Episode 617: TCO Has Fallen

0:00Welcome to NARS Code, the number one podcast for your Minnesota Vikings. I'm your host producer, my name is James Pagashtani, thank you guys so much for listening. And at the other end of the 10 candidates string, we have our analyst and co-host. You know him from numerous blogs and podcasts around the internet, most notably from WideLeft.Football, he is Mr. Useful Human, Arif Hassan, Arif, as I was watching the game this evening. I was struck by a thought about our own team that we cover here, the Minnesota Vikings. I thought to myself, ma'am, if only we had a quarterback as good as Michael Pentax.

1:00We'd be unstoppable. If only there was a way for the Vikings to have acquired Michael Pentax. What a time. I was I'm pining for, you know what? I'll even take the same score to back as long as he renounces, you know, the same score. The same, see. Yeah, Tyler Schuck, I think is, I was texting Drew about this. And he was like, you know what? I think Tyler Schuck is carving out a career to be one of the league's best backups. And I was like, that's, yeah, actually, that's pretty good. That's a good take, actually. He's playing high level backup football right now. He's got that, he's got that Wednesday trajectory. Okay, he's a high level backup. Oh, well. We do need to talk about Wednesday in a second, but I will say the Tyler Schuck is playing at a level where like, you know, like the 28th best quarterback in the NFL is kind of always a backup.

2:03And it's just like, he's like trying to like, hey, I'm better than some of these guys. And that's I think where he's going to be. Is he no longer leading the league and passing yards after the game? I have to assume that this game put a dent in that. I would have met. Well, I guess he wouldn't be entering the game, right? Because he was the final game of the thing. But in terms of yards per game, certainly I would imagine that that he fell behind. I could probably look this up. Yeah, the the Falcons absolutely took it to the Saints this evening, which normal people hate to see. I was just sitting and eating and just eating popcorn for the second half of that. The Saints do have a lot of haters. We'll say that. Okay. So Tyler Schuck, it looks like he's third in passing yards at the moment. So he did fall off a little bit. It is Bryce Young and Jared Goff ahead of him. Mm hmm. Yeah. I would there's a list of quarterbacks right now that I would I'd prefer to have under setter.

3:06But we'll we'll talk about that in just a moment. Welcome to this episode of Norse code. Hope you guys are all doing well. The Vikings did not lose the trap game. Day and day they were each into they absolutely wanted to. But they did not lose the trap came for the second game in a row. They did not score a touchdown. Though they had an opportunity. They did not score a touchdown in the in the last two games. And will record is I said in the discord at half time. When it was nine to nothing, I had said that if it if the game turns out to be 15 to nothing. And it's all record points. I'm buying a record jersey today. Like I'm just I'm just going to just flat out doing it. I'll retire the ham. I will just go straight to record. And despite the fact it was all 15 points from record. The defense wasn't able to hold that.

4:07So yeah. Yeah. Just just unfortunate. The Vikings win. And in typical Vikings fashion this year. We've got a lot to talk about as a result of it. So we'll be doing that. We got the mailbag as well. Thank you guys so much for listening to Norse code. If you enjoy the show and like access to stuff like the the discord bonus episodes. Check out Norse codes patreon patreon.com slash Norse code. Special thank you to Amos Powellson and Keesh Brando. Thank you guys so much for signing up over on patreon. And also go to paypal.amyslashnorse code as well. Or go to Norse code dot threadless.com for any any number of wonderful pieces of Norse code merchandise. Let's get into the show. The review of the win over the dolphins. The dolphins are atrocious at all levels of football. And speaking of atrocious. The offense for the first three and a half quarters of the Minnesota Vikings.

5:09Not good on just about any level. I was calling for Carson Wentz in the second half to start. I did reach that point of. It is it correct me correct me if I'm wrong because I've heard this I've heard this take out in the ether. And I'm trying not to absorb it as my own take. It seems to me that the Kevin O'Connell offense is more for someone who sits in the pocket. And Kyler can't really do that here. So we've kind of gestured at it on on a wide left. Me Luke and Matt have all written something about Kyler's fit in the Kevin O'Connell offense. And I think Matt was probably the only one who had played in the game. He had played in the game. And I think Matt was published in August.

6:10But he had written it in March. And so we published it for when he was announced he was the starter. Not because we were like waiting for that. Like I don't want to like make someone do work. And then there's like a 0.5% chance that's that the JG MacArthur that it was a real competition. And I do that. It was just like he was in the middle of like doing wedding and honeymoon stuff, which I can congrats to him. And so he didn't like finish it. So he like finished up the last pieces of it before turning it. It was like, hey, it's probably a good type of publisher. But yeah, so we all kind of, you know, looked at this question. Like Ken Kyler, Marie fit in the Kevin O'Connell offense. Is it possible that somebody who scrambles and improvises is actually a bad fit? Right? Because in theory, someone who improvises is can never be a bad fit in an offense because they're adding on to the offense. Right? If the offense fails in some way, your improvisational capability will allow you to correct for it. So every offense could use an improviser. But in that sense, you still do want some like how quickly do you improvise?

7:13Which is really the question with Kyler. He bails pockets relatively quickly in comparison to Sam Donald or Cousins or even J.J. MacArthur, of course, and when so. Don't bail pockets, but also aren't good, right? You also have to be good at football. It turns out. And so Ken Marie do that. And I would say that there is a really big complicating factor here. And Luke wrote about it for last week's games. I actually was looking at the all 22 of this game. And I noticed the same thing. There is an issue with receivers getting open, which it feels like that's kind of like the go to when a quarterback is like not doing well. You're like, oh man, it's the receivers. They're just not getting open. But you know, they were pretty happy with you on Jennings and we're all pretty excited about Jordan Addison. We think that they're good players.

8:13So why aren't they getting open? And I don't think it's because of their skill necessarily. So I'm watching a little bit of the all 22. And I'm seeing like, hey, you've got this receiver isolated here. You know, this is your alert here. And I was like looking at, you know, one of the plays was one of the ones that was just outside the red zone. I think it was in the second half or in the second quarter first half. And all of this is happening and Kyler like bales and he scrambles around. And then ultimately on this play, I think he throws the ball away. That part wasn't important to me with the result was. But rather like, why couldn't he find anybody who's open? So I look at the design of the play. And I'm like, okay, well, this defense. This is like a mess here at the bottom of the screen. We've got an ISO up top. You've got a receiver running. What looks like a curl. And it was like chew on Jennings. And I think Jennings is like a pretty good receiver. He's like a great wide receiver three to have. But the nature of the curl that he was running, the comeback route is such that he has to threaten deep.

9:16He has to, you know, I wouldn't say, I mean, yeah, you do have to put your shoulders down. But I wouldn't say like he has to like barrel forward and not look anywhere. He has to reliably threaten the idea that a deep route is possible and run the first 10 yards of his route as if he's running a nine. And I think the problem here is I think he was. He's so slow that the DB had no issue with dealing with this comeback route. So he wasn't going to be open even though by by design, he should be open. And the other half, you know, we've got the defense that they called just beats the concept that the Viking said at the bottom of the screen. And we're kind of seeing this a little bit that the defense that the dolphins called the worst defense in the league, by the way. I don't know if you caught our conversation with with Kevin last week, previewing the game. But like the worst defense in the league. The guys should get open like they shouldn't be out coaching you.

10:16They shouldn't be, you know, out calling you and there are times for Kyler Murray made mistakes. So a very similar situation occurred a couple of plays later where you have Jordan Addison one on one. You've got what is essentially a pretty heavy zone at the top of the screen or the left side of the field. And you've got either man coverage on the right side of the field or a deep coverage. It's quite a convert to man. So even if it is like a cover three zone, it's essentially man coverage. And it's Jordan Addison, you're like, oh, well, there you go. They do that and he didn't do that, right? I think we all would remember if he did. He did do that and Jordan Addison got open and didn't get the ball. Some of this was because of quick pressure. But he should have he should have understood that this was in alert, right? Like you've got a receiver one on one and what is probably going to be man coverage. All you have to do is check to see if the safety is rotating over to the right side of the field. And it's not. It was a single high safety.

11:17Notable, by the way, because the dolphins run a ton of two high safety. So probably should have paid attention to that and realized the police was coming. Dolphins only blitz on 18% of plays and thrown it deep to Jordan Addison. So there are like moments where Kyler is making the wrong decision here. But I do think that like Kyler. He's having issues with the offense in a way that would suggest he's not a good fit. He comes from an air-raid system in college. His first couple of years in the NFL were air raid it ish. And but he did play in what we would call a pro style offense in 2024. It looked very good in it. He did play a little bit in 2025 before he like famously he got benched, right? And I'm also noticing that the Vikings were running a ton of shotgun with him. And they've been like a mixed under center shotgun team with any other quarterback on the field. And so, you know, they mentioned in training camp that this wasn't going to be an issue and that they were going to run a bunch of under center stuff with Kyler.

