Morning Joes

So, perhaps the Vikings can be home for more than nine games this season. That’s where the rock-solid prognostication comes in. We can look down the schedule and forecast just how many of those home (and road) games the Vikings are going to win this season and if any extra post-season games will take place at The Vault. Let the speculation begin: and we will start it off with ours this week on the Vikings Territory Breakdown podcast. Mark Craig from the Star Tribune joins me to stop staring at our navels and start gazing at that old Purple crystal ball. Will they have nine wins, 10 or 11 and a home playoff game? The NFC North is not as assured as in years past, so anything can happen. Tune in to the VT Breakdown podcast to see what we think will take place.

Mark Craig and Joe Oberle talk about the Divisional Trades and more.

The 2022 NFL Crapshooter, I mean NFL Draft begins on Thursday, April 28, and the Vikings hold the 12th selection of the first round in that draft. That is as much certainty as we can safely predict at the time of this writing. What will the Vikings do with the 12th overall pick? Will they trade up to grab the player they want? We can pretty much speculate that they won’t trade down with the pick to secure several more seventh-round picks. At least if the words of general manager Kwesi Adolfo-Mensah prior to the draft mean anything:

The folks at the Vikings Territory Breakdown podcast have you covered. Mark Craig from the Star Tribune and Joe Oberle fromVikingsTerritory.com discuss the players returning to TCO Performance Center and look ahead to the Draft. They will break down the Vikings' roster needs and try to predict whom general manager Kwesi Adolfo-Mensah will select with his first draft in his new position. Can we expect more collaboration than has been reported the last regime was experiencing in the final years at the helm of the Vikings Ship? We can only hope.

Co-host Joe Oberle and Star Tribune's Mark Craig talk what came out of the first week or press conferences with players since the GM and coaching change.

And we will talk about that on the Vikings Territory Breakdown podcast with Mark Craig from the Star Tribune and Joe Oberle from puplePSTD.com and VikingsTerritory.com. We will also talk about the offensive line—specifically at the right guard position, a problem situation that the Vikings’ new regime has been busy trying to rectify and rebuild.

But Mark Craig from the Star Tribune joins Joe Oberle from purplePTSD.com to sort it all out on the Vikings Territory Breakdown podcast. Neither one of them is named Davis, so don’t expect them to be vying for a crack at the RG position, but count on them to venture some speculation as to who might win it. The Vikings, amazingly, still have some cap room left as time for the NFL Draft nears, and we get the feeling with how Free Agency has gone thus far, they may not be finished with their “competitive rebuild,” as Kwesi put it. Tune into the VT Breakdown Podcast to hear the latest.

Co host Joe Oberle and Star Tribune's Mark Craig talk all the free agency moves for the Vikings. Who the Vikings signed? Who they kept (and lost)? What and who happens next? Around the NFL changes

Co host Joe Oberle and The Star Tribune's Mark Craig talk the free agency tampering period is here (which is one the silliest things going—just open up free agency on Monday and let ‘er rip). But then the NFL has never been one for drawing a line and sticking to it (e.g. there will be no gambling in the NFL!) unless, of course, it has to do with giving Colin Kaepernick a job. But that’s another quarterback story for another day.

Mark Craig of the Star Tribune will break that down on the Vikings Territory Breakdown podcast with VT senior writer Joe Oberle.

Co-host Joe Oberle and Star Tribunes Mark Craig talk new coaching staff and what the NFL combine might bring the Vikings. Craig will look at the Vikings new coaching staff (led by Kevin O’Connell) and offer his ideas of the team’s top three needs in the draft for the coming season—and there are likely more needs, as well. Mark will also examine what the new offensive and defensive coordinators (Wes Phillips and Ed Donatell, respectively) had to say last week in their introductory pressers.

KOC Racing to Catch Up—And it Starts With Kirk Still, the Vikings under new GM Kwesi Adolfo Mensah were not sitting idly by while KOC was high-fiving his former players and drinking champagne in the back of a parade car. They were interviewing plenty of new staff members and were ready to bring them aboard just as soon as KOC was in place. Mark Craig from the Star Tribune and Joe Oberle, senior writer for VikingsTerritory.com and purplePTSD.com, will look at all the new hires to the Vikings staff and speculate what’s to come next on the VT Breakdown podcast.

