say it’s boring, but gosh, boring is effective and effective wins Super Bowls. And so when you look at the Kevin Oonnell offense and go, “Okay, yes, we we get it, Kevin. Your whiteboard is amazing. We understand you’re a genius with scouts, with reps and coverages and option routes and all these things. Deep crossers. It’s super fun and it’s super cool and I feel like I’m playing Madden.” But when you can’t run the football and teams know that, then they can just sit back there and go, “Hey, keep throwing it. Eventually the quarterback’s going to make a mistake when he’s not a veteran sevenyear plus quarterback.” Yeah. All right. So, if we were to rewind the clock, Jay, and we were to go back in time to the beginning of this season and you and you were in the building and and you got a feel for especially McCarthy, okay? What he was prepared to do, probably more importantly, what he was not prepared to do as someone who played the game and has been in the meetings and the building. What would you have done? Like, like I I feel like we’ve dumped on Okonnell a lot. I feel like he deserves it. I do feel like he has dialed things back at times, but if you were just to start from week one again and sort of accept what you had, what should he have done? What would you have liked to to seen? Because I mean, McCarthy is not without fault, just to be clear here. So, like what would have been the happy medium of trying to get the most success possible? I would have got started with what I heard from Wes Phillips in his press conference yesterday. Simplify, right? Simplify. Why? Why go into week one with a complex complexity offense that you think your quarterback can run based off what you’ve seen in training camp, but you have no tangible evidence whatsoever what he can do on a real Sunday. On a real not a not a preseason, not a not not a under the lights can’t practice. a real Sunday where that jersey is the same color as everybody else and those dudes on the other side want to rip your teeth out one by one. Then we can go from there. I feel like through practices and through OTAAS and through training camp, Kevin Oonnell and this whole staff kind of forgot about that. They forgot about the fact that he’d never done it. He had never stepped foot on a Sunday out on a real field in a real game and done it and proven to him that they can operate this complex offense when there’s real bullets flying and there’s not, oh, hey, time out, time out. Get everyone lined back up, back in the huddle, run it again. Like, those are controlled environments. There’s no such thing as a controlled environment on Sunday. And so, I would have liked to rewind back to week one and say, “Hey, I know we installed everything in training camp because that’s what you always do. You install everything in training camp. You put it all on tape. you see how it all looks and then you slice and you dice it away till you get to the game plan. I would have loved to hear the word simplify out of his mouth in September. And I would have loved to start with simplicity and start with running the football and going, “Hey JJ McCarthy, we think you can throw it all over the yard training camp. Hey, Jud tracked every single one of your throws. It was great. It was awesome.” Right? Instigator. I’m never doing that again. I’m never doing that again. Sensitive. But I’ll just continue to go there as we go. But, you know, and then go from there and say, “Hey, instead of throwing you to the wolves and putting you in positions that I think you can succeed in, but I don’t know what the fail rate’s going to look like.” Continuing to build in more high success plays. Hey, handing the football off, bootlegs, play actions, short crossers, those type of things. And as I say that, you know, it’s just one of those things where there we saw some of that, but so much right out of the gate was 500 yolo, go deep, let it roll. And then I feel once you started on that train and on that wagon, it was really hard for him to actually re everything back in. And then JJ gets hurt. Then you go with Carson Wentz and you feel like you can open up even more and now you’re in the meteor season. And before as the snowball started, it rolled downhill really fast. And I feel like they’re finally starting to try and trim back what the snowball is. But it might be too little too late in my opinion. Let me Okay, let let me ask you this because we just did yesterday uh we posted another Chicago Bears film breakdown on the O line committee YouTube channel and they are a machine right now. The Chicago Bears offense with a a a secondyear starting quarterback who has a lot more games under his belt and was widely regarded as having just a higher ceiling and athletic ability. I will grant you all those things. Uh, but this this is the highest ranked Chicago Bears offense in terms of yardage since 1983 was the last time they were sixth or higher in scoring offense. So, the Bears are go have gone from dead last in yardage offense a year ago to sixth. And I’m wondering cuz it’s not apples to apples the Viking situation with McCarthy and and just he just hasn’t played as many games, whatever. But the Vikings are dead last in almost every measurable quarterback and passing game statistics. So you’ve got these you’ve got one offense that literally can’t score a point right now and the other one that’s going on the road taking their running game into Philadelphia. They’ve got a bunch of 200 yard running games. The gap between where the Bears are offensively right now and the Vikings. How much of it Jeremiah is the quarterback, the scheme, or other personnel? It’s probably a combination, but like what’s the difference? If I’m ranking it, it goes scheme quarterback personnel, right? That that’s the way I rank it because if you look at it, what did Detroit do last year and what did Ben Johnson do with Detroit and Dan Campbell? They built it from the inside out and said, “Hey, tip of the spear, the Jim Harbaugh, right? Tip of the spear is the offensive line.” So, what’s Ben Johnson’s first move in free agency? Brand new center, brand new left guard, brand new right guard. get our top 10 pick tackle looking like Penn Aul draft a tackle at left tackle in the top two