12:18And then he's just getting a quarterback to make that work. And maybe not. I don't know. We're not certainly acting like it. So he might just not be a fit. And one of the elements of the Kevin O'Connell offense is that the timing of the offense is such that you hold onto the ball past the 2.5 second mark and then deliver a strike like 19 yards down field to your receiver running a poster of dig or whatever it is. Like you're waiting a next to a half tick. Which means you have to take the hit. It means that if a free rush was coming at you and you're like two and a half seconds at the pocket, you can't lean backwards and throw. You can't bail on the pocket because now the window is going to close. There are a couple of moments I saw where it's like, hey, second window's open here. Kyler, why aren't you throwing it? And then the window closes and it's like, well, your eyes got their way too late. Which like, you know, the nature of like criticism here is like, I would never be able to do that. But yeah, I like, I'm asking a guy to like deal with a 310 pound player who can run 1.7 second 10 yard split

13:26just barreling into their chin. I can't ask me to do that. But that is the job he's getting paid for mostly by the Cardinals, but still. And it doesn't it doesn't feel like he's feeding the spirit of what the offense demands of him. And then also when he is the offense is failing him. So it's like a two part problem there. It is notable that in that the offense has performed a lot better with Carson Wentz on the field. I'm not going to say Carson Wentz is a better quarterback than Kyler. And I think that we've got, if we just include the last two years of data that we have and sort of just the previous two games for each of them. We've got, you know, maybe a little bit more to go on. This is just Kyler's a much better quarterback. But it's not like a good sign that Carson Wentz has performed better. The offense has performed better with Wentz. And that when you do opponent adjustments, these are all small sample.

14:26But when you do opponent adjustments, the gap actually widens. It doesn't get closer to widens and Kyler looks even worse because again, the Dolphins offense is the worst in the NFL. It's and it's not like close like the distance between them 30 seconds. Like the distance between like 30 second and 27. Like it's not close. Or 31st and 27. It's really, I guess alarming. It's really concerning that they, I wouldn't say win all in on this quarterback. They paid them like $1.3 million or whatever it was. But they put this years outstanding defense, which we will talk about more. Into the hands of a guy where you couldn't have the 100% confidence to be a good fit for what you're doing. I can't be too critical of it because I did advocate the signing. I called it a good signing. But it is annoying that like, yeah, you didn't have Justin Jefferson in the second half.

15:30You were missing out on Christian Darisoff or almost the entire game. You're missing out on Jackson. These are all like pretty significant problems. But they shouldn't be so significant that like you can't score a touchdown. And again, they would have if it wasn't for like the clock thing. But you even scored a touchdown in two games. What's about that? It's longer, but I guess you can't blame Kyler for the longer part. But yeah, I don't know. It's it's rough. It's it looks like the preseason. And it's it's so bad. Yeah. It's borderline unwatchable offense. It is. I okay. So I was watching the NFL pro podcast. I hate that I have to say I was watching a podcast, but we don't call them podcasts anymore. That existed for like two years, right? It was a very short period of time. But Trevor Sikabat, Brett Coleman, they've got a podcast with NFL pro. It's on YouTube and also podcasts. But it's a very visual podcast. They got like they work with the NFL directly.

16:32So they've got like these wonderful visuals on screen. They've got they're like demonstrated with it. Basically everything that we've refused to do because of the effort it would take. They've got a production team. We have James is now also a host. I'm waving now. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like what we we had a producer, but then we made him a host. And then we actually didn't stop him from being a producer. So. But yeah. So like we don't have like a production anyway. So there they they were like explaining. The yeah, they were breaking down all they did deep dives and like three of the games. And then they were doing like a quick run around. But they started the Vikings were in the quick run around. But they like stopped and Brett was like, and this is a conversation I had in a group chat. Like two days before this Brett was like, how do Vikings fans watch this offense? How do they watch this team eats eats evil? It's devastating. It's so awful. And like Trevor is like, but they're four and no, Brett.

17:33They're four and no. How could you be mad at four and no? And Brett was like, no. I won't like, I won't accept that. The offense is abysmal. And and my friends at Texans fan. He would kill to be four and no. And he's still like, this is this is spirit. This is spiritually corrupt. We like we we can't let this continue. We are losing our essence by watching this. Right. And like Kevin in the group. So I think I tweeted out this group chat moment like, how do you watch the Vikings? You know who asked that? Kevin, the dolphins fan we just had on. Like do you get the dolphins have the leagues worst offense? Until today. Now it's the Vikings and the leagues worst defense. They are the leagues worst. Right. It's it. And he was like, man, I don't know how you watch the Vikings. Like that's how bad the offense is, man. The Texans and the dolphins are like, that's look, we got our own thing going on. And it's kind of a lot. But that is not good.

18:34That is that's bad. You do you have to exercise that or talk to a priest or something. That's not good. I would I'd like to run you through some stats. If I could great, because I have stats too. Let's go. I'm going to these are from a time that we absolutely hated the quarterback and basically ran him out of town. Please tell me this is like 2013 Christian ponder. Here are some stats for you completion rate 46 points. I saw Christian monster. He was a 70% guy. His first game, seven for 1539 yards. So this is Donovan McNabb's second game, 18 for 30, 228. Third game 22 for 36 for 211. He had a touchdown that game against Kansas City, 18 for 30, 202 yards,

19:35and an interception. Then Arizona, this is a win. 10 for 2169 yards. Nice. The Bears were the final game of his campaign. 19 for 24 for 177 yards. No touchdowns, those first two games or, you know, interceptions. Yeah, that was absolutely McNabb. Sir, the 39 yards. I said, ah, the chargers, Percy Harfen. I remember. So here's the thing. Through four games, he's still better than McNabb. Sorry, I take that back. He's still better than Murray. Oh, Jesus, dude, Jesus, dude, Jesus. He's still better than Kyler Murray. Oh, God. Okay. Okay. Um, so I have a couple of offensive stats that are more about the offense than they are about Kyler. I could probably pull up some some pretty damning Kyler stats this year too, though.

20:37Um, yeah, the EPA for Dropback. Let's do what? Why not? Let's just be mad. Uh, where are he? We've already brought up McNabb. So yeah, we'll take a look at the quarterback stats in a second, but just for the offense in general. So I ran through a bunch of offensive stats on locked down Vikings after dark, but it was like the last four minutes of the show and we just went through them. And so, um, not a ton of time to like discuss them or explain them or, or, or, or put them into any context. Not that context is the thing people want right now. Um, but I went through and I ranked 11 offensive stats in increasing levels of alarmingness. How alarmed I am that these things are true, but the Vikings offense through four weeks. Um, so they ranked 31st in net offensive yards per game 262.8. That's concerning. But it's the least concerning total yards. I mean, you should probably have 300 yards, man, but like, totally, I mean, you

21:41could just be efficient, right? Uh, they are first in percentive drives ending in a kick. So it's a field call or a punt, which I that's a, I think that's funny and stupid. But like, the degree to which they outrank the number two offense in the stat, the Tennessee Titans, it's by like 18% like it's, it's by a lot of 18 percentage points. It's a lot. Um, the, the fact that 81% of the drives ended either a field goal or a punt is like wild to me. Now, it does mean that there's not a ton of turnovers. It also means there's not a ton of touchdowns. Um, it means that there's some level of capitulation happening on fourth down. This is the fourth down capitulation stat. Um, they ranked 30th in percentage of drives ending in a touchdown. That's 14.3%. Now I did tweet out, uh, the significance of this stat, um, in, in relation to the article. So

22:42I produced a bunch of data viz. So I got access to like a new data viz package that I've been abusing for the past two weeks. And this one is really nice. And, uh, and I was able to put little like check marks and X's next to whoever did or didn't make the playoffs outstanding. Um, but I looked at the last 25 teams to start out their season four now. Um, and conveniently, the stops in 2016. I say conveniently because I just made a, I just guessed. I was like, I was the last 25. I want to include the 2016 Vikings. This was last 25 and it included them. So it was fantastic. Last 25 teams to go four and out. Um, 22 of them are from before 2026, right? So we've got a sample of 22 that have had a full season. 20 of them made the playoffs. So two of them did not. They are the 2016 Denver Broncos and the 2016 Minnesota Vikings. I don't know why I put the Vikings last like some sort of cliffhanger. You were all there. You know that. But we all survived that year. Yeah, right. Um, it would be like, I don't know, reminding the

23:51city of an awful hurricane that they went through for about two hours. Uh, you were all there. Uh, you saw that. Um, I would say that having anything in common with that 2016 team should raise some concern, right? Raise some red flags. It doesn't, you know, past does not prologue necessarily. It doesn't like paint the future, but it should give us some signs to watch out for. Um, so through four games, the Minnesota Vikings have all the four of teams, the last 25, four of teams are dead last in touchdown rate on drives. Uh, second, the last, the 2016 Vikings. Uh, these are very similar teams. Uh, they both had very low turnover rates. They had very high end the drive and it kick rates. They, um, had a pretty good special teams unit, this special teams unit is better. Now the 2016 Vikings had like a pretty obviously bad kicker. Uh, but they were pretty good at kickoff the turn. They were quite good at kickoff return. They're pretty good part return. They'd a part return

24:54touchdown, uh, one of four teams to do that in the first four weeks of the season. Um, they great fuel position coming out of kickoffs, pretty good fuel position coming off of ponds. Uh, great expected points coming off of ponds. Uh, it was really just the fuel goal thing, uh, which is a big thing, but they, they were well above average in terms of special teams. I think they rank sixth in special teams, DVO six or eight or something like that and special teams DVOA through four weeks, uh, that year. Uh, just like the Vikings, I believe rank first in special teams DVOA, actually by kind of a margin. Um, but yeah, uh, they like the ones that missed ranked last in touchdown rates per drive by the end of the season. Like you just can't, you can't not score. It's important that you score. I promise you you have to score. That's part of the deal. Um, so that's such a right for drive. That's one that's that's only the third stat. I have 11. They rank second in sac rate at 9.8% to the second highest sac rate. Believe number one is Tennessee.

