Happy Thorsday, everyone, and welcome to Skoloholics, your home for Minnesota Vikings Discussion! Every day you can join us for the latest Minnesota Vikings news, lots of Minnesota Vikings talk, also NFL news and updates, and most anything else you may have on your mind. At Skoloholics, the real action is in the comments, so if you haven’t checked out the comments section yet, sign up and join the conversation.
We’ve made it 3 days into the Vikings off-season, only 32 days to go until the kickoff of the 2025 season. It’s practically around the corner! I’m looking forward to seeing what Kwesi-Adofo Mensah will do in order to recouperate their 2025 draft picks, since e only have a first and two fifths. They’ll get a couple/few through compensatory picks, but I expect he’ll want to work some more deals to accumulate more draft capital. We’ll need lots of secondary players, and I’m asking Santa to send us some solid interior O-linemen.
Vikings News
The Vikings signed 13 players to futures contracts for 2025, from Vikings.com. Also, the People’s champion, Jim Kleinsasser was elected to the 2025 NFF College Football Hall Of Fame.
NFL News
ESPN looks at how Washington rebooted in just one year.
From AP News, the Browns are being sued by the city of Cleveland over a possible move by the Browns out of Cleveland…….again. Honestly, is Cleveland really losing anything?
Media Selection
Here’s another great interview by Shawn Ryan. Enjoy!
Thread Guidelines
- Keep politics out. We are adults, news happens, and we can talk about it. What we don’t want is to go down the rabbit holes and turn a productive conversation into name calling and personal attacks.
- Be cool to one another. Like it says above, just be civil. You don’t need to agree with everyone and that’s fine, you also don’t need to make it personal. Attack the argument not the poster.
- Keep the NSFW to a minimum. We don’t need anyone getting in trouble at work for hanging out here.
- All in all, be adults. Treat each other with respect and things will be fine. Mods will take out content they feel is pushing the boundary. If you want to reach out about something feel free to ask. We want to have robust discussions, that’s why we’re here, just be civil.
- Twitter sized version: Be cool to one another
Vikings lose, Wild lose, Wolves lose. Minny, loserville USA.
Hey, at least Iowa wants buy those of us in the lower tier of Minnesota, so we won’t be associated with you losers anymore…
The Rodents just beat #20 Michigan in OT 84-81 on a last second 34 foot shot.
It was the Rodents first league win this season, now 1-5.
The House passed the Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act authored by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) today.
The measure mandates the deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes against women, including domestic violence, sex crimes, and other offenses.
The bill was passed in a 274 to 145 vote, with 61 Democrats joining 213 Republicans who voted for the proposed legislation. It was opposed by 145 Democrats.
And it’s the left who accuse the right of hating women. These liberals will protect illegal immigration to the death, regardless of its impact on law abiding citizens, including women and children. The 145 representatives who voted against this bill should be expelled from Congress immediately. It would take some of those folks to vote for their own expulsion to accomplish this though.
Scariest thing about this country is the left. They “are” the threat to democracy. Monday can’t come soon enuf.
Does this now go to the Senate and require 60 votes for closure?
Yes, similar bills were passed by the House last year, but died in the Democrat controlled Senate. Now that the Republicans are in charge of the Senate, this is likely to pass.
The Talking Point is that wives won’t report domestic abuse if they think their husbands will be deported because of it.
That one hypothetical is more important than anything else in the bill per the DJT Resistance Movement. It is almost as if we didn’t just have a National Election to decide these issues.
RIP Bob Uecker.
90 years is a good run. Plus given what A. Lincoln said ‘It is not the years in the life but the life in the years that count’. Seems like Bob wins be either measure.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/bob-uecker-legendary-baseball-broadcaster-dead-90
Good all around guy with a million baseball stories.
So funny in Major League
‘Juuuuuuust a bit outside, tried the corner and missed….’
’This guy leads the league in hits, RBI’s and nose hair – blows his nose and looks like a party favor….’
RIP Mr Baseball
Ellen The Degenerate has returned the US 60 days after moving to England due to DJTs election.
I suspect that England threw her out and made FJP take her back.
https://www.outkick.com/culture/ellen-degeneres-returns-america-after-fleeing-country-looking-more-miserable-than-ever
Celebrities… nobody cares. So full of themselves, and convinced they matter. They don’t.
‘convinced they matter. They don’t.’