rounds and build from there and build on the running game because he watched the tape of Caleb Williams and heck they game planned against Caleb Williams go hey if we just drop this dude back 100 times we’re just going to keep sacking him he took like 68 sacks last year I think which was just crazy and so okay how do we build him up with success well we don’t ask him to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result so we’re going to build a running game around him and we’re gonna say, “Hey, we paid all you boys up front. Let’s lean on you, right? And we’re gonna bring Manungai in. And we’re gonna bring Swift in. And we’re gonna say, “Hey, we’re gonna go and we’re gonna run the football and if you want to block on the outside, then you’ll get the football. No block, no rock, right?” And so you’re seeing Roma Dunay, DJ Moore, Cole KD, Zakius, Coulson Lovelin, go block safeties because you don’t get explosive run plays without down the field blocking. Well, guess what? But when those dudes are physical on the edge and they’re pounding on those safeties and they’re push cracking, here comes the play action bootleg. That safety spends one second too long with his eyes on the back field, there’s the explosive play. And so the scheme, everything is built and modeled around the run game, which then leads to the explosive pass game. It’s not, if you watch the Bears, it’s not this crazy elaborate explosive pass game scheme. It’s all predicated off the run. So then you go to quarterback play. Okay. Okay. Well, if we saw what Caleb Williams did in the first first year and that didn’t work and he wasn’t ready, he was not anticipating throws, a lot of the things we saw with JJ this year, we saw with Caleb Williams last year, which is natural with any quarterback and any natural young player of just the game is just way too fast than they’ve ever seen before. And so then natural disaster things happen. Okay. Okay. So then the quarterback plays gotten better because you’ve asked him to do less and then you’ve now asked him to do less and then use his athletic ability to give you those splash plays that you need of the whirly derves and turn and run and throw it on a rope when you’re running to the sideline which is what makes him great and athletically really really special. So then you go to the last part the personnel the I I said it last last week on yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last yesterday last year on alike and you guys laughed at me. I honestly do believe the Chicago Bears weapons this year are almost better than Detroit’s weapons Ben Johnson had last year. And you guys might think I’m crazy, but the depth of that piece when you put all those three things together, it’s why you go hire Ben Johnson. It’s why you go do all these things and it’s why you look at what wins football games in the NFL right now. Being able to run the ball consistently is the number one hardest thing for defenses to stop. Yeah. I think we’re cuz I was I was not critical of the Ben Johnson hire but skeptical of like the hype and the it’s like okay it’s an you got to hire him if you’re the Bears you’re looking for offense for the first time in 40 years. It’s like can we pump the brakes a little bit? Cool. He draws up fun trick plays and that was kind of my a I was wrong and b what I didn’t give enough emphasis toward was what you just said which is Ben Ben Johnson. You might think of him as he’s the trick play go for it on fourth down guy along with Dan Campbell. No, he’s the pound the run through your soul guy with both Detroit and Chicago and then build big passing plays off of play action. And I mean, as you guys like, I I sit and watch you guys break down film of of his Lions offenses and of his Bears offenses. And I learned so much, they they run they run like the same type of look maybe 12 or 15 times in the running game with things built out for if it’s a play action. Oh, by the way, that guy that that would be blocking on this, boom, he he slips slips a block and comes out the back door wide open. Like these aren’t long developing. you got to throw a dot between a safety and a linebacker passing plays. It’s scheming tight ends and receivers wide open off of the running game. And so I have I mean I have a ton of respect for what Ben Johnson’s done as a coordinator and as a head coach now after kind of diving in more to the details. It’s also kind of scary to think about what if Ben Johnson can get the most out of Caleb Williams, right? because you see you you see the what he can be and so it’s a little bit of a scaring feeling if you’re a Vikings fan and you’re watching what’s happening in Chicago and you’re going oh my god is Ben Johnson really going to unlock what everyone thought Caleb Williams could be and now he’s got Roma Dunay Cole KT DJ Moore Coulson Lovel and they’ll build on the defense and then you look on the Vikings side and go what what shows me that we’re on that same path like what as a Vikings fan am I looking at at this Vikings team going. You have the largest cast roster on the NFL. You’ve got a rookie scale quarterback that we still have no idea if he’s the promise or if he’s going to be a bust. And it’s not really in everyone’s either one camp or the other. No one’s like, “Oh, he’s going to be okay.” Right? Everyone’s like, “He’s going to be great. Give him time or throw him to the wolves. He’s trash.” Tough place to be as a Vikings fan when you’re looking at going, “How did we get vaulted by maybe the worst team in the NFL last year arguably so quickly with the roster that we built?” But it also goes back if the scheme and the quarterback don’t marry, the personnel really doesn’t matter. And that’s why everyone you’re seeing with Jefferson and Addison and Hawin and all these weapons, everyone’s like, “Well, why do they suck all of a sudden?” It’s like, do they like do you really think they all just suck all of a sudden? Like they took this off seasonason off, they went to Cabo, jerked around and said like, “No, I’m not going to take it serious.” There there’s a missing piece there. And a lot of it is scheme and quarterback dependent. And Jefferson is to to me exhibit A. I mean, he’s absolutely fine. He’s still a superstar. You’re