25:55Again, not a good company to keep here. Um, but the reason that this one is really alarming instead of, eh, you don't do that. But that's is because they're like league average in pressure rate and league average in time. The pressure date like, it's entirely a quarterback stat. Like pressure is showing up as often for them as it is for anyone else and it's showing up as quickly for them as it is for anyone else. And yet their second in sac rate can't do that. Can't take on sacks for no reason. Now, if they had like an explosive play rate or, uh, like a deep depth of target or something that would make up for these sacks, I'd feel okay with it. But we're not there. Uh, they're 28th. So this one's not dead last. They're 28th in EPA per play. Jesus, uh, they're 31st in third down conversion rate. Uh, they're 32nd in yards per play. They're 32nd in first downs per game. They're 32nd in play success rate.

27:00They're 32nd in drive success rate. So drive success rate is, uh, you count out the number of series that you have down series, uh, and then, uh, so that's your denominator. And then your numerator is your, the number of first downs and touchdowns you scored on that drive. So let's say, you advance the ball three times you get three first downs and then you punt, which would be kind of hard to in the modern NFL. It's a fuel goal. Who cares? Um, so you had four down series there. So you know, drive success rate on that drive. That example driver just gave you with three first downs and a fuel goal of 75%. Uh, if you end your drive and a touchdown, that's 100%. Um, so overall, drive success rate is how often you get first down. So it doesn't care about third down conversion rate. You get points for converting on first down. In fact, that's better. You would rather convert for the first down. So you get points for that, right? Um, and, uh, you obviously get points for touchdowns. You keep drives alive. You're successful. Uh, this is a pretty stable stat. Um, I used to

28:04think that this was like the beacon of stability as a stat. It's really good. Um, but some testing, uh, that I've done since then suggested to me, it's not ass tables, I thought, but it's pretty good. Uh, they rank 30 second in that at 60%. Um, they're also 30 second. Oh, yeah. So this, this last one takes a little bit of context because I think it's really important that you understand how bad it is. Um, so back when I was talking about touchdown rate, right? That is really bad as a, as an end product. But if we're trying to figure out if offense is good or not, there's, there's so many other statistics you could use besides touchdown rate, especially touchdown rate per drive. Uh, and the reason for that is because it's really volatile because it depends on how often you convert touchdowns once you enter the red zone and, uh, you know, red zone conversion rate, that's really volatile. And I'm not saying it's completely random. Um, good offenses tend to have higher red zone conversion rates and bad offense is tend to have lower ones.

29:04But rather getting to the extremes of either you're going to progress really quickly. It's really difficult to maintain a significantly above or below average red zone conversion rate. And the Vikings red zone conversion rate isn't very good. That's not what the stat is. It's how often they appear in the red zone at all. Only in 19% of their drives dead last by actually kind of a margin. Do they run a play in the red zone per drive? And this includes when they enter the red zone and then got sacked out of the red zone. Like that counts. That's that's a positive example here. Um, this is untenable. And I was looking at kind of the differences in offensive and defensive and defensive point for drives and offensive and EPA versus defensive EPA. Um, by EPA going back to 1999. So 27 or I guess 28 years of data, including this one, 28 years of data. This is the 17th largest split between offensive and defensive performance.

30:11Last year's Browns are actually a little bit higher on the list. So congrats to them for having like I think the number two defense, the number 32 offense outstanding work. Congratulations. Um, everyone was envious of the last year's Browns. Um, but this is this is that version of that. Now again, they're 4 and 0. Like there's only so much mad you can be. But like this is less like I mad that they won or I'm not recognizing that like we're at a spot that a bunch of other teams would love to be in, but rather a recognition of the fact that this cannot continue and they got to fix it. And they've got the best cushion in the world. They've bought themselves a lot of time. But that's what I said, you know, two, three years ago when I was talking about sustainability. I was like, Hey, it's good that they've won. You're learning some really cheap lessons. Expensive lessons come with a loss, right? Cheap lessons come with the win. You get to learn the lesson. You don't have to take a hit in the standings. Um, they're learning, they're hopefully learning some cheap lessons. Uh, but yeah, I don't know. Uh, this is in a

31:17bismill offense. Oh, and by, by just by quarterbacks stats, I didn't mention I was going to do that. Negative 0.22 EPA for dropback. Uh, that ranks, uh, how many, how many do we have? 41 players here who've had at least 25 dropbacks? Uh, that ranks C41438. Um, but if I expand it to just or a contracted 50 dropbacks, uh, 30 second to 33. Um, that's yeah. So that cam ward is lapping you. That's not good. Uh, there's like, I've been in multiple podcasts of reddit for they're like, Hey, can the hosts stop pretending cam ward to thing? That's where we're at, right? Where people are like, no, we got a column of us. It's over. It's done. Yeah, this is, um, it's, it's so bad. And yes, Jefferson wasn't on the field. And yes, but even the little things are getting just dropped or I'd say that he, I mean, like, the office was having trouble handing

32:22the ball off. Okay, there's no control over this offense at all. Yeah. And fine, he looked okay for that, but final drive when he decided that every ball was just going to go to Hawkinson. Yes. So and the thing is like, so there's a couple of people that have that have mentioned this online. Um, I had at least one person text me like, Hey, can we take solace in like the second half or isn't there to be the final drive? The second half performs in the second half. I've leave you on like 16 of 18 yet seven and a half yards per attempt, which is not like world shattering seven and a half yards per attempt. That's like league average stuff. But that's a whole lot better than we've seen in the other quarters. I was going to like come up with the number I was like, what's three and a half times two when I was like, I don't want to do the math. It's seven and that's wrong. So I'm already doing it wrong in my head. Um, I'll be three and a half times four. That's why it's wrong. Fourteen. Um, I couldn't just

33:23multiply it by two again. Why am I bad at this? Uh, I'm your analytics co-host by the way. Um, that's what the Vikings offense is doing to me. It's making me bad at multiplying seven by times two. So anyway, so the previous 14 quarters, uh, pretty bad yards per attempt. This one seven and a half. Can we be happy about that? And like, of course, we can like, abstractly be happy about it. But like operationally, it didn't fill me with confidence because it was a lot of the same offense, but he was hitting his check downs. And maybe the offense wasn't getting check downs available to him in time. But like, he was still taking over three seconds to throw um, in, in the second half. And it was very clearly he's going through his progressions. And within that progression, um, second, I can shorten to the second half year. Yes, 16 for 18 or 135, seven and a half yards per attempt. Um, and it's three seconds per, uh, time to throw. And in that progression, he didn't find anyone open, deeper, intermediate. And so he would, you, you would take a little bit of time and then he would check down. And again, that's better,

34:27right? To not checking down, right? That's better than taking the sack. You only took one sack in the second half. Uh, 0.28 EP at per dropback. Uh, great. Um, that's a 78th percentile outcome. Uh, we love that for us. Um, but it was very like, operationally suspect. Like, I don't know how much that can continue. And again, the offense will probably get better. You'll get Jefferson back. You won't get Donovan Jackson back. Unfortunately, it was reported. By the way, I should just note this now. It was reported that he had a mischievous Terry's going to be out for the season. Uh, I don't know what the deal is with Christian Derrassine. I know he suffered two head slash neck injuries. Was evaluated both times, clear concussion protocol. The first time, the second time, I don't know, it sounds like he has a concussion. Um, but I haven't seen the news about it because I've been producing nice little neat little data. Vis. Uh, man, I'm not looked at the internet. Um, which is highly recommended, I guess. But, uh, yeah. Uh, that's not enough, right? Like, that's

35:32what we got to build on. But I would like the offense to work on time. Like, the, it's slant post. I don't know what to call it. The intermediate throw up the seam for T.J. Hockinson. That, that more of that, that was on time. That was a bullet. Uh, that was in rhythm. Importantly, it's not just on time, but it was in rhythm. And it was a perfect read of the defense. It was a great understanding of the real estate available to T.J. Hockinson. It got a first down. Like that kind of stuff, right? And not, hey, is Joanne Jennings open though? Is, is Jordan out of snoping though? All right. I'm going to check in that to T.J. Hockinson. That can't be the primary offense, right? Like, and that's, that was kind of the primary offense. And if that's going to happen, then like a past rush that doesn't rank dead last in the league. By the way, didn't mention this at all. The dolphins didn't have a sack heading into this game. And were dead last in pressure rate.

