and Hello, welcome to a very special episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and this took longer than expected because

Chad Graf of the athletic just left town all the sudden but is now here for his goodbye Chad episode and I have to say the other day Chad it finally became real that you now cover the New England Patriots for the Athletic and not the Vikings.

When I saw you tweet out for a mailbag, send me mailbag questions about the Patriots.

That's when it finally hit home that you no longer cover the Minnesota Vikings, but I'm happy for you.

You are near family and you are getting an up front seat to the Bill Bellacek experience.

So how is the move?

How are you doing what's going on, man?

Well, welcome to the Bill Bellacek experience where we are here in this windowless dungeon in the bowels of Gillette Stadium at the moment.

My kind of realization moment that oh God I cover the Patriots now was as the Vikings sent out their 53 man roster right at the

deadline 3 o'clock central time whereas the Patriots waited until 7 o'clock because apparently that's an advantage against the Miami Dolphins who they play next week.

So glad that McDaniels doesn't have time to prep down in Miami for this 53 man roster. Turns out Mac Jones is going to be the

starter so all is going well here in New England. Well they used to do that to us

here where they would wait way longer than necessary so shout out to Kevin O'Connell and

Koesi Adafomensa for just doing it right at the deadline like grown-ups and

letting us write about it but I think we have to talk about the Patriots. We'll go

position by position and not just I'm just kidding. But well I do want to

talk about Patriots since the Vikings play them on Thanksgiving and we'll be happy to see you in your return to Minnesota here.

But also this is the Goodbye Chad episode.

So we have to talk about also your time covering the Minnesota Vikings. How weird is it though that like we get to the end of the Zimmer era and we're all sitting here like, oh, new coach,

like kind of finally, because we've been doing the same thing

over and over, and you and Courtney just bolt,

like we're covering other teams, forget this.

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