Vikings Tailgate: Jeff Foxworthy Is A Football Wingman and The Falcons 28-3 Heartbreak - ATL - Episode 48

Published Dec 5, 2024, 11:00 PM
Welcome back to the Vikings Tailgate presented by Ticketmaster - The official ticket marketplace of the Minnesota Vikings. The 'dirty birds' are coming back to town and comedian Jeff Foxworthy is all about it. Jeff chronicals his love for Atlanta sports (Bulldogs, Falcons, and Braves), what it's like rooting alongside his diehard Vikings fan son-in-law, his new role as a 'football babysitter wingman,' why Game 7 of the 1991 World Series is the greatest of all time, and his feeling that experiencing repeated heartbreak is worth watching your team finally win a national title. All of this and more is on episode 48 of The Vikings Tailgate presented by Ticketmaster - The official ticket marketplace of the Minnesota Vikings. Also, be sure to check out Jeff Foxworthy on Dec 13th and 14th at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, NV. Tickets are available now: https://mnvkn.gs/4fWu9ek

Unreal is back with their limited edition Vikings drop, so head over to unarl dot com for more details. As the official ticket marketplace of the Minnesota Vikings and the NFL, Ticketmasters the safest and most convenient marketplace to score fully verified Viking tickets. So get those touchdown celebrations ready and score your tickets today at ticketmaster dot com slash Vikings. Hey everybody, it's Cy, Thank you for coming back for another episode. It is Atlanta Falcons week and here on the tailgate. It's a huge episode for us because, man, do we have a giant guest for you this week. He's one of the greatest comedians, one of the biggest comedians of all time. H You may know him as one of the creators of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. He hosted Smarter Than a Fifth Grader and on and on. You know who I'm talking about. You might be a redneck. The incredible Jeff Foxworthy joins us. He's a diehard Georgia Bulldogs fan, Falcons fan, Braves fans. We talk a little ninety one World Series, we talk Super Bowls, and this is a really fun one because he's got family, a son in law who's a huge Vikings fan, so he's always had a lot of love for the Minnesota Vikings. This has been one of my favorite episodes we've done. Guys, I think you're really gonna like it. And hey, make sure you go see Jeff if you have the chance. He is going to be in Las Vegas on December thirteenth and fourteenth at the Palms Casino Resort, So make sure you go snag those tickets. If you check in the description of this episode in your podcast app, they will be right there. You can click the link and get tickets to that show. Hey, and while you're here, give us a review, give us five stars. You it really help us out. Enjoy the show. Everybody the Rocket Rockett's a better man. I here, ladies and gentlemen. We are joined by the great Jeff Foxworthy. Jeff, thank you for showing up and talking to us a bit.

I'm excited to be here. I'm always loved Minnesota. I did my last comedy special there. I always love playing up there, and my football team has broken my heart so much that the Vikings are You know how you always have to have like the second team because I'm a Falcons fan. I grew up in Atlanta. But they've gutted me so bad that the Vikings are my fallback team. And my youngest daughter married into a family of insane scoldiers, so you guys are my backup team. So this, actually, this weekend's kind of hard for me.

It's funny because you would think someone who's had their heart broken so much would choose an organization that doesn't constantly break their fans' hearts. You could have gone with you could have gone with the Chiefs. You came over to another damaged, scared fan base.

Oh dude, my son in law, his name is Brendan, and we talk about this all the time. I'm, like I said, next to the Falcons. You guys find a way to lose in the most imaginative leg, and the Vikes never lose until within the last sixty seconds. Yes, it's creative, hey, but ten and two right now, right? Yeah?

So it's weird, it's and it's funny until you win the big one for the first time, which neither of us have experienced. I think you don't trust anything, and so even at ten and two, you feel this interesting. I was home over Thanksgiving, spending time. I was at the game on Sunday. You feel this odd combo energy of this is so great. Oh no, how's it going to end? It just permeas it's through people.

Well see, I'm that way, Like I'm a Georgia Bulldogs fan. So we we had not won the Natty since nineteen eighty with herschel Walk, forty one years. And you know, then we played Bamman like seventeen and they in overtime beat us, and then the Falcons turn around twenty eight to three and lose. I get it. It's like, so I actually I was not going to go to the Bulldogs. I'm like, all right, I've wasted too much money going to these games. But in twenty one when they played in Indianapolis, and then like the week of the game, me and my brother and my two buddies couldn't stand it. And so we drive up to Indianapolis and we win the Natty and I told my I called my son in law. I said, it's worth it for all the heartbreak, this may be the greatest moment of my life. And you guys, see, I'm old enough to remember as a kid the Purple people eaters and it was like, you guys just kept going to the Super Bowl and could never win it, and then I was it ninety nine.