36:33So it wasn't as if this was a weird statistical quirk. They had no sacks and then emerged with four sacks. They started the game with one. Yeah. The first play of the game was their first sack of the season leading to the first time the Miami dolphins defense this year forced a punt in the first half. Like, Jesus Christ. So, okay. So that's what they were at. The second half, you cannot have that all. It's better. Certainly better. Something to build on. But you can't have an offense that's continuously checking down because there's not options available. So it'll keep better when Justin Jefferson's back. It'll keep better when Christian there's us back. I don't know what the answer is. Green Bay hired all the guards, right? They signed three guards. So there's no more left. See, you relate to that train. Unfortunately, I guess Michael Jurgens is like off of pop or something like that. So you could like move Black

37:39Brandel the guard and promote Michael Jurgens to center. Although, like the Vikings probably have a pretty good reasons to why they didn't do that before Michael Jurgens got hurt. So yeah, that's probably not the world's best solution. But if you're if you're in the situation, the Vikings are in eventually. If you lose enough of your starters, you're not going to be able to make it across. Like, there's only so much our special teams can do to give you field position in order to get Will Riker field goals. Oh, yeah. By the way, the Vikings have the third um, shortest yards gained per scoring drive. Like they only score when the when the defense and special teams set them up. And even then it's usually a field goal. Like they're not they're not driving the ball from the 20 into the end zone. I mean, they're not driving the ball into the end zone period. But like, like abstractly, we're not seeing a vision of someone marching the offense

38:40down the field. It's like, yeah, we got the ball to 38. We moved the ball three yards. All right, Will Riker, take it home. How I, I, I realized that this is a question that we can't quantify. How was McCarthy worse than this? Hey, man, can always get worse? Oh my god. All right, so uh, the offense is is indescribably awful. Enough to, uh, enough to bring a tear to a glass eye. It's, it's god awful. The defense is still there. The defense is still holding as, as best as it can. But man, this feels like a less fun version of 2016. It, it certainly is. And I think it's because, I mean, the 20, so both defenses,

39:44the 2016 defense and the 2020 60 fence are very exciting defenses that are also quite good, extremely good. The 2016 defense through four weeks, number one in the league in all of the metrics points per game, points per drive, EPA per play, success rate, turnovers, force per drive, etc. Right. It was, it was great. You had, you had Eric Hendrix returning a pick six, 77 yards, you had the Neal Hunter scooping score, uh, special teams were good too. Of course, he had like a marker Sheryl's partner turn touchdown. Like I mentioned, um, the defense in 2016 was great. The defense in 2026 is also great. Uh, the reason that 2016 felt, not gonna say a lot better, but like felt better is because you were a, a, you're recovering from like the Teddy injury, right? And it's like, oh my god, Sam Bradford is not awful question mark. All right, I can, I can dig it. Let's go. Um, but like it was, there's just like more exciting, right? Like when Anthony Barr like peels the ball away, it over time and grabs a touchdown. Like, okay,

40:46cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Uh, 2016, uh, or 2026, the defense is on a historic pace. And, uh, someone asked a question, I might as well address it now, right? So someone in the mailbag asked, um, uh, I'd love to put aside the offensive struggles and just take a second to focus on the insane level that the defense is playing at because wow, it's just so fun. I know we're only four weeks in, but are they headed towards anything you'd consider historic? Um, and you know, you can use a bunch of different metrics to, to, you know, say this good defense is historic and this good defense is historic. Like, for example, the 2017 Minnesota Vikings defense is the greatest third down defense that we have data for going all the way back to 1991. No defense had a better third down conversion prevention rate than the 2017 Vikings, which is crazy because offense kind of sucked compared to 2017 in 1991. Um, and that's a really good thing to have and they were a very good red zone defense. Um,

41:53but like, if the name of the game is points, right? And it's just points. Um, I ran through all the points allowed for game in NFL history going back to 1960. And I realized like it wasn't going to be that great because like points were down from 1968 to 1978. It's the NFL dead ball era. Um, I wrote about the 1977 Atlanta Falcons. They allowed like 9.6 or something like that points per game is the lowest points per game by by raw point total. Um, that any defenses have her head. So by that measure, no. But when you account for the league average and the distribution of points scored across the NFL, um, you end up with this top 10 list. And it's a, it's a list of 12 because, or it's a list of 11 because two teams tied for 10th. So we get to include both of them. But tied for first, the 2006 Baltimore Ravens in 2002, 10 big buckeneers who allowed 12.56 and 12.25 points allowed per game, the league average 20.7 and 21.7.

43:02So the Z score, how many standard deviations away they were from league average based on the distribution of, of, of defenses, both were at 2.75. So nearly three standard deviations away. Very, very tail end of this stuff. Um, after that, you have the 95 Kansas City Chiefs, the 1970 Minnesota Vikings, the 1994 Cleveland Browns, the 1985 and 1986 Chicago Bears, the 2022 San Francisco 49ers probably not usually brought up in discussions like this. The 2000 Baltimore Ravens, the 1975 Los Angeles Rams, and another appearance of those 80s bears, the 1988 Chicago Bears. Um, so those are the 11 in the top 10. So mind you, the, the greatest distance from league median was 2.75 in the Z score. Somebody standard deviations away. The 2026 Minnesota Vikings on a four game pace are 2.87

44:03standard deviations away, which means they would be better in points allowed per game than the Baltimore Ravens, the 10 paybuckeneers and the Kansas City Chiefs, the Minnesota Vikings, and all those teams. I just named the 69 Vikings, the 71 Steelers, whatever, right? There are Super Bowl trophies in this list. Yeah, multiple Super Bowl trophies, historic historic defenses. Um, in defenses that like, defined the direction of the NFL, right? Uh, this could be history's greatest defense by points allowed per game. And it could be on the back of a historic blitz, right? So I'm in the middle of, um, hand charting a bunch of these historic defenses, if they were known to have a high blitz rate. So I already did a little bit of the 77 Falcons. I did a little bit of the 85 bears. I'm going to be going into the cowboy doomsday defense. We're going to go into the buddy Ryan defenses, the Eagles, going to the Rex Ryan defenses of the Ravens and the Jets.

45:07Um, I'm going into all of these defenses that have been historically quite good to great that have been known for, for blitzing a lot. And I'm going to hand chart it and see what their blitz rate is compared to the 80% or so blitz rate of the current Minnesota Vikings. In fact, I want to find out exactly what the current blitz rate is because it's always, it's just fun, right? It's just like fun to take a look at that blitz rate and think, huh, there are 31 other teams that don't get to live like this. That's how sad they you don't, you don't get to experience this on this side of the ball. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So 77.3 again, it depends on like who's doing the, uh, the counting. So PFF has a 77.3 blitz rate. Sumer has a 63.8% blitz rate. And I'm going to assume let's, let's check, uh, next chance, stats. Uh, I'm going to assume that their blitz rate is probably somewhere in the middle because Sumers, uh, tends to be pretty low. All right. We got next chance, stats. Team defense season

46:12leaders go to past defense, go to blitz percentage and 67.9. So, uh, it's 67. Yay. Um, but yeah, it's, it's either 63.8, 67.9 or 77.3. It's obscene is what it is. There are about, no matter who does the counting, they're between 20 and 25 percentage points away from number two, which by the way, number two is the Washington commanders, which is run by the Rante Jones, former defensive backscotch, four Brian Flores. This is just a different lifestyle, man. It's so cool. Um, there's a couple of really cool breakdowns. Uh, we've got a couple breakdowns over at Wylifteff football. There's a couple of good breakdowns and match quarters. Uh, there was one posted by Derek Lawson over at the athletic football show, uh, over on YouTube where he talks about, you know, how the standard defense for the Minnesota Vikings is the five man rush and the change up is the four man rush. And he talks a lot about understanding like where quarterbacks want to go

47:13and taking that away. And so trying to take away every receiver. Um, it took a quick seven minute video or something like that. Um, but I'll, I'll try to identify it because he's got unique and exotic coverages. So like, Derek Lawson identifies, you know, a version of invert two that they ran, which is when, um, you know, a quarterback replaces a safety and cover two. Um, but I've got non-traditional Tampa twos. Match quarter talks a lot about that. So I'll try to link that to. There's a bunch of really cool stuff that they're doing. They're leading the league, not just in blitz rate and not just in points, but also in pressure rate. They've, uh, they've pressured opponents 46% clip according to PFF of 48% clip according to a, uh, Sumer and a 46.8% rate according to next year and stats. All three of the charting companies put the Vikings at number one, which is actually kind of rare, but it speaks to how different it is, um, for the Vikings. They also have a very quick time to pressure. They rank fourth in the NFL in time to pressure.

48:15Actually, it depends on who does the counting. Let's, let's be sure. Um, so yeah, fourth in the NFL according to Sumer and G 16, according to next gen, what's going on here? Uh, but yeah, they're the pressure and quickly. They're pressure and often they're blitzing all the time. Uh, they got a zone behind it because they're crazy. Uh, and I believe they lead the league in SAC. Yeah, was 16 in SAC rate with 10.3%. Uh, they're, they're punishing quarterbacks. The run defense is fine. The, it's fine. It's not bad. It's not good. It's not bad. Uh, they ranked fifth in EPA allowed per rush. So it's actually pretty good. And that was just fine. Uh, so I say that because they allowed all the Gordon 119 yards on like 110 yards on, on, on nine rushes, um, maybe it's 100. It didn't matter. They allowed a 53 yarder and they allowed two more rushes of at least 10 yards. But the success rate was like 44%, which is still like above average, but it's just four successful runs out of nine.