not using him correctly. But but this okay so the what happened in Chicago though gets back to what I think is the most interesting thing or one of them about the Vikings and it’s this is it if you were to consult the Vikings if they were to call you today and just ask you this question do you think that JJ McCarthy first of all has been how much do you think he has been damaged by this because I feel like they skip steps but also do you think that Kevin Oonnell and JJ McCarthy can or or do you think that the Vikings should go get a veteran quarterback again? Because quite frankly, I said this yesterday, I’m sort of done with Okonnell and young QBs after what I saw on Sunday with Brosmer. Like some of that was ridiculous. Like this guy is a UDFA. You can say he’s the smartest guy in forever. But but hype train was real. His brain’s like a computer guy. I’m not sure. It’s unbelievable. But where I love bro, but where would you stand on that question? Do you think in 2026 if we run it back, do you think it can work or is Kevin Oonnell incapable of being patient enough because Ben Johnson’s doing some really good good things? Namely, he’s running the football. Kevin doesn’t like to run the football, you know. Yeah. And I mean, I said that early before the season began and and we talked about I know line committee like, well, this team’s going to have to run. I was like, listen, the Tiger doesn’t change his stripes. It it just doesn’t happen. And Kevin just refuses to do it. And that’s okay. That’s that’s part of his DNA. To your question, I’ve wrestled with this myself and I really wish that JJ didn’t miss last week and I really wish that I could have seen him against that Seattle defense and and I would want to see him the rest of the way because I want to see if there’s any type of big jump here at the back end of the year because I I think back to guys like Bryce Young and I think back to, you know, even Caleb Williams towards the end of last year and Drake May towards the end of last year. It wasn’t pretty, but it was better. And there was a little bit of that like, okay, this is going to work. And then you look and see what Drake May has started and been able to do this year and what Bo Nicks was able to do on the last few weeks of his his run last year. And so I wanted to see if there was any of that with JJ McCarthy before I make that that decision. But if it’s if it’s a train wreck the rest of the way and you drop a game to the Commanders and you drop a game to the Giants and you know something like that happens, then at one point in time, similar to you guys with the intro, if you’re going to throw the same thing out there and expect a different result, what’s the what what’s the point of this? And you’re going to have you already going to have receivers, superstar receivers that are already slightly on edge. First time ever he didn’t talk to the press after a game, right? Like eventually the humbleness and the great teammateness of these these guys will boil over and I will throw you in front of a bus faster than I’ll throw myself in the bus if I’m oh hey JJ what’s going on man like your numbers are down you know it’s like have you seen who’s done these football I’ve got a child back there that can’t throw me the football what do you expect and that’s when things can really start to chasm I it’s hard for me to say I I don’t know if it’s going to work or not I’m still in the camp of I just don’t know what’s your sense about the patience though because my my whole thing is, and I keep saying this, I don’t think the Wolves can stomach this like like like from covering them and you played for them. Yeah. I don’t think they can stomach this and I don’t think that they can stomach the thought of you very well might have some of these same problems next season. As you know, they want to win now and they want to get in the playoffs. That that’s always been what I’ve been told. Oh, for sure. Get in the tournament and you can win the Super Bowl. Misguided maybe, but that’s their goal. So, so what is your opinion about what’s the appetite in that building to bring back McCarthy, start him again, and risk it not working? I feel like you almost you don’t really have a choice for next year in my opinion based off of how you structured your cap because you went with the cap plan of rookie scale quarterback for the next three years and you loaded everyone’s roster. I mean, I’m looking at cap hits for next year, and it’s like 21, 26, 24, 26, and you’re like, “Okay, well, where is the money in here to go buy that veteran quarterback like you’re talking about, Jud? It’s just not there.” And so, if I’m the Wolves, I pretty much call in Quy and I call in Kevin Okonnell and be like, “You made the bed. Deal with it and show me that you can do it. And if you can’t, then your jobs are on the line as well.” And so that’s probably where you have to look at it from that perspective because I don’t see a world in which you can go out and sure maybe you can trade for a Mac. Mac Jones, but is that really what you want to do? Is that is that the idea? And that’s the conversation that the Wolves are going to have to have is that is this a trade for M. Jones and try and win right now or we actually trying to build what we said we were going to build the day we drafted JJ McCarthy. Yeah. And the patience factor then goes down to what are the Wolf’s long-term goals versus the win now or win it all long term. And I don’t have a great answer for that. Yeah. To just to kind of build off that point, you’ve got and to bring the Jefferson thing in, your highest paid player is Justin Jefferson, who you are barely utilizing right now. So you’ve got the the the asset that you have decided financially we are going to put the the most chips in that on that table. You’re not really using him right now. So that’s like a wasted asset. I’m benching him in fantasy football, which is a crazy thing to say. I am benching him in J. He’s gotten like seven points. Like I know he was a first round draft pick. He’s on my bench. This is the fantasy playoffs coming up too, man. We got to figure this out. So you’ve got you’ve got this asset that you are pumping a ton of money into that you are underutilizing. You