Should Minnesota Vikings BAIL on JJ McCarthy?; Week 13 NFL picks!

Should Minnesota Vikings BAIL on JJ McCarthy?; Week 13 NFL picks!

It’s three guys who combined to play 15 seasons in the National Football League trenches. Well, two guys and Mackey who didn’t do This is the O line committee. All right, boys. Hello. We’re a day early here. Giving people a chance to settle in for some greaturkey football, by the way. Great matchups. I’m so by the way, Burrow back at night. Tell me this Ravens game didn’t just get electrifying. And then the Chiefs Cowboys in terms of like there there’s projections it might be the biggest in the history of NFL football on TV that might be like challenge for the biggest audience. Let’s go right you guys get these bandwagon Chiefs fans, bandwagon Cowboys fans, people just watching football. So we’ll get to dumb football questions. We’ll get to our picks after uh I give a shout out here real quick to underdog. So if you’re looking to make it’s already a fun football weekend. If you’re looking to make it even more fun, why don’t you fire open that underdog app where you can go look at individual players like Patrick Mahomes and you can see that he’s listed at 267.5 passing yards and you can pick higher or lower on stats like that. George Pickins 74.5 receiving yards higher. Jir Gibbs 71.5 rushing yards higher. I’m not saying you go higher on everything because it’s probably how you don’t win money. Uh, if you get your picks right, you could win up to 5,000 times your cash on the Underdog app. Download the app, sign in or sign up with the promo code Oline, and you get a $100 in bonus entries when you play your first $5. That’s promo code Oline where you can also help the show. And we’re told that you guys have done that in droves through the first couple weeks here. So, thank you. Uh, underdog, make picks, win money. must be 18 plus, 19 plus in Alabama and Nebraska, 19 plus in Colorado for some games. 21 plus in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Virginia, and present in a state where underdog fantasy operates. Terms apply. See assets. Underdog fantasy.com/web/playander terms_fs_.html for details. Offer not valid in Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Concerned with your play, call 1800gambler or visit www.ncpgambling.org in New York or call the 247 hope at 18778y or text hopey to 467369. All right, boys. So, I’m going to read you two questions to start with. Dumb football questions from our text message thread this morning. And I don’t know if you guys have seen this, but the JJ McCarthy stuff is the biggest na besides like Chiefs Cowboys. Diana Merci had a big story about the Vikings quarterback situation. Mike Florio had a big story this morning about the direction of the franchise. get up on ESPN did like so in addition to like the teams that are actually winning and competing at a high level and the Vikings quarterback situation is top of the news nationally right now and so Jeremiah so let me set this up and you guys can answer the questions so I tweeted last night listen I know all the red flags he’s been historically putrid through six games uh there’s two years burned from the rookie scale contract clock the dude gets a new injury every 15 minutes feels like the team is kind of internally losing some confidence in him. There’s all these red flags and I’m saying I acknowledge those, but I mean I’m not like in a rush to trade a third round pick for M. Jones necessarily. So, I’m willing to just like see if we can get to 15 or 20 games. Uh, so Jay, you texted me after I went to bed last night said, “Do you really believe this this crap that you’re spewing?” And I said, “I mean, listen, I’m not I’m not smart enough to say after six games, yep, that that dude’s a bust.” because after nine games of like Jordan Love and Sam Darnold and Baker Mayfield and Daniel Jones, I was like, “Well, those guys are bust until they’re not.” And so, I’m willing to be kind of patient. And you asked, and this is the dumb football question, no disrespect to you. It’s a good question. Are you willing to wait as long as it took some of those other guys to snap out of it? And I said, well, I don’t want to wait 5 years, but I am willing to see more than six games. So, that’s I want to take Jay’s question and pose it to the group here. How long should the Vikings be willing to wait beyond the six games at this point? Is it don’t wait anymore, just move on to your next thing? Or does JJ McCarthy deserve some runway in 2026? Hold on. Jay’s muted. Hold on, Jay. That’s a Jay’s muted fine right there. You’re muted fine for sure. Sorry, that was that was making sure you guys weren’t listening to me just munch on my trail mix. Um, here’s where I’m kind of at with it. the more we’ve talked about it, the more I’ve sat with it, the more I’ve thought about it is we I watched this happen with I’m gonna use Zach Wilson as an example, right? We watched the first six, eight games of his career be a disaster in New York, not good. And everyone kind of said the same thing. Well, let’s see what it can be. Are we so certain? And what have we seen that makes us so certain that even in the next six to eight games out of we see of McCarthy or 10 games that it’s going to be better? Because we all believed at the beginning part of this year if JJ can just not wreck the car, this team can win football games. And it has been as historically bad as it could possibly be through the first six starts of his career. There’s a benchmark in the NFL that you must reach to be called a starting quarterback. And you just you have to reach that floor to be able to be there. And historically, the players that have come into this league and not even been able to reach that floor in their first six to eight games have not historically panned out. And JJ is so far away from that floor. And I don’t fault JJ. I I don’t I don’t fault JJ for this. You know, the more I think about it and the more I look at it, I go, “Okay, he was drafted 10th overall. He’s the youngest player like in the NFL. He’s got some immaturity issues. He’s got some things he’s got to learn and got to grow up.” But not a single time did someone ever give me an excuse in the NFL. Not once. I was never given a oh well maybe if you do this and you do that. This is a performancedriven what have you done for me lately league. What has he done for us lately? It’s been historically almost the worst quarterback play we have ever seen. He’s got to take a seat. You’ve got to find a replacement. And you’ve got to see, can we fix this? Not on Sunday afternoons. And until we get to that point, I think if you keep throwing him out there and he’s playing at this level, it’s just going to make it worse for him. And it won’t actually make it better for him. I think Jay has a great point there is if he continues to go out and play the way that he is. Like the benchmark for me is almost like should do what Shadur did last week. You have to have like what would we go 11 for 20 and a touchdown and interception. It’s like that’s serviceable, right? 