Vikings continuing trade dialogue before NFL's November 10 deadline

Yeah, I do not have any breaking news to report, but what I will start with is Blake Cashman is the NFC Defensive Player of the Week. As far as we're concerned, we've got a nice little streak going. Like I said, it was unfortunate during the bye week we weren't able to win it. But I don't know if there's much more I can say about Cash. I'm glad he's getting the recognition that his play is warranting because he's playing great, great football, leading our defense. Green Dot, such a huge part of our defense's success here early on in the football game. Obviously, division game on the road against a team with a lot of momentum. We know talented, tough football team, well coached. This is going to be a heck of a challenge for us, and we know the division we're in. Every single time we say divisional game, it means it's going to take everything we got. We're going to need to play our best game yet, and we're going to go preparing starting today and go to work on trying to make that come to life. So we know what we're signing up for. We know what it is, and we know this team well, and it's going to be a flat-out battle. And what our division is all about, we're really excited about the opportunity to go compete. Just giving you an injury update-wise, Aaron Jones and Joe Huber will not practice today. We'll see how they feel tomorrow. Joe really just had some knee soreness kind of pop up post-game. And as we've gotten into the early part of the week, not overly concerned about it. We just want to give him another day and then see what his work week looks like as we press onward. Yeah, I think you'll see Keegan and maybe Caleb Tiernan get some snaps as well, just trying to make a plan in the event we didn't have them. but both those guys have been taking reps. We started tiering in some reps inside a few weeks back, and that's been kind of progressing with the look team and some splash reps in there at practice. So excited to see him and, like I said, Keegan take some reps, and it's an important day of prepping pads. Yep. Yeah, I think Nolan and his staff are going to continue to evaluate opportunities. opportunities we're having dialogue about uh about things and and just trying to you know stay true to what i've kind of talked about a couple times is if there's an opportunity that makes sense to improve our team we're we're going to take a look at it um did notice that both those trades took place in the uh nfc uh in the nfc and i thought we were done with buckner for the season but we'll see him here in a few weeks um so that's always uh it's always a fun bit of news to get But it's all part of it this time of year as we lead up into the deadline. Yeah. He's, you know, we've talked at great length before about just the passer that he is. I mean, he is as good as anybody throwing the football, point A to point B. I think he's, you know, you think about it, he's had essentially, you know, almost all of his snaps with the same really, really good skill group. I think they've got, you know, between Amara and obviously J-Mo, They're different, but they're super impactful in their roles. Laporta is one of the best in football. And then the way they get Gibbs activated out of the backfield, different touches, different ways of getting the ball in his hands in space. And Jared's in total control. When he can sit back there and diagnose coverage and attack coverage, they are really, really good. And you can feel it watching their tape, just the momentum in games of what, you know, obviously the run game with one of the best backs in football does but uh it's it's those explosives it's the chunks, it's they can take yards uh in a moment's notice and it's going to be a real challenge for our defense like it is every time we play against these guys yeah i mean he's kind of you know he's an igniter for them um you know you can just feel it how they play maybe schematically you know doesn't change a ton they you know they feel very strongly about you know how they play Their play style, their schematics, you can see it on the tape. But when he gets back in there, he's just such a ball hawking, playmaking, physical. He's, you know, one of the best in the game. So obviously, anytime you can insert that back into the lineup, it's going to give a lift to the whole defense. And they really have, if you think about Hutch and then obviously Campbell at the second level and then him on the back end, you know, they have impact at all three levels of the defense and they put those guys in positions to hawk the ball and be around it and make a lot of plays. Well, I think in the past we were throwing the ball a thousand times. That's one thing. When you lead the league, you're close to in rushing attempts on the early downs, controlling the game or attempting to control the game. There may not be just the amount of volume, but he's our best player and we've got to find a way to continue to activate him. And we just haven't really seen uh teams say you know what we're going to get that eighth defender around the line of scrimmage uh with so much conviction that we're willing to allow him uh you know to to have one-on-ones and when he's had them he's you know he's won he's he's caught the ball he's had some opportunities that we haven't been able to take advantage as as we've kind of progressed and are continuing to progress as an offense he's made some off-schedule plays with Kyler he's made you know big red zone catch against New Orleans you know versus you know multiple guys in coverage so he's still doing all the same things but yeah we we definitely want to continue to find ways to get him the ball and and and be aggressive from a standpoint of knowing how impactful that is on our offense but at the same time you know the Colts came in here a week ago and you know had played a ton of post safety and we saw almost predominantly split safety coverage on the early down. So even though, um, I know the, you know, the stat sheet and the rankings and all those things, uh, you know, the film and, and, and what we have in our offense is still very apparent to our opponents. And, and we know, you know, that's going to be the case every single week, but, uh, when we, you know, package things together and we do get those single high looks and we don't miss our opportunities, um, for a multitude of reasons, you know, we, we expect those plays to be made. And I think they could come in bunches not only for him, for Jordan. We've seen it come in bunches for TJ when we've needed