have a head coach play caller who who really has shown with a with a chance to maybe adapt has shown ah I’ve got a yolo passing game. It’s what won me 13 games in year one. It won me 14 games with Sam Darren last year and um I call the plays that I call. This is my system. And you have an ownership group that hates losing, hates being irrelevant, lacks patience in in good and bad ways. So, if if you got all these factors, it’s imperative that you have a quarterback that can step in and perform at a much higher level immediately in 2026 than you’ve had this year. So, okay, with that in mind, how confident are you that McCarthy can be that guy? Okay, dude, we need a much much higher level of performance. Right now, the confidence level is almost zero on that till we see more sample size, right? Uh but you’ve got these cap issues. So even if you wanted to trade for like a Kyler Murray or a Tua and buy low on one of those guys, that creates all sorts of cap hell that you were in with Kurt Cousins a while ago. So your options become pretty narrow. M. Jones is one of them because he’s on he’s got one more year left. If he plays well, you’d have to extend him at some number that’s well over $30 million probably. You might have to extend him before you trade for him. That could be part of, you know, like that’s part of that’s usually part of the agent demand is before you get the trade done, I want a long-term deal done with him and he’s going to command Sam Darnold money. Yeah, he is. He’s going to spend 30 million a year. And by the way, on on this note, too, let’s say so Daniel Jones is a is potentially a free agent. The Colts could franchise him, but that’s a big number around $50 million. We’ll see. If he gets franchised, he’s a Colt, I think. I don’t think anyone’s given up first round picks, but if he’s not franchised, the number is still like 35 or 40 million a year on him. And now you’re back in a similar bin. So that’s why and that’s why I’ve brought up Aaron Rogers. I think your options are really I’m just saying stop. I can’t hit the bell enough. Stop with the Aaron Rogers stuff. That’s not even a legal That’s an SFR spine. Stupid I don’t know how much I can cuss on this show. Stupid effing rookie, right? Like stop with the stop with the Aaron Rodgers nonsense. I will I will Where’s my helmet? If Aaron Rogers wears that helmet right there, I’m gonna drive to Minnesota and throw it at you. I’m just I can’t, dude. I can’t. It’s not my fault if that happens. I can’t. It is because you keep putting it out into the world. A lot of fans, a lot of our comments are also saying the exact same thing that Jeremiah is saying to Phil that Phil, please stop talking about Hey, listen. Don’t kill the messenger. I’m giving you their options. I would rather have Carson Wentz back than Aaron Rogers. His arm being shot helps it. It It Carson Wentz or Aaron Rogers. Well, both of them, but uh but in Rogers case, his arm is shot enough that I I don’t think he can drive the ball down the field. M. Jones is gonna be the VI. Has the writing ever been more on the wall? And that is that is the issue. The the the the pool is not deep. No. Right. The pool is not deep. The draft class is terrible. Right. And I mean, unless you think you can go trade and and fix Shadur Sanders or, you know, go pick one of those young quarterbacks up that are still out there or I mean, an like you brought up Anthony Richardson, but even that that doesn’t fit the skill set. And anyone that can run this offense is not going to walk out of someone else’s building. And I I just I truly believe that if you have a quarterback that can run the type of offense Kevin Oonnell wants to run, he’s not walking out of someone else’s organization unless it’s M. Jones and they already have a guy. Like that’s a unique circumstance. Wait, wait, wait. As far as I’m concerned though, like let’s not talk about the draft. I’m not unless you’re giving me unless you are giving me a pro readymade best quarterback generational talent. I’m not drafting this guy a quarterback again. Like like he he doesn’t have the patience. Like McCarthy might suck. At the end of the day, he might be terrible. Okay? But what we’re seeing like I’m telling you, the bromer experience is very instructive. He is bound and determined to give you the entire playbook, install it all like you said, Jeremiah, and then you go to work. He will ruin other he like this is very important quarterback whisper with a veteran guy. That’s it. The first 23 plays of that game on Sunday, you’re in Seattle. You’re on the road. It’s December. You have an undrafted rookie free agent quarterback and the left side of your offensive line is hurt. And they called 17 dropbacks in the first 23 plays. That’s wild. Is that not crazy? It’s I mean you and I and and I’ve heard you talk about it about the third and shorts and stuff like that and the first third and short we have we throw that pass and I text you I was like I feel like you can’t make this crap up. Like it’s just it’s it’s almost to the point now where you’re like is he just doing this on purpose? Like I really don’t understand the idea there. And it also goes back to that I don’t know why he believes what he sees in practice in week 13 is going to translate to the game on Sunday. There are no full speed reps in practice in week 13. No one is running full speed cuz everyone is broken and they’re all just waiting to get to Saturday night, get their vitamin shot, and roll into Sunday morning. Like that’s how this time of the year goes, man. It’s you can’t think what you see in practice is what’s going to happen in the game. And so when you put the young kid out there with Brosmer and you just ask him to start slinging it all over the yard, I don’t really know what he thought was going to happen. And then obviously Greg Olsen’s talking before the game like there’s some people in the building that think that this guy is like more prepared and more I’m like why would you say that about him? You’re just setting him up for failure. I’d rather you be like, “Hey, we’re really concerned about how this is going to go.” Rather than go the other way. Like just be honest. Be like, “Hey, this is going to be it’s his first road start, first