GMFB’s Jamie Erdahl Talks Vikings, Rams, LeBron & More

LeBron James picked the worst possible moment to make news, and the best possible moment for a guest host trying to fill three hours of live television.

Seth Rollins was in the chair filling in for Rich when word landed that James was finishing his career in Philadelphia, roughly seven minutes before air. Jamie Erdahl walked into the studio and told him immediately that she had a bone to pick with him.

"We're building mountains out of molehills, my friend, with football mid-July," Erdahl said of the two of them working Good Morning Football together from 5:00 to 7:00 a.m. "There's just not a lot of meat on that bone, but we're still feasting. And then you come in here and you sit down and you get NBA news of all NBA newses like seven minutes before you start a three-hour show."

The grievance was not really about timing. It was about the destination. Erdahl is a Minnesotan, and everyone she follows had her convinced James was going to the Timberwolves.

"He's going to go play with Ant. He's going to buy a house on Lake Minnetonka right next to the one that KG owned. Like, it's all going to work," she said, describing the consensus in her feed. Then James thanked Cleveland and Miami on his way out. "Shoot, he didn't thank Minnesota. He never was going there, was he? Such a wake-up call. It's so humbling."

Her mother is from Philadelphia, so Erdahl allowed that she has cousins who are thrilled. She also gave TJ, the show's resident Sixers fan, his due. He had been calling it for a while and getting told to keep his pipe dreams to himself.

The football turned serious fast. Rollins teed up the Vikings quarterback question, team Kyler or team JJ, and Erdahl went somewhere else entirely.

"I'm team Justin Jefferson," she said. "That man is such a professional. Justin Jefferson has shown up for whatever has happened."

Her read on Minnesota is that the franchise backed itself into a parking spot, between the one-year deal for Sam Darnold and the draft pick spent on JJ, and that Jefferson has earned better.

"I would be infuriated if I was as talented as him," Erdahl said. "You are the brand, you are the Vikings. This is a team with a beautifully historic list of names at the wide receiver position, and all he's trying to do is continue that. Just give him a guy. I don't care who the guy is."

She would also take a mulligan on letting Darnold walk to Seattle after a 14-3 season. "No, I think we should have kept him," she said, pointing to a defense she called unbelievable and offensive weapons everywhere. "The fact that that is your one missing thing and you had the guy in the building."

On the NFC, Erdahl refuses to go chalk. She respects the Rams and thinks they are wildly talented, and that is exactly why she will not pick them. "I just don't want to know this early," she said. She would rather find the slow burn, the way the Seahawks were last season, and she came back around to the Lions with Dan Campbell, Goff, Amon-Ra and Jamaal Williams.

Brockman closed with 90 seconds on the quarterback under the most pressure this season. Erdahl went Dak Prescott over Lamar Jackson, and the reasoning was pure exasperation with the Cowboys cycle.

"Dak, like, be evil," she said. "I need you to be a stone cold killer this season."