Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, presented by Fanduel.

Matthew Collar here, along with Andrew Kramer of the Star Tribune, for our weekly

hardcore breakdown of Vikings and Chicago Bears.

And I think a pretty easy place to begin this discussion is our

expectations for J.J. McCarthy versus the Bears defense. Here's what I noticed last week against

Jackson Dart is that the Bears sent a lot of extra rushers. They sent Brisker. They sent Edmonds.

They were actually blitzing kind of a lot and sending

simulated pressures against him, which is not always Dennis Allen's thing. He's often on those charts with

four-man rushes. But I think that they've realized, Andrew, that Montez Sweat can't do it all. Grady

Jarrett looks like one of the worst signings of the entire offseason. There is nothing left there. Gervyn Dexter is a pretty good player, but aside from that, I mean, they just don't have a lot of pass rush. So this is a week, I think, for J.J. McCarthy to have some opportunity if he could sort through the rushes, sort through some of the coverage

stuff that you know Dennis Allen's going to mix and match, and have some clean pockets to throw to

and bounce back from where he was last week. Yeah, if he can remain poised before the snap, as Kevin

O'Connell talked about in terms of the communication, the fall starts, if he can remain poised

after the snap like he did on the first or one of the first plays where Kyle Hamilton blitzed, and he kind of side-armed a 10-yard pass to Justin Jefferson on the side. There were moments against the blitz with the Ravens that he showed. He's very capable of seeing it, very capable of making throws. But McCarthy also talked about the four batted passes at the line where he's stepping

up into it, where he said he needs to work on his different arm angles to get the balls around

defenders. This is all such a work in progress that if I'm a defensive coordinator, I think

blitzing him might be the kind of roll of the dice that you're willing to make just to see

how it affects him. We're also seeing that injuries with McCarthy affect him later in games, potentially the hand, which he said he felt in a fourth quarter in which he was very inaccurate with the right hand bruised or the high ankle sprained against the Falcons that O'Connell talked about affecting his fundamentals and his footwork. So if you can hit him, if you can get him off his spot,

if you can make him uncomfortable, McCarthy, that is.

I think it's a good approach for a defense.

And it's going to be a good test for McCarthy

because I do expect the bears to try to throw some things at him,

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