The Timing Could Not Be WORSE...

The timing could not be worse for the Vikings after just getting Jordan Mason back are now having to deal with another running back injury that brings many implications along with it. And Kyla Murray and Kevin O'Connell speak on the state of the much criticized offense despite being undefeated as it stands right now. We're going to break down all that in this episode of Vikings Digest, but first, you guys crushed it in helping us reach our goal of 5,500 subs last week, and now with a new week brings a new goal, so let's try and hit 5,600 subs before we kick off against the Detroit Lions on Sunday afternoon. If you're a part of the 89% of viewers who are not yet subscribed, make sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell icon so you don't miss any of the episodes when they drop. With that, let's hop right into the first topic, which is the Aaron Jones injury update. So we saw yesterday in the game that Aaron Jones left with an apparent knee injury. Going into the game, we had heard reports that he's been reportedly playing on a sprained MCL all season, which is crazy considering that he's been putting up 90 plus yard games ever since Jordan Mason stepped away from an injury. now Jordan Mason's back and the Vikings run game left a lot to be desired yesterday even before Aaron Jones got hurt because Jordan Mason 68 yards rushing Aaron Jones 29 yards rushing and I know that he got hurt later in the game he did get hurt to affect his numbers but even before that wasn't necessarily a factor and Minnesota's offense had to go out there and just win by throwing the ball around I know the defense won the game for us but I'm saying as far as the offensive side of things they had to win by throwing the ball and they were able to but that running attack when Minnesota wants to commit to the run for the rest of the season is going to be a big problem to get narrowed down but as far as speaking on that injury yesterday after the game post game comments and today's comments is what we're going to cover as well Kevin O'Connell said Myles Price did get a stinger and he returned Aaron Jones had his knee evaluated same one that he injured against the New Orleans Saints and then Addison got called down for a quick concussion evaluation was cleared to return then today in his zoom press conference he was talking about Aaron Jones saying very similar to what it was after the games aaron jones is just day to day and a lot of the guys coming back after missing some time came out clean so hopefully we'll be able to have a full complete work of practice this week and get ready for what's going to be a huge challenge on Sunday and hopefully we will see Aaron Jones back on the field as we know Aaron Jones is an absolute warrior this is a guy that feels like for the past two years has been battling an injury of some sort every single week but yet manages to lace him up on Sunday unless he's just officially ruled out but if he goes throughout the entire week with a questionable tag you can pretty much place a safe bet that Aaron Jones is going to be playing in that game will he be a liability probably not because he is still very efficient even when he is basically on one leg even though we didn't see that yesterday I think the Lions run defense is going to be a lot worse than the Colts run defenses so at least we can kind of take advantage of that but if they do not have Aaron Jones that brings a major question as far as depth is concerned and Kevin O'Connell was also asked about that today where he said we'll see how he does DJ Dallas is doing some really good things and from a protection standpoint in the kicking game standpoint we still have Demond growing every single day he's getting better and better every single day every week as part of his development plan but this is where everyone's gonna hang on to everything saying so i feel good about the room and we'll meet as a staff together with Nolan here and talk through that what it looks like but with where Aaron's at and where we feel coming out of the game don't necessarily see it as a depth issue at all obviously things could change here as we go day to day now we know that the Vikings and Nolan Teasley are always going to be looking to get players and add players to the team we've seen with all the practice squad signings that they've been making from guys to Jared Patterson, Devin Neal, Juju Smith-Schuster all these guys have just been kind of coming and going from the Vikings organization Teasley is just trying to have every single stone turned over so they can see if there's always going to be a potential for a sleeper uh practice signing uh guy out there or just another kind of opportunity to give a guy a great chance at being great on a great football team so with Nolan Teasley doing that it does no surprise that we have heard from Alec Lewis that the Vikings are expected to further ramp up conversations with teams on available players via trade this week so with all this happening with Kevin O'Connell saying that as well that they're going to see what they want to do with Nolan Teasley and take it day by day it kind of makes you wonder are the Vikings going to circle back to a potential running back candidate to fill in because Aaron Jones when healthy it's fine it's great it's cool but if we're going to have a consistent running back injury bug throughout the season whether it's Jordan Mason with his thumb Aaron Jones with his knee or a hamstring or a shoulder things like that like we've seen in the past that would give Minnesota a lot of reason to go and get extra insurance it's like insurance since you don't need it until you need it and that's where Minnesota is at right now where yes Aaron Jones could be good to go this week but is that going to be the case next week if he gets banged up again so these are things that Nolan Teasley the Vikings and Vikings fans have to consider before they immediately rule out now we don't need a running back we're fine I know a lot of Vikings fans know we need a running back but with this Aaron Jones injury it begs the question of how big of a running back swing are they going to take we've heard guys like Keaton Mitchell, Justice Hill, Kamari Vidal, Tony Pollard thrown out there and those would all be fine pieces if we're running with three backs but if this is a case where Aaron Jones might be a bit of an injury liability and they want to kind of ease the workload off of him and kind of make him more of kind of like a not an RB3 I hate saying that because he's a captain on this team but kind of treat him as part of a three-back committee and Minnesota takes a big swing on a guy like Jonathan Taylor or even Saquon Barkley even at this point would be all right but that would really fortify this running back room into looking like something very very terrifying on a team that wants to commit to running the ball like Kevin O'Connell was saying DJ Dallas has done some great stuff in pass protection and kicking game I totally agree there, but as a running back, he hasn't necessarily been able to step up in that sense. DeMond Claiborne, same sort of thing where he's good on special teams, he hasn't, he's had opportunities on offense with running the ball, but he has not maximized those. So, with Kevin O'Connell saying he has confidence in the group, we've heard that before, and then Minnesota goes out and makes a move, makes a trade, and they