200 yards. You’re like, “Okay, that’s serviceable. That’s serviceable. I can win with that, right? A Judkins can run the ball into the end zone how many times in a Wildcat Force and win this this game? 10 sacks and you’re good to go. That’s another thing like you need a really dominant defense to have a serviceable quarterback. Like your defense has to be super 2001 Ravens, right? Their offense was like 13 to 10 wins and the defense was just killing people and you were like, “All right, this is great.” 87 yards in a game is like, dude, what? I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen that number. And I’m not just picking on one game. I’m looking at it going, I understand what Jay says by the benchmark. You’re not hitting the benchmark of like, you can continue to keep this job. We need to look elsewhere. The only reason we’re not is because you are the number eight overall pick and this is really going to hurt us. Whatever it is, it’s going to hurt us when we do this. But I feel like other teams have kind of lessened the blow. Like you look at down at the Colts, they gave up right away on Anthony Richardson. They were like, “Sorry, bro. We’re not even going to do this. We’re going to go with this guy instead because he gives us a better chance to win.” What’s so wrong with going, “Okay.” Barring the fact that this kid’s hurt every 5 minutes, too. Like, that’s another thing that kind of annoys you is like, you can’t make a determination and we’re almost two years in because he’s not been on the field enough. And it’s like, there’s your number one reason why we’re moving on, dude. You’re not even able to play this game. We’re paying you a lot of money to not play. and eventually you’re going to hurt this team when you need to lose this cap number and it jumps up astronomically and we’re looking at ourselves going, “What the hell? We didn’t even get anything. We got a bunch of backups out of this.” But what’s so wrong with going out and trading for a Mac Jones, right? Here’s what I would say to the owners and the fans. Listen, we’re going to trade for M. Jones for an open competition next year. We’re hoping that Mack wins the job. We’re hoping that JJ wins the job. Doesn’t matter. But in the sense that JJ does win the job, we’re worried that his health going forward. He has been historically hurt a lot and we’re going to need somebody behind him that we know can step into a game and win games for us and not miss a beat. It’s one of the things that you’re kind of like, listen, it’s going to soften the blow of the fact that yeah, we’re trying to get Mack to run this team. Why? Because there’s not enough young quarterbacks coming out this year. And two, the quarterback market is never good because if you’re good, you’re locked up. If you’re somewhat adequate, you’re locked up. But there are a few names being thrown around that you’re kind of like, wait a minute. Now, I’m not saying that like all of them, and I’m trying to think of who it was that I saw. It was uh Kyler Murray was one that I saw thrown around, which is absolutely not. You know how I feel about that. Call of Duty coming out and it would just be So, you’re a no on on buying low on Kyler Murray if you’re the Vikings. You’re veryish. I am so no on it. It’s like, listen, go play baseball, dude. Do the baseball thingy. You can roll out. I think Anthony Richardson was one of the choices and it was like, listen, we’re going to pass on that as well. But well, if you think McCarthy has bad accuracy, unless Anthony Richardson has taken some steps, but he’s a bigger bigger better athlete, too. Dude, we sat on this show last year or maybe even two years ago and we’re like, “Oh, Anthony Richardson, 52% completion percentage. Get him the hell off the field.” Right. It’s the same conversation. Exactly. It’s a It’s the same conversation. What happened to Anthony Richardson his first year in the league? Oh, I can run over everyone. Crunch. Brokes his shoulder. You can’t just develop when you’re, it’s the old adage, you can’t make the club in the tub, right? You can’t develop if you’re not on the field. And you don’t develop on Sundays and the rate in which he needs to develop. You can grow on Sundays if you have the skill set and you have everything going. He’s so far away from the development for me, like he’s so far away from the benchmark that putting him out there on Sundays is actually doing him at a detriment in his development. Instead of, hey, we’re still talking on by week about footwork and fundamentals. Like, you should be development should be reading defenses, seeing the corners, seeing the safeties, understanding the route option concepts, killing it from a three technique to a nose. That’s development. When we’re talking about building block fundamentals as a quarterback on by-week, that’s not development for me. That means that you’re so far away from being the guy that we need to take a full step back and reevaluate who is quarterbacking this football team. Well, did you see that was I went and looked it up. Some of the names being thrown around were Davis Mills, Joe Flacco. Stop. Well, instantly you start talking about like, oh man, some guys that like to throw the ball. By the way, Davis Mills did not look bad the other day. I hate to tell you on that Thursday game when he beat your Bills, bro. I don’t know if you saw that game. But they did lose. And I’m almost positive that KC’s been known to be this. I’m going to bring back this back. You and I have given our takes here. I want to hear Phil. I want to hear where you truly like you’ve heard our argument. You’ve heard our argument. You probably agree with some of ours, but I really want to know like what what is making you be like something will change with him in the next 10 to 12 starts. I will admit, much like a lot of things, we’ve been doing this podcast for three football seasons, the three of us, and you guys have this is where there’s a point where