The FLOOR FALLS OUT On 2025 Minnesota Vikings

The FLOOR FALLS OUT On 2025 Minnesota Vikings

It’s the worst one yet. The Vikings go into Lambo, completely lay an egg again, and the questions are only getting bigger. Welcome to the Locked On Vikings podcast. You are Locked On Vikings, your daily Minnesota Vikings podcast, part of the Locked On Network, your team every day. What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome to the Locked On Vikings podcast where we’re always trying to learn something new. It’s part of the Locked on Podcast Network, the number one sports podcasting network, and I thank you all so much for your part in that. Today’s episode is brought to you by Prize Picks. Download the Prize Pix app today and use code lockdown NFL to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. today on the show, man. It I I can’t be like we’re eulogizing the season because we’ve done that so many times already and it’s not even Thanksgiving. Uh, but I mean the season has been DOA for some time and that’s unfortunate and it’s it’s something that I’ve kind of finished grieving and a long time ago I sort of moved my perception of the 2025 Vikings is I just wanted to be the year where we see a little progress with JJ McCarthy and we’ve seen very violently the opposite where things just keep getting worse. So the Vikings lose 23-6 in Lambo in a game McCarthy goes 12 for19 for with with two interceptions and 87 total passing yards. A passer rating of 34.2 and five sacks by EPA per play. It is an EPA per play of negative.65 per play. That means they’re losing more than a half a point every time JJ McCarthy touches the ball on average. Right? That’s the the thing that that stat is trying to tell you. It’s one of the worst games even though he only had 24 dropbacks. It’s like I think the 11th worst game this season by total EPA. The worst is actually uh Jake Browning in week three. Uh and it’s funny actually those two defensive touchdowns by Isaiah Rogers are still the highest EPA per place or EPA swings of the entire season that any team has seen. Uh which is kind of funny. But anyways, for this one, um, it’s one of the worst games you will ever see by an offense. I’m not going to say necessarily by JJ McCarthy. JJ McCarthy was terrible. And we’ll get into the the level of concern with him for sure, but I want to speak at the whole team because I do think it is a team level like teamwide failure. I don’t think you can say, well, you know, Sam Darnold were on this team, things would be going just fine. I really don’t think so. I think that there are problems in this in this building that span well beyond any individual. I think there’s a there’s a real poison right now in the Minnesota Vikings and you don’t lose five of six in the way that they have without some things being dysfunctional up to the top level. But you have a I mean a total disaster. You get a a zero for Jordan Addison. You get a zero for Jaylen Naylor. You have a zero for Adam Thielen who has another drop in this game. This is not an offense that was functioning at all. And when you have a quarterback that’s struggling as much as JJ McCarthy is, I mean, it’s historically bad. It is worse than all of the people, oh my god, do we have the next ponder? No. That’s disrespectful to ponder. That’s where we’re at right now. I mean, from a from a numbers perspective, we are at I don’t know. Zach Wilson at least showed you something more than this. This is this is now in 5 years we’re going to be asking, “Oh no, is this the next JJ McCarthy?” That’s where we’re at right now. Um and when you are when it’s this bad, like other teams with bad quarterbacks are doing more to help those guys than what the Vikings are doing. Which is why I’m saying team level. It’s not absolving JJ McCarthy at all. I just don’t want the heat on JJ McCarthy to absolve Kevin Oonnell, Wes Phillips, Josh Macau, that entire staff, Matt Daniels, the run defense, all these other things that are going wrong. This is the worst team in the league. Prove me wrong. Show me someone else’s worst. I would take the Jets right now on a neutral field. I would take the Titans right now on a neutral field. This is a really, really bad team. So, what happened in this game to cause this kind of spectacular meltdown? The Packers have a good defense. You know, I mean, the the the Ravens and Bears, who were your last two, were not that great of secondaries, right? And the Packers have had much better defense than those two teams. And so, you would expect that you would see a worse result, right? and that, you know, an actual quality defense when they get to go up against somebody like McCarthy who’s having the problems that he’s having are going to be able to like make more spectacular problems happen, right? Um, but you you had your fair share of plays where McCarthy just doesn’t look like he’s