Purple Positivity (Minnesota Vikings) Training Camp

He's BACCCKKKK, and better than everish... Justin Ekstrom, he gives his 5 points to look for the Minnesota Vikings, tough love from Justin like always! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Purple Positivity with Justin Extrom, brought to you by Seventh
Avenue Pizza, grabbling at your local grocery store or your
local holiday station. Seventh Avenue Pizza before pizza became trendy.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, Purple positivity is back and
veterish than ever. I'm your host, Justin Extrom, sponsored by
Seventh Avenue Pizza. I know Matt Geffrey hates this, but
thanks to Beer Belly Sports Matt Geffrey for allowing me
to do this. Let's get to it right away. Training
camp Vikings reported last week. Second week. This is where

(00:40):
you get a few more of those padded practices and
then you got to start into what you know, it's
not quite the preseason like it used to be. We're
not going to see most of the starters, right, So
what I'm going to do is give you five main points,
main reasons, main topics, five things that I look for

(01:05):
that I want to see the Vikings to know that
they had a successful training camp, right so they let's
call it like five keys. Usually I don't do this bullshit, right,
but five keys to a successful Vikings training camp. First step,
get everyone there, get them there. You know, you don't

(01:26):
want any of those holdouts. You don't want any guys unhappy,
you don't want any of those dig situations where they're
sending out the weird tweets where nobody really knows what
the hell they're talking about, anything like that. Get everyone there.
And the second key is kind of that, to get
everyone fat and happy, get those contracts figured out, Extend

(01:49):
the guys that you need, Extend the guys that you
want there. Josh mattelis getting his big contract. I mean,
he's made major key eighty ninety percent of the snaps
last year on defense. It's it's obvious that we need
him as part of this. Brian Flores off Defense. Sorry,

(02:13):
first recording of the year. So, I mean, I'm gonna
have some issues too. Maybe I should go to training camp.
I would love to go to training camp again, but
my life is too effing busy. Get everyone fat and happy,
get everyone content, get everyone there. Those are two major keys.
Obviously those go without being set, but that's a major key.

(02:34):
Like how many times have you seen some training camp
just go a ride because everyone is just like, no,
what are we gonna do? Or are we gonna sign
this guy. Are we gonna sign that guy? The Wolfs
love giving the contracts during training camp, usually the first
or second day. I'm glad they got that out of
the way right away. So those are the first two keys,

(02:56):
basically go hand in hand. Get people paid, get people there.
Number three, get and stay healthy. How the Vikings do
this season is so reliant on the health of that
offensive line. Gotta get Kelly back from that broken leg.

(03:20):
Get him those snaps. Get he's gonna be a maor player.
We need him to be there ninety percent of the time.
Give me ninety percent of the snaps, mostly at the
end of the season, right you want to be one
hundred percent of the snaps. But coming off a broken leg,

(03:40):
that's not awesome. Darisa. He's the second or third highest
paid average per year left tackle the whole entire NFL.
We need him back and better than ever last year
when he went down. No good, my friends. So get
those guys healthy. Justin Jefferson dealing with some stuff. Mittel's

(04:04):
dealing with a little something. McKay Blackman dealing with a
little bit of something. Get those guys healthy. It's gonna
be tough to get JJ and JJ on the same page.
If Jefferson doesn't get to take all the snaps in preseason,
doesn't get to take all those you know, get everything

(04:25):
going in the camp, obviously he's not gonna be playing
any preseason football, justin Jefferson's not. I wonder if we
will see JJ McCarthy though, because we kind of need
to see a little more of what we saw last
year when he got hurt. So I don't know. That's
kind of scary too for this. Here here's the next step,

(04:48):
the next key for as you figure out your depth.
Right now, the Vikings offense is pretty much solid. There's
nobody that's gonna be moving up or down in that chart.
The main one, the main battle is that wide receiver,
three wide receiver, four wide receiver, five tight end depth.

(05:08):
And then are they going to have more than two
running backs? That's it. Figure that out for offense, then defense,
figure out your rotation. Because right now, Dallas Turner, what
are you going to be doing? Young man? I know
he had a good camp yesterday or last week Saturday
or whatever it was. I know he had a good day.