my knowledge about what’s possible with professional football players development wise, tools wise. I mean, you guys make the joke all the time, which isn’t really a joke, that some a lot of people are just disqualified from being an NFL player on their birthday. Like, oh, sorry. Yeah, doesn’t look like you’re going to be lost at birth genetically. Yeah. Um, and so like as I as I listen to what you guys are saying, if if smarter people than me when it comes to NFL development say, cuz my stance is I know how bad he’s been the first six games, but he was also deemed not just by the Vikings, a top half of the first round talent that that that is going to be given the keys to a franchise that with a with a profile like that, I’m willing to let it play out beyond six starts, provided the guy can get back on the field, which is of 100% valid concern. And I’m saying I think there’s a chance that he could overcome a really bad start and become a good quarterback maybe like halfway through 2026. And I’m willing to let that play out because I don’t think M. Jones for one year changes your franchise beyond, oh, now you’re back in like the wild card mix with nine wins. I don’t really care about that. I want to win a Super Bowl. Um, and so that’s where I’m at is I’m willing to like I’m willing to ride this over the cliff and be really bad if needed in 2026 for a good draft class in 2027. Bill, this is why you are the seriously a Minnesota fan because you keep kicking this can down the road. But we’ll do another we will just do the super noon kicking the the Minnesota thing is moving off of the quarterback after to run the quarterback. Look at it. Look at Kirk Cousins. You guys stayed on him forever. It never went about that four years. I Well, we all did, but everybody else was like, “This is great.” And it was like, “It’s not though. It’s great until it gets serious and then it’s not.” We’re kind of telling you, yes, let this play out the rest of the year just like you wanted to. There’s, by the way, there’s nowhere to go. Max Bromer, JJ Martel’s, hate to tell you, bud, that is it. There’s nobody else coming for you, right? What you do on the practice? You’re not understanding, man. There’s no quarterbacks in the draft next year that you’re like, we can plant our flag on this guy and create a controversy in this room over this guy. But what you can do is go, what do these veterans do I like that can come in here and sling the ball for me? You’re Jay was right. He’s never going to change. He’s never going to run the ball 60 times a game to just get through a win, right? He’s never going to grind out a win. He’s like, it’s got to look beautiful. I got you, Justin. It’s going to look beautiful. Don’t worry. Right? Go find somebody then that makes it look beautiful and be like, “Hey, you’re going to also compete with this kid, but you’re going to aka you’re going to teach him, right? Cuz we can’t we don’t want to lose JJ. Yeah, we can’t cut him, but you’re going to teach him whether and this is going to sound stupid, but no offense. It’s Joe Flacco, whether it’s Davis Mills. Remember, you are not going to be able to go get who you want. You’re not going to be like, “Hey, Josh Allen, come here. Let me talk to you real quick.” Right? That’d be great. It’s never happening. So, you have to look at what you have and go, “How do we make this competitive?” Because if Justin Jefferson on the outside starts to even get a sniff that he doesn’t like it here, he’s going to start talking to his teammates and they’re not going to want to be here with him, right? And then all of a sudden, the word gets out in the league and it’s like, “This place sucks, man. Don’t come here.” You don’t want that. So, you have to keep being competitive. When you’re not even competitive, that’s when the former players go, “This is bad.” That’s what happened last week. That was not competitive football at all. In no way were the Packers even like, “Dude, we don’t even have to play this game. Are you serious? This kid can’t even throw it from here to there without taking a sack or giving it to us. So, could the as we talk through this and you guys are my therapists here trying to work through this yet another Vikings quarterback fork in the road here, dead end, whatever it is. Is it could you So, the the the Packers two different times in 20 years have drafted a guy in the first round and then they just stashed Rogers 20 years ago and Jordan Love for three years. And I felt and I’ve criticized them for especially with Jordan Love. Like the minute that you get to look at him for 10 games, now it’s time to pay him $55 million. I don’t like that. But they’re competing and they have a chance to win a Super Bowl. Um could you could you essentially say, “All right, well that was bad for five or six games and it just you’re mechanically, mentally, there’s just some things here that uh just aren’t good and you can’t stay on the field. We’re not cutting you. You’ll be the backup quarterback. You brought up Zach Wilson earlier and that’s a tale that didn’t end well for the Jets or Zach Wilson to this point uh for Zach Wilson. We’re going to try the Aaron Rogers thing or we’re going to trade for M. Jones and and JJ’s going to sit for his third year as as if the second year never happened. Go back on the Jordan Love plan and we’ll we’ll talk to you in your fourth year and see what happens. I mean, is that a viable Well, that was what was supposed to happen last year. Like, that was the plan for last year. You didn’t bring Sam Darnold in for $10 million to not start him over JJ McCarthy, right? The plan was to bring Sam Darnold in, start Sam Darnold, give JJ a red shirt year in the NFL, understand what it means to get through a practice, how to game plan, how to do all the things it is to be an NFL quarterback, and then allow him to take the reigns going into 26. He missed all that. And again, so it it it’s I hate being like, well, everyone gets injured. like, yeah, everyone unfortunately does get injured this part, but that really screwed up the whole plan of the Minnesota Vikings. Yeah. And you know what, to piggyback off that, here’s what kind of what I think what, for lack of a better phrase, pisses me off the most about this whole scenario is all we can do on the outside is react to what credible, smart people in the moment. Kevin Oonnell has been regarded as a credible, smart top 10 head coach, coach of the year. I’m not saying he’s perfect. definitely mixing a water, mixing a run play once