Into ninety nine when you guys, when you guys crushed my soul as a child.

Well, we had to come up there and play you there, and I thought, we're going to get our teeth kicked in. There's so much better than us.

That's what. But that's what I've been telling everybody this year when they worry that the egos are the Lions, I go get you just never know in one game if you're if you're some version of good, you just never know.

Yeah, especially you know, that's kind of what I'm going through in college this season with Georgia, because they can look unbeatable and they can look horrible. Because we were talking about it and I thought, you know, the Lions are playing so good that it's probably going to end up being the Falcons and the Vikes in the playoffs. In the playoffs, and so Arthur Blank invited me and my son in law, Brendan down to watch the game. And he's so funny because he's sitting there at the I mean, we're in Arthur Sweet on the fifty yard line and he's watching the bikes on his phone between his legs, and so I'm like, dude, let's go, let's go watch Kirk and because this is gonna end. God, we played awful last week like the Chargers, and just just so now I don't know the Bucks are on a roll. So maybe you guys end up with the Bucks. But what do you guys have won like five straight. I really like this football team and I like Darno. You know, when Matt Ryan when we were going through all that and he was kind of the guy. I always thought, this guy hasn't shown what he can do. I think he's better. Uh, and obviously he is.

I mean, well and we've you know, the interesting thing that's happened is with you know, now Daniel Jones has come to Minnesota and you this when he signed. You saw these former players and analysts do this thing where they all go, oh, they were commending Daniel Jones on the right choice. And to me, what that felt like was this coach, this Kevin O'Connell, has created an environment and has a reputation where if players want to be I mean, you know, this is a Bulldog fan where it's such a heavily you're you're in the You're you're in a recruiting competition as much as you are in a football competition. And if players want to be in your culture and in your environment, you know, so to see Sam succeed the way he is and then see another guy who got a raw deal somewhere people you know, he thinks try to come here, I think that's an If you're a fan, you look at that and you get pretty excited about that. As weird as it sounds.

I mean, Koc is like a such a good quarterback, and so when Sam went to you guys, I thought, well, at least he's going to get a fair shot with a good team to see if And I think he's been fabulous this year, absolutely, you know, when you look at what it did for y'all, freeing all the cap space when Kirk left, and then you put it on defense, and now all of a sudden, you're suffocating quarterbacks. And I'm like, and I've always liked Kirk. I put Brendan told me years ago, he said, do you know Kirk Cousins. Every year his wife buys him a you might be a redneck if page a day calendar. That's his one thing that he has to have in his Christmas stocking. And so I always like Kirk because of that. But we spend a lot of money, you know, and what Sam's like ten MILLI a year and I think Kirk like thirty five or something.

So yeah, uh, it's ultimately as much as you know, you want sports to be about the competition, and it is, but you also have this piece of you that goes It's kind of an interesting math equation. You know, how much how much better do you guys perform than what you pay them? And you get a rookie on a rookie day. It's really it really that's where you start going, Oh, some of these gms, either they're lucky or they're good, but when they hit on the math equation, it gets really fun.

Well, and then you have the thing because I know, both of us sweat out draft night because we're both notorious for blowing draft dames. And yeah, so then so we signed Kirk for a bazillion dollars and then instead of taking Brock Bowers, we go ahead and draft Michael Pennix.

It was my thought it was the most interesting thing coming into the season in the whole league.

What You're like, what because I knew from watching I'm like, bron Bowers is going to be one of the best players in the NFL, and damn ify.

And I think to see what he's doing. I don't think people quite understand how the tight end position is probably the most difficult other than left tackle, the most difficult non quarterback transition on the offense to the pros. So much blocking, so much route running. You never see these guys break out in their first year. You certainly don't see him breakout on bad teams, and you damn sure don't see him breakout with a carousel of below average quarterbacks. It doesn't seem to matter who's throwing the ball like he's got I might end up being the greatest tight end to ever play football energy in his rookie season.

