Luke Braun | Minnesota Vikings Insider

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Blackout and other restrictions apply. Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission. Luke Braun who has the Locked on Vikings podcast and to the best of my knowledge, and I can't keep up with all of his social media exploits, but it feels like Luke that you tweet and post about the Vikings year-round. Don't you ever take a break? The Vikings ever wear you out?

What's a break? No, Lock on Vikings is a year-round show. Rain, snow or shine. We talk about this in the summer.

We do retrospective and storytelling and stuff. And then, you know, it's got draft season and everything. No days off.

All right. No days off, Bill Belichick. OK, so what happened to the Vikings on Monday night? Why didn't we see the Vikings from the Packers game in the season opener? It feels like they went away from everything that made them successful before. They went to a much more vanilla, much more conservative defensive plan. They took all the pre-snap motion out of their offense. They just went away from everything that was working and instead put. It's like they overthought the Eagles and they thought that, you know, they to beat the Eagles.

They needed to do something totally different than everything they had put on tape. But that meant they went away from everything they were good at. And they just came out totally flat. And by the end of the game, they were all in a blind panic. And I think honestly, the game broke their spirit.

You get punched in the mouth like that. You go into halftime down 24 to 70, you have it in you to make a rally off defensively, kind of. They pulled it together. They ended up not giving up any more points. Offensively didn't score any other points and they sure did have opportunities to. So I think the team kind of let the game get to them.

Kirk Cousins in particular. Why would they change the game plan? You know, new head coach has got to learn that lesson to not go away from what you're good at. You know, I guess there's a lot of lessons that you learn that head coaches learn.

And when you get a new one, you got to wait while they learn all those lessons for the first time. Because everybody's got that thing where they go, man, we just totally overthought that. And we probably should have just stuck with what was working.

But we didn't. And we decided that we're going to come out with this totally new game plan. And that'll super catch them off guard. And then realize that they get paid on the other side too.

And they can just beat that easier because now you're doing something you're not good enough at. I think they just kind of outthought themselves. I was fairly surprised by the number of chunk plays that the Eagles were able to amass in this game. And also, I don't know what the strategy on defense. But why did it seem like every single Philadelphia wide receiver was wide open all game long?

Yeah. Horrifyingly bad performance because everything was uncontested. I'm pretty sure Jalen Hurts set a career low for throws into tight windows. And I'm pretty sure he approached 400 yards on the game. Like he just didn't have to do any hard throws. The Vikings made it super easy on him.

Which is really, really frustrating. It was very passive. It was very conservative. It was very, well just sit back, keep everything in front of us, we'll rally and tackle.

But that stops working when in front of us is a 15-yard game. The Lockdown Vikings podcast for Tuesday is going to go up shortly here. I just recorded it and I ripped into Ed Donatell. I think of all people, if you want to find one name that deserves the most blame. And that is a pie that is being shared by a lot of people.

So it's certainly not just him. But Ed Donatell probably gets the biggest piece of that pie. That is a dreadful game plan. When you're so scared of A.J.

Brown and Devonta Smith and Dallas Goddard. Good players. Good to respect them. But when you're so scared of them that you play this passive soft zone. And by the way, players deserve some of the blame too.

And they'll be the first to tell you that. That they didn't execute very well at all. And they didn't do those zone pass-offs very well.

They kind of stayed on their landmarks a little bit too long. So it was really easy to just kind of tell the receivers. Hey, just sit down in a zone and Jalen Hurts put the ball on him. And it was like they were throwing on air.

It was just like way too easy. They basically just sat, they were so scared of losing the game they lost the game. So that's what you would call it a passive soft zone. It's something new for the NFL. Passive and soft.

Yeah, Charmin Ultra Soft. And they better get that fixed because they've got a short week coming up. Luke Braun is with us to talk Vikings. And this split personality we've seen in the first two weeks. He's got the Locked on Vikings podcast. And no days off because there's plenty to talk about.

It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Alright, another question I have then. I get that the Eagles were playing some strong defense. And once they got behind, they weren't thrilled about going slowly to try to pick up points. You can understand why they'd want to throw the ball more, I suppose. But why so little attention to the run game? Why so little balance with the run game?

That's going to be Kevin O'Connell, I think. I really don't think he cares about the run game. I don't think he cares about it on offense or on defense. I think he's a quarterbacks coach, he's a quarterback, he's a passing guy. He's been a passing game coordinator.

He wants to throw on you. And coming off of Mike Zimmer, a lot of people in Minnesota wanted exactly that. That's just what the doctor ordered after we came off of a defensive, grind him out, kind of let's win every game, 17 to 16 kind of coach.

Kevin O'Connell wants to throw, throw, and throw some more. There comes a point where you tip the scale too far to the other side. And I think like six carries for 17 yards for Dalvin Cook, that might be that point. Now, you're chasing the game for a lot of it, so some of that's just going to be part of the game situation. But you've got to get something going on the ground.