seeing what’s going on down the field. And those are ones where I want to see kind of what happened on tape. I want to see was that a big long double move that he was waiting for, or was he just staring something down, brain totally off, and he took a sack, right? like that. That’s very different if we see one thing or the other. So, I want to make sure that I see that before I go too hard on it. Um, but the offense itself just ain’t work. There are a few stats here that I are just staggering and mind-blowing. The EPA Play one to me is the most staggering stat I think I’ve seen all year. That was significantly worse than the Atlanta game. It was significantly worse than the Chargers game. Just to put in perspective how broken and dysfunctional the offense was with McCarthy under center, with everybody healthy. The line comes back healthy. They only lasted three quarters, but uh you you had all five of your on your offensive line to start that game. You’ve got Jefferson, Addison, Hawinson all healthy. You have Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason in whatever distribution you want. Those guys are healthy. Everyone was good to go and it melted down that hard, right? And so there’s nowhere to hide now. There’s nowhere for you to look and say, “Oh, well, you know, if only we just didn’t get this unlucky thing.” There was nothing unlucky about it. You just stink. This season, the offense has stunk. Whether it’s Wentz, whether it’s McCarthy, no matter what, who who has been healthy or who has not been healthy, the Vikings have scored singledigit points in the first half eight out of 11 games this year. And they’ve scored exactly six five times. And they’ve scored exactly three two of those times. They can’t get a touchdown. And they didn’t get a touchdown. They went scoreless in the second half. But what really bugs me extra about this one, you know, it’s one thing you go into, you know, a road game, tough place to play, it’s cold out, the defense across from you is good, and they beat the the heck out of you. That’s one thing, right? It’s another thing to quit. And I am hereby accusing the Vikings of quitting, waving the white flag. There’s a lot of evidence of this. So, Miles Price blows a punt return, right? It’s there’s a punt, it goes over his head, it lands on about the two, and it bounces back. It hits him in the back. He never saw it coming. you need to have like the poison poison um thing. That’s a very basic deal. The broadcast tried to be a little more charitable and said, “Well, you know, Miles Price is trying to block the punt gunner, the the Packers punt gunner, so that he can’t down it at the one, so it’ll safely fall into the end zone when it bounces.” But the risk of that is if it bounces backwards now, you risk it getting caught up in your feet, touching you somehow, or what happened where it just hits him right in the back. Um, and then it can and then suddenly it’s Packers ball. Bad mistake, right? We and and I’m sure lots of people are going to talk about that mistake. And and I think that coupled with the special teams meltdown on the kickoff return last week that cost the Vikings the game and all the penalties that have happened on special teams, the special teams units have been such a bugaboo. I am starting to change my tune on firing Daniels mid-season. Um, I still think it’s too little too late, right? Like the season’s over. you’re not going to save the season by firing my Matt Daniels. Um the the question is would you rather just lame duck it and move on or is there somebody in your building like the assistant special teams coordinator that you think is worth a look for the job? And I’m mixed on that. On one hand, might as well give him an audition. What are you going to lose? What do you got to lose? But on the other hand, are we really going to promote somebody from within? Are we really that happy with how this staff is going that we’re going to start handing out promotions? I don’t really think so. I kind of think that these guys lame duck all the way to the end of the year and you hire a new special teams coordinator in January when all the real teams are still playing football. That’s where I’m at on that. But all that said, you spotted him a a short field, right? Well, a short field is shouldn’t be game-breaking. It’s a bad play. It’s a big swing, but spotting him a short field isn’t the craziest thing in the world. We’ve seen the defense show up, make a goal line stand, come back effort is on, right? It was 10 to six at the time. If you make a goal line stand there, right? If if you stop them, make them kick a field goal and it’s 13 to six. You get the ball back and you’re like, we’re still in this, everybody. But they score in two plays, two s and it was like a a successful run down to the one and then another one punched it in with very little resistance. No