Oh and we saw it at Georgia that the cat was just different, you know. And I mean, but you guys, you know, Hockinson, you guys got a great tight end. You always You're Minnesota does something that I'm always jealous of is like you always have a pair of really good receivers. Yeah, in the Falcons. I mean, maybe like Julio and Roddy White for a couple of years, but we never seem to be I mean, we got Drake London now, and Drake's good, but you guys always seem like you have a pair of them.

So I think about that a lot, because there are things I don't know how it happens or why it happens, but organizations and areas kind of you're right becomes synonymous. The Vikings had Moss and Carter feeling and digs, and now they have Jefferson asked, yeah, you go to Chicago, It's like it's like there's a banner in their building that says, we must have a middle linebacker right your braves teams for that whole run in the nineties, it's like we're gonna have essentially two to three aces constantly right all the way up through. So I don't know why or how like that happens. Somebody explained it, I think. On the show last week about the Bears, his name good comic named Daniel van Kirk. He said, maybe it's the when you come into a place that has history like that, you know, like if you come into like in Georgia, when you walk into the building and you see a bunch of pictures of the bulldogs of herschel Walker. Everybody goes, hey, man, you gotta there's some stuff to live up to here. But if you walk in at you know, a different position, that's maybe just the aura of the previous people creates that. I don't know, but it is weird that it kind of repeats itself historically.

And you guys just I mean, when I think of the Vikings, I always think of like great wide receivers. It was funny because like, all right, i'mmist trying to flip my screen around.

You can see my wall of like oh sure, yeah.

Remember being stuff. So I'm trying to do that for my son in law. So every year I buy him, it's it's usually a Vike to put in his office. And so I wanted to get him with Jefferson, and he would not allow me to do it until he signed his second contract. He's like, no, he's gonna break my heart. He's gonna go somewhere else. And so so I did finally get a sign Jefferson for him in there.

But now is he so is your son? Is he from Minnesota originally? Or is he one of these places that his family was? And then they grew up somewhere else.

He and his forty five cousins, all of their aunts and uncles are from Minnesota.

I'm catching strays with that one. Jeff as a man who's got a mom with eight brothers and sisters, and I have a but you you hit it on the head. Is he Swedish too? Is he a giant Nordic Swedish person?

Now he's Irish poorly. But they're all they're all Minnesota people. I mean they're Twins fans, they're Vikes fans. He's taught my grandson. He's three now, but I found him last year. He's two years old, two years old, down at my farm in the middle of a field, and I videotaped him singing the Vikings fight song two years old, every word of it, at the top of his lungs with it. Because we had to negotiate because he was a Vikings and a Notre Dame fan. Another one that would break your heart. And I was a Bulldogs and a Falcons fan, so two more that would break your heart. So before he was born, we had serious negotiations and who was going to get the college team and one was going to get pro and one was going to get caught, and so I ended up I took the Bulldogs because the twenty eight to three. I never trust the Falcons anymore. I mean I root for them, I follow them, but it's like it's like day a hooker, you know, It's like every year, you're like, you're not gonna cheat on me. Right, You're not gonna break You're not gonna break my heart again. Right if I get if I get all invested again, You're You're not gonna break my heart. Oh no, I'm not gonna break your heart. And then you get invested and then they break your heart. And so I went with the Bulldogs and he took the he took the Vikes.

Especially given the state of what's happening in college football and the elevation of the SEC, I think that was the right call. I think you made the right decision.

I think I did too. But now, like in pro the NFC North is like the SEC, and in the NFC South it's kind of like the Sun Belt.

Now, yeah, there's a little easier nobody Wolves to win the conference. Uh are they down? Are they near you in Atlanta?

Yeah? Yeah?

What is the what is the game day ritual, So let's go pro not college. Are they coming over? Are you get like I have my nephew comes over. I have an adult because I've got a big hillbilly family where somehow I've got a nephew two years younger than me, you know, and so he'll come over. We have you know, we've got the multiple TVs for the multiple people rooting for multiple teams. There's just curse words coming from different angles. Do you guys get together or do you commiserate afterwards?

It depends on how big the game is, because he's like, if it's a really big one, he'll go into a shell. And he's got a one year old and a three year old, So I allow them to come over here while I kind of clear space for him. I'm running like his wing and he'll tell me, first of the wait, look Sunday, I gotta have I gotta be all it. Can you take the kids?

You're his NFL babysitter wing man?