time in the NFL. We’re not sure what this is going to look like.” instead of just pumping the hype train. Here’s here’s one of the reasons why uh Jeremiah I don’t know that you can bring McCarthy back though as your starter. It’s Jefferson. Yeah. How how do you sell him be? Because I mean he is a good sport man. He doesn’t talk publicly. The fact that he walked out on Sunday and didn’t speak spoke volumes probably more than if he had said let’s get our effing quarterback act together. But all of that being said, you know that he’s in Okonnell’s office. He probably called the wolfs. I mean, he’s got more power than So, so how do you justify that? Like, like how how do you say, “Well, ju Justin, we’re up against the cap and we think he might be okay.” Like, literally, you have taken a career, your careers aren’t long, and you have taken a career of one of of a Hall of Fame receiver. You’ve put it in the toilet, and you’ve hit the flush. That’s a Yeah. And that’s the thing is when you pay guys like that, you give them power. you give them power in the organization and rightfully so. I mean, just like in Buffalo when they had Josh Allen in the draft room and they’re like, “Hey, we’re thinking about taking this guy. What do you think?” Face of the franchise, keys of the car. You do that with a guy like Jefferson. And it’s so hard because you don’t know what publicly what Jefferson thinks about JJ. Like, is there something going on where he’s like, “Man, I think JJ’s close and I see it in practice and the cork’s about to pop or whatever it might be.” But I I really do believe that if Jefferson walks into his exit meeting and goes, “Hey, I love it here. Y’all paid me a bunch of money, if JJ’s the starting quarterback and you don’t bring in someone here. I’m not coming to OTAAS. I’ll see you in the season. I’ll come. I’ll do my job, but I’m not coming to OTAAS. I’ll I’ll be here for camp and then maybe if that doesn’t go well, the trade request rumors might leak from my camp.” Right? Just be honest with them. And those things are not unwarranted. If I’m JJ McCarthy, if I’m Justin Jefferson and I know that I have a terrible year where I’m not might not even make the Pro Bowl. I might make the Pro Bowl strictly because my name’s Justin Jefferson and that’s a popularity contest more than it is a numbersbased thing now. But you’re talking about a guy that was all pro bowl to people are now asking if he’s washed. Like that stuff can’t happen and it shouldn’t allow and he him and his camp should not allow that to happen. And they should go in there and say, “Okay, what’s the plan? What are we thinking?” Or else I’m going to be I’m going to be upset. Can we do some uh some bonus dumb football questions? Some crossover dumb football questions here, Jeremiah. Okay, football. I got one. There’s one one that I’d love to bring up from a commenter here, too. Uh after we shout out uh let’s start with underdog here, Dex. A place to have some fun watching football. That’s right. Sign up with uh with promo code score and uh play your first $5, 100 bucks in bonus entries, riding higher or lower on so many different things. It was feast week last week in the underdog lobby with with it being a turkey day and Thanksgiving. Uh but you can still get with your notifications on boosts and tokens and things in your lobby plus breaking news. Sometimes they they beat Twitter to me when it comes to breaking news. It’s crazy. Uh so sign up at promo code score at underdog and get in the fun action on the pickham side high or lower on so many different things. Also uh Roku is the official TV of Purple Daily here, the official sports watching TV. And Roku makes it so easy in a day and age now where with all these all the different leagues have different partnerships with nine different networks and streaming platforms and you got College Bull season coming up and sometimes it’s hard to figure out what platform or channel is a game on. And Roku for sports fans, they have a sports specific section on their home page or their menu that uh that that guides you to the games, the leagues, the teams if you want uh that are your favorites to watch. And this time of year, it’s great. It recommends based on your viewing habits, too. So, it knows that Hello, Mr. Mackey. Here is the football game tonight. Here is the basketball game tonight. Oh, and here is the uh the Christmas jazz Ulog channel for uh background music. It’s just recommending things all throughout uh the day. Better TV for everyone with Roku, America’s number one streaming platform. Go to roku.com to learn more or shop at a retailer near you. Okay. Dumb football question number one from Xavier Whitcraft on YouTube. Oh, cool. Whip. This one came in a few weeks ago. You can’t have dumb football questions without Whitcraft says, “What really is the difference between left guard, left tackle, right guard, right tackle? They seem to fill the same role. But what makes it hard to switch between being a tackle and a guard and from left to right? Yeah, I’ll start with the left to right. I mean, if you’ve done something on one side of the ball for, say, your entire college career or a majority part of your NFL career, muscle memory is a real thing, right? Muscle memory of how I strike, how I move, how I set. Like, it’s a very real thing. And you want that to be a big piece of your game because you don’t want every single play to be thinking about, okay, load my left leg, throw my right hand. And like that has just become natural because the dude across from you that you’re fighting is reacting to you and you’re reacting to them. You don’t have time to be thinking about mechanically what you’re doing is also trying to fight Miles Garrett. Uh I mean anyone pick one of the monsters, Dexter Lawrence, whatever it might be. You you don’t have time to be thinking so much about yourself that you’re worried about them. And so when you all of a sudden flip sides, right? I always tell people, I use the analogy of like, hey, if I go from right guard to left guard. Yeah, it’s the same stuff, but it’s the idea of like when I get done taking a poop, I wipe with my off hand. Like, you have to think about that. And then you have to mechanically go, how does that