resistance at all. And and I I’ll talk more about the defense in a bit, but the way the team melted down after that is giving me serious questions about the efficacy of this coaching staff and their ability to develop young players, which we’ve seen all over the roster. Right. Right. Young players not developing and sometimes even doing better when they go somewhere else where they can develop more. uh and their ability to be mentally resilient because they quit. They went three and out three times after that and gave up big long drives the other way. Suddenly it was a field goal field goal. It was 23 to6 and that would be the final score and the Vikings would never get out of their own way. It was working okay up to that point, but by after that Miles Price fumble, the effort was gone, the aggression was gone, the fire was gone, the energy was gone, and there was even a sideline report that I found kind of suspect that was like, you know, everybody’s not really down in the dumps here. They’re all just kind of like walking around. this team has quit on on the season and they’ve quit on you and you need to hold their feet to the fire on that as much as they need to hold each other to the fire. Um, it’s just not a functional organization and they’re not part of this NFL season anymore. That’s sad. Let’s keep going. Next on Lock on Vikings, today’s episode is brought to you by Prize Picks. It is the holiday season and for the Vikings that means it’s over. You aren’t going to turn on the TV and have that much interest in who is winning because the Vikings aren’t going to be on the TV a lot, especially after the holidays, which means it is a great time to get involved in prize picks. If you’re just looking for a stake, if you’re looking for something else to root for, which I think a lot of us are, prize picks is a great place to look. It’s the easiest way to get in on Daily Fantasy. Just pick more or less on some of your favorite players, at least two up to six. Lock in your lineup and boom, you’re in the game. It’s simple, fast, and available in 45 states, including California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia. The early payout feature is also a great bonus. If your lineup starts strong, you can get the option to cash out early and not take a risk of a heartbreaker at the end of the game. And their new stacks feature means you can put multiple stats from the same player in your lineup. So, you can do Anthony Edwards three points and assists or Justin Jefferson yards and touchdowns, whatever you feel you want to do. Deposits and withdrawals are quick and easy, and it keeps everything flowing. Download the Prize Pix app today and use code locked on NFL to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That’s code locked on NFL to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Prize picks, it’s good to be right. Moving along with the Locked On Vikings podcast, there is a question that I think is running through everybody’s mind, which is how could it possibly be this bad? And the answer might be the thing rattling around in your mind. I think for a lot of people the answer is, well, McCarthy’s just that bad. He’s the worst quarterback we’ve ever seen. Fire everybody who had everything to do with it and he’s horrible and terrible and and booed the Michigan Wolverines, right? And I think a lot of people are thinking that way. I have trouble with that because we have seen a lot of quarterbacks come to the league that weren’t ready for this, that busted out really hard and were terrible, right? And if you ever talk to those people in hindsight, if you ever hear them come on some podcast eight years after they were in the league and talk about their rookie year, they’ll say stuff like, “I didn’t know the place.” They’ll say, “I didn’t know what I was doing at all. Like, I was totally overwhelmed. I couldn’t throw. I couldn’t do all this stuff. Like, I was terrible.” Right? Um, we’ve even had people admit that they were like addicted to drugs at the time. And all of those people have played better than JJ McCarthy. So to me, I I I think what what what is a more likely situation that JJ McCarthy is, you know, worse than all of those people, Johnny Manzel, right? Worse than, you know, rookie Marcus Mariota, worse than I mean, like name your draft bust here, right? Or Blake Bortles if you if you rather. I go back in time, right? This is worse than all of it. It like I’m not exaggerating. JJ McCarthy is currently playing on trajectory to be the worst NFL quarterback of all time post World War post World War II. Like that is not hyperbole. That is genuinely where we are at. And to be that bad, like what is more likely that JJ McCarthy is genuinely that we found ourselves unlucking our way into the worst quarterback of all time post World War II? Or that there’s more than the quarterback that is wrong. that