First off, allow me to be the one millionth person in this
country to say thank you to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots for screwing
me over last week. You could’ve hit a
couple of those deep balls you overthrew, instead I’m out a survivor pool entry
and $120 from a failed parlay in which the first two teams covered. It’s like you knew my gambling future
depending on you playing well, that’s the only explanation I can come up with,
to think I was the only person I know who actually rooted for you in those last
two Super Bowls.
Now, speaking of glaring ineptitude, let’s talk about the
Vikings.
The nice part about rooting for a rebuilding team is you don’t
have to get upset when they lose. The
annoying part is that anyone can come up with a rebuttal for anything that
happens. Good or bad, no insights can be
gleaned from any of it. I know we live
in the age of microwave analysis, and that bothers me at times (although
typically I just think it’s hilarious), but will someone please let me know
when I have clearance to express an opinion on things?
Because it really just comes down to what you feel like
believing…
Either Christian Ponder looks good or Christian Ponder's only looks good because he hasn’t
thrown a pass that traveled the length of a Buick yet.
Either they're afraid to throw downfield or they're just taking what the defense is giving them.
Either AP looks like he’s back or we won’t know if AP is back
until we see how he holds up late in the season.
Either linebackers aren’t supposed to be covering wide
receivers in the Cover-2 or the linebacker has gotta make that play for the
Cover-2 to work.
However you want to spin it, they’ve got a rebuttal for you. But there are two things I’m not interested
in hearing anymore:
You can’t blame the GM for the lousy roster because he just
got the job.
You can’t blame the coaches for the crappy gameplan because
they don’t have any talent to work with.
I'm an insane, reactionary fan, and I will blame whoever I want, whenever it suits me.
People hand Rick Spielman the excuse that he isn’t
responsible for the current state of the roster, because he didn’t have final
say on trades or draft picks. If true,
then I have to ask, what exactly did he do during his time as VP of Pro
Personnel? Is the fact we have no
defensive backs or wide receivers (save Harvin) to speak of really 100% on Brad
Childress? I hope so, but I’m not sure I
buy it. Frankly it continues to strike
me as incredibly bizarre that this whole thing was not blown up after Chilly was fired, it would’ve been the perfect time to break with the past and
totally start fresh.
Beyond front office concerns, I’m also not sure I buy Leslie
Frazier as anything more than a coordinator.
He seems like a great guy and I know he’s saddled with poor talent, but good
coaches sometimes jump up and gameplan overmatched teams to victory. It’s not impossible to win just because you
don’t have the most talented team on the field, as we see every year when talent-poor
teams switch coaches and see a decent bump in victories as a result. I’m not saying I expect him to be a miracle
worker and somehow guide this team into the playoffs, just occasionally find a
way to beat a team they shouldn’t beat.
In 24 games as the Vikings coach, Leslie Fraizer is 7-17, with
only one of those wins coming against a team that ended the season with a
winning record (I am preemptively counting the 2012 Jacksonville Jaguars here,
I believe you’d agree). That one win was
the only inspired Fraizer gameplan that springs to mind, Week 16 in 2010, 5
games into his tenure, in a bizarre Tuesday evening tilt that had been
rescheduled due to a snowstorm in Philadelphia.
They moved Antoine Winfield all over the place, blitzing him from every
possible angle and confusing Michael Vick all night. It was a big upset of a quality opponent, and
the kind of great defensive scheme you’d occasionally expect from a coach with
a defensive pedigree. Sadly, there hasn’t
really been another one since.
So, those are my two simple questions. Do we have the right guy putting together a
winning roster? Assuming he does do
that, do we have a coach who can get the most out of them?
Bonus question would be why is the Christian Ponder era
starting to remind me a bit of the Tarvaris Jackson era? But I already know the answer to that one. It’s the Catch-22 style “you can’t judge a QB
until you get him some good receivers to throw to, but you can’t tell if
receivers are good unless they have a legit QB throwing to them” circle of
reasoning. Maybe Sid Rice 2.0 is already
on the roster and he just needs someone to get him the damn ball.
But the first two are probably enough to chew on for now,
let’s leave the QB discussion until two years from now when he’s released later.
I guess all there is to do is wait for the answers, and
perhaps start reading up on 2013 draft prospects in the meantime.
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