Enough Said: Undefeated Vikings and MLB playoffs

I feel like offensively we're ascending, and I know, you know, defense, they've been doing their thing. But I'm excited where we're going, you know, after, you know, get back, get off this bye, get healthy. I've got a couple guys coming back. You know, I feel like the sky's the limit for us offensively, as long as we, you know, don't shoot ourselves in the foot. It's a don't disturb this groove edition of the Enough Said program. My name's Dan Barrero, Justin Gard with me, and Natalie Brininger filling in for Lori Fisher, who is unavailable to us this week. Welcome back, Natalie. Yet again. Thank you. Yeah, Lori's on a bye this week. Yet again. We're like the Vikings, though. Dan was out last week. We plug in Pierre. Lori's out this week. We plug in Natalie. It's next person up. And we're still going to win, right? Sean Skinner, who did that great shot that you just saw, when he leaves, we don't have a replacement for him. So thankfully he's here this week. The one and only. Which is rare. Well, the Vikings are 5-0, one of three undefeated teams in the NFL, and they're on a bye right now. And it seems like it couldn't have come at a better time. Several players are injured, and some key contributors should be back after the bye, so the team should be much healthier going into Week 6 when they face the Colts. Dan? I think anytime you have a bye, you sort of do the evaluation of where are we, right? And in the standings, you can't be any better than 5-0. That's undeniable. I like to think that the most positive thing for the Vikings through these five games is that they have taken full advantage of what I think is a softer part of the schedule. And if you look forward, after the Colts game, you say, hmm, Buffalo starts a pretty tough stretch. So what do you do? Well, every team is in that position to a degree. So what you hopefully do is you gain, you build equity on the softer part of the schedule. Give yourself a little margin for error as it gets tougher. And to that extent, it's a huge win for the Vikings sitting at 5-0. With a quarterback who's developing, Dan, who's trying to find his way. You're ready to extend the deal already, aren't you? I'm not, but you had to be pleased with what you saw in New Orleans, right? It was clearly the best offensive performance of the season. He had a good fourth quarter against Miami in a day that was absolutely dreadful until they got a few things going in the fourth quarter. They wouldn't score a touchdown until recently. In fact, Will Reichert, I think, is still their leading scorer, the kicker. But not only do you take advantage of the soft part of your schedule, you navigate some injuries, including to Kyler Murray, and you do find at least a little bit of hope. The first few weeks, the offense seemed hopeless, or it felt hopeless. Like, what is this? What are they doing? Do they have any chance? It seemed like last week you saw Kyler Murray, maybe not at his best, but getting closer to that. I love that he used his legs, not just to scramble for first downs. He scrambled a couple of times to find guys down the field, including Justin Jefferson. The consistent, steady improvement, I think, is what you're looking for. And he said it off the top of the show. They don't need – if they don't just shoot themselves in the foot, And they did against New Orleans with two fumbles. Those were the offensive issues. They can win a lot of games with the way the offense played and the way the defense has been unbelievable all season. The legs are crucial. Yes. It has to be, as far as I'm concerned, a part of every game for Kyler Murray. And, again, sometimes it depends on opponents. Sometimes the opportunities aren't there. You can't be reckless with it. I still don't view him as a great enough quarterback to just say, just back up and just start throwing the ball. Correct. The legs are clearly one of his weapons. Even if he seems sometimes like, yeah, I used to do that. I'm not sure I want to do that all the time. Right. I would say he has to do it a decent amount of time. It's such an essential part, I think, of what I think gives you a chance with him. It is worth pointing out, though, how absurd this league is. Because people are starting to get a little bit used to Kyler. Meanwhile, in Seattle, they've already turned on Sam Darnold. I know. He just won a Super Bowl. Softie from what? Is it KJR? KJR. Yep. A big-time radio guy out there. The KFAN of Seattle. Exactly. Yep. He just put out a poll after their overtime loss asking, do you want Darnold to continue as quarterback, or do you want Drew Locke, the backup, to play the position? Guess what? It's like 70%. Such an easy poll. I know. Come on. Let's get Darnold out of here. So it is such an insane league about how quickly things can come and go. Because there are people I'm sure would say now, who would you rather have as a quarterback, Sam Darnold or Kyler? Probably right now people would say Kyler because we're sitting at 5-0, even though I still would say Sam Darnold is a more accomplished quarterback. Let me give you another quick example. Bo Nix is in the same area right now, right? Your guy, Bo Nix, Sean Payton's