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00:00Let's get into this. I got my six-pack here of things for this Vikings game on Sunday.
00:03I want to bounce these things off you. I want to start with number one.
00:07Turn that up, man. There we go. There we go. Sam Darnold. Got to swarm this guy.
00:14We're going to do our first ever circle of swarms at seven o'clock hour. You got to swarm
00:19Sam Darnold. I've got numbers. I've got numbers. Number me up, Sean. I'm going to number you up.
00:23Darnold, this is courtesy of John Crumpler. Darnold passer rating 111.8. No, 111.6. Sixth
00:33in the NFL. However, Darnold passer rating without play action or screens down to 97.9,
00:4213th in the NFL. Darnold passer rating under pressure without play action or screens.
00:48He is 25th in the league. 25th when he passes it. You take away the gimmicky stuff.
00:53It is. And he's Sam Darnold all over. You got to remember, he is, it's not like he's a super
00:57athlete, but he's pretty athletic. He had a lot of traits that got him drafted as high as he did.
01:01And the, and he had a couple of plays last week where he pulled the ball down and ran on third
01:06down. So, I mean, it's almost getting to be annoying because it's kind of like turnovers
01:10every week in the NFL anymore. There are very few quarterbacks who aren't pretty good athletes.
01:14And so now, just like you say, turnovers are the key to this victory. It's also,
01:18you got to be sure you corral this guy and keep it in the pocket. It's three weeks in a row.
01:21Now we've been saying this about steadily less athletic quarterbacks, but still athletic enough.
01:25And we'll say it about Trevor Lawrence. We'll say it about Josh Allen.
01:29I, you know what I might say with, I wouldn't, I won't say it with Trevor Lawrence as much as I
01:32would say with Sam Darnold, just cause I think Sam Darnold still is, he's more of a threat with
01:38his legs sometimes in his arm. He's got now, this is one of those stats early in the season. It
01:42means nothing at all, but he has four touchdowns to two interceptions, which all right. What are
01:47the, what's the nature of the interceptions? Well, he threw one to Fred Warner last week
01:52that you credit Fred Warner for making an incredible play on the ball. Like he's doing
01:55Fred Warner things out there, but I'm not so sure if the ball had been complete. If the,
02:00if the intended receiver wouldn't have lost a kidney on it, he threw, he was throwing him into
02:05danger and possibly not just a, like a huge collegiate. Had a couple other interception
02:11worthy throws last week. So, and even on some of this, this is Arnold, this is a classic.
02:16All right. As you know, slow pointed this out yesterday, like all these offenses they take on
02:20their own. It's not like they're all running Shanahan's offense. And yet Sam Darnold has
02:25been thrown to wide open receivers a lot. They've been getting them, they've been scheming him open.
02:30So when it comes to, okay, how can the, like the Texans have a lot of familiar familiarity with a
02:36lot of the coaches on this staff and especially on the offensive side of the ball. So, okay,
02:40what do we know that, what do we know that O'Connell likes to do? And you know, what's he
02:44doing with, with Sam Darnold that, that maybe we can keep these guys from being as wide open.
02:50All right. Number two, what do we do with this Justin Jefferson guy? How do you think
02:55D'Amico Ryan's and Matt Burke attack the Justin Jefferson situation? They,
02:59they will probably be without Jordan Addison. They are without TJ Hawkinson. He's still on
03:04injured reserve. So they are down some weapons here and joy and Justin Jefferson is nursing
03:08a quad injury. I think so far so good in that, you know, D'Amico blitz way more than he's ever
03:15blitzed before last week. And part of that was cause I think they felt really good about Stingley
03:20on the number on the number one receiver there. Yeah. More and more DJ more. And so I think they
03:26do it again this week. I think they like Kamari Lassiter, but they want to still try to keep it
03:30as simple as indigestible as possible for him. And they just really trust, trust Derek Singley.
03:34And now, now that he's gotten a little taste of it. Yeah. You know, I think Stingley's up for this
03:39because the guy's like, I've never had coffee before. What's it like? Well, here I'll put a
03:43bunch of sugar in it and a bunch of cream and like, Ooh, I feel good. I think he got a little
03:48taste of caffeine last week. That's a matchup Stingley and Justin Jefferson. Like that's a
03:52matchup that you wished was like a split screen that you could choose to watch the whole time.