the quarterback is bad, but stuff is making it worse. I tend to look to the ladder because I don’t want to let everybody else get get off scot-free here. So, what else is going wrong? And I I said this a little bit on the postgame squad show, which you can find live after triple zeros. We’re live on the Lockdown Vikings and Lockdown Minnesota Sports YouTube channels. And you can, of course, get the audio a little bit later as well. If you’re an audio listener, you can still listen to those. But um I I I said it there and I wanted to kind of explain myself a little bit more. The Vikings miscommunicate a lot. There was this snafu where Ivan Pace shed a little bit of light on the locker room where So there were 11 people out for a field goal block attempt. There was the Packers were kicking a field goal and the the field goal unit was out there. Ivan Pace gets the message from a coach to run off. So he starts running off the field, but he is the 11th player. There would be 10 now. Kevin Oonnell rushes down the sideline to take a timeout. The flag the the broadcast sees this whole thing and puts the flag thing up on the CG even though no flag was thrown and the ref comes in and says timeout. There is no penalty. The 11th player was running off the field. There actually was never 12 guys on the field at all. But the Vikings clearly thought so. So how does that thing happen? Well, the way that a sideline in the NFL is organized is pretty hierarchical. Like you kind of answer to who you answer to and you don’t really have a lot of time to do a lot of debating. And I think that some debating is happening. I think there’s some villibustering going on and it would explain quite a lot, right, how slow the the play calling process was earlier in the season and all the play clock issues they had and um you know the the miscommunications. This is not the first time there has been a substitution snafu on special teams either. Um, there’s actually been a lot of those, which again is another feather in the cap of why is Matt Daniel still here? He’s doing a really poor job. Um, but to me, that kind of snafu tells me a little bit people aren’t listening to who they’re supposed to be listening to because usually in a in a healthy sideline environment, it’s somebody’s job. There are a lot of assistant coaches that have their jobs during practice that, you know, are are with their position groups and are working in film and have all their through throughout the week jobs. But on game day, there are a lot of guys who don’t have the most stuff to do, which is why you’ll see like the strength coach being the get back guy, right? Nobody’s lifting weights on the sideline. You don’t really need the strength coach to be there. So, you give him another job, keep his time occupied, and, you know, get make some use out of out of the strength coach. So, he is the guy that says, “Get back from the sideline. We don’t want a sideline infraction.” That’s his job. Somebody’s job, and I don’t know if it’s Matt Daniels or if it’s some low-level assistant or a QC coach or whatever, somebody’s job is to make sure that the right people go out on special teams, right? Is to make sure that all the teams are correct. And that person did that job correctly. There were 11 people and it was the right amount. Somebody in the world thought that it was wrong, was incorrect about that and had the authority to tell Ivan Pace to come off the field in erroneously and and Okonnell has to burn a timeout to make it happen. To me, that tells me you are disorganized. If you aren’t trusting the guy next to you to do his job, you feel like you got to do it for him, then we’ve we’ve lost the plot. then there is no hope for this staff. So what we do about this and I wouldn’t be honestly I wouldn’t be shocked to see Matt Daniels fired on Monday. If not I also wouldn’t be super shocked about that either. Let it lame duck, right? But I see that same process happening when we talk about you know Theo Jackson getting benched or Jayvon Harrave getting benched and then unbenched and then benched. It’s somebody’s job to decide it and somebody disagrees with that person and it’s a power struggle and I think there are power struggles going on in in in the Minnesota Viking staff. And so then you apply that to JJ McCarthy and McCarthy’s having his struggles, you know, doing his developmental stuff, but now there’s all this other pressure on, well, maybe we got to have him throw a little shorter. Well, he did and the Packers snuffed it out. Well, maybe there is, you know, a way to get the ball out quicker, and he does sometimes, and he doesn’t sometimes. We have to ask him to do this. We have to ask him to do that. They don’t seem to really have an understanding of what McCarthy’s needs are. And those needs are a lot. They’re too many, and he shouldn’t have been picked in the first