And Cackles helped prove that.
took the family to The Great Wolf Lodge in Bloomington for an overnight, yesterday to today.
it was a GREAT experience. my kids LOVED it. Random wednesday in the middle of january, the place was DEAD. just as i hoped.
The conveniences of having homeschooled kids, you can do whatever you want whenever you want.
Awesome!
We also home schooled for several years.
I had my kids read the Federalist Papers. I wanted them to understand the reasoning behind limited federal control.
Good luck seeing that happen in a public school.
Also took random mid-week vacations. Glad you liked Great Wolf. We went to the one at the dells a couple times. Those are a blast.
this was a stepping stone to get the kids excited for the dells, i’d like to do that at some point..
we haven’t really done a big waterpark before but they LOVED the slides and the wave pools and the surfing wave, so the Dells are next for sure
Well we are trying something kind of similar next week. Most of my life we never took an out of town vacation, saved money for kids education. Told them later when they get all grown up and settled, we would take a big family out of town vacation on Mom and Dad.
Well, they picked the spot, so we’re all, including spouses, going on first sort of big vacation.
that’s awesome, i’m excited for you and the family!
Great Wolf is the bomb, especially in “off” seasons.
Cake Eater
But how are they going to learn how to change a battery?
Even though Santa is hundreds of years old, I can only assume he would be better than our current interior O-linemen.
Santa ‘sending us solid interior O-linemen’ does not equal Santa being a interior O-lineman.
Hopefully he sends some. I was being absolutely hilarious by stating even Santa would be better.
‘I was being absolutely hilarious’
I will give you an E for effort at least.
I was quoting Brad from the mythical words up top. Give him the grade. I prefer “incomplete”.
Hmmm
If we are hoping for ‘Santa’ to bring us O-Linemen does that mean we have to wait until next Christmas??
JJ stepping into the practice field is going to be July in March, or August or whenever it happens.
Drax, that you?
I don’t mean to brag, but yes it is.
Believe out tackles hardly distinguished themselves the other night.
I have been lol-ing at this video for 10 min.
and this:
Same time I was in MS U of Wisconsin had a blind medical student. That still irks me. I guess they would do okay as a psychiatrist but imagine as a resident being assigned that person as your medical student. “Did you get a chance to look at the x-rays on … oops. That skin lesion looked excoriated…oops. Did you look for leukoplakia…oops.”
What do you have against disabled people??? Just like a privileged white guy to say something like that.
Hey, since I know you have a Canadian background….Shout out to Canada to supplying their specialty ocean scooping planes and crews to help fight the California fires.
Those thing are fun to watch.
And very effective it seems.
Genius. Also, I assume this requires expert flying.
It’s crazy to watch. Scoop a little too deep and you put too much drag on the plane and go flipping. The ones we watched were running in tandem. The second guy wasn’t far behind so if the first one crashed, they were both going down.
The helicopters are fun to watch too.
Oh, and our new Senator has like 10 of the super scoopers. If the government would contract US firefighters for 12 months, they might not have to use Canadian planes.
We got to watch some smaller ones up close this summer. Pretty cool to watch, especially considering the smallest miscalculation and that plane is gonna go tumbling.
This fire burned something like 100,000 acres in one night and covered 20 or 30 miles if I remember right. When we were eating dinner it was to the south when we looked across the lake. By the time we went to bed it was so far to the north we thought it was a new fire.
And as I recall she makes a fair chunk of change as LAFDs ‘Chief of Diversity’.
Fundamentally what you get when woke hiring practices and emphasis are applied to the workforce. Ridiculous in the extreme, and catastrophic for the Nations citizens, who ironically, pay for all this BS with their taxes. I think most citizens would pass on all these hires, if asked.
Who in their. right mind cares if the firefighter who comes to save them “looks” like them?
I stay in touch with the firefighters in the local volunteer departments as I used to be one. Women will join from time to time, they are able to pass the physical qualification (run a 12 minute mile, drag a 150 pound dummy up stairs, etc) but an actual fire often beats them up. I’m no elite athlete like some of these firefighters in the big city departments but I would estimate that some times dragging hose in extreme heat that I would reach or maybe even surpass 15 METs. The one fire I can remember where we needed all hands on deck the female firefighter on the scene could not haul a hotel pack (big roll of two inch hose) up a 30 foot ladder, so needed to swap roles with someone laying down a stream of water from an outside nozzle.
You must not watch enough tv. On tv, women can do everything that a man can do and often better.
forgive MT his ignorance, he apparently doesn’t have time to watch TV.