guy who took him to the championship game a year ago, they have quarterback analyst Dan Orlovsky He's basically saying he doesn't want the ball right now. He doesn't want to do anything. And Bo Nix a year ago, Drake Maye is another example, right, who's been in that boat. It is crazy. You're right. So next week could be totally different. Who knows? Well, the Wild are back on the winning track, beating the St. Louis Blues here at home. And even though there are quite a few injuries, some big stars are healthy with Matt Boldy, Kirill Kaprizov, and Quinn Hughes making a big difference last night. Well, Boldy was the difference last night, right? It's nice to see him get going. And Pierre and I talked about this last week while you were out, Dan. some of those guys had been kind of slow to go and with Boldy I'm kind of past the point where I really worry about him I think he's established himself enough like he's getting chances he's going to find the back of the net more often than not what's interesting though is a lot of NBA G League teams they'll do like tryouts in their town like in Des Moines you can go try out for the Iowa Wild you know just to maybe go get some social media content or go run up and down at the Wells Fargo Center a couple of times are the Wild on the precipice of having to do that with all the injuries that have already piled up. When did the season start? Like two and a half weeks ago? Two weeks ago. And there's already six or seven regulars that are out. They're still waiting on one of their goaltenders to come back. They've done a good job, I think, of kind of holding water and maintaining. Thursday night was obviously a nice victory, but that's the story of the early season, right? The fact that so many guys are already banged up and they don't exactly have a bunch of money to go find other options while they're still waiting for Dylan Larkin, while they're still waiting for Quinn Hughes to sign. Just kind of a weird start to the season that they're going to have to get through. Well, you know, you brought up the sort of the Quinn Hughes situation. I'm trying to figure out exactly what, like a lot of people, Quinn Hughes is waiting for at this point. I'm with you. Is he waiting for, let's see how the season starts with these injuries. The fact is, they've held up pretty well. And the way to do it, somebody wrote about it today. If you have stars, they just have to take over. And we saw some of that, and that's sometimes how you can survive an injury bug like they seem to be in always at the beginning of every season. If Hughes is waiting for a big move to add Dylan Larkin, well, I mean, that still has not happened. I'm in the group that says the Wild need that or something similar to happen if you're really going to put yourself in the best position in the postseason to make a run. But that's still the elephant in the room question. It is. What is this? and then there's the ongoing rumors about that's what this it fills the vacuum at times like these he wants to play with was how many Hughes brothers are there six seven yeah whatever it is he wants to play with at least two of them yep they want to match into this and there's something creative going on there I don't know but it's still looming over all of this is that it's it's you and I've talked about it I think we're both almost reaching a point of exasperation with it I am but they have to play it out because it's not like they can say okay we're not even going to talk you about a contract anymore he's too important and they invested too many assets to trade him basically essentially four number one draft picks but that's still sitting it is unanswered one and Michael Russo from the Athletic who knows more about all this stuff than all of combined it was interesting when he said i think with you last week if they traded for Dylan Larkin tonight he thinks Quinn Hughes would sign tomorrow which isn't that annoying like that's kind of annoying to me quite honestly like that we have to do literally everything because who knows what the Dylan Larkin deal is going to be true and you're off one of the guys that might be rumored in that deal is actually playing pretty well from what the hockey people told me like Pierre I can't watch all the games all the time don't have Wild Plus quite yet but that's kind of annoying that you just got here they traded all these assets prime he's not Amazon Prime guy uh i'm not sure must not be well he might be Amazon Prime but you still have to pay that's the confusing thing about Amazon Prime yeah but i mean we all knew that that you're gonna have to pay for to see the team that's the reality in any friend yeah that's true right yeah that's true anyway sign or don't sign that goes for Tim Conley too by the way who we're gonna talk about Wolves right now he's in the final year of his deal but go ahead Natalie you're right well they're moving into the regular season next week the Wolves they're wrapping up the preseason and face the Heat in Miami on Wednesday they open up the season at home on October 25th Justin take it away Can't come too soon because I love LaMelo I love the vibes. I love the lob mob. I love J.K. That's Jonathan Kaminga. I love