Yeah? Yeah. And then but it's somewhat like if he comes to our house, he has every TV in the house on and he's he can't sit down. I've got footage of him like when the Vikings win in the last second. Well, I was with him in the car the other day when he lost his mind. But this dude like rips his shirt off, is out in the front yard beatings, screaming skull. He loses his mind and then like in was it eighteen? He eighteen? I can't remember who they lost to. But he announced he was going on a hunger strike. He was as down as I've ever so, I literally, I mean, he's got a bad Viking problem. So I went, this is how good of a son in law. I went to Honey Baked Ham and got him a Honey Baked Ham sandwich and soup and took it over there.

So he was sick.

So yeah, like he has pneumonia because the Vikings lost, and I'm in there like, dude, you got to eat you got it.

It's I remember I've told this probably on this show. I've told it to other people. I was doing so the one that got me ninety eight, I was so. I was young. I was fifteen, And you think that was such a special team. You remember them, You thought you were gonna get blown out. I think everybody thought this was the start. They didn't realize it was their best chance at the mountaintop. You thought we're about to go into ten years of Randy Moss mania. And so that one hurt. But the one that like truly.

Hurt Barvan, New Orleans.

Barvan, New Orleans. It was farv and and I'm a broken record, but I remember when he hit Sidney Rice on a pattern up the middle and he crossed the fifty yard line. I thought, I let myself believe it. Jeff, I thought to myself, and I bet you've heard your son in Las Ades ex actors. I thought to myself, oh my god, we're going to the super Bowl. And then when he missed that kick, I remember the next week. You know, you remember from back in your club days. I know the landscape has changed immensely, but there are comedy clubs and then there are a few of those clubs where you're like, I wait all year to perform at this club, and one of them is Comedy on State in Madison. So I have Comedy on State the next week, and I go there and I felt like someone broke up with me. That's how pathetic that I felt like. I felt like my heart it's to this day, it's my least fun comedy week at one of the best clubs. But I just I didn't enjoy a thing. I was miserable. Same thing. Pathetic, a pathetic excuse of a person.

Well, when the Falcons twenty eight to three, and my daughter looks at me this is the fourth quarter and looks at me and says, start of the fourth quarter, Oh my god, Dad, we're gonna win the Super Bowl.

Oh no.

And then the Patriots come storming back. But then Ryan connects with Julio Jones and we're now we're in field goal range. Great, Julio catch. All we have to do is run it three times and kick the field go backwards, just don't go backwards. We pass it three straight downs and he gets sacked twice, and you're like, all we had to do was run the ball up the middle three times in a row and kick the field goal. So I and dude the next day, because you're probably like me, if I'm in the car truck, I'm listening, I got sports talking, and I've never seen anything like this. This whole city was like it was dead. Like the guy would come on and go, I don't have anything to say. If anybody wants to call in, you can call in and it would just be like dead air. But yo, were I mean that year you guys, you guys were the best team in the NFL that year.

Yeah, yep, I think that's I think that's kind of the travesty of some stuff. And I actually think this about your ninety one Braves team. Now, you guys went on to win a win a championship with one of those nineties Braves teams. What was it ninety six? You guys got one ninety.

Five, ninety five against the Indians. But but, and as a lifelong baseball fan, I still say the ninety one World Series is World Series of all time, best World Series ever?

What I don't and somebody who I fell off on baseball, like I could write a ted talk about my frustrations in the uh you know, but it looks like the Twins are gonna have new owners. Like we're like, we're heading a good direction again. But you're a little cute who grows up with Kirby Puckett saying hop on my back and hits that homer in six. But I don't. It's not just the greatest World Series of all time the Game seven. I watched it again as an adult. It's greatest pitching performance, greatest game. It's it's everything.

Molts and Jack Morris in Game seven. Now, if Lonnie Smith doesn't get deeked out at second base, we probably win that game one to nothing.

Yep.

But Smoltz and Jack Morris were two warriors that night, and I mean it was one of those when it ended, I couldn't even get out of my chair. You're just like, I'm exhausted. But it was so much fun because they both were last place the year before.