49:21They did have to throw the ball a lot. Um, so it's not a huge deal, but they did, they, they didn't get run on a little bit. It wasn't a huge problem. It turned out in EPA per rush. They're still top five. Um, but like, it's interesting because when you, when you listen to them talk about like defending the run or blitzing and all that, they talk about how they designed their blitzes such that it's got really good rush contained principles behind it. There's a lot of blitzes that they won't run because of how, especially on first down, because of how they might implicate rush defense. Um, and, uh, and they talk about earning the right to have like a, a third and long and have like a better kind of menu of blitzes available to them. And so you got to stop the run. Um, but they very much clearly have oriented themselves around, uh, blitzing the quarterback a lot and then letting that running back stuff kind of just sort itself out. Like it'll, that'll take care of itself. We just have to hit the quarterback a ton and the rest will just kind of fall into place.

50:24And so far, yep. So I, I, it feels weird trying to break this game down in a conventional way because of all of the conversations that have to happen, like in a broader sense about this team. Uh, 2016 was the fat cats gets slaughtered here. Yeah, it was also the Northern resigned year, the alleged fight. Then North turn and Mike Zimmer had, there's no official sort of reporting that. So don't take this as gospel. Uh, and the laceration from the play sheet of the eye. I believe that was that year too. So we're, we're reliving a real fun bit of history here. But if you found yourself clamoring for Carson Wens in the second half, you weren't alone. Uh, the boobards were out in full force.

51:24They were booing during the victory formation. And yeah, you correct the boo. That's nuts. It's, uh, it's, it's so weird to end. I was sitting there and as somebody who's like done audio for, for like games before, it felt like they, that they had the, the, the audience cranked a bit too hard, like in the mix. Like I was actually trying to sit there and go, are they like, like turning the booing up? Like what was going here? When I, I, what do we do it? What's going on? Like I was just trying to figure out what was happening. It was, it, it did feel like the mix was a bit heavy as far as the audience was concerned, like the crowd, but like, they're booing for a good reason. This offense is just that terrible. And we all know that we're a couple injuries from not being able to score at all, not being able to move the ball at all. Aaron Jones is carrying a huge amount of carries right now. And like, that's not sustainable.

52:28Yeah, certainly is not. Like this, uh, this was the, uh, the, the answers kept saying this was going to be the, the get Kyler comfortable game. It was so weird how much they emphasize like does he need his jammies? Like, are they footy pajamas? Like what does he need out there? I'm so tired of like, of waiting for the quarterback to like, oh, oh, okay, now it clicks, no, it clicks. It's not going to happen. And let me, in my words, this is not sustainable at all. This is awful to watch. I, it's, it's awful to cover. I want to get him to watch. Like, can we have the competency of Christian Bonder? Can we have the competency of Donovan McMabb? So I, so the Aaron Jones thing got me wondering. So I divided his carries by like three and a half

53:32because he was injured in one of those games. Um, because he's currently sixth in the NFL and carries despite missing half a game, um, which, all right. Um, and he would be third in the NFL and carries. Number one is Derek Henry, which like, yeah, obviously. Number two is Kenneth Walker, which like, yeah, that makes sense. Number three is Jonathan Taylor. But so you'd be able to like, Jamira Gibbs and James Cook. I like Aaron Jones. What is that? That's, it's four games. We got a game at a buy and, uh, man, I, I'm frustrated. I was, I was ready for Carson wants to come out and just, all right, we just need to kindly sit down for a little while and we just need to retool the offense a little bit. Let, uh, let Carson come in and do his thing for a little while. I'm not saying Carson would have put up 300 yards

54:33in the second half. I am saying it would have been 250. Just something. I, each, each hard for me to interact with this one because like the data tells us that Carson has been better. Um, by almost every measure, and technically the, the running game is better with Kyla run the field. I don't think that's because he's such a running threat. He's changing. It's not like a, like a Lamar Jackson effect. I think that's like more noise than anything else. Um, and it's, which is a fun, which is a fun stat again, because it looks like he can't, like he doesn't know where he's supposed to hand the ball off to. Right. Exactly. That first down to air to the air, air there, Aaron Jones ran in. That was not how that was, that was drawn up. That was a, oh, well, I guess I'm just going to go through a hole that I didn't expect to be here. That was crazy. Um, but yeah, right now by every measure, Carson went to the offense more successfully than Kyla Murray. Um, I don't expect that to continue. I do find myself sympathetic to people

55:39who are like, Hey, if one guy's played better, why not play him? Hey, that's a pretty rock solid argument if I'm being honest. Uh, but I do think that Murray is going to be better, but I'd like to see it sooner rather than later. And, um, what do the Vikings ownership say at the beginning of the season? Patience is not infinite. We don't got all season man. I gotta figure this out. Yeah, patience. That's it. Patience. Let's, uh, let's end this, uh, this review of the dolphins game that they won. I want to reiterate the Vikings won this game. And we're still this frustrated with it. Um, let's go to the mailbag. Skimble shanks, the railway cat asks, is there any meaningful difference between how we were playing at the end of last year and how we're playing now? Yeah, the offense was better. That's rough. Um, no, okay. So mind you, the

56:39offense was better against the league's worst defenses, which again, the Miami dolphins are that. So that's not a huge excuse. Um, but also like they were, they, okay, they actually put together an air raid offense, which is kind of ironic, given that it's Kyler at quarterback now and they haven't done that. And also McCarthy comes from like a very pro style non air raid offense in college. But they ran like a somewhat air raid style offense. They didn't pepper the middle of the field. They only ran routes to, are they only through routes to the outside? Um, it was a very, you know, we'll use the word again unsustainable offense in a lot of ways, but it was like more efficient. You were getting more yards per attempt. You were getting more yards per play. You were getting more first downs. Uh, yeah. And that's the, that's the end of the season. The total season, not really the same thing. In fact, I could look up like, because I think more games of this and people will, will have to like consult with their memory, right? Like, hey, was, let's be real. Was that worse?

57:42Was did, or am I, am I maybe over indexing on how mad we were, which is I can think also fair to like be like, Hey, was I, was I writer? Was I mad? Like, which one of those two wasn't? You'd fan fascinating question. Um, so I'll take a quick look at just the EPA per play. Um, and see if I can like figure out, let's, let's do this by EP a per dropback. The, the, oh, here's the fact that we're here. Right. And we're just like, I can't, there's no way last year's McCarthy was worse. It was, by the way. Uh, so of all quarterbacks with 100 attempts since 1999, uh, Inovikings uniform. Um, like it's kind of resonant 100. So he doesn't appear yet. So let's just, let's just log this number. Oh no, it is worse. No. Okay. Uh, J. Jim McCarthy ranks 29th of 30th. Brad Johnson in 2006. So every 10 years, huh? Uh, Brad Johnson in 2006, uh, dead last at 30th.

58:47Now let's remove, reduce the passage to 25. See how you get there. All right. So, uh, I believe it's worse because Kyler's EPA per dropback, uh, right now is, uh, negative point two something. And if McCarthy ended the year at negative point one five seven, that would be dead. That's it, right? Like the whole McCarthy year, fake offense in the final five games, of course, uh, was better than what, yeah, it's minus point two two. I, I don't have a lot of words for that one, man. Imagine this team with just an average quarterback. Do we have an average quarterback? This team would be like, there's like one team better than maybe two than that version of the Vikings, right? It's the 49ers and maybe the Jaguars. Those are the two teams. I can't wait for

59:49the Tuesday morning rankings and all of them being like, so I have to put the Vikings here because of their record, but they are in no way a good team. Yeah, I was doing a bunch of the, uh, like then margin stuff. So like positive EPA versus negative or as it's offensive EPA versus defensive EPA and so like it. And the Vikings like rank like seven or 12, like they rank above average because of how demolishingly good the defense is. It's a, it's an insane defense. But man, why are you doing this to us? It, uh, it hurts. You know what, this point, throw a couple of picks over at the chargers. They're not doing anything with Herbert. He looks broken as hell. Just give, uh, give, give Harbaugh an out. This, this does seem to be the, um, the kind of trade the juror that I've seen people put together. All right, I did, I did look it up. So two different versions of EPA. So they are next to each other.