You have to be able to run your staples and your bread and butter calls. Even the Rams, Sean McVeigh, famously pass-happy, and it's where Kevin O'Connell came from, they still had their staple runs that were their bread and butter that they could go to on a second and four and convert it. And they just didn't get that. I think they were really quick to abandon it.

It didn't work, and now we're getting behind, and they didn't have that patience. And I think just in general, the whole team had a feel of panic about it, this feeling of, oh, no, the game's getting away from us. They're going to start jumping things wrong. They bust a coverage, give them a 51-yard field goal.

Kirk Cousins throwing up fades off his back foot that are basically games of 500 in your dad's backyard. Just panic from top to bottom, from the coaching decisions and everything, just deer in headlights. It looked like a team of rookies, and I think part of that is being run by a whole bunch of people who have never done their job before. Ed Donatell, he'd been a defensive coordinator before, but it's been a while. Kevin O'Connell's never been a head coach before. Their quarterback's coach never has been a quarterback's coach before. And a lot of people getting their feet wet, and a lot of people got punched in the mouth for the first time tonight, and you could tell it was the first turn. Well, that makes sense because there are some growing pains for coaches too, and we are seeing it around the league. It's not as though Kevin O'Connell is in that boat all by himself, Nathaniel Hackett.

It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Luke Braun is with us with Locked On Vikings and trying to dissect what happened with them. I got to tell you this, Luke, I knew they weren't running the ball a ton because that was pretty apparent, but it's jarring to see Kirk Cousins as your leading rusher. That should never happen. I don't care how bad the game is or how it's going.

That should never, ever happen. You're preaching to the choir. You got to stick with it. I know I sound like way too old school here, but you can't give up after six attempts in a whole game, even if you're chasing it. If it's the third quarter and you're down three scores, you got a whole half. You've got to be able to show a little bit of multiplicity because when you can't, when you can just back off and go empty every play and you're going to play this spread offense like you're in the SEC, they're just going to tee off on you. And that's exactly what happened.

They just started blitzing every play with total reckless abandon. And then they got panic Kirk Cousins and panic Kirk Cousins just flat out loses games. I think that's a lesson you got to learn. And it's unfortunate that they had to learn it in a live game that mattered on the national stage in primetime.

Kind of wish we could have navigated things in such a way where you could learn that lesson before it counted so much. Well, two plays that I will say that weren't on Kirk Cousins, one that Irv Smith drop or the ball that went right through his hands would have been a huge gain. He was behind the defense.

And then the was the Darrius Slay interception at the goal line where clearly Justin Jefferson had broken off his route. And according to Paul Allen, I just happened to see his tweet. He mentioned that JJ went right over to Kirk immediately when they got off the field and said, hey, that was my fault.

I'm real sorry. Yeah. So not completely on him. But as you point out, it did not look like they were sticking to any kind of a game plan.

And it was much more reacting and reactive than it was dictating. But about Justin Jefferson, he obviously had a record setting season opener. He's a guy now that a lot of people will point to and say is the best receiver in the league, but definitely in the top three, if not the best. Where have you seen the greatest growth in his game, even as he gets to the point where he's feared around the NFL? Yeah. Well, so not the best night for him, but we got to zoom out past it and be prisoners of the moment because he's a fantastic player. And I think the biggest thing for me is there is this artistic quality to his route.

I've been calling them art. I've been saying throughout camp and preseason. Well, he didn't play preseason, but throughout camp, he looked like he was really pushing the boundaries of what a route can be where, you know, really when you're coaching a route, when you're telling someone how to run a route or what the play is, really, all you care about is that they're in particular spots at particular times. Get to 16 yards at this spot and then break here and then get here where the ball is supposed to be. And really, you don't care what happens in between so long as you get there on time. And what happens in between usually is running.

Right. But if you add a little bit more deception, a little bit more lean, everything that Justin Jefferson does is so subtle. His routes like to the naked eye, they don't look like they're covered in all this window dressing. But then you break down little details, a tiny little lean, just enough to get the safety to think that he needs to widen out a little bit.

You can cut inside and that kind of stuff. There's so much subtlety and nuance to it that allow him to get open. And then once he has the ball in his hands, he's just a gamer like he just is relentless and tenacious. He even saw it on a bunch of the catches tonight. You know, he'd catch stupid little spot route five yards downfield and he needs to get a first down. No, it's second and eight. So you could just go down and a lot of wide receivers were just kind of turn around, dive forward, take your thing, not take a huge hit and move on.

That's fine. But no, he's dancing around. He's finding a way.

He's pushing through people. There's a very never give up attitude to the way that he like once he has the ball in his hands. And that's the kind of thing that led to that touchdown. I'm sure you've all seen against the Packers last week where he's, you know, diving toward the pylon. Like that's a very like every wide receiver. But Justin Jefferson just kind of trots out of bounds at the four and says good play.