Yep, and climbed up the ranks. You know, the thing I like about baseball, and I love minor league baseball, but the thing I love about baseball isn't necessarily the baseball itself. It's a little corny, but I like the romance of it. I don't think it's a coincidence that baseball makes the best sports movies and by leaps and bounds like a really long ways, and I just think because there's something Baseball is this interesting collection of individual sports masquerading as a team sport. It's a pitcher against a batter, right, it's a guy catching the ball. It's it's not so much connected in the same way the other sports are and so I think when you have a game like that Game seven, where you have Jack Morris going ten innings and John Smoltz going the distance and not giving up a single run, there's just something so this is corny but soul touching and poetic about something like that that it's almost hard to create moments of tension like that in other games because of how fast they move and how much the play intertwines.

You know, I would agree, but like in football, like you guys had one of those moments. So Cousins tears' achilles and then it's like, what Hall's gonna start all the.

Dobbs things, you guys, Yes, And so Hall gets hurt on the first drive, and.

They bring in Josh Dopps, who's been with Minnesota for like ten minutes. He doesn't he doesn't even know anybody's name in the locker room, and he couldn't have known the playbook. No, it was pretty much like O'Connell just said, run here, throw there, backyard football. Just yeah, And you had to be in the huddle going go, you go five yards and turned towards the car, you go to the Smith's front yard into a button hook and and leads him down the field at the end of the game, and they so, to me, that's that's a movie.

No, that's it. That's a good point.

But baseball is much more of a individual storyline thing than football.

Yeah you can. You are, like, I just the the amount of affection I have for Jack Morris. It's almost like I see this whole personality and backstory and I've built so many narratives into a human man because of one game I watched him pitch, as opposed to some other sports where you just it's more about the physical accomplishment of the moment, the mindset of what it takes to have. In Game seven of the World Series, have your manager be like, we're gonna send a reliever and then you go, the hell you are, I'm going out, and then you do it and you shut them. That's wild to me.

Well, and John Smoltz is one of my best friends, and.

So that's cool.

And you know, he's always been honest about when he had it and when he did and he's like, dude, I had it that night, I had it, he said. And then you realize, oh, hell, jack'scot it too, And I mean that was just one for the ages It's still my favorite World series of all time.

Does Smoltz look back. I'm always curious about because as opposed to the Falcons loss or that Vikings fave intercept where you feel like you did something wrong, Like when you're that high level of an athlete, like you're one of the greatest pitchers to ever walk out onto a mound and you perform at your highest level and someone just out high levels you by a Smith. Does he walk away from that going, God, damn, I was just a part of something special. Or does that burn in a way that is unique?

I think probably the former is in John. It doesn't matter what you're doing. You could be playing ping pong or whatever. He's he's the most competitive human being I've ever I've ever been around. But he's like you just kind of tip your hat that night, go, you know, and what could have been? You decliney Smith out and we end up with the bases loaded and nobody out and don't score. I remember that summer I was playing up. I was playing in many apples. I can't remember which club, and I went out because the Twins were such a story that summer and went out to the Old and and all I remember is new smoking in the Metrodome uh uh. And the way they announced Kirby Pucketgerby Pucket.

It is forever cemented into every Minnesotan's brain.

And and Dan Gladden out there with the official redneck uh hair.

Dan Gladden looks like his dad was one of your old albums. Uh. I want to ask you one more question about Kirk and I'll get you out of here. We appreciate you being a part of the show. Uh. Kirk was so interestingly, I think divisive in the fan base, Like if you were a part of the organization, you know I've always said and you probably know this, knowing that you know a little bit about him now that he's in Atlanta. First class human being, right, yeah, first class human being and an all time accurate arm right. And where it gets muddy for the fan base is the argument of kind of like what you were saying earlier, and then you add on top of that, right, how right you need things to do versus how off schedule and whether you should have you know, the old line needed there just gets into this big, never ending argument and it kind of went from Washington, it followed him to Minnesota, and it existed there. And what I am curious at this moment is you guys walk into this game, which is a you're right, Tampa's playing, Well, this is a big game for you guys. It's a big game for him.

So let me ask you this. And I asked my son and all of this last week. I said, is he going to get booed when he gives back to Minnesota? And he said, nah, Vikings fans aren't like that.

Yeah, they'll they'll they'll clap while whispering something negative in their spouse's ear is what they will do. It's like, oh, well, you're so great this guy is. You know, that's what will happen. I will say, you hit it on the head. Sam has played so well, They've built the rosters so well. Anybody who's booing, like I think, if you didn't like Kirker, didn't want Kirk, maybe you feel vindicated now. But anyone who comes to boo to me, it's like, what do you what it's like when Diggs left? But you got justin Jefferson like let him let him go, let it, let it, let it, let it live. So I think you might even be surprised how warm of a welcome he gets at the bank this weekend.