Exactly. It’s not your gender, color, race, ethnicity, or cultural background, that matters in an emergency. The only concern is “can you save me”?
That whole argument such a lie.
Exactly. If someone comes to save me from the middle of a raging fire, I wouldn’t think to myself, “Phew! It’s a white guy.”
If you can save my family and me I wouldn’t care if you had turquoise skin or had the same upbringing as me.
And it’s not just you and me. Every American feels that way and we just had an election proving people have had it with this type of crazy crap.
Very true.
That is not what people voted for. They were just voting against Kamala because the country is racist and misogynistic.
If the country can’t see how totally inept these policies are, and in particular, the people in CA who voted for it, then it’s on them for subjecting themselves to this nonsense. The Feds should not bail them out.
People need to leave like SoCalVike in Idaho did.
Some political guru’s are saying that this will be the tipping point in CA.
I have my doubts.
Stupid is, as stupid does…
The NFL is way ahead of the curve on DEI. They have been hiring blind referees for decades.
Now that’s funny VP!
Well Done VP.
Live look at Sam adjusting his 2025 contract budget……
Ha! For sure!
I read it on the interweb so it has to be true, WE GET TO KEEP FLORIO!
Our predictions for every NFL head coach opening
Had Florio on my mind, I meant B-Flo!
TMI
I had just read another bullshit article by Florio about how there is tension between KOC and the ownership and he therefore might be traded, or some such nonsense.
If he wants to bring Sam back for a big contract and the owners watched the last two games I could see there being some tension between them.
Nah, the tension was because the owners didn’t offer him an extension prior to this season.
Reminder, we swept the FTP! this season, and that is a win.
4 Losses from Detroit (Better team, and outcoached both games) and the Rams (same. Better QB play, better O Line, better interior D line, and KoC was outcoached by his mentor)
Lessons will be learned, and we are not the Bears or FTP! so things are looking up.
I’ll buy that.
I have a topic:
Here is Jefferson’s stats for our Giants playoff game and the last Lions and Rams games from this season. All big games.
Giants playoff game (2023): 7 catches for 47 yards
Lions (January 2024): 3 receptions for 54 yards
Rams (January 2024): 5 receptions for 58 yards
That’s no good for what we are paying Jefferson. Now then, not blaming Jefferson completely. Could be QB issues, as well. Could be play-calling issues, as well.
The point being, it is an issue that needs to be figured out. The trend is that it is easy to take away Jefferson in big games. He is supposed to be the best. Why are we not getting the best out of him in games that count?
If this is what we are paying for, we could have traded him for an OL. I would reckon an OL would be better in those games than a receiver averaging about 50 yards.
Again, not trolling. It is something the Vikings need to examine, methinks. A definite problem exists here that needs to be solved.
Fair point. I was for trading Jefferson vs signing him to a huge contract, but I am wrong a bunch, and I do think he is one of the best WR’s in the game.
Giants game, they pressured Kirko a lot, and well… Panic ensued. Kirko on 4th and 8 will live forever in Vikings lore, but Kirk looked like Favre compared to Sam in the last two games this season.
Lions and Rams, we had Sam taking sacks vs throwing the ball away and he showed his complete inability to handle pressure.
I think coach knows he needs to do a better job of play design. If Jefferson is doubled, someone is 1 on 1 and needs to get open, and open quickly if the defense is blitzing.
IF the team finally fixed or at least improves the O line, those slow-developing plays will work better.
I am not sure what the answer is. Prior to the Jefferson contract, I was on board with trading him for draft picks. You would still be required to draft players that can play, and do not die. Team struggles with that.
Addison for one was open but Sam didn’t throw the ball. He could have had 3TDs in both of the last 2 games. Start making teams pay by hitting those throws and the coverage on Jets loosens and he feasts or you just keep making em pay with Addison and Hock.
I think going for it on fourth down before the half really hurt the offense’s psyche. I am all for aggression, but the offense clearly was not clicking well enough to justify the risk.
What also hurt the team’s psyche was that bs call on Cashman’s TD. Tie the game there, and we have all the momentum. Even the head ref looked disgusted when he had to make that call. He knew it was made up bullshit.
I get why we didn’t even try second half. Why bother and risk injury when you’re clearly not allowed to win the game?
Yeah, that was a mental-drain play for sure.
Yes, it could basically boil down to pressure. In which case, a good OL would certainly be handy.
Vikes really need to stop screwing around and fix the OL. Rot can quickly spread throughout the offense from that point. A bad OL will nullify stars.
