Dieter, how are you? I'm doing well, well better than Christian McCaffrey right now, so I guess that puts me in a camp with so many people.
Well let me ask you this, Dieter. We heard from Kyle Shanahan, he's not playing against the Vikings, he might go on injured reserve. Is this that big of a deal because the Niners offense is so stacked?
What do you think? Well it's not a big deal right now, but this is the National Football League. I love saying that, the National Football League. It makes me sound like a real football guy. One play, everything can change.
And you don't want to be in a situation where you're playing from behind. Not just in a game, but when you're talking about your roster. The 49ers are starting the season, they've started the season now without one of their key players. And they don't know when they're going to get one of their key players back. Jordan Mason was magnificent on Monday night. Every team that the 49ers face, so long as Christian McCaffrey is out, is going to dare Jordan Mason and the 49ers offensive line to do it again.
And he's not going to be able to do it again, I presume, maybe, we'll find out, against every team. Not every team is going to be so movable as the Jets on Monday night. And it's just also the fact that if you're a running back in the NFL, Jordan Mason had 28 carries on Monday night football. If you're a running back in the NFL, it's a harsh reality. You're going to be in that blue Tet for at least a series, whether you want to be or not.
And you don't know when it's coming. And the 49ers are down to Mason, their third string running back. I think people overlook this because he was the guy who got the job. But Christian McCaffrey missed all of training camp. The 49ers put Elijah Mitchell, the backup running back, on IR at the end of training camp. Jordan Mason was the third string back. And that is an incredible amount of talent to have on your third string. But there are points of diminishing returns, to be sure.
Once you get down to 4, 5, 6, who the heck knows how deep you have to go. From behind right now, we don't know how long it's going to be before Christian McCaffrey comes back. And you just hope that Jordan Mason can continue to do what he's done, which has been fantastic through one game, and that he stays on the field. That's the most important thing now. Because Dr. Ben's a guy who didn't even start in college last year, and he's a rookie coming into the league, Isaac Garinto.
And so let me ask you this, Dieter. You mean to tell me that Jordan Mason is not going to be the running back version of Brock Purdy? That's not happening? I'm not saying he won't be. I'm just saying that it's not terribly likely. What we saw on Monday night, I'm not saying it's separation. I'm not. I'm just saying that cannot be the game plan week in and week out.
It was just inside zone, outside zone. And I don't know if it's Minnesota this week. I don't know if it's the Russians the next week, or the New England Patriots. Somebody is going to get wise to how they're running this thing. And the 49ers are going to have to make some adjustments. And it's a lot easier to make an adjustment when you have Christian McCaffrey who can do everything on a football field than it is to do with Jordan Mason, your third string running back.
Dieter Kurtenbach is joining us from the Bay Area News Group. Minnesota Vikings, that is the next team that is up on the docket here. They certainly had a good showing and a good game against the New York Giants, which I don't think is a difficult thing to do. What are your thoughts on these Niners taking on the Vikings? Are you expecting them to go another 2-0?
I think yeah. I think the sports books say the same thing, right? 6-point favorites with Minnesota playing at home.
That's telling. But man, it's a head coach in a quarterback league. And the Vikings have a really, really good head coach in Kevin O'Connell. And Sam Darnold, I don't know what he is.
I don't think we found out that much about Sam Darnold last week, other than he has a really good coach who made it look easy for him and he took advantage of every opportunity given. They got Justin Jefferson and Aaron Jones on that team right now. To overlook the Vikings, if you're the 49ers, is to just set yourself up for failure. That place is going to be loud.
It gets crazy loud in that dome. And the 49ers, short week traveling cross country, 10am body clock. I think that the Niners have certainly enough talent to win it.
And it comes down to brass tacks. We're talking Brock Purdy versus Sam Darnold. I know exactly who you take in that scenario.
It's Brock Purdy. But I kind of like the Vikings to cover. I feel like the Vikings are a little more feisty than this six points at home underdog line would suggest. So I'm expecting a pretty good game. If nothing else, you're going to have two well coached teams going at it. That's the kind of NFL I like to watch.
I didn't see a lot of that last weekend. Dieter Kurtenbach is joining us here coast to coast. The JR Sport Reshow. You talk about the dynamic weapon of Justin Jefferson on the Minnesota Vikings. The 49ers, they've had to deal with another injury dating back to last year. Talano Hufanga dealing with that ACL. People are waiting on him to come back and help on the defense. Is it likely that we might see him make a debut? Are they going to hold him out a little longer? No, he's going to be held out.
And that's the smart thing to do. The Niners are not in a position to, they don't need to rush him back. Kind of like with Christian McCaffrey, right?
If Jordan Mason went out and had a terrible game on Monday Night Football, I mean, I'm not stating, you know, they kept using the line, well, if the playoffs started today, there's a level of desperation in play when you're rushing guys back from injury. The Niners don't feel any of that right now because they have so much talent. And I think that applies to the defense as well. They feel pretty good about George Odom, the guy who stood in at strong safety. They feel really good about second year player, Jair Brown, who's standing in at their pre-safety this year. And above all that, they feel really good about Nick Sorenson, their new defensive coordinator, and his top assistant Brandon Staley, former Chargers coach.
And I think they have every reason to feel good about it. We saw what they did to Aaron Rodgers and the Jets. They had Breece Hall looking like some, I guess, Jordan Mason. Maybe actually not, because Jordan Mason looked a lot better than Breece Hall on Monday Night Football. And Breece Hall's a hell of a player.