round. I think we can see that. But that’s all water under the bridge. You have this kid now, and you have to figure out what he needs to succeed. And the Vikings have deeply, deeply failed at doing that. And again, I’m just looking at what Kevin Oonnell had to say about this, right? Organizations fail quarterbacks before quarterbacks fail organizations. So, either JJ McCarthy is the most hopeless idiot ever the league has ever seen, worse than Jammarcus Russell or an organization is failing a young quarterback again. Which one is more common, man? And maybe that’s me finding some kind of avenue to hope that maybe, you know, other people can get involved in this. Whether you’re making lower level changes or higher level changes to the staff, other people can get involved in this and maybe save JJ McCarthy because I like the kid. I liked him coming out and I’m not going to apologize for that. But I think the developmental process has been catastrophically bad. And that’s supposed to be the thing that OKConnell is good at. It’s supposed to be the thing Mac is good at. I’m pretty firm now in in the idea that I do not believe Josh Macau should be a part of this organization moving forward. Um, I I I his his claim to fame is Bryce Young’s rookie year and this crap it’s over. But I’m telling you right now, you could go back in time and you could switch you could trade McCarthy away in the offseason while there was still value on him and you could have the Vikings keep Sam Darnold and this team is still losing games. I would I would bet my life on it because that kind of dysfunction is is QB proof. That kind of dysfunction is talent proof. It will always be messed up if your organization from staff to locker room. Everybody, if they aren’t communicating properly, if you don’t have that smooth, it’s going to fall apart. And it is falling apart in a spectacular way right now. Again, in five years, there’s going to be some drafted QB who’s a junior in high school right now. There’s going to be some dude coming out of the draft that starts out really bad and somebody’s going to say it’s bad. It’s almost as bad as JJ McCarthy was. That’s where we’re at. So, I don’t want to let everybody else get off scot-free, right? We had problems on the O line. We’ve had injuries. We’ve had uh problems on defense as well. The Packers had nine real possessions or I’m sorry, eight real possessions because by the time they got nine in it, it was Milique Wilson. So, Jordan Lev had eight possessions and scored on five of them. Yeah. So, they scored five of the eight times they had the ball. That’s a that’s a bad defensive game. Even though some of those stalled in the red zone and one of them was a short field, that’s not your fault. And there is a trend on defense that is very concerning and it’s another staggering stat that I’m going to uh be able to give to you. So, that’s going to be next on Lifon Vikings. This episode of Locked on Vikings is brought to you by Game Time. And with the Vikings season circling the drain, you know what that means? Tickets get cheaper. If you want to find a way to a US Bank game, go see them play the Lions or the Packers. If you’ve never been to a game before because it’s tough to get tickets, now might be a great time to look when the vibes are bad. In just a couple taps, you can see amazing deals for upcoming Vikings games or any game you want, not just football concerts and stuff, too. Um, the app makes it super super simple. You can even see your view from your seat before you buy. So, you can make sure that you’re satisfied with the view. And you could even just say, “Hey, game time, pick. Here’s the section I want. you pick the seats and I’ll take the best deal you can find. You can find more savings that way. Usually when you’re going to buy tickets, you get hammered with a bunch of stupid fees. You there there’s no big long wait times that you might uh otherwise have to deal with. Uh and it’s really easy and simple to get your tickets delivered to you. Really quick and easy. I use Game Time every time I go to a Vikings game now. So download the Game Time app, create an account, and use code lockdown NFL for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, that’s promo code len NFL for $20 off. Swipe, tap, ticket, go. Download Game Time today. Moving on. We’ll put a pin in JJ McCarthy for now. I’ll have quite a bit more to say on him throughout the week. Uh, but let’s look at real quick at the defense. the defense. This is one of those games where it’s going to feel like they played better than they did because they’re overshadowed so much by how catastrophically bad the offense was that like there’s a real real real big problem here. This is the third time this season that a depth running back, second or third string, has set a careerhigh and been the player of the game. It happened against Pittsburgh