Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider.

And we are just, I don't know how many hours, 36 hours away or so from our first full team practice out at TCO Performance Center watching the Minnesota Vikings in

training camp. And what a time it is to be alive. I wrote about this yesterday over at the

newsletter, Purple Insider dot football, just about how this is such a long time in the making,

such a long time in the making. such a long time in the making.

It goes back to me to 2019.

You guys have been waiting for this since 2019 when they walked off the field in San

Francisco after getting bludgeoned by the 49ers.

And then they resigned Kirk Cousins.

And we kind of knew that this direction wasn't going to get better

than the team was in 2018, 2019.

And then Kevin O'Connell takes over a team that had a lot of the old pieces and made the most of it.

And then an Achilles injury sent them on this path because that set them up to draft J.J. McCarthy in the first round. And yet you still had to wait, though. You still had to wait after the Achilles injury. You still had to wait through all of last year, which was a very odd year, I think, for Minnesota Vikings fans because you wanted the team to win the Super Bowl. But yet it seemed like a lot of the fan base,

even as good as they were throughout the regular season,

was still kind of looking at their watches.

Is it McCarthy time yet?

Like, okay, they got their 12th win, 13th win, 14th win.

And it really wasn't until maybe the 13th, 14th win that people started to buy

into the realistic possibility that they

could be a contender. And then, of course, the minute that Sam Darnall got strip sacked

and Jared Verst picked it up and ran it most of the field for a touchdown. Since that moment,

again, it's been waiting around for this for J.J. McCarthy taking over as QB1. And to me,

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