in a while, but but he was he was when if he decides, you know what, I do trust JJ McCarthy to start going into year two despite not practicing back in March, I’m sitting here thinking, oh, I mean, yeah, like I trust him. If he feels like that dude’s soaked up enough just kind of behind the scenes and he looks good enough at mini camps, no, that’s cool. the fact that he looks this bad through five or six games and they didn’t even have a viable QB2 until because they cut Sam Howell and then they brought in Carson Wentz at the last minute. My point is if they if if they and we by extension would have known that JJ McCarthy was going to look like this. Well, I’m going back in time and I’m paying Sam Darnold $35 million a year for two more years. Let’s get even deeper into the weeds here. This is going to be a rough show. If you if you if you want to recruit talent in free agency to your team, you have to sell that you have the quarterback. Right? If I’m Kevin Oonnell, I’m not able to get Hargrave. I’m not able to get Allen, Kelly, Fries, name every free agent that we signed without planting the flag that JJ McCarthy will lead us to the promised land. And so he had to. He’s young. He’s great. And then because guess what else that does? You start forecasting and you start planning five years down the road for your cap, right? Like it all comes back to the grandmaster plan. And it’s really easy for us to focus on one year at a time here or first year to second year, but I promise you Rob Brzinski has his entire cap planned out through 2029, right? because all of it is predicated on well we can backload these contracts because we have a quarterback that over the four years we’re going to pay $22 million not $50 million a year too. And so in order to do that you have to convince everyone including maybe yourself that he is the guy before you go into free agency because once you enter into free agency that first year where you name your first round quarterback the stud the franchise guy the next three years are budgeted. They’re all budgeted on what your cap’s going to be and how your cap’s going to do it. So, I don’t think Kevin and them when they finally let Sam walk and they didn’t have any reason to say JJ was the guy in March because he hadn’t done anything September, but you didn’t have a choice because you had already decided we drafted our guy at number 10. We’re building this on a rookie scale contract. We’re going to build the team around him and this dude, as long as he’s not the worst quarterback in the history of ever, should be able to win us 8 n 10 games. No one anticipated him to be this bad. What I wonder is did Kevin Oonnell have an idea that I don’t know, man. I don’t know about this. Which is why you saw the you you saw the Aaron Rogers flirtation throughout the summer. I wonder if Kevin had a little bit of suspicion. How could you not? If you practice, the front office said, “Hey, we trust you. You’re the quarterback whisperer. We drafted this guy 10th overall. This is the best way to structure a team. Go, go, go. Cuz Kevin’s been really sour the last like six to nine months. More so that like with the media, behind the scenes, I’ve heard behind the scenes, he’s been a little more sour. Also, when you’re when you’re losing, [ __ ] doesn’t go well. It doesn’t go well. But to be fair, a some of it can fall on him, too. Like, you know, this product now, right? You knew it coming out of training camp. No one says you have to. Everyone I talked to from training camp and Phil, you were there said it looked great. Everyone in training camp said JJ McCarthy looked great. I mean Jud charted every freaking throw. He looked he he showed a lot of flashes, but there were some periods where he struggled with the defense. Yeah, we heard there was things that he had struggled with. But that’s my point is Kevin should then be like, “Okay, then the offense needs to be predicated around someone else or whether it needs to be predicated around quick throws or the run game to make sure the play action sets up cuz he’s got a pretty deep ball.” Like JJ’s not the only one that’s to indict over here. At some point, you have to turn around and go, “Listen, the scheme is not working for this offense, and it’s not working so bad that we’re derailing this poor rookiey’s career because you guys continue to keep letting him stand back there and throw it when when the [ __ ] is an out route just a bad idea? When is handing it off a bad idea?” I mean, if I have to hear the stats, like Mackie, you’ve been going over the stats. Now, all of a sudden, it’s all over the national news about the stats of third down are so bad cuz all they do is throw it. And it’s like, well, no [ __ ] Eventually, you’d think that the coach would turn around and be like, “Okay, listen. It’s not working. It is not working. We’re all going to get fired because we’re looking bad. We’re going to get Quy fired because he drafted this kid number 10. We’re all going down on this sinking ship and we’re taking this kid with us when we should just run the ball or throw it sooner. They’re a good running team, which is funny. They’re a really efficient running team. They’re not good. They’re efficient, which means you’re really good because it’s like five, six yards a carry and it’s like just do that more, you [ __ ] idiot. Does it make sense? I’m sorry. I just can’t anymore. Cuz like eventually I do look at this poor kid and I’m like, you are the youngest kid in the NFL. Why are we crushing you so much? Maybe we should just not let you throw it so much. I’m I’m like I’m like okay he’s 3 years away from being 25 years old and I feel like there’s a there’s there’s a longer runway here than we none of us have the stomach for this and maybe it’s just a bust out of maybe it’s a bust after six games and Jay’s right but I hear you I don’t I don’t want to be right I’m never rooting for someone to fail like I’m never rooting for someone to fail but at the same time at the same time boonie you and I have been in this business there there’s a standard that you have to hit at every position. At every single position, there is a standard in which you have to hit to just be able to be allowed on the field. Right? If I’m an offensive tackle and I’m giving up three sacks a game, I’m not going to be allowed back on the field. If I’m a if I’m a safety that’s getting ran by two or three times a game for touchdowns, I’m not going to be allowed back on the field. The quarterback position is the one position