in Dublin. Kenneth Gainwell had a career day. Kamani Vidal was a rookie, had his career day against the Vikings in um the the that Chargers game. And now you had this with Emanuel Wilson who set a career high. Vidal, it’s a little bit bad faith that he’s a rookie. Of course, it’s a career day. It was kind of his first real action. Um, but I believe that that is an amount that’s going to hold for a while cuz Kamani Vidal had a phenomenal game in pass protection and everything. Like he killed us, right? He got killed by an undrafted rookie that uh was not even on the team before that. Like that was cut before. And then with with Emanuel Wilson and similarly with Gainwell in week four, he absolutely wrecked you. The Vikings can’t tackle. It is a huge issue. They are tied for the eighth most missed tackles in the league. And a lot of those missed tackles, they have 96 missed tackles on the season, which is yeah, in the upper half, right? So 96 times you have watched a Viking try to make a tackle and failed to do so. That is, I think, understating how bad the Vikings are at tackling because it won’t go down as a miss if you get bowled over, bring the guy down, but with four more yards after contact. And that’s really what this game from Emanuel Wilson was. There were so many times where it was fit up properly. There was a guy in the gap that there was supposed to be, but that guy would just get killed. Blake Cashman was a culprit on a lot of these. I think Blake Cashman really had a day to forget just on my live eye. Blake Cashman was really poor. Eric Wilson was very up and down. They still have him playing edge and that’s where all the bad stuff happened, but they had him playing from depth 2 and that’s where all the good stuff happened. Uh, and the fact that they can’t recognize this trend is at this point like I I feel maybe I’m being cocky, but like I feel like it’s super obvious that that’s just a bad idea that they just keep going back to. But I don’t know, maybe there’s some galaxy brain thing that would mean that if I were in charge, they would let up seven of eight. I don’t know if they made that decision like they would let up seven of eight scores instead of just five of eight. But either way, that’s the kind of thing that makes me leads me to believe that there was quit in the team. Um, you know, the the defense has spent this whole season just barely keeping the offenses this in this and dragging them along to keep games close, right? And if the defense ever dares to have a bad day, then it turns into 37 to 10, right? It’s a it’s a blowout, which is what happened here. So, I I’m not going to go at Flores or the defensive coaching nearly as much. But I will say the idea of them tackling high, trying to punch the ball, and then missing the tackle is a very common problem that has led to so much production and no turnovers. They aren’t causing the fumbles they’re supposed to be going for. It would be one thing if you missed a bunch of tackles, but you got two huge fumbles and it changed the course of the game, you’d say, “That’s worth it, you know, but but it’s you’re not getting anything for it. You’re just bad at tackling now.” And I I I went everything I said in the crossover and I felt like I was being a little too doomy in that crossover, but like everything came to fruition, right? I said, you know, this is a team that can no-show. It can just be like a freebie for you. This can be a team that is going to miss a bunch of tackles and whether it’s Josh Jacobs or I didn’t even realize who the backup was, Emanuel Wilson, it’s going to be, you know, it’s going to be great for him. The Vikings can’t generate a turnover and they can’t take care of the ball. So, if they lose the turnover battle again, they’ll lose the game. All of that came to fruition. It shouldn’t be this predictably bad, but I I will say that like the Vikings are no longer aggressive in trying to generate turnovers except in how they tackle and that way isn’t working. So, they’re just cooked. It’s they just can’t get turnovers. That’s all it is. They’ve gone from I I think third to 32nd in the turnover margin. And that’s uh that is how you go from what could honest to God be 13 and four or 14 and three, excuse me, to four and 13. I honest to God think that the way that this team is playing, I don’t know if they win another game. Please prove me wrong, Vikings. Please prove me wrong. But I honest to God don’t see how it can how how they can pull this together without something very serious changing. And in a way like something big enough changing that there’s reporting on it, not just a schematic tweak or, you know, a a different decision to use Justin Jefferson in the backfield more. This isn’t that kind of pro. Something really big needs to happen that could include firing somebody to get this team to turn it around and at least get to the