Yeah, Kirk. To me, it's and it's a little bit like Georgia always has a pro style quarterback. I think if Kirk probably would have had more success fifteen years earlier because and Ai tipped my hat that he was able to come back from the Achilles thing.

Oh my gosh.

But in the open but in the first game of the season looked horrible. The whole team looked horrible. And then I'm like, oh, it's going to be one of these years where we're the worst team in football. And then they kind of got it together and started playing well and we're Okay, we're six and six. When we lost three in a row, Hell, three weeks ago, we were on top of the world. But same thing with Georgia. I think football has changed and you have to be at least semi mobile as a quarterback. And I think back to like was friend Tarkinton forty years ahead of his.

Time, one hundred percent, because.

He's one of the players for me being a little kid that I just remember going, dang, you can't tackle this guy. You know, he extends plays forever. And I think that's no pun intended Kurt's Achilles hill is he just can't move well.

It's really interesting. History is funny. You grew up and you saw those purple people leater teams. I think if they win two or three of those Super Bowls, the Vikings are considered, uh, you know, a cornerstone franchise. He's considered one of the greatest quarterbacks. It's just funny how that happens. But your other point, it's so interesting and correct. You think about because I love basketball too, I'm a big basketball guy, and I think about what if Reggie Miller got to play in today's day and age with the way he shot the ball back in the nineties when they took three threes a game in that same way, imagine if you pourted Kirk back to the Troy Aikman nineties, where you had these big, bruising running games. You didn't have all these motion offenses, all these college concepts that have as the rules have changed, you know, offense has become so dynamic and so strong. I think you're exactly right. I think you put Kirk in the nineties and he's probably a Jim Kelly type.

I agree, I think he is. But like even with George, I'm like, man, moving forward, we got to have a quarterback that can move, you know. I mean, I don't need him to rush for one hundred yards a game, but he's got to be able to get outside of the pocket and extend plays.

And you look it out of the way.

Yeah. You you look at the the franchises that that are doing well in the NFL, that all of them have a quarterback that's mobile.

Yeah, it's uh. It is the way things have probably permanently changed. I don't think they're going to go back to guys who are like I'm going to stand here now.

I will tell you this as an outsider looking in Okay, probably as a Vikings fan. It's it's a lifetime of frustration. But I think other people look at y'all is one of the top tier football teams because you have been always think of the Vikings like the Vikings. Oh, the Vikings are good. The Vikings are good. I never think of them as a bad team. I always think of the Vikings as being good. But it's like you get right up to the top of the thing and then find a way to.

Fall off the mountain. We hang out on the mountain, but we like to fall.

Yeah, you guys, you've got that falcon thing where they know how to break your heart. Yeah, you guys are such good fans. You'll come back the next week and you know, be right there.

But we'll be right there cheering for Kirk. That's what we'll be doing.

But maybe this is the year. I mean, your defense, your defense is so much better wild and this I think this iteration of the Vikings, this team has hard. You know, they could have folded last week, I think. And and to me, that's the difference in great teams and teams that aren't is having each other's back and having that hard.

In the belief in those moments that you're going to figure it out.

And I think this team has that more than the Vikings have had in recent years. It's like, do you not agree?

I mean, I very much agree. I think I would pair that with because I always say I think locker rooms are sports. Locker rooms are unique places, and you hear all these cliches and you think they're dumb, but they actually believe them. And locker rooms take on a personality of their own. And if you lose three close games, next time you're in a close game and you think that's who you are. And so I do think it's a big deal that they have developed this persona. You know, they blew a few teams out and now they've figured out how to win gritty. The other thing I would add on top of it is exactly what you said earlier. They freed up all this money, but it's next year. Also, this is a team that is ten and two, that has a rookie quarterback on their roster that is a very affordable contract that is about to walk into seventy five million dollars of cap space. And so I'm very very I'm enjoying every minute of the season and I'm always the sky is falling, Jeff, But I have bought in to I don't know a right place, right time, right moment. We might go on a run and then but it's gravy because I think the GM and the organization is so strong that you use that seventy five million bucks this offseason and you put a couple more people on this team and we might be walking into next year in a real big time window.