03:56Do you have, I'm trying not to look at my computer because I know I'm in a sleep deprived state. I
04:00don't want to get distracted. Do you have this stat on there about Sam Darnold? 20% of his
04:04passing yardage this season has come on one 97 yard touchdown. Oh, I didn't know that. I wondered
04:08about that. Yeah. In which Justin Jeff, it was a nice throw, but Justin Jefferson was juking all,
04:14like if you, if you followed a, they did a GPS on that touchdown. He probably ran about 150 yards.
04:19Yeah. Justin Jefferson. That was all Justin Jefferson. That was a credit to Sam Darnold,
04:23et cetera. What a great comeback story and all that. But yeah, that's a great stat. 20% of his
04:28yardage this year is on one play to Justin Jefferson. I did not have that stat. That's a
04:32great, it's one that, okay. Maybe it feels, it makes you feel better about Sam Darnold,
04:35but it should also be a, a reminder that Justin Jefferson has paid the way he is for a reason.
04:40Yes, yes, absolutely. All right. Number three, it might be cam acres time. Uh, no Joe Mixon,
04:47no Damien Pierce again yesterday. They did get the two centers back, uh, juice grugs and Jared
04:52Patterson, both practice. That's good. Growing again. I think it's back from the growing,
04:56just got his growing back. God is growing back. Uh, cam acres though,
05:01maybe getting a lot of touches come Sunday. If Damien Pierce and Joe Mixon are out here's Bobby
05:06Slowick yesterday on what acres does for the offense. Yeah. He's great vision. He's been
05:10running, uh, you know, Ram zone scheme. He came from, he did the same thing in Minnesota. He's
05:15really good at reading that we call it riding the wave, finding the right hole to hit. Um,
05:20you know, he always plays under control when he sees it, he hits it. He finished physical,
05:24um, yeah. And he has really good contact balance, you know, and I I'd say those,
05:29those like are the things that jump out with cam. You, you pretty much see that every carry.
05:33We, we talked in the open late in the open previous segment about Dana Brown and some
05:37of the little pickup cities made Hector near, this is like a Hector nearest Jason Hayward pickup
05:42right here by Nick cassaria. Right, right, right. All of a sudden like, wow, we may need contributions
05:45from the marquee pickup or anything, but it was notable because of the name. Yes. The name cam
05:50acres being a really cool name in and of itself. Right. You know, if he was a kid in your class
05:55that you're teaching, you'd be like, Oh, that's a cool name. But he's also, he's cam acres of the,
05:59you know, the, the phenomenal rookie year a few years back. So, um, and a good training,
06:03this is where I get, honestly, I love Bobby's. I love Bobby's press conferences. Uh, but I feel
06:07like I just want to turn it into a podcast because at this point I would have been like, Hey, didn't
06:11you just say that there's not really that many similarities as people think between the Rams and
06:16the 49ers and the Vikings offenses as ours. And yeah, man, that's the one thing I think,
06:22I think he thinks it's overblown sometimes, but it's the, the outside zone and being good at that
06:29and all the things that it sets up in the passing game. That is very much a common theme. And I
06:34think the thing that the coaches from like Kevin O'Connell or elsewhere do it guys that are in that
06:39Shanahan tree do, and we don't know about Bobby yet is that they scheme it real, like they coach
06:44it really well. It's, it's one thing to say, yeah, we're going to run about a bunch of outside
06:47zone run plays. Cool. Um, we've seen that before with the Texans trying to do that. We saw it last
06:53year. Um, but it is a common theme and it is, even though the 49ers got worked over last week
06:59by the Vikings offense, I think that there is, there's a lot of value in seeing that in practice
07:04day after day for the Texans defense. Yep. Um, I want to get to this one. This is the one I
07:08wanted to get your take on the most Brian Flores versus CJ Stroud. Here is, uh, here's Bobby Sloak
07:14yesterday on Minnesota Vikings, defensive coordinator, coordinator of chaos, Brian Flores.
