and Hello, welcome to the 2021 season can no longer hurt you anymore

podcast as we reflect on having watched the Vikings play a football game

against the Chicago Bears at U.S. Bank Stadium that definitely happened.

Matthew Collar here along with Paul Hodawannick, Sam Ekstrom is out today and

Paul you were in the stands. I was in the press box.

And so I decided to write my piece reacting to the game,

not about each detail of the game or what it meant

or anything like that, because it all means nothing nothing but really just sort of observing and looking around at what everything looked like the sea of purple seats that I've never seen before outside of 20-20 when there were no fans.

The way that fans did not react at all,

when Andy Dalton walked down to the field

to start the offense for the Bears,

you know, you and I could have been having a conversation across the room.

It was so quiet.

I've never seen anything like that with an entire building full and yet the opposing team's

offenses on the field that everyone's like, okay, I guess we'll see what happens here.

Tell me about before we get into the Justin Jefferson non-record and some of Anthony

Barr's comments post game, which he was very reflective and made it pretty clear that he's not going to return and of course the inevitability it seems of

Mike Zimmer's situation tell me what it was like for you in the stands you made the decision along with your family to go and attend this game so I thought this is

perfect we could talk about what your feeling was being there and getting that sense for how people were here, but yet not really engaged because they all sort of knew the deal.

Oh, yeah, for sure. I was all the way up in section 302 way up high.

We got some discounted tickets.

I think it was like Teacher Appreciation Day

...