where you kind of give a little bit more leeway of like, okay, that middle ground of development and bat is much larger. But if you’re so far below the middle ground, that’s where you have to just look at and go, this isn’t it. This this isn’t it right now. I’m not saying you don’t ever will be, but you got to bring someone else in next year to at least have a competition. Because I think if you truly go into 26 and say, no, no, no, no. JJ’s our guy is our backup and we’re going to roll with it. You’re basically signing your entire fate to JJ McCarthy. And I don’t know if Kevin’s willing and Quasy’s willing to do that yet. We will see. We will see. Last thing on this, I did put this is binding. This is the official poll. And all 11,000 people who voted on this, Vikings fans, you’re going to be held I’m going to personally hold you all accountable for this. I said, “All right, you want to bail on McCarthy? Okay, here are some options. Here’s 2026. Let’s talk about options.” And there’s probably more than this, but and they only let you put four up on the actual poll. Twitter, can we get like can we go five, six options, Twitter? I don’t know why we limit to four. I said, “Here’s your options. M. Jones trade, sign Aaron Rogers, draft a quarterback again, or I put Anthony Richardson trade.” Such a terrible trade by far. Well, there’s not I mean, we could keep listing options. Tua Tua Flacco. Well, Rogers or Flaco are in the same bin. um 11,000 people, 45% said M Jones trade. So that’s that’s that’s a pretty big number because that’s that’s the guy that they hear constantly being talked about right now in the media and they’re like, “Oh, this guy’s going to come save us.” But I’m not kidding. Like you need to look around and be like, “Listen, Davis Mills, he was drafted by Lovey Smith. I remember when they drafted him, poor kid had to go in and play and he got thrown into the fire.” And what the fact that he’s still around and still slinging it and he’s still winning games makes me go, you’re a quarterback whisperer, approve it right now. Like here’s a guy that wasn’t drafted really that well, but still has some experience in the league can do it. If not, you’re looking at a Flaco type person to come in and it’s more about the experience. Please rub off on this kid quickly, right? You’ll get an old guy to come in here and be like, “Hey man, listen, you’re being really stupid, okay? I never took half as many hits as you’ve taken and you’re only in year three. What you’re doing wrong is this. Boom. Boom. Boom. Right. Or maybe he just rubs off on him in a better way. Like you need that’s what he needs because right now it seems like everybody’s throwing everything on him and it’s like I can’t imagine what that room feels like right now, right? Especially cuz he’s probably thinking that everybody on his team can’t stand him. He’s probably thinking that KOC is probably pissed as [ __ ] at him. Like he’s probably in a very vulnerable spot. So you’re like depending on who you bring in because if you do trade for a Mac Jones that could just done right like instantly he’s like and there goes my spot. That show, but then that would show us that he’s not ready to play in this league, right? If you shy away from competition, if you shy away and you turtle, if you bring someone in and all a sudden you turtle or you start being like, “I thought I thought I was the guy.” Like, it’s like based off of what you did last year. How could you possibly believe we weren’t going to bring someone in, right? But if you bring someone in and they come in, he goes, “Cool. Can’t wait to compete against Mac, right? I’m going to push him. He’s going to push me.” Right? That shows me, okay, you have the mental fortitude to make it in this league, but you can as a player expect to play the way he’s played and not expect your organization to do something about it. Yeah. Yep. Well, this won’t be the end of the Vikings quarterback discussion over the next few months here, I’m afraid. So, got started. Let’s do uh at least one, maybe two dumb football questions from the audience here, and then we’ll make our picks for the week going into Thanksgiving. This one comes from Brandon and he says, “I went to the gym the other day and destroyed my legs leg day and multiple days later my legs were still sore. My dumb football question is how does the strength and conditioning team facilitate player lifts during the week?” I imagine an offensive lineman’s leg day is insane and then to have to anchor yourself against mutant defensive linemen. How does that work when your Oh, yeah. legs are always sore. So, this is a great question. Off in the off season, we’re there to build up muscle and build strength and do stuff like that, right? Like, you can lift heavy weights. Oh, yeah. Callus your mind, gentlemen. And it’s great cuz you can go in there and throw weights around and be a [ __ ] goon. In season lifting is completely different. It is all about maintaining. That is all they’re going to say. We’re just here to maintain this, right? You are not maxing out in season. You squat on Monday and the dirty trick is because you still can’t feel anything from the day before. So, you want to get in there and put as much as you can on and be like, “Listen, at times like the coaches will be like, get down there.” And you’re like, “I don’t want to.” And like they start pushing you down and you’re like, “Oh my god, it’s breaking.” But like 20 minutes later, you feel amazing. And you’re like, “God, I can’t believe I act like such a P word a minute ago.” Everything else for the rest of the week is all maintaining. So, a lot of it is like Tuesday was bench. You’d go in, you do a little bit of bench. At times we would do some incline if they wanted to get a little crazy, but it was never crazy. A lot of ISOs on the on the cable stuff, a lot of dumbbells so you could get that free free weights hold up there. The the ISO holds up there, stuff like that. Thursday was shoulders. Friday was uh Armageddon, baby. Armageddon. Saturday was kind of like a sauna day, so you could go in and flush everything out. But like, as you can tell, the week started early with the big muscles in your body and as the week trickled down, it went to the smaller muscles, right? So that those big muscles could recover and you could feel good. But you’re not feeling good in your legs, but we would because we’d sit in the cold tub for half an hour a day. So you’d get right in that, right? It wasn’t even hard. That’s the only time that