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Photo by Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images In 2024, the Vikings led the league in interceptions with 24. That’s not only the top number of that season, it is the best mark of any season during the entire tenure of Brian Flores as Vikings defensive coordinator. That’s also more than the Vikings generated in 2023 and 2025 combined. Interceptions are a famously unstable stat, so much so that PFF invented a different way to chart quarterback mistakes.

Photo by Gary Hershorn/Getty Images Watching the coverage of visitors to the United States for the World Cup has been many parts wholesome and some parts infuriating. There are endless videos of Europeans (and those from other countries, but primarily Europeans) finding themselves charmed by unique American cultural elements, like giant Bass Pro Shops, country music, free refills and enormous gas stations.

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Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images This is part three of a three-part series about Harrison Smith, his impact, and how well his likeliest replacements Jay Ward and Theo Jackson will be able to fill his shoes. Part one was about the basics of safety play, footwork, and tackling angles. Part 2 discussed safeties in Cover 2, and today, we’ll go over how they play in Quarters, specifically, Brian Flores’ Hot Quarters coverage.

Photo by David Berding/Getty Images This is part two of a three-part series about Harrison Smith, his impact, and how well his likeliest replacements, Jay Ward and Theo Jackson, will be able to fill his shoes. Part one, linked here, was about the basics of safety play, footwork, and tackling angles. Today is about safeties in Cover 2, and part 3 will discuss Quarters. When discussing safety play, we’ll have to take a certain mentality about risk and reward.

Photo by David Berding/Getty Images This is part one of a three-part series about Harrison Smith, his impact, and how well his likeliest replacements, Jay Ward and Theo Jackson, will be able to fill his shoes. Part one will be about the basics of safety play, footwork, and tackling angles. Part 2 will be about safeties in Cover 2, and Part 3 will discuss how they play Quarters.

Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images for ONIT After a drawn-out legal battle between Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby and the NCAA — the NCAA denied Texas Tech’s appeal to reinstate the quarterback, who placed over $90,000 of bets in four years at Indiana and Cincinnati, and courts instituted a temporary injunction allowing him to play the season before the Big 12 independently filed suit to prevent him from playing conference games — Sorsby decided to sidestep all of that and declare for...

Photo by David Berding/Getty Images In March of 2014, the Vikings had to let Jared Allen go. In the midst of a messy 2013 season, Allen made it clear he was looking to contend. He did not want to stay with a Vikings team that was about to hire a new head coach and enter a full scale rebuild. In addition, Allen had never been a true free agent, instead having been subject to tags, tenders and trades. He wanted to play the market.

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images Sandwiched between two lakes in the Fort Worth, TX area, a fourth grader was on a tear. Around 2007, elementary school science teacher Michael Staten decided to introduce fourth-grade student Kyler M. to chess. His classmates could not unseat him. ❝ “Games were set up similarly to pickup basketball -- winner stayed, loser took a walk.

We’re Switching to Beehiiv! Now that we’ve entered the dead zone of the NFL offseason, Wide Left has the ability to make some changes we’ve been planning for some time now. The biggest such change is moving our publication from Substack to Beehiiv. In the short term, this should mean no changes for you, the reader. You’ll continue to receive emails with updated analysis and news, formatted in a slightly different way because of the change in platform.