The Los Angeles Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals 20-16 in the Super Bowl last Sunday. That is the headline, but there are so many other sub-plots to recognize. Matthew Stafford left Detroit and got a ring (while his fellow Detroiter Eminem followed him to LA and knelt in honor of Colin Kaepernick—good on ya, mate), Rams owner Stan Kroenke build a winning team through trades and free agency (and hopefully built himself a private bathroom) and the Vikings get their new head coach in Rams offensive coach Kevin O’Connell. The wealth was spread around to everywhere but Cincinnati, which came ever so close to winning the title and capping off an incredible turnaround of a franchise. At least they had the day off of school on Monday to sulk around home and lick their wounds. The Bengals do have the look of a team on the rise, however, and we should expect them (if they bolster their offensive line to protect star QB Joe Burrow) in the hunt for years to come. Just think, now at 0-3 in the Super Bowl, the Bengals have

Co-host Joe Oberle and Star Tribune's Mark Craig talk: The NFL hosted its (nearly) annual AFC-NFC Pro Bowl game this past weekend and I woke up from my third quarter nap in time to watch Vikings running back Dalvin Cook score on a late touchdown reception. He appeared to keep the football (I am thinking it was his first Pro Bowl TD). The game apparently meant more to the players, who seemed to be enjoying themselves, than the many NFL fans who have been criticizing for its lack of competition—such as this: More importantly, the Vikings new GM Kwesi Adolfo-Menash made his first and biggest decision of the offseason (if reports leaking out are to be accurate) in the hiring of Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell to be the team’s next head coach. KOC as we will refer to him often, still has one game to play next week in Los Angeles before he is officially announced as the Vikings head coach and can take over the reins for the foreseeable future. Let’s hoping he will have earned the rights to be

Joe Oberle and Mark Craig Post Conference Round Podcast Topics A season to remember. I Hate to see the season coming to an end. Only one game left. Kwesi Adolfo-Mensah was named right after left the air last week. Is the right man for the job? Vikings head coaching candidates Pro Bowl preview AFCCG review: NFCCG review: Tom Brady retires: The Vikings need to keep drafting QBs—that’s what this league is about. Defense in the NFC; Offense in the AFC: Prediction segment recap:

Wild Weekend of NFL Games Arrives a Week Later Two weekends ago the NFL held its Wild Card Weekend, which we called a misnomer due to several blowouts and games that were anything but wild. Well, the playoffs made up for it this past weekend when the Divisional Round of the playoffs were as “wild” as anything we have ever seen in the modern era. There were four Divisional playoff games and each came down to the final play to before they were decided, and one of them, the epic in Kansas City between the Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills will go down as one of the best ever. The two teams displayed excellent quarterback play and exhausted defensive performances, which resulted in 25 points being scored inside the final two minutes of the game (an NFL playoff record). The Chiefs tacked on a walk-off touchdown pass from Patrick Mahomes to Travis Kelce for the win and jump started the discussion once again about the playoff overtime rule which dictates that if the first team to have the ball in OT scores a TD the game

Poorly Named “Wild Card” weekend features Blow Outs and Blown Calls The NFL Wild Card weekend wasn’t very wild last weekend. Of the six games played, five of the home teams won and the other game—between the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys—was a flag-filled slog that eventually came down to the last play that never took place. The other games feature blowouts and lent credence to the thought that adding a seventh spot to each conference was little more than ill-advised money grab. Which means in the NFL that they are here to stay. The games, many of which were snooze fests, do set up some interesting match ups in the divisional round this weekend. The Green Bay Packers will rejoin the competition off their 1st-round bye and host the upstart niners, who held on for victory over the Cowboys when their OC called a QB draw with little time on the clock and watched that clock tick away before they attempt a game saving passing into the endzone. Goodbye to the perennial favorite Dallas squad who will n

Joe Oberle and Mark Craig talk about the Black Monday after win against the bears. The Vikings beat the Chicago Bears in their 2021 season finale at U.S. Bank Stadium by the score of 31-17 but there was almost no joy in Mudville. The win, which included perhaps the Vikings best second half of the season, serves only to give them a lower draft pick (by one position), come up short of record numbers for the star wide receiver Justin Jefferson and marked the final game of head coach Mike Zimmer and General Manager Rick Spielman with the Vikings. Whether you loved Zim or loathed him, the end of the Zimmer era is a sad day in Purple Nation.

But we all knew this was coming. The Packers have been ascending while the Vikings’ ship sprung leaks and has been bobbing in rough waters, waiting to submerge. The fact that the Packers got to plunder them again while the Vikings are cast under a raging sea of uncertainty is just more bitter, salty water for the Purple fan base to swallow. The Purple faithful must wander another arid offseason with likely no rudder to steer them to safe harbor. Tune in for the wake. Mark Craig from the Star Tribune and Joe Oberle from Vikings Territory/purplePTSD are here to dissect this latest debacle on the VT Breakdown podcast. Join us as we go over the following topics and look for clues for the way forward:

Mark Craig from the Star Tribune joins Joe Oberle (senior writer for Vikings Territory/purplePTSD) on the VT Breakdown to discuss and analyze it all.