Regulator, mount up!

We're coming.

We're coming Hey, everybody. Welcome into the Purple Insider Minnesota Vikings Postgame show presented by

Fandul. Matthew Collar here along with Dane Mizatani inside Ford Field as the Minnesota Vikings

defeat the Detroit Lions. It was a game where the Vikings were not anywhere close to the favorite

coming in against the Lions. Detroit was coming off of a big win and then a by week. The Vikings

were coming off getting blasted by the Los Angeles Chargers, but there were a lot of players

who played in this game that have not been 100% healthy this year.

And the big takeaway for me, Dane, is this was the Minnesota Vikings of 2025 that we expected.

We expected a team with two really good tackles, with an outside linebacker who was a second team all pro,

with all of the players healthy that they were expected to have, including their quarterback,

J.J. McCarthy. We expected that there was going to be ups and downs, even inside of a game for

McCarthy. We thought that there was going to be occasional inaccuracies for McCarthy or moments

where you go, KOC, why didn't you run the football?

Why would you make JJ throw in that situation?

And we did have a few of those today.

But we also expected interior pressure with the Vikings ahead and causing lots of problems with their blitzes and with their stunts and twists for J. Von Hargrave and Jonathan Allen.

And finally, we saw all of those things come together and culminate in a win for J.J. McCarthy.

And another thing we expected after watching training camp, after getting to know J.J. McCarthy, after interviewing every single person who's ever met this guy at this point and asking him every single question we had about learning and growing and all those things, but not actually seeing him play.

One of the things that we thought is that he could deliver in the biggest moments,

that he could deliver with the Ford Field being at its loudest.

And we saw him do that.

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