But now he wants everything all the time. And I love that attitude in that mentality. Kind of wish the rest of the team had it throughout this game because I think there was a little bit of quit in the Vikings today.

Well, it certainly can be contagious. So we've seen the best and we've seen the worst and we'll see what else happens in September. At least we know it's not just Minnesota. There's inconsistency and there are these split personalities all over the NFL through the first two weeks of the regular season. You had a chance to see the Packers in week number one.

And I was actually at Lambeau Field on Sunday night against the Bears. And so they are one and one as well as is the rest of the division. But what are your impressions of Chicago and Green Bay, of course, that the Vikings played in the first week? Detroit is still a work in progress, but I don't know how competitive is the division this year? Still feels a bit like two team race to me. Detroit is surging and great game for them against the commanders.

I want to see a little more to believe it. Hey, they're coming to U.S. Bank Stadium, so I'll get a healthy dose of it. But I guess I want to see them sustain that success a little bit before they prove to me that they really are for real. The Bears, to borrow a phrase, they are who we thought they were. They are not taking the season seriously and they deserve every insult you can possibly throw at them because of it. They just I mean, they're trotting out practice squad players. They've they've got their roster has like eight players that were cut from other waiver claims. They just are not taking the season seriously.

They decided this is the year we fix our cap issues and get nothing else done, which is a really bad thing to do when you got a rookie quarterback on a rookie contract. I hate the way that the Bears have done this as much as I wish them ill as a division rival. I don't not like this. Be competitive. Try. Come on.

It's no fun. It's like when your friend in your fantasy league stopped setting their lineup and like, I guess you get the win, but this is not what this is supposed to be. And that's kind of how I feel the Bears were. And so Sunday night kind of went the way I thought it would going into the season. And week one might have been a little weird and maybe the natural order is resetting a little bit. The Packers will be a fearsome force and the division belongs to them until somebody proves that they can put a consistent season together.

And well, everyone's one and one. That's true. And actually, the Packers had more points in the second quarter on Sunday night than the other seven quarters combined to this point. So they're not consistent yet either. I mean, they've they've got a long way to go to, but it is still a division that they have owned for for years now.

All right. So Luke Braun, before I let you go and I'll just tell people you can find Luke on Twitter at Luke Braun NFL. He not only tweets about Vikings and his podcast and whatever else is happening in the NFL, but he also tweets photos and videos of bunnies. I need to know more about these rabbits and how do they predict games because apparently they get victory pellets when they get the outcome correct. Or they get sympathy defeat pellets if they're not.

But the. Yes. So my rabbits, the the Enzo, their little chinchilla breed dwarf rabbits, if anybody knows what that means. That's just the kind of rabbit that they are. They're great.

They're evil incarnate. And yeah, no, I just put a little veggies, a little bit of their veggies down on like either side of a plate and just like one side is Vikings, one side is Eagles and they pick against the spread. And I had that like whichever veggie they go up to.

And I did that for every game last year. And Zoe picked eleven, four and one. No way. You had one push and she refused one week because she was not feeling it. She walked away eleven, four and one against the spread. She beat Vegas. I can't remember. People started getting on the bandwagon and they just started betting whatever Zoe picked and they made money behind people. It was unbelievable. So of course, I got to do it again.

And hey, they both picked silly minus two. Wow. Well, Ziti, as in like the pasta Ziti. Yeah.

Ziti and Zoe are clearly much smarter than the rest of us. That's, that's impressive. And also very cute. The aunt and uncle that I'm staying with in Wisconsin, they have rabbits too out. I think they're Alvin and Teddy or Alvin and Theodore.

That's where it came from. And yeah, my favorite thing to pet them now they're a little skittish sometimes, but they are so soft. If petting a rabbit, just, it just makes you happy. So I highly recommend and yours are adorbs too.

So it breaks up the football intensity to have photos and videos of rabbits. So definitely check it out on Luke's Twitter again, at Luke Braun NFL, he's got the locked on Vikings podcast, which never takes a day off. And we're always glad to have him here on the show. Luke will catch up again soon when we figure out this NFC North and the personality of the Minnesota Vikings. Happy too.

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Blackout and other restrictions apply. Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission. Get into all the Major League Baseball action with season two of Play Loud exclusively on the MLB YouTube channel. Forget front row seats, we're taking you into the game on the field and in the dugout during some of the hottest matchups of the season. Follow along and be part of the fun alongside some of the league's biggest stars as we mic them up and get the cameras rolling during some of the hottest matchups of the season. Catch real time reactions from Juan Soto in the field or listen in on the hilarious conversation between Eduardo Escobar and Francisco Lindor in the dugout. Tune in for live reactions from players across the league with unprecedented access. Play Loud is your exclusive look into the fun of the game.

You never know what you're going to see or hear. Play Loud. It's baseball like you've never watched before. Tune in for new episodes of Play Loud only on the MLB YouTube channel. Major League Baseball trademarks used with permission.