Dude, I don't think there's anybody that wouldn't take your head, coach. I think O'Connell. I mean, what a great surprise. He's been right, and hell I would take him today nothing again, Raheem Morris. But I think he's going to be around for a long time. And I I just feel like you guys are on the on the right track.

Can I pitch you my Can I pitch you my craziest theory because I'd be curious what you think about this because we talked to a lot of people on this show.

It says, Okay, you have a fan brain that has been permanently damaged over the years. But yes, I would like to hear the theory.

But see, we have people on the show and some of them are fans. But you are You are a You are clearly a deep than Oh yeah right, you of of your Yeah, you're a I'm gonna be you take this word however you would like. But you're a maniac. I can see it, I can feel it, I can sense it as one of my own. I have a maniac radar. So I'll pitch this to you and you won't think I'm telling you the moon landing was fake. I have been waiting for a coach and an organization and to break the quarterback structure in the NFL, right, because again this is salary cap, right, the salary cap rule, and you know quarterbacks. Now there's this thing where in the last however many years, the only quarterbacks, the only teams that have won a Super Bowl with a quarterback that makes more than twelve percent was Brady one year, and then Mahomes a couple times because he's Mahomes. That's ever since the salary cap started. People don't they don't realize salary cap started right around the time Tom Brady started going. And then he took a cheap deal because of his model wife every year and cruised with awesome rosters. You know, tough thing about being a GM or a head coach is you screw up, You're gone. Right, There's not a lot of franchises like you know, the Vikings are very supportive franchise, the Steelers, where the leash is a little longer. I've been waiting for a coach who goes. I don't care about having a Hall of Fame quarterback. What I'm gonna do is either take a reclamation project or a second, third or fourth round draft pick every single year. And I'm such a good quarterbacks coach that I am gonna work that guy through his cheap deal, and then I'm gonna find another one, and I'm gonna keep doing that. And tell I, if I get a Mahomes someday, obviously I'm gonna keep the Mahomes or a Josh Allen. I thought Harbaugh might do it in San Francisco when he was cycling through guys. Kevin O'Connell, like we're playing in the fantasy world. He is so highly respected and so good at quarterbacks. I have the belief that give him a good roster and give him any quarterback he won with Josh Dobbs just saying plays into his headset. He I don't think anyone will ever do it. But if anyone was meant for that crazy break the salary cap quarterback thing, it is Kevin O'Connell.

It is. But to your point, I'm not sure that's a great thing. And you know I had a I had, We had Michael Vick, you know, which is like one of the first guys to break the bank. Yes, we ended up running the team because we had no money for anything else. But I, like, I wasn't excited when y'all took McCarthy and then like when you started playing exhibit and I'm like, holy cow, look what Donald has done with McCarthy. I think that's one of the saddest things of the year. I was excited to see what he could have become because I think you're right. I think if you've got and and that's O'Connell's biggest strength is he's so good with quarterbacks. And I don't think you need to have my homes to win it. But because look what, all right, so you take all the Kirk's money off the books and and look what Florida's did with the defense. I mean, you are a much more complete team this year than you were last year because you freed up so much money.

I'll always put the money in uh in defense always that is that is my dumb guy brain, give me all the defenders.

Well, as a Georgia Bulldog fan, defense wins championships and it still does. And if you look at twenty one and twenty two, that's how Georgia won the Natty. Because your offense doesn't need to score forty points a game. Put together an offense that's good enough to score twenty four game and you're probably gonna win most times.

And it's I always think it's easier to play offense when the game is tilted your direction as opposed to defense when it's tilted your direction, because they're still trying to come back, so make it make it easier when you do that. Jeff, you're the king. This is great now, dude, I.

Have enjoyed it. This is one of those weeks where I can't really lose. I mean, if the Falcons win, I'm happy because then maybe we But if the Bikes win, my son in law is going to be so happy.

So well, I hope your son in law ends up happy. This meant a ton to us, Jeff, this was fantastic. I really really appreciate it. Thank you for spending time with us.

Okay, thanks Sed, you've bet all right. Great care of y'all.

And hey, thank you guys for listening to our podcast feed well you're here. Give us a review, a rating. It helps out a ton and also big thanks to Ticketmaster, the official ticket marketplace of the Minnesota Vikings, for helping make this show happen. We'll see you again next week