and Oh, Hey everybody welcome to

to welcome to another episode of purple insider Matthew Collar here and I have just returned from the Minnesota Vikings night practice.

So they have every year a night practice.

In fact, this year, two night practices, one they're going to have next week, but it is a tradition that they have had for many years.

All the years that I've been here, I actually don't know when it started but it's been going on the

entire time I've covered the team since 2016 and it is one of the highlights of

the summer. They fill TCO Performance Center. We were trying to figure out how many of the practices is not the same as it was with Mike Zimmer.

I think that just like all practices, Kevin O'Connell kind of had much more of a normal routine night that they would have on a regular basis where Zimmer used to try to turn up the, you know, the juice a little bit for the offense let him throw deep more try to get

more highlight plays try to get the crowd going and there was some of that there was a

couple Justin Jefferson catches a Jordan Addison catcher or two that you you know, the crowd got excited about. But I didn't think overall there were a ton of opportunities for the crowd to really have those big like crescendo huge cheer moments. I think more or less it was like a festival for Vikings

fans to show up, watch them practice under the lights, see the stadium. As we're walking out, you know, there's all sorts of things that they have set up around there like little mini golf things and little games of jenga I saw people playing so it's very like fan friendly kid friendly but I think if you went to try to chart the plays and

you know pay close attention to everything that happened, you probably got less out of it than you used to.

So I very distinctly remember when Sam Bradford had his night practice in 2017 in Mankato and it was a very intense practice, lots of deep balls.

In 2018, Stefan Diggs got in a fight with Mackenzie Alexander like there wasn't really that kind of vibe tonight it was more of just a regular type of practice

They did a handful of 11 on 11's early of Red Zone drills, and then went back for the final drive type of drill at the end, which is where I will begin in terms of my observation, my biggest takeaway from the night.

And I want all of you who are watching to jump in with your questions,

whether it's about tonight's practice or just, you know, the Vikings Vikings in general lots of things to talk about as they go into a day off so happy to answer any questions you have here in this late night chat and already see that a lot of you are watching live which is really awesome because I know this is quite a bit later than we usually do this.

So if there's new people watching, jump in, ask questions, happy to answer them or give your takes and happy to respond.

But the biggest takeaway of the night is that Brian Flores did not make the drive to Egan to take it easy on Kirk

Cousins and the offense.

He was not going to let the offense have the big night

under the lights and it definitely showed.

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