how does that make sense? Like, how do I get through this? Like, it it it seems so simple, but when I I had to do it when I had shoulder surgery and it’s a disaster. Like, it’s not it’s wipe with your hand. Wipe with your off hand. Next time you go to the bathroom, just like don’t even think about it. Just grab with your off hand and be like, “Do you ever have Do you ever have walk-offs where you’re you you know, you’ve been eating clean for a few days and you’re like, I think that’s a walk-off.” Not often. No. I mean, it got to the point when I had shoulder surgery. I just got in the shower cuz I was like, “Okay, I can’t do this.” I I have takes I have takes in this really quickly. Trevor Plof, our guy, went on a whole rant on talking baseball this week because he was in Japan. And I I’ve been team on this for years. Team bedet. I’ve had betay in every bathroom that I own. I it it is a life-changing experience. You are a caveman when you have to do that now outside your house. It’s already uncomfortable to do that. Beday team beds. We as as an American society, we have gone backwards with toilets. Why have we not? Let’s get a bedet sponsor. Let’s get a bedet sponsor. And let’s let’s get all over that cuz I’m here for that. But yeah, so back to your point. Like yeah, chafing’s a problem. Chafing is a huge problem, too. Little gold bond. I hate chafing. That skin is not that skin’s not like your normal skin. That’s all I got to say. Don’t worry, Mackie. You’ll figure it out. It’s more sensitive. It’s super sensitive, right? Little baby paddle, a little gold bond, little bedet action. Call it a night, right? So, you flip sides back and forth. And so, that it just muscle memory then it goes from like mentally you know how to do all of those things, but then as you’re on the left side, you’re like, “Hey, that play call that I’ve heard a thousand times, which meant set with my and step with my right foot now means step with my left foot.” And so you’re thinking about that from a mechanic standpoint and it makes you half a step slower and you have to then retrain a lot of your body mechanically and it just takes time to readjust and readapt to, right? And so that’s the switching from right to left. Now switching from guard to tackle in my opinion is actually much harder because it’s a timing issue, right? It’s a timing thing. At tackle you have time and space and distance and you get time to read what he’s doing and he reads what you’re doing. you can change and you can eat up that distance and you can move different ways. You move inside, those dudes are right there and everything’s happening so much faster. Contact’s quicker, you throw in your hands faster, the stunts, the movements, the linebackers come into play a whole lot more. It’s a timing issue. And when you have to speed up timing and you’re used to, if you’re playing tackle and you’re used to taking this big kick set and pushing yourself back and creating that space to all of a sudden it’s a 6in step and that dude’s right there in your teeth, that timing takes reps and reps and reps to get time with. And so when you especially then you go into center, I can remember one of the first times I ever played center in a game, I wanted to like push the nose guard away from me and be like, “Dude, back up.” Like you’re right here. like I can like like because you have the ball and so that neutral zone is nothing and so everything even speeds up more and more in that respect. So it’s just a timing and a feel thing and the more you can stay on one spot and want to do you can hone those skills and when you move it over you don’t lose those skills you just basically have to retrain the muscle memory in your brain to be able to highle function at that ability. Yeah I love that. It’s so it’s not that hard. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. I mean this sounds pretty simple. Not that big I mean, that’s why guys like Blake Brandle and guys like myself stayed in the league as long as we did. I trained myself to play all five, right? It wasn’t easy. And it’s why I I was never great at all five of them, but I was serviceable at all five. And as a backup in this league, if you can do that, you’re very valuable because it’s hard. A lot of guys can’t. I can’t tell you how many guys I played with, they’re like, “Dude, I I can’t I cannot go on the left side. Like, I physically just it just doesn’t work in my body.” It’s like, okay, you’re a right side only player. Well, if you’re not a starter or an immediate too deep, you’re probably off the team, right? And so there there’s a give and take to both those things. Either be great and leave a guy there, let him grow, be great, or you have to be versatile, and then that’s a hard thing to do. What what was the hardest one? So, of all the positions, was there one of Left tackle thing? And left left tackle is a different beast. It’s a totally different ballgame because the defense knows it. That’s the quarterback’s blind side. It’s usually their best defensive rusher. It’s usually where they try and scheme things to blitz and come off that edge and you know it’s just every single play you’re going against arguably the best player on their defense. I have a I have a a follow-up dumb question that kind of kind of broadens this out. Uh and you I thought you did a really good job on O line committee this week explaining that cuz I was saying okay for young players like for McCarthy for example as a quarterback but this could apply to any position. You have to balance being patient. Like these aren’t these guys aren’t walking in the league usually and just like boom, you pick up everything pre- snap, post snap speed, everything. So you got to be patient, but also the league moves fast. Mhm. Year two, year three of a contract, we’re not going to wait 10 years for you. and you demonstrated, for example, like an offensive lineman coming into the league and what they might have had in their head uh and what they’re supposed to look at in college versus NFL and the gap between even just like the language to identify what’s happening. So, my dumb football question is, can you contextualize for our non NFL playing audience some of the things that might be going through a young