In the Giants game, they doubled JJ all game. We actually moved the ball well but had to use the other receivers and TE.
The Rams appeared the other night to play tight press on JJ with a safety over the top. Also worth noting McVay knows our offense and route schemes probably better than even KOC knows them.
Would also note McVay used two TE’s 67% of plays to protect Stafford. We used two TE’s or one with a fullback 26% of time to protect SAM. Given the amount of pressure the Rams were generated, would seem some adjustments were in order.
In which case, it is more on KOC to figure it out. I can see that.
Dude gets triple-teamed. Even Peyton and Eli pointed it out.
It’s the others that have to get open. The coach needs to help scheme them open. The QB has to be able to read and hit the open guy.
They should be able to do better. Using the Buccaneers for comparison, Evans had 7 receptions for 92 yards and a TD.
The Bucs have a very good running game, and screen game. They force the opposing linebackers to play honest, and their defense to stay out of nickel. That gives their receivers more opportunity to get deep.
That makes sense. Good analysis.
The QB needs to stop staring at Jefferson, hoping he will beat coverage.
KOC also needs to call some slants.
If you look at those games, the opposing teams were able to get to the QB very routinely and sack him or disrupt the play, rushing just four. The Rams played a 3 deep shell all game against us, with 7 defenders dropping in coverage. They put a lid on our favorite route combinations and and still stopped the run. In my reviews Jefferson was bracketed with a safety over the top continuously.
It sounds like we need to fix the OL. Our shiny toys don’t mean much without the beef in the trenches.
Absolutely. Tom Brady went 20 years in New England with his O-line rated in the top 5 every year. That is a huge advantage to a guy who is already a top shelf QB.
As you know if they are going to play a defense like that to stop our down the field routes. you have to run the ball. And if you can’t successfully run against that type of defense, you’ve got some big problems.
Exactly, and the Rams stuffed the run continuously on first down, putting us in second and long all day. 9 sacks hurt too. Offense going backwards is never a good thing.
I agree. That is why teams put so much money into the QB position. Having the highest paid non QB in the league means you expect him to disrupt opposing defenses as much as an elite QB. However, our opponents say “not so fast”. Relatively easy to limit his production with a porous O-line and QB with the yips.
I said this before he got his contract, and I was told that it was the QB, not to be discussed other than Tuesday’s, fault.
Good morning, SKOL!
FTP!
Happy Thorsday!
Good morning, SKOL
Guess I’m not going to watch much football going forward. It’s more like reality TV, entertainment. And I’m not entertained by it anymore. Well, that’s how it goes. Have a good day, everyone.
It will get better. JJ is not going to panic, and the Vikings have not had that in a QB in a very long time.
I still enjoy the show, and will watch all remaining games. It is more like reality TV vs a real sports competition. There are too many human variables in the officiating to really have a fair contest unless one team dominates. And those games are boring.
I think I’m going to find a better use for my time than watching scripted “games”, I’ll find out I guess 🙂
Just can’t enjoy it anymore like I used to.
Drew Pearson pushed off. That was when I learned that the Officials decide the outcome. Sometimes it seems scripted or fixed, and it could be with all the $ from gambling involved. I think it is usually either incompetence or bias.
Once the Vikings are done for the year, I am also done watching football. They are my one football vice. During the offseason, I do enjoy the rare time that the Oilers games are televised – aha! Oil @ Wild is on sweet! Right up there with the league leaders in points. I think they can get it done this year!
Oilers are looking really good so far, Wild as well, but the Oilers are better. Sadly, the Bruins are not living up to expectations this season so far, but I’m still concentrating on hockey as well now.
I used to watch as much football as I possibly could, but pretty much done with the NFL at this point in time. Will still follow the Vikings, of course.
‘watch as much football as I possibly could’
What about collage?
Notre Dame vs Ohio St on Monday.
GOOO CATHOLICS!!!
Catholics or B1G, I am good either way.
As long as it is not SEC.
Yes, the arrogant SEC had to eat some humble pie.
Never got into college football so far, not familiar with the teams or anything really, so I don’t know if I could get into it without any rooting interest. I might give it a try, thanks for the suggestion.
Just pick any Collage that fits your interest, be it from a certain area, past success, previous alumni, heck even interesting mascots.
I tend to like team from areas I was stationed/lived before. It is not an exact science.
Good morning, JJ time, FTP.
FTP Auto Rec.