finish line with some dignity, but they don’t have dignity right now. One last thing that I want to kind of leave you with and and it it it involves the JJ McCarthy decision-making process, but I need to remind you of a couple of things from the offseason. One, the Wolves spent more money than anybody. The Wolves, I mean, they bought a lot of big upfront signing bonus bonuses, two, threeear deals all over the place. So, they have gone into this season saying, “Okay, here’s your Taj Mahal, right? We have bought you the best roster we possibly can. Right? We are trying to be the Yankees. All right? We’re gonna outspend everybody. Here it is. This is your roster. There is nowhere to hide. And then the Wils and Quy together said, “We got to figure out who the quarterback is going to be.” And Kevin Oonnell has earned the right to make that decision on his own without any interference from anybody. I mean, we we’ll give input, of course. We’ll help him. We’ll assist him. But he has cart lunch. Whatever Kevin Oonnell wants, we’re going to make that happen. And what Kevin Oonnell wanted was J.J. McCarthy, right? They talked about Darnold, said no. They talked about Daniel Jones, said no. And and you know, they offered Darnold a one-year deal, but they they they didn’t want him to be the long-term guy. They said no to that. They offered Daniel Jones a deal to come in and be a backup, but Jones wanted to be a starter. They said no to that. So, while there were offers, they did give offers to Darnold and Jones and and and they said no to those offers. The Vikings very much chose JJ McCarthy to be their guy for the next three years over Darnold or Jones, right? And Jones, I hold a lot less against them, right? Jo Daniel Jones was in a terrible place. He had just been cut, right? Like the the vibes there. That was not that would have been insane for them to go and do that. But let letting Darnold walk was was Kevin Oonnell’s decision. And they were very clear that they were going to support Kevin Oonnell even when he was doing something that a lot of people thought, wait, whoa, you just went 14 games. what are you doing? And they said, “No, we back you, Kevin Oonnell. We’re going to do this. If you believe in the kid, we’re going with the kid.” So now here we are under that guidance and it is falling apart. Not only was that an evaluative mistake, JJ McCarthy was not ready to be the guy and they needed something else to happen there. They needed to approach the offseason at quarterback a lot different than they did. But they’ve also failed to develop him. Failed. We are now deep into year two. And I know he missed a lot of that time to like work with them, but they have failed to develop any new stuff. His mechanics are still bad. He’s still reading the field slow. He’s not getting better. That’s what I want. All I wanted to see was for him to get better. And if you’re five and 12 and but he got a little better over the year, I was going to take that. But we don’t get that. He’s getting worse significantly. He is getting worse, cratering into hell. So, you failed to teach him anything new and you failed to figure out how bad he was and now the team is really bad. Now you’re failing to hide him, too. There’s a lot of teams with rough quarterback situations out there. Teams dealing with straightup backups, busts, you know, fifth round picks or whatever. There’s Tyler Shucks and stuff like they are all doing better than you. And I would say that Kevin Oonnell has failed to simplify his offense for a young quarterback. Um or or maybe outright refused to. So you didn’t develop him. You didn’t evaluate him and you’re not scheming around him. What’s the point, man? What do you do here? So look, Kevin Oonnell has way too much leash, I think, to talk about firing him on Black Monday or anything like that. But if you go four and 13, I think that eats into quite a bit of that leash and and it becomes a more reasonable conversation. But as it stands right now, the Vikings threw all their eggs into the Kevin Oonnell will be right about quarterback basket. Kevin Oonnell was wrong about quarterback in a number of different ways and now they are in the position that they are in because they put too much trust in their head coach. I don’t think everybody survives that. I I I could rant about this for another hour, but I already feel like I’ve made a very disorganized show. So, uh I’m just going to cut it here. Tomorrow is Town Hall Tuesday. Get your questions. Vent if you just want, bring me a hot take, whatever you want. The form is in the show notes. I’ll see you all for that.

The Minnesota Vikings have achieved their worst performance yet. In Lambeau field of all places, the floor completely fell out. Who is to blame, and how can we address these problems as we look toward next season?

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