eventually immediately either get better or worse, depending on who you ask. Let us know down in the comments below if you guys think that this Aaron Jones thing is going to be something, maybe not for this week, that's worth monitoring or potentially getting worse or as but more so as the season goes on let us know down in the comments below that's going to take us into the second topic of the day which is the offensive confidence I know you guys want to think it's offensive confidence but it's offensive confidence as there was a couple people that pointed out on our stream uh during the Colts game that the Vikings offense was offensive and yes there is some merit to that because when you look at the points that Vikings have scored since week two Will Reichardt has 63 of those offense only 33 so obviously this offense needs to really get going a couple weeks ago when we covered this the gap wasn't nearly as disparaging and now it's gotten to a really bad spot where Will Rychard is carrying the load for this Vikings scoring but as far as the week seven offense Kyler Murray did also speak to it saying my confidence will never waver in the group that we have I think we just have to put the ball in the end zone I know it comes down to execution as far as moving the ball I feel like we did that again to we did that but again we got to get to end that drive instead of with touchdowns instead of kicking field goals and i totally agree with that and i do think that eventually minnesota is going to figure it out on offense i'm just i'm holding out hope that they're going to figure it out because we've seen so many good flashes throughout the past even just two weeks where we know what this vikings offense can look like when they are fully clicking so it's just a matter of getting those execution things down right those drives that were starting off really good ended in field goals because of self-inflicted wounds by penalties mainly on that big one and as well as just the ball just not getting in the receiver's hands there was a couple drops that Jetta's had there was a couple a drop that Juwan Jennings had some of them were a little bit of uncatchable balls some of them should have been catchable so just cleaning those things up goes a long way towards showing people that this offense can look like we are wanting it to look like and as well as with Kevin O'Connell back before the season started saying that he wanted an elevator at the quarterback position and that's why they went out and got Kyler Murray so when he was asked about that today he said the elevator can come in a lot of different ways and I think in general that's a philosophical thing for the position itself when you look around teams the NFL that are winning football games I know we look at things from a global standpoint of in totality and we do the same thing at the same time we look to play and try to project forward the best way to coach this week the best way to put together a game plan this week not only for Kyler but for our whole offense to give our team the best chance to win so again a lot of people want to jump on Kyler Murray just not being able to complete passes not seeing open receivers when you look at the all 22 film of some of those things that are happening you look at Wolf Rice he's been a liability a lot this year even more so in that game on Sunday there was a wide open Justin Jefferson chance that they had taken away by Will Fries getting absolutely monstered by a defensive lineman then you look at some of stuff maybe Kyler's height factors in this but the ball not getting up high enough out of line out of the um out of the line basically or past the line of scrimmage that could be an issue but again he's just got to roll out more with that because you can't fix that really height is a problem that you can't necessarily fix very easily so with all those things you got to take into consideration that yes Kyler and Murray isn't completing passes on the way that we want to see him completing them but he still has been very accurate going into that game he was 40 of his last 48 passes and yes a lot of people say well he's only throwing it three or four yards it's almost like calling Bo Nix a good passer after having a good day for only throwing it five yards at a time or five yards at a time really at max so with this with Kyler Murray I think when you break down the film and look at all the things that happened in that game or the past couple of games that led to the offense not capitalizing certain opportunities leads to a lot of pre-snap penalties there wasn't as many in this game last on Sunday which thankfully was the case but it happened late in the game which cannot happen if it was going to happen do it earlier in the game don't do it late in the game and as well as looking at the protection breakdowns of how the pass rush was really getting there Kyler wasn't able to have necessarily a clean pocket so all these things have to get factored in to where we want to put all the blame on Kyler but at the same time you have to kind of just take it with a grain of salt and real and look at the other pieces on the offense because Kyler is only one of 11 and for a great offense you need all 11 guys being able to click on all cylinders and making sure they're getting the job done the last thing that Kevin O'Connell had to say on Kyler Murray as well saying I think he's done a great job of protecting the football which has been true for the most part only two interceptions, he's been phenomenal at making a play here and there like we saw with his legs and the important thing is how we look at each play, assess each play, how we were going how we were coaching and putting together a plan to make sure that we were continuously ascending while winning football games and that is the big thing here is a lot of people want to pile on the Kevin O'Connell hate train with this but still winning games, I know it's not pretty but we knew that it wasn't going to be pretty even going back to last year when we started this win streak and it was like hey we're just happy to get a win at this point so those Vikings fans that were happy that we were just winning games last year seems like they've taken a little bit of a turn and now as long as we're if we're winning pretty they're happy but we're winning ugly not as much but I don't think that should be the case, it's like I said I keep saying over and over every week in the NFL or in sports they don't ask how, they ask how many and right now Minnesota is the only undefeated team in the NFL sitting at six and oh but let us know your guys's thoughts down in the comments below on everything we covered in this video do you think the Aaron Jones injury is going to be a lot bigger than it's being made out to be Do you think that Kyler Murray and Kevin O'Connell are really going to get this offense clicking on all cylinders, hopefully against the Lions in a really bad defense where they can take advantage of it? Let us know down in the comments below as that's going to do it for this episode of Vikings Digest And if you guys missed our live stream that we did during the Colts game yesterday, I will link it in the description because it was a lot of fun and I think you guys would get a really good kick out of it. And keep looking forward to more live streams like that happening throughout the rest of the year. For now, I've been your host Griffin Take care.