how Anthony Edwards is getting wide open threes. You love the giddiness I love the giddiness. We've traded moodiness for giddiness That's kind of what we did this week with Lori and Natalie swapping out. Word will get back to her on that one That was an easy cheap shot. Yeah, but she'll take it hard. She will. That'll be tough. I might not be back next week. We'll see. But it's time for the regular season to start, right? because as promising as it's been and as much fun as it looks like LaMelo's having and I love his approach that he's coming in and trying to get everybody fed and trying to get everybody to eat, it's time for real games The early signs offensively have been good. I thought it was interesting how Detroit came in the other night, and I know it's preseason, but basically played bully ball, which is what the Wolves used to do to teams, and now they really can't, right, because Julius Randle's gone, Naz Reid is gone. As rugged as Rudy is, he's not your typical bully ball defender. So it's time for the real games. It's time to see how this thing all coalesces. As Chris Finch always says, moods change when the stats start really counting, and that starts on Wednesday. So I think the signs have been good and promising. I love this play right here. Good job by J.K. to get Rudy involved because you know he loves that. But it's time to get going now. It is probably worth celebrating a great quote that our guy John Krasinski from The Athletic got from Tim Conley that really could apply to both him and to Bill Guerin. My industry has become so risk-averse. They're so concerned about real-time analysis from the media. In all reality, either you're trying to win or you're chasing that. And he basically said, the frustrating thing about our league right now is that too many teams are trying to survive and trying to be in between. We should not take this part of it for granted. Bill Guerin is not trying to stay in between. Tim Conley isn't either. It doesn't mean either of them are always going to make the right decision. But I've got to tell you, if I'm And if I'm a fan of these teams and I'm a young fan of these teams, I love that sentiment because not everybody has it because it's dangerous. It can get you fired. And so that, I think, beyond where we are in the preseason because there's so much more to go, that's, I think, the most important lesson is you've got a couple of general managers, man, who are serious at going after whatever they can. They're not waiting for their window. No. Like the Twins have for two decades, right? I'm seriously, though. We're just under three weeks out from the election, and there are some new polls out. They're done by the Star Tribune and Care 11. They show Senator Amy Klobuchar is leading House Speaker Lisa Damuth 50% to 41% in the governor's race. And in the race for Senate, it's much tighter. Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan leads Michelle Tafoya 47% to 43%, Dan. I use a term on KFAN mainly talking about toy department stuff, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, that a game is loser-proof. I have felt from the beginning that Klobuchar was in a loser-proof position. I got admonished a couple times. You never say never, even in politics, weirder things happen. I think the polls are indicating that that's exactly the case. The smartest move that the Democrats made was, well, maybe with a little bit of her influence, wanting to make the change run from Senate to governor, is that she has a little bit of protection on the fraud issue, right? Because she can say that that really wasn't my bailiwick here. I'm in Washington in the Senate. So she can't really, as much as there's been an effort to try to put her in the middle of it, that's not going to work. On the other hand, I also say this. I'm not sure if you're an independent in this state that you can trust any Democrat to take the fraud story as seriously as they need to. Because I still think, Justin, especially in the metro area, you're not going to get voted out. And that is one of my frustrations about the entire fraud story is that you only, I think, punish a party if there are ramifications on Election Day. And I'm not sure. Now, maybe in some other tighter races in other areas, it might have an impact. Not here, though, because I still think Democrats are almost unbeatable in the metro area, and I think, sadly, that just fuels the notion that, yeah, it was bad, and we'll talk about it being bad, but do we really want to take the steps to ensure that it's not going to happen again at the same level? Well, what's interesting, though, is the Senate race tightened up, though, right? It did. Because even a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like that one wasn't Klobuchar safe, but it felt safer, and we'll see where it ends up, and I'm kind of surprised. I don't know where you stand on this, that Republican national money didn't really get behind Tafoya. Like, I thought they would because that seat, because even though Flanagan technically I don't think was really locked into the fraud thing either, that's at least what she's trying to say, Tafoya, I think, is the candidate that probably could win. And she's