your body like your ankles, knees, and hips don’t hurt cuz they’re amazing. And so you just sit in there and be like, “Oh, we should probably get out. Five more minutes. Five more minutes.” Yeah. five more minutes, you know, like from your belly down would be red, like pure red, and you’d be like, “God, it feels so good.” And then you’d go take a shower and it felt numb. And it was like, “This is amazing.” Dude, we had such like traditions, especially as O line, like you had to do certain things or here’s the problem. If you don’t do everything that you’re supposed to do, like there’s a checklist in your mind and every week you have to hit the checklist. If you miss one thing, something on Sunday could not feel right. It could feel off and then all of a sudden you’re in your mind and you’re like, “What didn’t I do this?” Well, and and to piggyback on that point, if you fall behind in that maintenance schedule, you’ll never catch back up. Never. Right. Like, and that’s why maintenance lifting in season is so important. I mean, you feel like death. You don’t want to do it. The last thing you want to do on a Monday morning after you just played 68 snaps is put a bar on your back, but you know that you start falling behind and maintaining your muscle, it will literally start to fall off. I mean, and and once it starts to go, there’s no catching back up because you’re burning so many calories a day like in between practice and lifting that if you fall behind in that maintenance piece, you’re toast. And that’s why so many people have the rookie wall because these rookies go through hell from January and then they hit November and their internal body clock’s like, “Oh, Thanksgiving season’s over, right?” It’s like, “No, no, buck up, bud. We got six more weeks, right? We got six more weeks here.” And they’re just, it just wears on them. But also is a ramp up period going from I had to learn this my first year, right? I got done with my first year in the NFL. I got activated the last couple games, right? Got to my first chance of playing and I was like, “Oh, this is awesome. I want to be a starter next year.” and just balls to the wall. January, February, March, I show up to training camp or I show up to OTAAS like at 100% peak physical readiness, right? Like let’s go. And then I realized as I was like older, I was like I actually got in worse shape in OTAAS because it’s not and then I tried to reamp up to get back to shape in August and you can’t stay at that high level. You have to ramp up all the way from January get to like 70 80% in OTAAS maintain there and then get yourself to where you’re peing physically 100% at the end of July and then all you’re doing those maintains is trying to hold that peak as long as you can and then eventually it’s going to start to drop. You just have to try and hold that and make sure that drops gradual and not off a cliff. You know, I think about this and I wonder how much of the OTAAS that they don’t do now is contributed to JJ McCarthy dealing with what he’s dealing with now because there was a time when OTAAS were for real, right? like seven on sevens. We’re live pass pro. You tell your [ __ ] PA, I swear to God, I’ll cut you. You’d be like, “Coach, we’re not we’re not supposed to be doing this.” And they’d be like, “Say one word. I’ll cut you.” Be like, “Okay, here we go. Pass pro and just helmets. Let’s do this. You’re not going to bull rush us, are you?” They’d be like, “You’re [ __ ] done.” You’d be like, “God, this is terrible.” But it really did callous you over. It made you really hard. And that’s why Jay’s telling you like we used Pause. Made you really tough. There we go. Don’t get me wrong. It did make me hard at times. I love being out there. I’ll take that fine. But now they go out there and I talk to my rookies and I talk to all my vets and they’re like, “Coach, we didn’t even really do anything but like a half the time they don’t even put helmets on.” And you’re like, “Dude, how are you guys expected to get better?” Or how are you supposed to look at a team in a in a real time and go, “This is how I think we’re going to do.” The owner asked you after Ots, “How do you think we’re going to do this year? What do you think?” Every one of them says, “Good. We’re going to do good.” Right? What’s he going to say? When when we used to do OTAAS, it was very evident how the season was going to go. They were like, “Oh, offense needs to get way better.” And they tell you at the end of the OTAAS, like, “Offence, bring your [ __ ] [ __ ] back here during camp or don’t come back. You got it.” Or like, “Defense, what the hell was that for the last nine weeks?” That was trash. Y’all better figure it out. And it was like, now they just go away going, “Great job, guys. Great job, guys. Enjoy Cabo.” Okay, everybody get your nails done. Have fun. I’ll see you back here for the slumber party when we start in August. Okay. See you. And then we wonder why it looks like [ __ ] Seriously, they need to pick it up. Amen. Amen. I love By the way, before we make pictures here, let me see if I can share this. What do you got? Share. Can I share? Show me. Show me. We have uh we have some new merch in the O line committee merch shop. By the way, it’s good to see you not in that bunker anymore. Yeah. Oh man, I might go I kind of like that. You’re probably going to have to go back in there soon. Yeah, after this episode. You might have to go back. By the way, I knew the buds would come out. Dude, I got savage for that and it it was accurate. But we have Soine committee.com. Oline committee.com. If you use the code at checkout holiday code at checkout, get 15% off. Um Yes, I need I need that shirt immediately. I need that. We have some of the old I want it. I want it right away. Ding sensitive. We have a We have a a hunting/camo line committee trucker hat in the store. Snow cap. It’s kind of hard to see this, but yeah, the snow cap there. And then even some coffee mugs and an under arour backpack with So getting the backpack. Sensitive, dude. I love the dig sensitive. Do you like the sensitive so much? I I designed that myself. That’s right. Anytime someone makes sense, just touch it. Dude, I’ve started finding people in like on my other podcast and it’s become a thing. Like we do our weekly picks with the Husker Radio Network and every time our one of them’s from Florida and one’s from Oklahoma and so every time they pick their teams I’m like, “Oh, I’m like Homer fine.” And so now they’re literally like, “Get the bell ready. Get the bell ready.” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll get the bell ready. I’m just going to incorporate the bell into every asset of my life.” It’s so yeah, you can go to oline committee.com and use the code holiday for I think it’s 15% off at checkout all throughout the next couple months. So, and you can support the show obviously when you when you do that, too. So, all right, boys. Let’s make our picks, our weekly pick. How’d we do? Well, bad news for Jeremiah. Jeremiah, I’m I’m putting him at the top. How was I three and two? You and I are both three and two, Boon. Who did I lose on? Well, you put your money on Missouri State for one. lost Kennesaw. Kennesaw State came through, bad the Owls needed it. Who else lost? And then who who else did you have? Did you have the Bears? I can’t remember who you had. You were three and two. No, I was 4 and0. I was 4 and0 without that college. Four and0 Jay, you lost every game. I did. I’m obviously two and four, [ __ ] So, I did not lose every game. And you lost a game where you put a a double booster. I put a double on the Colts. Yeah, I put a I This was my week to try and either make the comeback or I’m just going to continue to fall into oblivion. And the Colts Boon had the Cowboys. You should have been one and five. That’s why I was like, I know cuz I took both of you for the whole week. Cowboys won. Uh oh. Are we getting a mental error here on Old Philly? No, I don’t think so. Hold on a second. We’re going to have to check the tape. The show’s not going to continue until I I got it. Cuz I can go into previous document status, right? I don’t know. Like Oh, you’re right. You won with the Ners. All right. That’s By the way, that’s a fine. That’s a fine. That’s a That’s a false bellish because you were trying to D him for memes. So on the season, Boon, you’re far behind. You are not even 500. I’m at 30 and 24 game back. Jeremiah 26 and 29. God damn. You’re four and a half back of second place here. And we’ve got a banger. Let’s start with Packers at Lions on Thanksgiving. Give me the Lions. I’ll go first. Give me the Lions. I’ll go first. I’m in last place. Who cares? Give me the Lions. I think the Packers, if this was in Green Bay, I’d probably take the Packers. The Lions at home on Thanksgiving, they always seem to play really well. Aiden Hutchson’s on his way back up being great. Jir Gibbs is Gibbs unbelievable. So, yeah, give me the Lions to avenge that absolute ass beating they took week one. Oh, give it to me. And not only that, but Micah Parsons is great for pass rushing, not for run stopping. Let’s go, dude. Jir Gibbs injected in the veins. Thursday game, by the way, remember the Thursday game we played there? God, it’s horrible. The 9minute Artha Franklin national anthem. Everybody started to sit down. They were like, they’re like, “Dude, my never ending.” Tony was like, “Is this ever going to be over?” Dude, Tony was so pissed. So pissed. Yeah. I’m on the Lions here, too. Lions at home. Thanksgiving. I do think they’re a better team than the Packers. And their offense with that running game lately has been clicking and they’re looking for some revenge off the embarrassment from earlier in the year. Okay. And playoff hopes alive. That’s kind of I mean, yeah, they’re out of the playoffs. They’re out of the playoffs right now. This is a big time win for them. Okay. This is going to be one of the most watched games in a long time here. Chiefs at Cowboys. Whoever loses probably a long shot to make the playoffs. Who’s got the balls? balls to pick Dallas. I’m going to do it. Listen, I’m going to do it. All right. I’m feeling it. I know last week was crazy. Down 21. They come back at home. I’m Give me the Cowboys to win this against the Chiefs. And for the first time in 10 years, the Chiefs are probably going to be looking at outside looking in the playoffs. Holy [ __ ] I just said that out loud. Wow. I’m getting They’re like the nine or the 10 seed right now. I know. I’m getting judged. Give me Okay, you know what? Give me George Pickkins and CD, baby. Let’s go. Give me Mahomes. Give me Give me to do. You know what? I’m doubling down then. I’m doubling down to take an even bigger lead to take an even bigger lead from Jay. I’m so into it. George Pickkins, two mouthguards. CD is not even going to have a mouth guard. I can’t wait. Here we go. Wow. He’s going times two bonus. And I’ll make it, dude. I’ll I’ll make it even spicier for you, Boon. I’m going Chiefs as well. So, you can get two on both of them. This could be right here. This could be big. Give me Yeah, Moy’s going to do Mahomi things. I mean, that offense started clicking last week. They realized, hey, if we need to run it, we can run it. The back end for Dallas’s defense leaves a lot to be desired at times. So, AJ Brown got loose last week. I think Rasheed Rice has a big day. Eagles hosting the Bears on Black Friday. Give me the Bears. I’m going to take the Bears here. I’m going to take the Bears to go into Philly. I’m going to take the Bears to go into Philly because I can’t not take Philly after my thing that I said on Tuesday, which or maybe Monday, which was I believe that this loss could be starting of the snowball that was 2023 as they entered into December. So, I have to at least be a man of my word and believe in what I said. So, give me Caleb Williams to go knock out the defending world champs. Wow, dude. Okay, Boon, I’ll let you think for a second. I’m going Eagles on this. I think it’s a bounceback spot for the Eagles. I still feel like the Bears and their crazy turnover margin. I know they’re in line for like a slap up across the head at some point. I’ve kind of said that for two or three weeks in a row. I’ll say it again. Eagles are going to beat the Bears at home. Man, this is such a hard decision because I agree. Like I could see the Eagles putting up points through the air, but I also could see them giving turnovers. And do you see when he glitched last week, Jaylen Herz? I don’t know if you guys talked about it, but he like glitched in the pocket and totally just took a sack. And it’s like things are happening. Do I take the Bears? You know what? Is Lane Johnson back? That’s a question, too. Cuz Lane being out last week was very hurtful for them. All right. Listen, I don’t know that Lane’s back. Coming back early on this week would be very rare to come back. Like, normally you’re hoping that somebody can make it back by Sunday. So, to be back by Friday with something is probably not good. Give