07:22Yeah. That's actually, it's funny. You say that our, our big thing, uh, this week is, is the
07:28challenge about this defense is, is it's almost like he does everything he can to try to eliminate
07:33coaches from the equation. You know, like he creates a lot of chaos, uh, but then behind it,
07:39all their, their fundamentally sound, they run, they hit, they do all the things that defense
07:42needs to do. And for us, like we strained this week, the biggest thing for us is, is our guys
07:48got to go out and they got to own what they're doing. And they, and they like, we have to play
07:51well against this defense, you know, and our quarterback is leading the charge on that. And
07:57he knows that we block well. Yeah. Yeah. We're good. Bobby, we're in a podcast here, Bobby,
08:02let me jump in for a second. So you're hogging the mic. Um, okay. Well, you, you saw my eyes
08:07light up. I know that's why I wanted to get to it. I think both with the Eber Flus last year
08:11with Chicago or last week, the head coach of the bears and defensive coordinator. Um, and with
08:16Brian Flores, they do that thing that so many defensive coordinators want to do, but you just,
08:21can I trust my guys to do it? And can I coach them up disguising your look? Pre-snap the bears
08:27do a really good job. Uh, and we saw it in the game versus the Texans on a couple of negative
08:31offensive plays. They shift right before the snap, the defensive line all shifts and it's,
08:37it screws with offensive linemen so bad because they are, you know, they got, they got all these
08:43things going on in their brains. These offensive linemen do about the responsibilities and what the
08:48front they're seeing and everything. And then when you shift a quarter second before the snap,
08:53it's, it just screws everything. I'm somebody who's going to screw up on the offensive line.
08:57One of those five, five guys is going to screw up. Um, Flores does that as well with all 11 guys.
09:02It's that all defense quarters know that if you can disguise beforehand, it really, really helps.
09:06The problem is usually there's too many guys on your defense that will disguise and then not
09:12get back to their spots. They're supposed to be at, or don't understand. You want to have guys
09:16that understand what the weaknesses are. Like if you're a linebacker faking that you're in a,
09:20you're going to blitz, but also you got to cover the flat. Like you gotta, you gotta maybe
09:25know when, okay, in this formation, I got to cheat back a little bit. I can't be disguised in this
09:30and not, not all teams have guys that are intellectually capable of doing that. The
09:34Vikings do. So it is when Bobby says, take the coaches out of it. I love the way he said that.
09:39I think if we, if we had them on the podcast, I think it's because Flores does a good job of not
09:45really showing tendencies because those guys can execute out of multiple different looks and
09:50personnel packages. If you're slow, if you're like, well, all right, I know they're a nickel
09:55or they're in dime or they've got this guy aligned here and it doesn't matter because
09:58they can run anything out of it. And then also just because they are so well coached,
10:04they're fundamentally sound. I don't think this, this defense doesn't really need glaring weaknesses
10:08or opportunities. Like if you're an offensive coordinator, you're thinking, okay, who are we
10:12going to attack? How are we going to attack? And I think for Bobby, it's probably harder this week
10:16to really just figure out like, yeah, this is what we really need to hammer. If we can just do this,
10:20we're going to win this game. You got to have multiple answers for one play. So it comes down
10:24to the players on the field and CJ, CJ, getting them into their CJ, picking up on perhaps a few
10:29tells. Yep. I mean, that's because no matter how good you are on defense, there's always a couple
10:33guys that have tells. And you know, when this guy's actually blitzing, when he's not, we know,
10:38we know that CJ does a lot of research above and beyond what most quarterbacks do.
10:42He listens to podcasts. He knew, he knew about what Jalen Johnson was doing in one particular
10:49look. Cause he saw it on the Richard Sherman podcast. That's right. All right. We'll do these
10:52quick. Number five, kicking game, Caymmi. This is going to be a game that might come down to
10:56field goals again. Uh, Caymmi has been amazing. AFC special teams player of the week. He's got
11:01the medallion to prove it or whatever we're calling that thing that he's hanged out of
11:06whatever the hell it's a big old hunk of jewelry, gigantic a hundred thousand dollar H. And then
11:10finally my prediction, Texans, 23 Vikings, 20. That's what I'm going with in this game. Okay.
11:17Going Texans by three. They're a two point favorite right now. Is it two? I thought it
11:21was down to two and a half. It was down to two down to two last night. And maybe, you know,
11:24that one is impressive because you know, you factor in the two and a half points.
11:28These days they go about two and a half points on the road that you get deducted off. And so
11:33basically Vegas and, or the betting public driving it at all, it all just looks like they,
11:38people really liked, I think what it comes down to is people trust CJ Stroud. They don't trust
11:42Sam Donald. I think that's exactly what it is. Yeah. On a neutral field, this would be Texans
11:46by like five. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I, I a hundred percent agree with you that that's what that is.