The Vikings Are COOKING...

The Vikings are cooking after outlasting the Colts in Week 7 to remain undefeated thanks to many standout performances that unlocked major personal milestones, and despite the victory being far from a perfect effort, they found a way to get it done, because that's what this Vikings team has been able to do all season, even stretching back to the end of last year. We're going to break down all of that in this episode of Vikings Digest, but first, we are just two subscribers short of hitting our goal of 5,500 subs, so if you're part of the 89% of viewers who are not yet subscribed and you want to see an update on all things Vikings make sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell icon so you don't miss any of the episodes when they drop with that let's hop right into it which is the Vikings outlasting the Colts as they pulled off the 16 to 10 victory and it wasn't pretty folks I know it was we thought it was going to be an offensive showcase we thought the Vikings offense is going to look a lot more like they did against the New Orleans Saints however with this Vikings team they still were able to move the ball through the air Kyler Murray had a pretty decent day with passing the ball he didn't throw he didn't throw any interceptions he didn't throw many incompletions and for the most part the only problems Minnesota had on offense was with running the ball as that was the biggest thing a part of it when you look at Kyler Murray's stat line on the day he had a really solid day where he had 150 passing yards one touchdown 14 for 24 so only 10 incompletions and a 39 yard run which was at or 39 on rushing uh yards and rushing but he had a 35 yard run which was absolutely awesome and it was also the longest scramble by a vikings qb since week 14 of 2011 when joe webb recorded a 65 yard rush the former wide receiver mind you and as well as this being a very big statement for the vikings as i know a lot of people are going to already jump to the comments saying why are you all hyped up about this they didn't even beat the brakes off of them we barely won this game we should have done way better i know i'm not denying that but Kyler Murray all things considered played a really good game and he didn't he took care of the ball which was great and a lot of people are going to put a lot of this on Kevin O'Connell and Kyler Murray not finding open receivers but when you look at the major problems that this Vikings offense experienced all game it was running the football Aaron Jones he did get injured so hopefully we get an update on him from Kevin O'Connell as well but Aaron Jones only had 26 yards and one catch before he exited the game so that was not very good on eight carries even before the injury he had a really hard time getting going Jordan Mason even he had a hard time on the ground where for 15 carries he only went 68 yards and he had no touchdowns and the longest one was a 12 yard run so we thought that Jordan Mason getting back was going to be a huge boost to this Vikings offense but unfortunately they could not get the ball going they could not get the ball running and that was a big pitfall of this Vikings team today and I got to say I thought that Minnesota was going to do a lot better I thought it was going to be a two possession game and we were going to be comfortable in how we were going to go throughout the entire game but if you watched our live stream you saw that I was starting to sweat a little bit wasn't for very long because Harrison Smith got that game-ending interception but it was still a little bit sweaty and a lot of Vikings fans were getting worried that the Colts were going to march down the field score a touchdown make it 17 to 16 and minnesota was going to have to try and kick a miraculous last second field goal wasn't the case harrison smith went and made sure that did not happen as he got a beautiful game-ending interception to seal it and he hit a major milestone as he is just the third player in NFL history to have 40 plus interceptions and 20 plus sacks in his career as he got involved and got a sack as well today and a pass breakup and the only other two people that join that are in the club with him are hall of famers charles woodson and ronde barber so unless i mean i mean a lot of vikings fans are going to agree with me on this but i know a lot of people if they aren't vikings fans might try to say otherwise, the Harrison Smith first ballot Hall of Famer, book it, he is guaranteed to be and he is one of the best safeties that we have ever seen possibly the greatest in Vikings history, I know Paul Krause has all the interceptions that are going to be impossible to catch but different era, different time period with the way that Harrison Smith has been able to play in this era or a couple of eras really because he's been playing for 15 years, this has been amazing to watch and I'm so happy that he has shown no signs of slowing down really this season because he's really kind of just picked up where he left off last year and gotten even better, we had a great game, he had 30 snaps today, that was his highest of the season and Kevin O'Connell said that he didn't expect Harrison Smith's snap count to really increase dramatically but today he was involved and it was a situational thing where they wanted to make sure, all right, if we're in this situation we need Harry in there, we're gonna ask on him and they even said that as well where they're not gonna try and put Harry in and force him into a bunch of snaps but the situation calls for it, they're putting him in there and they made sure that hey 22 is on the field, he's helping us out, he's getting involved, he got free on a great sack and a lot of pressures as well so he was rolling today, he was feeling it and he did not show his age whatsoever and was a pivotal part to the Vikings getting that win and another person who was pivotal to it as well even though he didn't score a touchdown was Justin Jefferson as one of the milestones that he unlocked as well was being one of seven players joining Keenan Allen, Anquan Bolden, Antonio Brown, Julio Jones, Cooper Kupp, and CeeDee Lamb to since 1933 to