me the Bears to come in. I know. I know. But listen, I think that the Bears O line to me, I think they’re stuck. Playing really well, right? And I think that Darnell Wright’s playing at all pro level. Last week, Philly had a hard time and at times they had to blitz to get home and they have to do things at times uncharacteristic. So, give me the Bears to come in here and do some things. Plus, the weapons on offense, man. Let’s Manangai running through a [ __ ] 92 drill. Boom. Here it comes, baby. Talk dirty. All right, I will. Texans at Colts. Texans at Colts. I’ll go first here. Give me the Colts at home. I I think they they get back on track. I think that they’re going to run the [ __ ] out of the ball. I get that Houston has a dominating defense. I think one of the things you do to stop this pass rush is you run the ball. And I think that last week the Colts, they’re like, “Hey, it’s time to come back. It’s time to show people that we are the Bellcows and we know how to run this thing.” Give me the Colts at home. Yeah. I mean, the Texans played Tampa last week, right? Who was it? No, they played uh the Bills, right? They and they went after Josh Allen. Yeah, they went after Josh Allen. I think that the Colts have to find a way to get Jonathan Taylor going again here if they want to go. They’ve dropped two of the last three. They have to get back on track this week or they’re going to be dropping that one seed and Jaguars are hot on their tails. So, I think this is a must-win for the Colts and I’ll be curious if Mills or Shroud plays as well. I’m not sure it matters. It’s also a must-win for the Texans who have dug themselves out of a an 0 and3 and a three and five hole. Three straight wins to get to six and five. And I feel like it’s going to be panic time for the Colts in that division after one of the best defenses in the NFL hands them an upset loss in their home building. Give me the Texans to walk into Indianapolis and beat the Go, Phil. Oh, we are we are all over the boards this week. I’m excited. And that brings us to our featured college football matchup of the week. A uh a a glorious a American Conference rivalry. I think East Carolina. First of all, ding this man for not putting the Ohio State Michigan game on here. The greatest rivalry in sports. Should have been. Who cares? They own your ass anyway. I’m sorry. Nebraska, who are you playing? Iowa. Michigan State’s going at it. No way. It’s a great rivalry. If you’ve never seen East Carolina play Florida Atlantic before. Okay, listen. Give me East Carolina. Are they the Pirates? Yeah, they’re the Pirates. Give me the Pirates right now. Uh, here we go. Who’s the running that came out of there? That was so fast. Um, Chris Chris uh Oh, no. Played for the Titans. Chris, he ran like 42. He was Chris Johnson. Was it Chris Johnson? Yes. Took me a second to remember that. Chris Johnson was East Carolina. I think he was I think he was in East Carolina. Chris Johnson ran the fastest 40 though like for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um give me the Owls. I’ll go Florida Atlantic here. Give me Give me the Owls. Are they the Owls? You’re going to take the Owls over the last two weeks. I think that’s Liberty. I think Liberty’s the owls. Oh god. Hold on. Florida Atlantic. Yeah, they’re the owls. Florida. I was so two straight weeks. Who? Give me the owls. Come on now. Listen behind the battering ram duo of Landon Montgomery and Marlon Gun Jr. Give me the Pirates. East Carolina goes out. Here we go, Mac. Yes. Let’s go. Rivalry week. Rivalry week. Football. Football. It’s a glorious week. It’s turkey day. Oh, it’s so good. I’m Don’t forget to click the subscribe button and the like button on the O line committee YouTube channel and this video. And don’t forget to use the code holiday at checkout at olinecommittee.com for your holiday merch, your ding sensitive shirts and coffee mugs. And good luck during rivalry week here to all you guys. Is it Iowa, Nebraska? We got grill the boat sky versus as I was on the pod here, I just got a bunch of people texting me that Dylan Raola’s hitting the transfer portal. So that’s not super cool for us. All right, there we go. Maybe you can find a Josh Allen cosplayer to be your next quarterback. It’d be great. Maybe not. Lamar Jackson cosplay. Can we get Nebraska to up their game? Cosplay just a little bit. We’re going to be Are you guys even bull eligible? Yeah, we’re seven wins. Die. Oh jeez. Not seven. What are you laughing at, Minnesota? You’re barely bull eligible. We’re six wins bull eligible. About to get our seventh this weekend. Let’s go. Brother Sky. Go Max Brosmer. Oh, goodbye. See you guys.

Jeremiah Sirles, Alex Boone and Phil Mackey answer your Dumb Football Questions, including whether the Minnesota Vikings should bail on JJ McCarthy.

02:00 – Should the Minnesota Vikings bail on JJ McCarthy?
27:00 – What does offensive line weightlifting look like?
32:00 – NEW MERCH at OLineCommittee.com! Promo code HOLIDAY at checkout gets you 15% off!
33:00 – Week 13 picks! Green Bay Packers @ Detroit Lions; Kansas City Chiefs @ Dallas Cowboys; Chicago Bears @ Philadelphia Eagles; Houston Texans @ Indianapolis Colts; East Carolina @ Florida Atlantic

Please click the LIKE and SUBSCRIBE buttons to help us grow this channel!

Download the Underdog app today, sign up with promo code OLINE to score $100 in Bonus Entries when you play your first $5!

Try Huel with 15% OFF for New Customers today using my code OLine at https://huel.com/oline. Fuel your best performance with Huel today!

Shout out to ZBiotics for helping OLine Committee listeners wake up feeling fresh after drinks with friends! Go to https://zbiotics.com/OLINE and use OLINE at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics!

Visit Rugiet.com/OLINE and get your game plan from a licensed ED doctor. Use our promo code OLINE for a special offer.

Surfshark is completely risk-free with their 30-day money-back guarantee. Go to https://surfshark.com/oline or use code OLINE at checkout to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN

OLine Committee OFFICIAL MERCH! — https://the-oline-committee-shop.fourthwall.com/

Listen to OLine Committee on Spotify! — https://open.spotify.com/show/4I4s73DKnlDeCejmG0uH0o

—
Two former NFL offensive linemen (Alex Boone and Jeremiah Sirles) team up with a die-hard football fan and media dweeb (Phil Mackey) for entertaining, informative, opinionated, behind-the-scenes discussions about the game — from a trenches perspective!

#NFL