player’s head walking up to the line of scrimmage as a first or second year player and and what that processing is like versus a guy who’s been in the league for seven or 10 years. Absolutely. Yeah. It I mean, it’s night and day. And I think Mitch Morris said it beautifully when we had him on the line committee. He goes, “By the time your brain actually understands football to the highest level, very rarely can your body do it anymore, unless you’re incredibly special.” And so, if you’re a young player at any position, you come from college where you are probably the best player, one of the best players on your team, probably in your conference and arguably one of the best players in college football if you’re being immediate day one starter. And so, you’re used to beating people up physically and you’re used to walking up to the line of scrimmage and knowing what was going on. and you get into the NFL and the first thing they do is slap down this giant playbook in front of you and go, you got to know all of it, right? Because one thing we’re going to install here in week one of OTAAS might be something we don’t play again and we’ll check to in week 14 and we’re going to need to have it. And so the first thing is the mental aspect of it. You understand that week by week the game plan changes. It’s not like when you’re at Michigan and you’re like we’re just going to steamroll over everyone. It doesn’t really matter who’s in front of us or what scheme they run. We’re going to do what we do. It doesn’t work like that in the NFL. You have to game plan every single week. And so mentally, you’re trying to catch up and understand checks and kills and formations and there’s 10 or 15 different snap counts. Like I don’t think people understand that. Like green, gold, black, brown, like all those colors mean something. And so you have to understand all the snap counts and on the quick and on the on the Delta and on the Rambo or whatever it might be. So then you’re learning all of that piece there from the snap counts perspective. And that’s before we’ve even installed a play, right? That’s before it’s like how we get in the huddle and all those things. And then you get into the play calling. And college play calling is so simple. I mean, I can remember for me, I didn’t have to understand formations. I didn’t have to understand who the mic of the defense was. I just looked to the sideline and they would go, “Hey, two lock.” And I was like, “Okay, we’re running inside zone to the right and they’re locking the backside tight end. Sweet.” Right? That’s all that mattered. And now you have to go, “Hey, we have to know what the formation is, what the personnel grouping is. We have to be able to identify the mic. We have to identify who’s the nickel. And you’re going, okay, well, why does that matter? It’s like, well, this is a track play, so we’re going to identify just tracks and we’re just go to people. Or this is a man identified play, so we have to know. We have to go which linebacker and safety, who’s involved in the count, who’s not involved in the count. And you’re just kind of like, wow, okay, sounds the play clock is at 9. And this is all like, okay, this is cool. And then you get out to training camp like, oh yeah, yeah, by the way, that’s Grard. He was an allp pro last year and you’re going to have to block him if you want to play in this league. And so then physically you’re getting your teeth kicked in because you’ve never seen speed like that before. Mentally you’re doing all kinds of gymnastics trying to get everything put back together there. And ultimately you play slow, right? When when you don’t feel confident because you’re not 100% confident in what you’re doing and how you’re going to do it, you’re going to not play like I don’t I think this is what I’m doing. I’m not sure. And you play slow in the NFL and that guy’s playing fast, you’re dead. And so all of that stuff is really hard and and again it’s not an excuse because everyone has to go through it. But to your point, Mackey, the league rolls on and if you show me in year 1, two, and three that you can’t do that, I’m leaving you behind and finding someone else that will. And unfortunately with the quarterback position, all of that is magnified by a hundred. All of that from a processing speed is times a thousand because every coordinator knows you’re young. Every defensive linebacker who’s been in this league for a long time knows you’re young and they’re going to mess with you. And so you see that and it’s why young quarterbacks really struggle early on and it’s why some of them tank and never make it out. And it’s why some of them eventually claw their way back and go, “Okay, it took Sam Darnold six years, but he figured it out. It took it took Baker Mayfield a long time, but he figured it out.” The question then becomes for Vikings fans, are we willing to wait that long? You know what I’d rather do at this point? I I I’m kind of like full circle where even if I I do believe that there’s a future for McCarthy, I’m kind the league has kind of come around so much with like lack of patience. Why don’t maybe maybe he failed here for now and he can go somewhere else for like four years and then we can grab him for a discount on the back end when he’s 26 years old just like Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield and Daniel Jones. That might be the play. actually it it’s it’s a hard place to be as an organization because you want to draft the young quarterback and you want the rookie scale contract and we can build around and whatever it might be, but the rookies just aren’t ready to play. It’s just it’s just not like Jaden Daniels was great and he was amazing last year and then he tried to run and coordinators knew he’s going to run this year. So what’ they do? They broke him, right? Hey, Jaden runs this year, hit him as hard as humanly possible. Like everyone’s going to continue to get better and so it’s just a matter of those things. The patience level for the quarterback position has never been lower. And unfortunately, development is not linear. It doesn’t just climb and climb and go like this and straight up like it’s ups and downs. But unfortunately for JJ McCarthy right now, it’s been