The Vikings traded back into the bottom of the first round of the 2014 NFL draft to take Louisville quarterback Teddy Bridgewater as their second pick in the first round (after linebacker Anthony Barr). Many Vikings fans wanted the team to take Johnny Manziel as the team’s quarterback of the future (I wasn’t among them … I thought Manziel would be too much of a media circus attraction for the Vikings). 1500ESPN‘s Judd Zulgad says that Bridgewater has been almost the exact opposite of the ongoing media extravaganza that is Johnny Manziel:
Johnny Manziel has spent much of his time since being selected in the first round of the NFL draft this spring fetching himself as many drinks as possible and calling attention to himself at every turn.
Teddy Bridgewater, meanwhile, has done everything in his power to maintain a low profile and hasn’t been photographed once with an alcoholic beverage near him. But Bridgewater might have left himself open for a photo op at one point Friday when he did have a drink in hand, although it was not of the alcoholic variety.
“He actually got me a Gatorade today, which I was really thankful for,” veteran quarterback Matt Cassel said of his rookie teammate.
Bridgewater would qualify as the anti-Manziel.
Manziel is cocky to a fault and before he’s even neared NFL stardom, or played in a regular-season game, he’s allowed his celebrity to continue to go to his head. It sounds as if this has left the Cleveland Browns wondering exactly what they have gotten themselves into.
Bridgewater, whom the Vikings took with the final pick in the first round of the May draft after making a trade with Seattle, not only doesn’t come across as brash, he’s getting sports drinks for the guy he ultimately would like to beat out of a spot for the starting job.
“Right now, my main focus is just getting better each and every day,” Bridgewater said Friday after completing the first training camp practice of his NFL career. “I’m going to continue to just push Matt and Coach Zim (Mike Zimmer) is going to make the best decision for the team. If the coaching staff feels that (I’m ready), that’s when my number will be called. But until then my role is just to continue to push Matt and make the quarterback room a better room.”
Update: In other Vikings news, in Arif Hasan‘s report from camp yesterday, he points out that last year’s team would have been the third seed in the NFC playoffs if the games had only been 59 minutes long, along with other observations on the team’s potential this year.
Like any Vikings fan, I’m ecstatic to see Mike Zimmer in charge of the team I love and expect it to lead to some significant improvement. We won’t know the answer to this until a significant amount of the season is through with, but there is a good question to ask: will it really make a big impact?
Teams for the most part are driven by talent and play design. Coaches rarely affect the talent on the field, though there is something to be said about developing that talent and putting the right talent into the game. Largely, they’re involved in the play design aspect or in managing those who provide play design technology.
In this case, Mike Zimmer is one of the many coaches who does not identify and supply talent to the team, but does provide a significant amount of play design on the defense, letting Norv Turner on the offense handle things on his end.
There are dozens of ways to measure talent, all of them massively imperfect and some of them contradictory. The issue is with separating play design from talent on the field; an inextricable feature of the way the game is played.
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What’s interesting is that in this case, the Vikings may have played exactly to their talent level, despite the odd statistic here and there about the Vikings’ record in games shortened by a minute (yes, they would have been the #3 seed in the NFC, but no they were not that good). Their average point differential per second implies they were a 5.3 win team, while Football Outsiders’ Forest Index indicated the team was probably a 6.5 win team. The “Pythagorean Wins” metric, which looks only at end-of-game point differential, implies the Vikings were “truly” a 6.1 win team.