1:00:52Murray is still worse than McCarthy by, by one rank. Um, yeah, I max Brosmer at the bottom. Congrats. Good work, buddy. At 55, then Jaron Hall, then Spurgeon Wind, then Josh Freeman. Congrats. Oh, uh, can he still play? Is he, is he still an option? Remember that that it's technically, he was technically worse. I'm listing the worst ones. Oh, still, I know. Um, yeah, it's, F dude, he's got to get better fast. He's got to get better fast. Uh, quick notes about the specific game on the defense. Jalen Redmond had a pretty good game. I like it when he, I like that when he chased down, uh, in outside run, no reason for defensive tackle to get 11 yards down field and prevent the touchdown. But he did a good job. He had a couple of pressures mostly stops. He didn't get a ton. I believe in the PFF box score or the normal box score. Um, but he did really

1:01:54well. Dallas Turner shout out. I believe four PFF pressures and four pressures from next chance to answer and summer. So everybody agreed. He had four pressures. They probably disagree on which ones are the four. Um, but he ranks first or second. I believe tied for second. Uh, in all of those, uh, pressure total categories. But in a fascinating update, he, I mean, he's still had a 67 or something PFF grade. So, uh, but he's, he got real reps. He got the reps that everyone was complaining that he wasn't getting. You didn't get them blocked. He didn't get a bunch of tight end. He got a little bit of tight end. Uh, but he didn't get a bunch of tight end. He was running through offensive tackles. He got one on one reps against offensive tackles and he beat them. He got pressure. He had a 35.7 percent pass rush win rate win blocked. Uh, he had a 33 percent pass rush win rate win blocked one on one by an offensive tackle on a non-play action non screen dropback, which I know is a lot of qualifiers, but is usually what we think of when we think of a good pass rusher. So I think it's pretty good qualifiers. 33 percent. That is an 88th percent

1:02:57title outcome. He is playing at a 90th percent. I was a pro bowl level. Um, he's playing out of his mind. And then giggle very, very good game. Kyle Van Noi, pretty good game. Eric Wilson out standing game. And he got a ref suspended, which is even funnier. Um, but yeah, really good. Obviously individual defense performances from a lot of Vikings players. Not a ton to say about the secondary. Part of that is because Malik Willis was having just the worst time back there. Uh, and so not a lot you can say about a secondary, but, uh, I think James Peer took like five snaps, didn't allow a target in those five. So, you know, power to him. I, you know, I don't want to like congratulate. I got too much for a small sample, but great. Um, let's see. We had, uh, we had two targets go to Eric Wilson's way. He deflected one of them. Or no, he just prevented one of them. Uh, we had a deflection from Harrison Smith. We had a deflection from Isaiah Rodgers, who otherwise did allow a, a, a reception in this coverage, uh, after that. But, uh, yeah, I,

1:04:01it's, I, it's, it's usually good. Uh, Theo Jackson, I could have seen better tackling angles. That would have been nice. Blake Cashman was fine. Usually he's great. So I guess it's something to work on. Joshua would tell us played better than I expected. He's been having kind of like a rough year given that they're asking to play like normal safety. Um, yeah. I think, uh, I think that covers most of the guys that, that I've paid a lot of attention to. Um, good defense. Oh, and Jake Olde took snaps. That was, that was cool. He took like five snaps. I want to say, that no, I got to say good for him. Good for him. Uh, Kenneth Allen asks, is it a good idea to build your offense around the 31 year old running back with a serious injury issue, asking for a coach of the year winning friend? Uh, no, sustainable. Not the, it's, it's the opposite of, well, then I'm googling Adrian Peterson. One sec. Oh, no, no. Hey, the 2016 Vikings.

1:05:09Moving on. I'm just saying this is age 31 year. I don't know. Kenneth Allen also asks Vikings fans are prone to catastrophizing. So I know we need a bit of practice, a bit of patience, rather. Uh, but when do we start to seriously worry about this offense, the Kevin O'Connell's ability to make it even average little on good now, we worry about it now. Yeah. We just played the worst defense in the league. Good score. Touchdown. Good. I mean, again, there was kind of a touchdown available that wisely. He decided to slide. But if you give them that, so I was looking at touchdown rape or drive, right? I mentioned this. If you give them that touchdown, they still rank dead last among four O teams, which, you know, good dessert to have you for now. But, um, they still rank dead last, even when you include that, they don't beat out the 2016 Vikings

1:06:11in touchdown rape or drive. If you give them that, if you spot up a touchdown, because we exclude drives that end and kneel down. So, uh, yeah, even that, yeah, it's now is when you worry about it because like if you're like the patch of my home's chiefs and the Tom Brady Patriots, you get to have four tune up games, right? Remember when when the Patriots would like start off every year going like two and two and everyone would be like, I don't know, man. They'd lose some dumb game in Miami. Yeah. Yeah. Is it going to be like only like 2008, which I guess technically did a pretty good reason to lose a bunch of games to the Nate that they didn't, but they did a good reason. Um, but yeah, so let's go back to 2009. They were like losing games beginning the seasons and they like tune up and then they would be fought being invincible by the end of the year, right? And the chiefs did that for like two or three years too, where they were like lose games at the beginning of the season and then just be juggled on to the end. But this is Kyler Murray. It's not Patrick Mahomes. You don't get tune up games. Like that's crazy. The Vikings aren't

1:07:13planning on having tune up games. They were planning on winning. They were planning, which again, they did win. But like they were planning on the offense doing stuff, right? And so the idea that this is like an extended preseason is so obnoxious and annoying every time the Vikings go out there and look unorganized. You have to ask, why did you only have like five snaps in the preseason? Like if if joint practices are really that good, why aren't they in offense? Yeah. This is a hard Zachary asks for a reefs say this five times fast corner. I want to say I have not practiced this line at all. For a reefs say this five times fast corner, how many sacks could Zach sealer seal if Zach sealer could seal sacks? All right. That took a drink of water. Is this going off in some rant? So I just want to, you know, how many sacks could Zach's sealer seal sacks? How many sacks could Zach's sealer seal if Zach's sealer could seal sacks? How

1:08:15many sacks could Zach's sealer seal sacks? How many sacks could Zach's sealer seal if you could, I said he gets weird. I think I did pretty well though. You know what? I that wasn't bad. You know what? It was more productive than the Vikings offense. Next question. I'll take it. Chris asks projecting for a top 20 offense for the rest of the season. Is there a single player that could even come close to Rikard in point scored? So at the moment in point scored, Rikard is tied with Josh Allen, Jameer Gibbs, Derek Henry and Spencer Schrader, the kicker for the Colts. The problem with this question is if the Vikings become a top 20 offense, that means they're scoring touchdowns and not field goals. And so he'll actually lose points if they're better on offense. This is the ideal situation.

1:09:17But if they're like, if they're floating around 30th, right? And Josh Allen is probably not going to sustain this pace. It would be very funny if he did because this doesn't include passive touchdowns. It's receiving touchdowns, rushing touchdowns. I don't know of safety's count, probably not. Doesn't matter. No one's going to do that. Extra points, field goals, you know, whoever, you know, is responsible for ultimately having the ball when it crosses a goal line or gets over the goalposts. I kind of doubt Jameer Gibbs is going to sustain this, although I say that very carefully. I think Derek Henry is though. I think probably you're not going to keep up with him. Still, that's a pretty promising list to be in. And it feels like it's possible, right? Could lead the league and point scored, which used to happen all the time when Randy Moss led the league and point scored. It was rookie year, right? 98. That was, that was like, I think

1:10:21the next four people behind them were all kickers. Like that's just like what it was. So it used to be pretty common. So it was rare that it was common that it was rare again. I don't know. It's kind of funny. Next question is from Michael, who asks, when was the last time a team ended up top five in defense of EPA three years in a row? All right. So this was an annoying thing to look up, but I got it. The 21 to 23 Dallas Cowboys, actually really recently, so the Mike Parsons Cowboys, where they ranked third, second and fourth. I believe the year they ranked second was the year they got, no, I've never been the year they ranked fourth, where they got all those like pick sixes and stuff. Like they had Fervon digs, get six picks and DeRond Blanc, get seven and like five of them were pick sixes. But you also have the 2017 to 2020 Baltimore Ravens,

1:11:23who also appear in 2003 to 2006 and 1999 to 2001. Good Lord. But you have two Vikings teams that show up in addition to this current Vikings team. You have the 2016 to 2018 Vikings, because I don't think that surprises anyone. You have the 2006 to 2008 Vikings, also kind of not surprising. And then you also have the 2014 to 2017 dead Vibrantcos. We all remember the 2015 Broncos defense. It turns out they did that four years in a row. You have the 2014 to 2016 Houston Texans, I'm kind of trying to remember that defense. Who was all that defense? No, whatever. In the 2014, 2006 Chicago Bears, like the peak of their like Tampa to, Brian or Lacker, I think Julius Peppers is on those teams. Peanut Tillman, who's the other corner? Forget the other corner was like a better cover guy, but we all remember Charles Tillman more. That is great teams. And of course you ended with like a Super Bowl, the Rex Grossman and all that.

1:12:28So yeah, a bunch of a bunch of teams actually. It is pretty unusual. Which is why defensive defensive performance is pretty unstable from year to year. Usually you get a lot more offences you know, sustaining it for three years in a row. The gaming nerd asks for my own sanity, is this the worst 4-0 team we've ever seen on the offensive side of the ball? And how does this team compare to the 2006 Bears who made a Super Bowl? This is at least in the last 11 years, which is where I looked at the data for it, by a pretty good margin. So let's take a look at the 13 and 3, 2006 Chicago Bears who ranked second in points scored. Huh? This was unleashed the Dragon. This was yeah, sexy, rexie, unleashed the Dragon. A really classic old internet meme.