way more downs than ups. Hey, I I got one more because unfortunately also the quarterback um discussions have led to like that’s it. We’re talking quarterback quarterback quarterback. But there’s other things here and I got a question for you Christian Darasaw. Mh. What’s your take on this entire thing? Because I feel like he he has spoken a couple of times and defended himself. Said, “I was back a month before I was supposed to be back. I am playing, but you know, the knee’s not great.” Do you think he got thrown to the wolves here? This kid was out there in the spring or this guy was out there in the spring. I I for a star left tackle, I just think it’s a very interesting and probably under discussed storyline about his season as a whole, what he was coming off of and what the ask was for him to play very quickly. Yeah. And I think I know I’ve read quite a few things like, “Hey, what’s wrong with Christian Darasaw, right?” Like, “Why isn’t And I It goes back to people have to understand when you have a season ending injury like that, it throws everything off, right? Your whole off season is no longer what a normal off season is. So much of what January, February, and March is is not about it’s not college, bigger, faster, stronger, protein, right? It’s about getting your body back, right? Because when you’re performing at the highest level like like Christian Darasaw is, he doesn’t have to just get in the weight room and live in the weight room and get so much stronger. It’s about getting my body back to baseline. Hey, I know here it’s about maintaining. It’s about lifting. It’s about running and doing what I’ve done in my routine for years and years and years. You throw a season ending injury in there and now it’s all rehab in the off seasonason, other parts of your body are going to suffer. You can’t run for months on an ACL, an MCL. You can’t squat like you normally can. You can lift upper body, but you can’t do the things of your technique and your training. And so then when you’re trying to come back from that, sometimes it’s not about the injury, it’s about the rest of your body and it’s about trusting it up between your ears. And so when you’re a hyper competitor and your your team needs you and your coach is having conversations with you off on the side, any guy in the NFL is never going to be like, “Oh, I’m just going to sit and wait. We all want to be on that field. We all are hyper competitive people.” And so for him to come back as early as he did is a testament to how hard he worked, but also it shows you how much and how important a full year of being able to come back off an injury like that is actually important. And so I reserve all judgments for Christian Darasaw till 2026. I think him even coming back and playing at all this year was awesome of him. And I think he would have been well within his bounds to not play until like week 10 of this year and be like, “No, I’m not coming back out there until I am 100%.” Because if he’s looking around going, I want to be like Trent Williams. I want to play till I’m 37. The hell am I coming out here for a 4 and 8 football team right now? Like if this is Super Bowl playoffbound, like anyone can strap it up, brace it up, take the shot, and roll. If you’re trying to be like, “Listen, I want to be an allp pro in this league and I know I can be for a long time.” His main concern right now needs to be his health. And I know Vikings fans don’t want to hear that, but that is a business decision you have to make as a player in this league. And protein. Football. Protein. Always protein. Protein. Yeah. Great stuff, dude. Jeremiah, O line committee. Uh, are you still are you guys still doing Sad Nebraska podcast now or are those over? Yeah. No, we we still got we got National Signing Day was today. So, I get to go break down high school O line tape. Yay. and explain why they’re going to be good. I I don’t know. I thought I thought until you transfer portal, baby. Oh, trust me. Screw recruiting. It’s all about the transfer portal. I’m kneede in the transfer portal now. Are we By the way, is Penn State still looking for a coach? Are we are we safe on the Matt rule thing for you guys? Oh, yeah. He’s we we extended him. We didn’t give him a raise, but we extended him and made his buyout huge. And so I think, you know, it was just more of a securing him. But I mean, Penn State, what are we doing, boys? I mean, you fire Franklin without someone just sitting in the wings and you’re just ready to like usher in. I just knocked everything over, right? You’re not ready to just usher everything in and then you swing in a miss on everyone. I saw a rank I saw a picture today. Their recruiting class right now was with like the Montana Grizzlies, Gramling State, and like other FCS programs are where they’re ranking right now. They have zero early signing day people today. Penn State, I don’t know what that happened up there, but I mean, I don’t think there’s a sexy coach out there right now that they’re going to be excited to go and get, and it’s a crazy world. They’re calling on DJ Fleck as we speak. I would not be shocked. I would not be I kind of I kind of called that immediately. I was like, listen, you want to bring a culture guy and all that, but I mean, I don’t know how many people in Happy Valley are going to read everybody poops, but hey, everyone can figure it out on their own. Uh, I wouldn’t be shocked if they if they put a phone call in there. We’ll see. But all right, Jay, awesome stuff. Jeremiah Sills, O line committee, uh, three days a week during the season, plus film breakdowns. And you can find that on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify for the Sports Dad Jud for the Real Dad decks. I am Phil and we’ll see you guys tomorrow. We just want the Vikings win Super Bowl before we die. Don’t touch. Probably not going to happen anytime soon.

Minnesota Vikings needed to simplify things; Why the Vikings should’ve asked less of JJ McCarthy; Are the Vikings facing a long road of returning to contention in the NFC North; How patient will Vikings leaders be with this plan; Plus, we have dumb football questions with Jeremiah Sirles on Purple Daily.

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