showing it, right, because things are tightening up. But you're right. The best thing the Democrats did was go, we need to be safer. What's so interesting, I was watching the, not Pat Kessler, who's back, by the way, on all day. Yeah, he's back. Is he on Fox 9? He's on Fox 9. I had no idea. But in between all those appearances, Boyz Olsen is also on Fox 9 doing the political happy hour with Courtney Godfrey. And he was talking about... Are they at odds? Who? Boyz and Kessler? Probably. Okay, I just want to... I don't think they've appeared on the set. Maybe they are for the debate that's happening on Wednesday. But what's interesting is President Trump just endorsed, to the surprise of everybody, including her, Michelle Tafoya. And Tim Walz has not really endorsed anybody. why because nobody wants the endorsement of either one of them that's i think the interesting part about this race is you would think both of those guys would be coming both of them are complete opposites and both of them are equally weak when it comes to endorsing who's running we have the unusual situation where her opponent is making a bigger deal of trump saying i've endorsed Tafoya yes herself did you see this she knows yes it's it probably does not work to her interest at all Certainly, again, in the Metro. Not even close. Well, the Gophers are on a bye week, and it comes after a tough loss to Purdue. Wasn't last week a bye week? Based on what I heard, sorry. I have a worse cheap shot that I'll get to here in a second. Oh, okay. I can't wait. Well, the Gophers host the Iowa Hawkeyes on October 24th, and the big news in college football right now is the possible expansion of the playoffs to include 24 teams. Well, you mentioned Softy from KJR. It's the second Softy reference to the show. And that's, by the way, his real name. It is, yes. We call him Softy. What's his birth name? He's also the guardsie, the sideline reporter for Washington Huskies football. They are in Purdue tonight. Might even be on Fox. I'm not sure. And he mentioned this week that there's apparently a flu bug that is going through the Purdue Boilermakers, and my text to him was, well, they couldn't have got it from the Gopher defense. Wow. And I'll probably get a text about that. But you have to laugh to keep from crying, because that's what last Saturday night was. That's what it was, right? The Gophers are 4-2. That's about what I thought they would be at this point. But that's empty because the way that they got to the 4-2 is not how I thought they would get there. They had a great two-week stretch. They do something they hadn't done in forever and beat Michigan, which is, you know, that's happened five times since 1968. So I'm always going to say that's a huge deal. But then you back it up with just really a no-show in all the phases. And that's the tricky spot that they're in when it's talking about cutting through and having a ceiling season is those are the kind of performances that just hurt you probably even more so than the Michigan win helps you, as weird as that sounds. And now you've got to do something, again, to kind of shock people back into your season, and that's beat an Iowa team that for 30 years since Kirk Ferentz has been there, you've had trouble beating. If you lose to Purdue 41-13, it doesn't matter if the playoff gets expanded to 48 games. It seems like a distant concept, like it's not even worth thinking about. And that's the interesting juxtaposition of it, because if you keep winning, like you win that game, you keep the door open to how big this season could be. I think that's kind of fun to wonder, well, why not us? Who's to say? Weirder things have happened. But you take all the life out of it by, again, not just losing, but losing decisively, not even being in the ballgame for any length of time. I didn't see it, but you were there. I was there. the lowlights of it and look we've been waiting again for the the the the next quote-unquote breakthrough season from PJ it's been too long now he he still has a chance they still as you say have a chance because you look at their schedule the rest of the way it's formidable enough and interesting enough that if you you know win a bunch of games yeah they have some big games coming you'll get back in yep but what confidence do we have in that at this point i i just don't have i don't know how anybody can have much a quick scan by the way on expanding to 24 teams for the playoff. In the last 10 years, 14 Big Ten teams would have made at least one playoff appearance, including Minnesota the 2019 season. Which I think is, I mean, I know people don't like it. Some people think it's too watered down. With the money that it costs to do all this stuff now, both for a fan and for the team, just accessibility. Like the NFL, you've got to be playing for something. And so I like this move. We've talked about this before. Because of the number of teams in the Big Ten, it's a pipe dream to say we're going to try to win the Big Ten title. Right. Or even go 10-2. Or even go 11-1. Exactly. You know what I mean? It's very difficult. The other seems more attainable. When you get to 24 teams, it's like, eh, we might be able to back in there. We might be