He had, you know, Garrett Wilson on the clamps. I just think that the Niners should feel really good about their defense, and they don't need to rush anybody back. Especially, too, you look at their schedule.
This is the soft part of it. What they need is guys to be ready when we're talking Halloween to Thanksgiving. We're talking week six Thursday Night Football against Seattle, followed by a game at Kansas City and Dallas.
We're talking about the week of Thanksgiving. You go at Green Bay, and you know Green Bay is going to be fighting for its life, probably with Jordan Love back by then. Then you go home for Thanksgiving. Then you get back on a plane. You go to Buffalo, New York, and you get to play Josh Allen. That's no fun.
Anyone can tell you that. The Niners got a hellacious, hellacious travel schedule. They have a hellacious back end to the schedule.
The perks of being a first-place team are on full display. Guys can take their time in getting back into the fold. Because, again, even without Talanohu Funga, even without Christian McCaffrey, guys that you will need down the stretch, don't get me wrong, you will need them. But even without those guys, six-point favorites going into Minnesota this week, I think that tells you everything you need to know about how talented this 49ers roster is. Dieter Kurtenbach is joining us here from the Bay Area News Group.
You know, last hour we had a conversation with Merrill Hodge. I asked him his thoughts on the 49ers, and he said, yeah, they'll be good, but he seemed a little bit higher on the Detroit Lions. What are your thoughts as to how things will boil down here in the NFC? I think there's a lot of reasons to like the Detroit Lions.
I really do. Clearly, they are the second best roster, if not the best roster, in the NFC this season. I think you can make a case for the Philadelphia Eagles as well to be in that conversation as they've been in that conversation for the last couple of years. But here's what it comes down to.
It feels so simplistic and honestly casual, but the fact of the matter is it always comes down to this. It's head coaches and quarterbacks. And the 49ers have Kyle Shanahan and Brock Purdy. Say what you will about Brock Purdy, but he processes the game as well as anybody.
He can deliver some big-time throws, particularly in good situational football scenarios. You saw what happened in the NFC Championship game. Jared Goff had a chance to just win the game.
Just carry him home, Jared, and he fell apart. You saw what happened, and I hate to speak about the recently injured here. You saw what happened with Jordan Love the week before that in the NFC playoffs. Just carry us home, Jordan, one of the worst interceptions you'll ever see to lose to the 49ers on the final play of that game.
You've seen what has happened with Nick Sirianni. What does he even do on the sidelines, J.R.? I don't know who he's talking to. He always looks like somebody's cussing him out on the headset. He doesn't seem to talk to anybody.
I don't know what he does. His quarterback can't seem to stand him, according to the ESPN reports. That's a hot mess, and I'm not going to buy in to a head coach and quarterback relationship that seems...
They're buttonheads. They can't even be in the... Well, they get along right now. That's what they say. Yeah, well, that's what I would say, too, if I had 16 more games to play.
I've got some coworkers I put up with as well. That doesn't mean that we're going to get to where we need to go. That doesn't mean that everything's A-OK and we're still going to put together the best newspaper, the best radio station known to man. You want chemistry. You want cohesion. You want the quarterback and the head coach to be on the same page through and through. Maybe that's the case in Detroit, but I just like the 49ers quarterback better, and I think when it's all said and done, that's what it comes down to. Head coach and quarterback. I'll take Brock Purdy over Jared Dauph every day and twice on Sunday. Okay.
Hey, final question for you, Dieter. You talk about your confidence in Purdy. We saw what just happened down in Dallas with Dak Prescott. $60 million.
What's that number looking like for Brock? You think he's going to sit in that same boat, or is he going to go past him? I'll tell you, man, inflation's out of control, and if you've got Dak Prescott out here, a guy who, when was the last time the Cowboys played in the NFC Championship game?
It's been 20 years. I think Dak Prescott's a hell of a football player, and I'm not arguing that he shouldn't get the money because you're seeing some guys who aren't very good at football getting just as much money. I could look over in Cleveland. I could look at what Kirk Cousins just did this past weekend. He looks like he's a shell of his former self, and it's somewhat to be expected, but that Michael Pennix pick looks a lot more sane now that you see Kirk Cousins out there not being able to move around in the pocket. And so this is the cost of competence, and that's what Dak Prescott gives you, plus a little bit more, and that's certainly what Brock Purdy, who was fourth in MVP voting, gives you as well. He's making himself a whole lot of money, and good for Brock because currently he's making as much as like Skylar Thompson, and we all know that those two things are not the same. So Brock's been having to get by on some, I guess this would even be considered middle-class wages in the Bay Area.
He's about to go into that upper echelon for sure. He can buy any house he wants, probably buy 10 of them when he's getting $60, $65 million a year from the 49ers at the end of this campaign. Nice jump from a $900,000 to $60,000. I'll take it, man.
I'll take the $900,000 too if you can give it to me, but it's good to be a good quarterback, that's for sure. And no doubt about it. Well, it's good to be chatting with you, Dieter. Where can people follow you and all of your work at the Bay Area News Group?
Fill us in, man. If you want to dive into the muddy waters of X, I'm over there at Dieter, D-I-E-T-E-R, Dieter and Hutch Show, KMBR Radio, San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times. I'm out there.
You can find me. My game is very Google-able. Google-able?
I like that. G-O-O-G-L-E-A-B-L-E. Google-able. I said it. I never said I'd spell it. Yeah, I tried. I think I spelled it okay.
It's the JR Sport region. I tried, Dieter. Hey, Dieter, I'll catch you on down the line, okay? Hopefully we won't be talking about hurt guys. That sounds like a plan, too.
