Leslie Frazier

Shut up.

I remember I covered football beats where Brad Childress was the coach, Leslie Frazier was the Vikings coach, and then was kind of in and out of some Zimmer stuff.

But But where I really learned some of these lessons was covering baseball and covering Ron Gardenhire when he was the Twins manager.

And also Tom Kelly, who was like the World Series winning manager for the Twins back in the 80s and 90s.

I'm kind of flabbergasted to see those numbers.

Like that feels a lot more to me like a Leslie Frazier or Sean McDermott type defense than some aggressive, you know, swing for the fence type of defense that I was expecting to see from Jim Leonard.

I suppose you could say the good news is, while they were aggressive against the Raiders, they blitzed 40% of the time, which is a lot.

The bad news is they didn't sack Kirk Cousins once.

A defense that plays a lot more man.

And if you get beat, you get beat.

But at least you're doing it on kind of your terms and you're not letting the offense dictate how they beat you, which again, when Sean McDermott and Leslie Frazier's defenses struggled, that's exactly what it was.

So it looks like to this point, at least anyway, a lot more of the same.

This is

giving me flashbacks to Leslie Frazier going, we got to go back and watch the tape.

What do you think about the defense? Well, we got to go back and watch the tape.

Ed Donatel saying, no, you're going to love it.

They ran the ball pretty effectively in Cleveland.

The guy's been coaching in the NFL for you know a couple decades under Brad Childress Leslie Frazier Mike Zimmer you know heavy play action from under center I'm pretty sure is what you're going to see with him and Reese what do you think of Stefanski so far

yeah I've been impressed with him Larry I think that he's you know he's got he'd come in and he wants to put his stamp on things Matt Ryan is in the building too and and obviously you've got a guy there and Matt that that hired Kevin and and so he has a vision that Mr. Blank wanted to know what Matt's vision was for the team, and obviously Kevin Stefanski fit that as they interviewed a number of people to come in.

Matt knows what it looks like, feels like, and smells like to win.

Now, getting a chance to watch the Vikings now as you do, just kind of maybe watching Brian Flores and just everyone's kind of fawning and loving what Flores and that defense is doing.

But you guys had some pretty terrific defenses as well, whether it was working under Mike Tomlin and just – Really, really good years, Leslie Frazier's defenses at times.

What was it like playing defensive tackle and having success, being part of the Williams wall in purple and gold?

You see me, I just approached the game plan free.

So every Sunday you're trying to ball it out, he won't call you out.

Yeah.

Okay, well, to close on the other side of that, there was Leslie Frazier.

So Mike goes back to Pittsburgh, and there was the somewhat foolish narrative around the NFL.

Really elite.

There's a lot of big name wide receivers out there in the NFL but And I, you know, just in talking with people and you ask questions, and Mike McDonald's a good friend and Leslie Frazier in Seattle, but everything that comes back about him as a person, you know, high character, and you have that kind of talent and that kind of high character, that's a pretty good thing to have.

And then you're on the other side of it.

It's a pretty tough thing to defend against.