1:13:2920 Interceptions that year, 23 touchdowns, 20 Interceptions. I just I'm just envisioned that bright blue and white logo. Yeah, I'm throwing it deep. Nearly 2000 rushing yards from Thomas Jones, say Thomas Jones stuck around for a while. Cedric Benson, the other Adrian Peterson, Georgia Southern's legend. Jason McKee, some guy named Bernard Beringen. I don't know if you've heard of him. And then two yards from rex Grossman, minus five yards from Brian Greasy, screwed up the rotation, dude. Oh, and then Devon Hester got like three punt return touchdowns, two kick return touchdowns. Probably helped with the point scored thing. Just a little bit. Yeah, this, uh, yeah, optimism castle doctrine asks, does a reef really believe an average offense is lying under the surface? Like you stated a few episodes ago.

1:14:30Yeah, but like, like deep under the surface. Like like Mary on a trench. It's, we know it's there, but we have to send our best directors to go find. Yeah, I was thinking like, you got like, you know how in ice fishing, you got to like figure out how thick the ice is. See if you could like walk on it and stuff like that. You can walk, you could drive on this ice. Uh, you're going to need a little ice chainsaw actually, um, to get under the surface here and extract the offense. Um, and auger, a normal auger isn't going to do it. No, no, no, no. Uh, if you want, set up a little ice shed, there's very comfortable. Get a TV. Don't watch the Vikings offense. Um, and get to work. It's going to be a long day. Grab some beers. Uh, bunch of people are going to be like, what are you doing? Is in this crazy? You can be like, yeah, you're not from here. Look, you don't understand. This is the only time of year you can drive

1:15:33your gigantic truck out here. I promise you, this is the correct move. Kyle Sugall asks, now that the Vikings have cleared the toughest part of their schedule, I'd like this guy so much. I'd like to visit a reef gambling and legal advice corner to ask, which kind of reverse mortgage should I take out on my host to fund my investment in betting on the Vikings going 17 and out? Uh, so I officially recommend against this, uh, and, uh, this is not a financial advice podcast or a gambling advice podcast, but in theory, if you want us to do something, I think very illegal, right? Uh, you are great sentence. You're right. I think you could take out a HELOC because those have like pretty good interest rates for, for the types of like reverse mortgages to extract money from your house. Uh, those are, I believe locked for home improvement loans. So you do have to use it on, uh,

1:16:36your, your home, right? To like, make it better. That's what home improvement means. I, I'd realize I've kind of, you know, you know, squared the circle here on this one, but take some of the money and, uh, put an outdoor pizza on out there. That way you can claim that they was part of your, uh, yeah, as far as I know, not a ton of people are tracking receipts for this kind of thing, but it's quite illegal. I believe it's called the froward. The emphasis might be on another vowel, but we'll worry about that later. If you've, if you've gone this far, you're not gonna, you're not looking for any reason to say no. Um, I think, yeah, we're just gonna go off the rails from here on out. Uh, Sammy asks, what are the odds of the Vikings end the season with the top seed, but the play-ass or cancel due to this Russian plague? And then the Vikings brass locked themselves

1:17:38in Wonder Park to tell tales of football past. Cam, googling the Russian plague, is this new? Is this, are you completely out of the loop? I told you, I've like shut off my access to Twitter to write these stupid articles. So the short version is that Russia admitted there was a problem, which typically means that it escaped the country. Uh, and it turns out that is accurate. And I'm telling you, Russia's anti-plague is the dude has died from a suspected case of plague. That's eating same sentence. Yeah. Um, it's, the irony with that is a boat as, um, well, it's, it's a bit like when Patches O'Hulahan dies in the movie Dodgeball, uh, from a look of the Irish thing falling on him. Loyalers, dude. Uh, yeah. Spoilers on what? A 2006 movie? 2008? I think it's 2008. Is it? Let's find out. 2006, I'm gonna laugh. 2004. Okay. Wow.

1:18:42Well, you're still wrong, you know, is that's important. Thank you. We'll ignore the fact that you were as well. Odds, uh, higher than you'd think. And uh, we, we should all be so lucky. As to okay, but like ear cuts is, is, is, is been placed under quarantine. That's merely a region in Eastern Siberia. I'm reading. I got to worry. Yeah. Well, I will survive this. Let's see if we can make this bad. Hospitalizes 200 people. Okay. Anyway, uh, then the Vikings brass locked themselves inside Winter Park. Did I, how would they be in Winter Park? Dead places demolished, man. Yeah. I suppose Winter Park. Yeah. I didn't even recognize that that was, uh, yeah. No, there's no, there's no less TCO falls. TCO is falling. Back to Winter Park. We must retreat.

1:19:43Uh, room temperature asks for the North code explicit tag is Mufftpunt, the dirtiest sounding term in football. I still prefer giving them the business. Given in the businesses like up there, right? Um, so I, I'm going to link a TikTok in the show notes. This compilation of, and it's Blue Text Jam. So you can see it. Um, this, yeah, crazy. Uh, this compilation of broadcaster phrases. That's why to put it kind of goes viral every couple of years on TikTok, well, especially, um, in the areas of TikTok, where like you're not expected to have sports fans, like, oh my god, the answers are saying this, but it's stuff like, I just tied in this soft, soft hands. And you're like, okay, um, and there's just like a lot like, uh, you got hit hard by the penetrator. This, you know, football is just going to do this, man. Mufftpunt is probably not the

1:20:45dirtiest. Um, like one, one of the clips, um, I think it's Joe Pug. He was, this wide receiver is thick, so thick and just lower half. He's just explosive. You're like, ah, yeah, man. I guess we got all kinds of resounding terms and football. Given in the businesses number one, but like, yeah, that and Joe Bucks description of a power bottom. Yeah. Let's go to, um, I'm keeping that in. I don't know. Yeah, no, no, that's fine. You're good. Yeah. Uh, Damian Bolshearie asks, what happens to all the unsolved threadless merch when the show ends will be donated to a, uh, like a losing Super Bowl team's winners stuff? All right. You, David, you got to learn about it a little thing called print on demand. Uh, so there are, there are merch places that you end up paying for a bunch of things to be printed. Uh, and that we are not one of them. We are,

1:21:45this is, this is on on demand thing. It's actually why we chose, uh, threadless. Yeah. So we don't got to deal with inventory. We don't got to deal with putting up a bunch up front. The downside this is we don't make any money. Yeah. That's that if it is. In terms of money, we have no money. But it's, uh, it's, the savings are being passed on to you. Uh, so please keep buying the shower curtains. Yeah. Uh, frankly, one of our more profitable purchase. I don't under, yeah. I love that. Uh, Francis Ford Copium asks for a Reeves Etsy witch replacement corner. The Vikings traded away at J.J. McCarthy in the next week. Minnesota beat Michigan at home for the first time since 1977. Was this all a long-term plan to siphon away J.J. Pah, Browis to counter dark magics? Which steps could the front office take to break the possible

1:22:46curse on the bank Vikings franchise also, uh, follow up from better B and did the gophers bring the war with our end closer to an end by doing a reputable damage to the psyche of deceased leader, mom, who's would have a demon shot. Yeah. I guess I didn't get it. Like, it's really important that, like, we know that he's dead. Um, one of those I didn't know he was sick sort of moments like hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We competed. It does not have a date of death for him. It's just a different set of a bunch of Iranian leaders who are dead, which, you know, I think it's a fair mistake for us to make. Um, certainly no longer president. He's not being president like 2013. Um, but yeah, for those who don't know, my movie, I'm a damage ad tweeted at put a crazy sentence tweeted at Jim Harbaugh. Uh, in Shala Michigan, will, will, well, no, it wasn't. It was not at Jim Harbaugh.

1:23:46A fan had like posted something or had had replied to a not to, to one of his tweets and said, uh, but sir, uh, the Michigan football team, Alas, we'll ever reach its four, we'll ever reach its glory. Oh, yeah. And with, with the hard work ethic in Shala, the U of M will return to its glory days. Yes. Yeah. Hashtag go blue. Um, the reason I thought he tweeted at Jim Harbaugh is because the original tweet tagged Jim Harbaugh. And so in Amidini judge reply, uh, Jim Harbaugh was dead. Which sure, why not? Yeah. Um, yeah. I, I, of all the stressors at the top of Amidini judge mind right now, certainly Michigan footballs rough start to the season is at the top. Like, there can't be like anything else. He's worried about at the moment.