(05:31):
But I want to see those I want to see
you on the field more than twenty five percent of
the time. I don't want you just to be like
some rotational guy. I want to you you were going
to be a top five pick, my good man, top
five pick. Vikings got you middle of the draft and

(05:54):
use the first round pick on you. Middle of the
first round, I should say, not middle of the draft,
middle of the first round. And last year you showed flashes,
but now you want to see where you're going to
fit in that rotation. Right now, there's no spot for
you at linebacker except for on spots where we need

(06:15):
you to pin your years back. I think he's a
big depth guy, like you need him like. He's basically
you just think of the Timberwolves. He's nos reed of
the Vikes. He's that sixth man. You know, obviously it's
more than six, but he's that twelfth guy that's got

(06:36):
to rotate in there, and he's going to have to
figure out what coverage is. He's going to have to
figure out he's going to have to learn how to
play in Brian Flora's scheme, because that's not how he
was brought up in college college was he's right on
the line, he's going after the quarterback. He can be
successful doing that. But we have guys that do that.
We need guys that can do everything. Now on this

(06:57):
Flora's defense. And number five last, but certainly not least,
these are not in any like main order. These are
all things. These all go tied in together. Five main
key to a successful preseason. JJ McCarthy confidence and knowledge.

(07:17):
Give him that comments, Obviously, the guy just drips and
oozes confidence. He says he's ready to play. He says
he's ready to start. I mean, we can say that
all we want, but you can't have five picks in
a practice and then make us believe that like we
gotta see it all the time. We are gonna go

(07:38):
as far as you can take us. I'm telling you
right now, you're basically gifted the keys to the kingdom
if you take what you got right now, you're driving
this ferrari. We gave you this ferrari, and the Wolf's
built this Ferrari for you. Now you need to drive it.
You need to handle it. You need to take those corners,

(07:59):
you need to take those turns. We need to blast
off in that mother. That's all. That's all I gotta
say about that. Give JJ McCarthy the confidence and then
obviously the knowledge get him, get him those reps. Get
him in there in those situations, those you know, I'm
not gonna say just red zone situations. Get in that

(08:20):
in between the thirty and forty where field goals good enough.
Sometimes like get you in that situation where you're not
gonna Kirk Cousins at and throw a pick or drop
the football or fumble things away. Get into a situation
where you know what's at stake, where you have to

(08:44):
come away with three points and give yourself a possibility
for seven. Obviously, in today's NFL, three points isn't always
gonna do it, but sometimes it helps. Like that first drive,
first drives of the game, you're going down there, you're
going down there. Things get a little tighter, little tighter windows.
You don't have to force anything all the time. You

(09:05):
don't have to put yourself in a terrible situation. Take
the three, Take the three. Don't take that made and
sack where you got to all of a sudden punt
where you're first and ten on the thirty and then
you're punting from the forty. No, we don't want that.
We do not want that. So there's my keys. Get

(09:26):
everyone there get everyone fat and happy. They got the
contracts out of the way. One and two are done,
so now get healthy. Stay the fucking healthy. Stay healthy,
please please stay healthy. Get your depth figured out right now?
Are starting eleven offense? Yeah, that's set. We just got

(09:48):
to get them there, get them healthy defense. There's rotational deals,
so you gotta figure that depth out. Then five JJ
McCarthy and even Dallas Turner two. We could even broaden
that to our first round picks, not this past draft,
but the draft before. Those two first round picks. Get

(10:11):
them the confidence they need, Get them the confidence they
need to be a major player on the offense and
the defense. That's it. I mean, you get those five keys,
you figure those out, You give me a good answer
to those, and I feel a lot better about a
daunting schedule that we have. Next week. I'll kind of

(10:34):
break down a little bit more of where we're sitting
depth wise. Obviously, this is Tuesday. A lot of injuries
can happen. Please don't. And I just saw breaking news
some shooter was targeting the NFL offices in New York.
Dots of prayers. It sounds like for sure five confirmed dead. Awful,

(10:58):
and he took the wrong elevator. The guy was gonna
go take some NFL execs out and he took the
wrong elevator, So he's just killing random people. That's a
terrible day. That's an awful day. So hopefully things get
figured out. Lots of prayers out to the families. And
it just happened while I was starting to record this,

(11:19):
so otherwise I would have done a little bit more
of that. But next week we'll break down the vikings
just a little bit more, see where they're sitting depth wise. Hopefully, hopefully.
I know JJ's not gonna take a whole lot of
snaps in preseason, which stinks because or Justin Jefferson. I
gotta differentiate JJ's Now Justin Jefferson's not gonna be getting

(11:41):
on that same page JJ McCarthy as much, which you know,
get your explosiveness back, go through those walkthroughs, whatever you
need to do, but get healthy, man. Obviously, if you've
never heard this before, you know how I'm gonna end this,
but special thanks to Seventh Avenue, Pizza, Matt Geffrey, Beer, Belly,

(12:02):
Sports Love you guys, saw your little thing on the
news the other night. Fantastic stuff. I don't know how
Matt Geffrey worked that one in there. Hopefully you get
some upticks and you guys are the best. And until
next week, school bitches,