to rely on him in kind of the inside-out passing game. So I feel really, really good about where our players are at, both from a mental standpoint of everybody in this building knows some critical factors that we believe bode really well for us winning. Now it's about the execution and trying to use these next 11 games to show that what we're capable of as an offense, and I think that's all 11 guys, whatever personnel grouping that we're in, we all feel very strongly that that's where we're headed. Yeah, we still just have such a limited inventory. I know it's, you know, Monday through Saturday, it's got to be, you know, grand, this is what it is. But I thought the Colts had a great game plan as a team the other day. If you think about what they did, they tried to run the ball as much as they possibly could. They had some success, you know, extending drives and keeping us off the sideline. You know, I think we had that three and out in the third quarter, and I'm not sure we got back on the field until just before the fourth quarter. So they controlled the – they tried to take away some of the things, you know, didn't expose themselves to a lot of adverse situations to turn the ball over, have negatives versus our defense, and then vice versa. Defensively, they said we're not going to allow those big plays to come, and we're going to try to stop the run and split safety, move the front, you know activate some different tools along that front to see if we can keep them to two three yards running the football and get them to third down and then that's you know that's when we saw the script flip a little bit with seven or eight guys up at the line of scrimmage and and trying to see if they could activate forcing a turnover or a negative play against us and and fortunately we didn't turn the football over we made some plays versus those looks we left some plays out there and I thought we left some runs out there too quite honestly where we got to find it when it's there and and that's a big part of you know the progression of our offense all these little kind of things that that happen on a one-off play it might be your only negative in 20 or 30 plays as a player but it eliminated our ability to throw and catch on a third down or just you know we had balls on the ground too much when we did have some eligibles via the check down that could be big plays all of those things every time we throw it and catch it in my opinion with our players and the way we're in attack mode when we do those things every completion has a chance to be an explosive via down the field intermediate catch and runs like we saw Juwan late in the game with a nice catch and run on a simple keeper so we're still in the stage where you know we've got to evaluate things and progress and coach individually off of plays with obviously themes in mind of what we've seen with different teams on the field you know we're still kind of just in the the beginning stretch of having the guys out there that we really are going to rely on all together and you know understand the the weight of being a 6-0 football team there's a you know there wasn't a whole lot of eyes on us when you know we were you know a team that people expected to be in the bottom of the division or whatever they thought you know we were a team now that people are trying to figure out and it's not always really exciting to figure out not turning the ball over time of possession you know being a very minimally penalized team a lot of things that probably don't uh warrant a lot of advertising dollars uh and i understand that but at the same time i see what i see on the film and the things that i need to fix where i can be better and our players can be better and that's what we're trying to do um knowing we've got a heck of a stretch out in front of us, starting with one of the best teams in football in our division on the road this week. Yeah, run the football, marry the run and the pass, generate explosives, be really good on the weighty downs without exposing ourselves to turning the football over. It doesn't, you know, I'm not going to, you know, if we go out there and have 500 yards offense, but we turn the ball over three times, you know, that may be good for, you know, the rankings and all those things, but that's not good for our football team. So how do we continue to progress and know that we're going to need to be the reason why we win some football games this year offensively making plays in critical moments and you know it hasn't you know necessarily we've been in four-minute offense in most of our games you know you know trying to run out the clock and eventually taking a knee so those are opportunities lost to maybe you know ring the bell from a statistical standpoint but to me it's those first it's the it's the points in the game where we could be the reason why we recapture momentum we can be the reason why we capture the lead and give that deliver that to our our defense and allow them to play with the lead earlier on in the football game we're going to need to be able to do that we're going to need to be able to do it against some of the high powered offenses as we progress you know not only on in the season but hopefully where we're going but I you know between some big completions some touchdowns some third down conversions Kyler using his legs for some massive explosive gains to not only get us, you know, new down in distances, but also, you know, if he hangs a right on that one the other day, walks into the end zone, he hung a left and we scored on the next play. But all of those things, when you start piecing it together, maintaining the principles of not turning it over, being smart as a unit on the field, not being very penalized, because we saw that a little bit the other day. that statistically looks a little different if Jays catch or we don't take a sack against a four-man rush when we've got 13 personnel on a play pass. That should never happen. So there's some things that when you look at it, we've got to get better at. But then there's also some things that give you a lot of encouragement on what we can become. I think he's just like we talked about the other day. He's day-to-day. He's doing well. He feels strong. He feels like he's going to be able to progress and get to a good place on game day. But we have to have plans in place regardless. So we'll keep you guys updated as the week goes on. But I feel good. I feel good about both where he and Joe should be at. But that's just off of the opinions of the medical experts. I'm just a coach. Thanks, guys.