Wake me up when the season starts. After two weeks of second and third-stringers, it is time to either get the starters in the game to knockoff the rust or go watch the Twins. The Vikings' offense was under whelming against the San Francisco 49ers on Saturday at U.S. Bank Stadium. After a week of hearing about fireworks and some great plays (and fiery words from one Kirk Cousins), we didn’t get to see the starters and the Vikings lost 17-7.

Talk about a buzzkill.

Nick Mullens joins the Vikings so we can skip talking about the regression from second-year quarterback Kellen Mond, who had some flashes but then threw two bad picks. Sean Mannion was more of the same, some moments bracketed by less than stellar play. (Although a nice throw up the seam to Zach Davidson, who dropped it on his way to a huge gain, could have changed our impression of Mannion.) And rookie corner back Andrew Booth, Jr., left the game limping badly on an injured ankle.

The defense played well and several of them distinguished themselves: Ty McGill (1.5 more sacks); LB Brian Asamoah shined again and looks like the real deal; and Ty Chandler ran his way into our hearts once again with a decent performance. And Mark Craig from the Star Tribune will be on hand at the Vikings Territory Breakdown podcast to discuss all of the above with co-host Joe Oberle, senior writer from VT and purplePTSD.com. They certainty spice up the doldrums of more preseason football to come.

There are only three preseason games this year and still the regular season can’t come soon enough. There is one more exhibition game next week in Denver—hopefully the starters can take the field to get in the swing of things before the season opener against the Packers. But the VT Breakdown pod fellas are in mid-season (well, mid-preseason form, anyway) so tune in and check it out.