Yahoo Sports fantasy analyst Matt Harmon and NFL analyst Nate Tice debate whether or not they think the Minnesota Vikings will make the playoffs this season and how Sam Darnold will perform with the team. Hear the full conversation on “Football 301” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Nate, t you believe that the Vikings will make the playoffs?
Uh and we just have in parenthesis here plus Sam Arnold.
So, uh third two, third, two games here, the Sam Darnell oligarchs are, uh rising above the crowd, that’s for sure.
Yeah, I’m standing pat on this one, not double downing because like we talked, we talked about Sam Darnell last week a little bit was that he was solid plus and again, this week solid plus he had one little Sam darn moment on a pitch.
Two guys went on motion and I was just like, oh my God.
See that is so classic Sam Darold and usually what would happen would he’d followed up with another interception because he was just trying to overcompensate for it and it was kind of cool to see him kind of calm down, do some things.
But that’s Sam D experience.
You’re gonna get one, maybe two of those a game where you’re just like, what, why are you the way you are like that?
That’s what I always want to ask him.
But then you get to see the seam throws to Jalen Naylor that breaks a cover two pole runner and it’s just beautiful and it’s like that’s why you chase Sam Darner.
This run game really has me optimistic along with Justin Jefferson along with Sam Darnell being solid.
Plus this offense line I think has been solid so far.
But the Vikings right now are first in rushing success rate on design running back runs.
So taking out QB runs 54.8% on 42 runs that is outstanding.
They had the fifth lowest stuff rate which is zero negative yards.
Uh, last year, they’re at 19% this year at 9.5%.
10 or more yard runs last year.
88.9% this year, they’re at 19% runs where the running back reached 15 miles an hour or more.
They had 30 of those runs total all of last year.
They have 13 of them already this season through two games.
So I am optimistic about that offense and I think it’s, again, I don’t know if it’s gonna be like a top five, but really what they’re looking at right here, ok.
This is, this is good enough to be a playoff team.
The defense is fun.
The defense is the equalizer.
Brian Flores really gave pretty a lot of issues.
He really struggled against the blitz.
He had a couple of answers, but there’s a couple of times he was really guessing.
I don’t think the Vikings defense is gonna be excellent.
You can run on them pretty easily before I showed that.
But if you get in passing downs, they have your number, they’re gonna have a lot of teams numbers unless you have a dude at quarterback.
So they’re gonna be in a lot of games.
I don’t think they’re a contender or anything, but I think this is in the wide open NFC.
They have a very valid chance of, uh, obviously being too, no, but a very valid chance of making the playoffs now.