record 600 receptions in their first 99 career games and that is the elite company to be in if you saw our pregame video where we talked about all the things to watch for going into this game. This was one of the milestones that we thought was an absolute lock to get, as well as Jordan Addison having a great day with two receptions in the first quarter. He passed Sammy White for eighth on the most receptions by a Viking in their first four seasons. So he had a really good day. And another person who had a fantastic day on the defensive side of the ball was Blake Cashman because he was absolutely rolling today. He had 12 tackles, 2 sacks, 4 pass breakups, 3 QB hits, and 2 tackle for losses with 8 of those tackles being solo tackles. And what makes it even crazier is as well as he is the first player since Alex Brown in 2005 to record at least 2 sacks and 4 passes defended in a game. Absolute insane stuff. He has been stellar and I hope that Minnesota is able to extend him much sooner rather than later because every game that Blake Cashman plays and he continues to just be an absolute dominant force the more that price goes up so if Nolan Teasley wants to make sure he stays in Minnesota at least without taking a pay cut they better make sure they get a deal done sooner rather than later because it's getting very scary very fast with how well Blake Cashman has played i mean it's no surprise he's been killing it ever since he got to Minnesota but this year really has taken a step forward so has a lot of people on his defense Dallas Turner he had half a sack and he was an absolute monster today he was getting free on so many opportunities where he was making Daniel Jones life a nightmare Brian Flores put Daniel Jones in a blender where the only way that the Colts really had a chance at beating us was in their run game because they could not pass it whatsoever Daniel Jones passing did not have to do very much he only had 108 yards passing he went 13 for 22 and he had an interception as well Jonathan Taylor I had in my fantasy league so i'm not overly upset about this we had 95 rushing yards and a touchdown and as well as him being one of the uh the only touchdown of the game and going into this game i said if JT is the only one who scores in this Colts game for them i am super happy because that means that we likely win the game and i have a pretty good fantasy score so i was really happy about that and somebody who really showed up for the Colts was Seth McGowan this guy is an absolute dog he had 11 carries 46 yards and he was great in special teams for them so i gotta give him his props as well and Minnesota early on gave up those gash plays where it looked like Taylor was going to absolutely take us to the cleaners today but thankfully Brian Flores and this defense cleaned it up and they didn't have to worry about it very much as the game went on they were really starting to contain it to a couple of bursts here and there but never more than 10 yards except for maybe a handful of times so it was nice that that was able to kind of shore itself up and as well as Will Reichardt coming into this game we had a lot of conversations about the kicking in this game where it's the two best kickers in the league going at each other well Will Reichardt won this matchup folks because Spencer Schrader missed two kicks which were huge for the Vikings winning this game because if he had gotten those kicks we probably lost this game in all honesty because that was a big momentum shift where one of the both of them just absolutely went wide one of them was a complete duck and then Will Reichardt as well he had some field goals too as his streak went to 36 surpassing Gary Anderson for the most consecutive field goals in franchise history unfortunately that longest active streak in the NFL did come to an end after his third kick of the day was unfortunately blocked and that led to the streak coming to an end however I can comfortably say that at least he didn't miss it on his own accord or by hitting a cable on a camera it was because someone had to get a hand on it so at least with Will Reichardt right now knock on wood that he is good enough to where he's not missing on his own power he's missing because somebody else is getting in there so or a camera is in the way or things like that so he's been absolutely on lock this year the Vikings even though it wasn't a beautiful game to watch by any means it was still a game where they pulled out a gutsy win the defense played great the offense passing the ball wasn't as great as it could have been but it was still very efficient and the reason why I think the passing game wasn't as efficient as it wasn't as great as it could have been is because they could not run the ball worth anything today that Colts defensive line was a lot better than I was giving them credit for going into this game they played really good they shut our running game down almost completely and that opened it up to us being a little bit one-dimensional on the offense with having to just resort to the pass a lot but with what we were able to get away with in the passing game wasn't necessarily too bad and at the end of the day they don't ask how they ask how many right now Vikings we got six wins and zero losses so that is the biggest thing to take away from this and stay tuned to Vikings Digest for all the updates and all the coverage of the post-game press conferences all the crazy stats that are going to be coming out as the rest of the week kind of as the rest of the day kind of goes on and the rest of the games kind of follow suit we can get a pretty good idea of how this game shook down for the Vikings overall in week seven as they're going into week eight with a 6-0 record and looking to make it seven but let us know your guys's thoughts on the game down in the comments below as that's going to do over this episode of Vikings Digest again thank you guys so much for liking subscribing hitting that bell icon so you don't miss the episodes when they drop stay tuned for even more content that we're going to have dropping tonight and tomorrow as well as we do every day but for now I've been your host Griffin take care