able to sneak in. That sort of thing. That gives you more of a chance than necessarily thinking that you can actually compete for the conference crown. Alright, you guys are getting too used to me, I think. Because we're not listening? No, not at all. I didn't even hear you. Did you say enough? Yeah, I forgot you were here. My hearing is... It was just Dan and me for a minute. All right, well, we now know at least one team is headed to the Fall Classic. The Milwaukee Brewers are heading back to the World Series for the first time since 1982. The Brewers sweeping the back-to-back defending champion L.A. Dodgers out of the playoffs, and they'll host either Cleveland or Tampa Bay in the World Series opener next Friday. Everybody uses the most recent result to state their case, whatever it is, when it comes to labor in baseball. So here's what I'm hearing now. Yep. Here's what I'm hearing now. Well, this proves the Dodgers being beaten and swept, right? Right. What that proves is baseball, the whole salary cap situation is not necessary. There's no need to have any major changes like those proposed by Major League Baseball owners, which is just as absurd as saying that, you know, money doesn't matter. Spending money on your team doesn't matter. But again, we're in a business now where you use the latest result to make whatever point you need to make. And to me, the point continues that I think the Twins have tried too many excuses on payroll, okay? Because Milwaukee is a sign that you can compete without always spending a lot of money. But on the other hand, the notion that you have so many teams that, what, spend 50 bucks in Major League Baseball on their payroll? You can't continue that. So it is not a tenable system. No matter what, this particular result seems to indicate that. It is a Twins fan's worst nightmare, though, that this happened. Because you know the Polads are just, they've been waiting for a World Series like this, right? To use it for their own argument. Forget about just the labor stuff. Their own argument that, well, it's not the most important thing. You know me. I don't like the Wisconsin Badgers. I don't like the Green Bay Packers. I love the Milwaukee Brewers. I've always loved the Milwaukee Brewers, especially the last 15 years. because like you said they give you hope that you can do it in a smaller market but I just like the way it goes all the way back to when they traded for CC Sabathia if you remember that like and they knew that was going to be a rental they knew that he was going to go sign with the Yankees which he eventually did but they pushed it all in they went all in they made a big bold move I'm sure they gave up a bunch of prospects and he basically carried them to the playoffs in the division title that year I remember I just always loved that even though they're like five hours away they're on the other side of earth when it comes to aggressiveness and going for it when it's their turn but again the twins are still boxed because then i'll say to them time for a really quick lightning round um some big awards for the Lynx, Cheryl Reeve has been named WNBA Executive of the Year, it's the third time she's won the honor and Olivia Miles was named to the WNBA All-Rookie Team, I cannot wait for the uh presentations between games one and two of the Oh, WNBA. At Target Center. Oh, yeah. They've been out for a while. Yeah. They got swept. I know, it's hollow, right? It's about as hollow as, I mean, it's about as hollow as has ever happened in this team's history. I know. I mean, no one can get, it's great, great regular season, but it means nothing now. Well, it's MEA weekend, and that means kids are out of school and many families are out of town. It's the busiest travel weekend at MSP. They're expecting a 16% increase in passengers. I'm just sticking around, but I know I always used to love to go out of town. Well, I will say this. I don't know how you feel about this, Natalie, because you're one of us as well. Dan, you're not. I promise you, I promise you that when I was growing up, nobody, we weren't going to Cabo for 10 days. We weren't making this the spring break in the fall. We weren't going to Captiva. We weren't going to Sanibel. We were just hanging out, maybe going to an apple orchard or something. I don't know when MEA became the fall break of everyone's dreams. It was always a cabin weekend. I'm so old. This whole concept is a foreign language. Well, no, it's the school year. We got a couple days off. Let's go to the mall. That's it. That's it. There was no big vacation. It was never in anybody's thought process. I have friends that are in, like, Italy and Ireland. What are we doing? Crazy. One last thing. It's the saga between Kelly Clarkson and a small business in New York. She claims that she was pretty woman. She wanted to buy a $15,000 mechanical bird, and they made her feel like she couldn't afford it. Thoughts? I mean, it's all over social media. I know. I don't know whose side I'm on on this. Well, I'm on the side of this is why we're all screwed up. Whatever happened doesn't matter. And yet it becomes part of the agenda, part of the debate. Pablo Torre, our best journalist right now, is investigating.