the Raiders in the bills, by the end of the week, they'll be
sixteens. I think that are up and running by next Tuesday,
everyone will be going. It is done, it is over. We have
gotten through
the period of time where there isn't as much news happening
but there's still plenty of news that happens. And
Here's the bottom line,
it slows down but people still want to know what's happening.
This is the time of year where people watch and wait and
worry. Is there reason to be concerned about? My favorite
team is the reason to feel good about my favorite
team is something going to happen
in the months of May and June and the middle of July that
caused me to feel differently. Good, bad, or otherwise,
people who are all in with their favorite teams, people
who follow the NFL on a religious and zealous basis,
Ever wanted to slow down, they want to know what's happening
at all times. And again, as I said earlier, it's part of
people's routines. You want to check the websites? Hopefully
PFT is one of them. The Twitter feeds. Hopefully, ours is one
of them.
What is happening in the NFL watching waiting hoping
for that team to get better
or that team did? Not get a lot worse, remains to be seen.
How much better the Vikings will be in 2022. We did
a mailbag yesterday on PFT and one of the questions was,
what are the teams in Each conference that
could basically fall anywhere, they could be horrible, they
could be great, they could be at any point in between in
the Vikings are one of the teams
that stand out to me in the NFC primarily because
of the potentially improved offense. It's kind of a weird
thing to see, a new GM and a new head coach come into a team
that doesn't have a significant dramatic Personnel overhaul
in your one, especially
on the offensive side of the ball. Now the defense is
changing from a base for 32 to 34 in those Exchange all
the time with nickel and dime package is etcetera. And who
knows what the defense is going to be? Can't be much worse than
it's been. The past couple of years.
The offense is really the question because you think about
the way it's gone under Mike Zimmer,
and this is why all due respect to defensive coaches out there
and defensive coordinators aspiring to become head
coaches. I'm a firm believer in hiring an offensive head coach
because
if you have any success
as a team and your head coach is a defensive guy,
you're going to lose your offensive coordinator,
he's going to be gone, he's going to be a head coach
somewhere else. If your head coaches and offensive guy, he's
the one that becomes bound at the hip with the quarterback
together they work through
years of success and as the team does well and assistant
coaches get opportunities elsewhere. The guy who is
making the offense, go ultimately stays put look at
the Rams.
Sean McVeigh stays put
Zach Taylor gets a head coaching job.
Kevin O'Connell gets a head coaching job. They head coach
is still there tied at the hip with the quarterback of
the team. So with Mike Zimmer gone after a revolving door of
offense of coordinators, either fired or quit or promoted to
head coaching jobs. Now,
for the first time in
a decade, the Vikings have an offensive head coach and when
you consider
how the offense struggled in recent years but still was
pretty damn potent and has some great weapons.
I would cook and just in Jefferson Adam thielen. They
expect a lot of Irv Smith who had a knee injury last year.
That impacted him dramatically. KJ Osbourne has had his moments
Kirk Cousins
when everything goes well that's the narrator. When
everything goes well he can get it done,
it's only when things start to crumble
that it all falls apart. Well,
now that you've got
Better coaching offensively, maybe
things go. Well, more often, maybe
that play that crumbled,
was the result of a bad play. Call
a bad audible. A bad decision before the snap. Not
something that happens
after the snap. We know what the limitations are of Kirk
Cousins. He's not going to run around like Josh Allen or
Patrick Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers
when the walls close in. It's done. So you try to engineer
situations where the walls close in And
fewer times
than they did in the past. And this is all about self scouting
Hammer. When the Vikings got to the brink of the Super Bowl
2017
and got blown out, by the Eagles, one of the
concessions, made by
Zimmer after the game was,
you know, we kind of learn when we get this deep in
the postseason, you have to spend a lot more time,
figuring out your own Tendencies words to that
effect, but that is an active constant process that should
happen all year long. Long, it shouldn't be get to
the postseason and say,
gee, we've got 17 regular season games of film out there.
Somebody may use that against us. No,
you've got to assume that they're using it against you.
Every week, all the time, you have to constantly stay ahead
of it. And that's what I think Kevin O'Connell. And this
offense will do
and that could lead to good things for the Vikings this
year, we'll see, they could, as I've said, go anywhere from NFC
Championship all the way down to
third or fourth place in the division, who knows.
But the off It's going to be a big part of that and that's
why,
when I saw the recent comments from receiver, Justin Jefferson
to complex sports, that
he regards Davante Adams at the top receiver in the league
right now. But next year he intends to be that guy. Yes,
it's the normal glass half-full bravado and if you don't have
that confidence in yourself,
who else is going to have that confidence in you, and that's
just the way you got, to be wired to survive, not just
Thrive, but survive in the NFL, you have to have a high degree
of confidence in yourself.
Chase Claypool recently said he views himself as a top three
receiver and he got dragged by a lot of people Fort look, you
need to have that and maybe talent-wise. He's got
the ability. We just need to see a blossom.
We know, Jefferson is already one of the top receivers
and he was one of the top receivers
on a team.
They had kind of a basic meat and potatoes old-school
offense. That's one of the things that Jefferson said not
that long ago, spoke to Jory Epstein of USA Today. During
offseason workouts how different the off,
It's just going to be how Dynamic it's going to be.
We talked to Justin Jefferson at the Super Bowl. After Kevin
O'Connell got the job,
he's going to be the Cooper Cup
in that offense and you look back at last year.
And you look at the week-to-week performance.
It isn't going to take much for Jefferson to be what cup was
in that Rams offense.
So you take the guy who's already one of the best
receivers in the NFL with an offense that left plenty to be
desired.
Yeah. Pump up that offense. You create more opportunities, all
of a sudden,
Vikings have the
ultimate good problem to have we're after this season,
they're going to be paying Justin Jefferson 30 million,
a year, 30 million a year and he will have earned it potentially
if he stays healthy and if it goes the way he thinks
could be a magical season for him and
has been. Lieber said has a gazelle but CBS Sports Radio
which kind of kicked off this whole topic for me on Sunday.
The defense was crap, the past couple of years, the offense
wasn't horrible,
the offense stays where it was or gets a little bit better in
the defense, just improves a little bit and this is
a playoff team in a wide-open. NFC,
we've got the Bucks the Rams in the Packers and then kind of
everybody else. You know, somebody from the NFC East is
going to make it by winning the division. Eagles Cowboys, who
knows but you got those three
Wild Card spots now
wide open
and it's not unreasonable to think even with a first year
GM. Head coach. The Vikings can get one of them because
the talent they have and the new approach that will happen
offensively.