1:24:47Uh, Lavar Bolsharif asks for the what is to be done corner? All right. One power is entrenched. Many people turn to civil resistance to make the peoples this pleasure known. In 2001, uh, one case of this happened with the roof goof said roof, uh, said goof rather stayed on his roof till the Raven scored an offensive touchdown. He waited for 15 days. That outcry for offensive improvement fueled a Super Bowl run. So my question is, what can we do to show our displeasure to Kevin O'Connell? Does it involve sitting on our roofs till we score? Lenin Braun, what is to be done to revitalize this offense? I do, I do want to say, I believe many Minnesotans pronounce it rough instead of roof. Uh, rough, uh, so be rough, guff, right? That would be, I am, uh, uh, this is where I get to say I'm North Dakota and not Minnesota. So, uh, because there's such a huge

1:25:51difference in how we, how we pronounce things on this side of the river. So when I met work, it's rough guff, obviously. Right. Yeah. But when you're at home, oh, no, it's roof goof. That's it's roof goof. Um, and rough is an exaggeration. It's more like roof, like a stressed vowel, um, roof goof, uh, as opposed to roof goof. Um, anyway, uh, hunger strike, right? Like that's got to be the answer here. I mean, if, if, if TCO has fallen, uh, I don't know where you're looking at. Look, if the plague is spreading, I don't know that a hunger strike is going to motivate anyone to do anything. They're just going to be like, great. More resources for the rest of us. Uh, but either it's an episode title. But, uh, other than that particular circumstance,

1:26:52I think maybe a hunger strike could motivate the Vikings offense to score a touchdown. Just, dude, I got to eat. Please score a touchdown. I feel like it's like one of those like, like, corporate, um, like giveaways, like, hey, for every extra point, we kick, you know, you get like a free wing at B. Dubs or whatever, right? Like, you know, there's like local tie-ins, uh, like you get a free, you could say which if there's a missing two, I'll see you say if you, if a bass at a bass, well, you have, if the opponent misses both, both, uh, right. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, so it could be like, it, like, remember when the entire city of Cleveland would get free beer if Brown's won a game. Yep. And they set them up, they set the machines up all over town. Yeah. And then they set a record for most consecutive losses in a row, uh, at least since like the 77 bucks or whatever, like, Jesus. Uh, like, and it's not like saving, was it course, Miller Lite, Budway had to be Budwaz

1:27:56for the official beer sponsor, the NFL TM. Um, but it's not like Budwaz was like saving money, right? They'd already bought the, they'd already manufactured and set out the beer, right? So there's just like people are just like waiting on the win. And then it became kind of like this thing where it's like, yeah, we could break in. But like, in addition to where's the fun in that, that like, I feel like that's like bad juju, right? So like, people did not, there were a couple of people, but generally speaking, people did not break apart these very easily to break into, uh, beer fridges, uh, because they were just like, yeah, well, but like the Browns, come on, just like win a game. I feel like you could, you could put yourself in a pretty harrowing circumstance. If you're like, please, just touch down and offensive touch down. It could be a quarterback sneak. It could be just give it to Justin Jefferson, Jefferson score two when he was healthy. He's healthy again. We could just do that, right? Like, oh my god, I just realized, do you ever think I could finish the year with as many touch

1:28:57chances he did last year? I want to end the show now. I, I, I'm like, almost shaking angry at that revelation. Oh my god, I hate that. Next question. A second jet has it drew blood. So asks for the drew blood. So lion's corner, why does the lion's defense look like a historically bad defense? Uh, I mean, they're all hurt. Right? I, I, I feel pretty, you don't got safeties. The safeties are all dead. Yeah. There's no substation here. And you definitely no longer, well, that, and that corner that you had that you cut because that was the right move to do, is looking at his co-conspirator just, yeah, it just led to 10 years on the condition that he, then turns on Terry on Arnold. Yeah, which by the way, if the plea deal, if like getting down,

1:30:05he's 10 years like that rough. Yeah. Uh, the plans that you had no longer are relevant. They, they have changed. And it's, it's hard to catch up. Also, DJ Wanim is like your primary password for opposite aid and hugginson. Like that's aid and hugginson's been through a lot of man. Why are you doing this? Yeah, this is, uh, this is not great for, um, for lions, lions fans, uh, enthusiasts. Uh, also for a reef's, a pacifist corner, I keep traveling to Ohio and taking out men who I believe to be Don from Ohio and keep, he still keeps posting. What's going on here? How do I end this man once and for all? Do the Vikings need to win a Super Bowl? Brian Flores becomes a head coach. Do I need to mend his relationship with his wife unrelated? But the right brothers have been moved and are now resting in their bicycle shop. Okay, under no circumstances, should you mend his relationship with his wife or move bodies? Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh,

1:31:10but but Don's thing first. Yeah, I think you need to take out every man in Ohio. That's like the only logical conclusion here, right? I mean, and you get rid of Ryan Day, which would make a lot of Ohio State fans pretty happy. Oh, okay. Well, so we win. It's, it's about time somebody makes them happy. Into that level. Finally, for a reef's midlife crisis, uh, question for a reef's parenting corner, my three year old wants to be Darth Vader for Halloween because he enjoys being a bad guy. Should I be concerned? Additionally, the same child was singing zombies by the cranberries tonight while getting dressed and laying in his bed. Am I a bad parent? All right. So zombies question first. So you're not a bad parent for exposing your kid to bad music. Your bad parent. Oh, my hold on. Let me finish your bad parent for exposing your kid to anti-Irish independence propaganda.

1:32:14Okay. Okay. So zombie by the cranberries is a famously centrist song from a Northern Irish band, whom otherwise I love. Um, where they were just like, why is there all this fighting? And it's like for the independence that I like, I don't want to get into the complex politics of the troubles that we have enough Irish listen and we have discussed the troubles at length on the show. What is this show? Good Lord. Remember when Amazon did not recognize Northern Ireland? You're like Pittsburgh editorial rights and then someone tried watching the Steelers in Northern Ireland and Amazon was like, well, we like you prime doesn't go to Ireland and they're like, no, buddy, you can't call this Ireland. This is the United Kingdom. That's really important. They fought a war over this one. Um, but yeah, uh, I refer you to previous episodes plural on the troubles.

1:33:24Jesus. Of this Minnesota Vikings. Yeah. Uh, I'm simply ending this. Yeah. Yeah. Hold on. But, but I will say you are a bad parent for exposing your kid to mid. I wouldn't say the music is that bad, but it's mid, right? Um, but I just think the greater crime here is, uh, independent centristism. Now for the Darth Vader thing, yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with the space Nazi. That's fine. I just want that clipped out of context. I don't think that's anything wrong. Can I get like back when like they would put that quote on like on Twitter? Like, you get the image of the back image background and then the line is like, there's nothing that's for the space. Not see it's fine. It's fine. I don't know. That's what's wrong with it. Uh, you know what? Change, change the kids, uh, change the kids listening up, expose them to salvation. That's a fun, uh, that's a fun cranberry song. It's not as popular,

1:34:26but it's so good. It's so good. It's so good. Linger is like a bright is an earworm for me. I love it. And maybe it's overexposed to a lot of people. I will never get tired of it. I ended up finding of all things some like 90s gone haze seed. Uh, and it's not quite country, but it was a more like a bluegrass thing of a bunch of like 90s one hit wonders. And like, it's some of them Oh, okay. This is kind of interesting. One of them was like, uh, like a bluegrass version of hate jealousy. And I went, well, that's interesting. That's a legitimately interesting take. Cool. And another one was a version that was a bluegrass version of linger. And I just have they're like, Oh my god. This is like remarkably good. All right. Cool. This, I, I, I, I hear things in this that I didn't hear in the cranberries, verse, I get it now. I completely, I completely get it. I must have sent you the Alex Melton cover of linger, right? Yes. Yes you did. Okay. I so, it's so good.

1:35:33That is going to be it for this episode of Norse code. I And remember what nothing wrong with the space naughty. Let's plug your stuff. Let's get out of here. It's one thirty and I'm in the morning. Thanks to Luke Braun. And I'm I'm listening to somebody defense space Nazis. I'm done. Repeatedly, I'm repeatedly defense space Nazis. All right. So over at Why Left a Football, I've got a piece comparing the 2026 Vikings to the 2016 Vikings. I mentioned the data visit a couple of times. That's great. Matt Freese has already begun writing his articles to break down on some specific plays. That's going to be pretty exciting. Luke Braun has already turned in his article, which is about the operational failure, specifically of the Vikings offense. So, stuff like the pre snap penalties and stuff like that. That's all coming up on Why Left a football pretty soon. That's going to be pretty good. I still have the all ball podcast with Drew McGarry. We have scheduled more podcast sessions for a 60 minute drill. We're going to be talking about

1:36:39Colin Kaepernick soon. That's going to be fun. And I believe I mentioned all the other stuff. I did the jam. I did the guardian. I did damage. Yeah, that was on the last episode. Yes. Get ready. You're doing the stinger. So that is going to be it for this episode of Norse code. We hope you have enjoyed it. For a reef. My name is James. Thank you guys so much for listening. And please remember tell them a race. Yeah, I don't think there's anything more of the space. Not to and we'll see you later this week. Norse code is the largest and only division of Norse code LLC. You can find Norse code on the daily Norseman Espionations Vikings blog at dailynorsman.com. You must also find it on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and wherever Find Podcasts are aggregated. Our Vikings blogger extraordinaire and generally useful human is Revason of. And he can be found on Twitter at a Revason NFL. I'm your producer and host and my name is James Vagashnik. You can find me at these shows official Twitter feed at Norse code dn or at my

1:37:42personal account at big mono. If you'd like to donate a few bucks to the show, you can do so in a couple of different ways. You can go to patreon.com slash Norse code and donate there. For $3.50 a month, you get bonus material and more. You can also go to PayPal.me slash Norse code for a one time donation or you can go to Norse code dot threadless dot com and pick up some Norse code merch. Any questions or comments that cannot fit in a tweet can be sent to Norse code podcast at gmail.com. On behalf of the Norse code staff, we thank you so much for listening. Our formula is this. They all things are possible through the power of vending machine.