Quotulatiousness

March 12, 2013

Vikings part company with Antoine Winfield

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:27

I’m a bit shocked by this one. Antoine Winfield has been a pillar of the Vikings defence since he arrived and still had one year to go on his current contract. He is, to put it mildly, popular with the fans. Here’s the brief report from Tom Pelissero:

Antoine Winfield is done with the Minnesota Vikings.

The veteran cornerback was informed on Monday afternoon he’ll be released, an NFL source said.

Winfield was due $7.25 million in base salary in the last year of his deal.

The Vikings wanted him to restructure his contract, but Winfield [turned] down the offer, per sources.

I understand the mathematics here … $7.25 million is too much to pay for a player who was supposed to be playing fewer snaps in the 2013 season. But it feels wrong.

In other Vikings news, wide receiver Jerome Simpson signed his offer to come back for another year after a disappointing 2012 season. That means the current receivers under contract are Simpson, Jarius Wright, Stephen Burton, Greg Childs (on IR for his rookie season), and Chris Summers (practice squad in 2012).

I’ll be updating this post with other free agent news as it trickles in:

  • Right tackle Phil Loadholt is reported to have signed a new multi-year contract. The expressed interest from divisional rivals in Chicago may have helped this deal happen.
  • Backup offensive lineman Joe Berger is also reported to have signed a veteran minimum contract for 2013.
  • A bit more information on the release of Antoine Winfield from 1500ESPN.
  • Safety Jamarca Sanford told his Twitter followers that he’s re-signed with the Vikings.

Update, 13March: After I logged off last night, the Vikings re-signed outside linebacker Erin Henderson to a two-year deal. They also re-signed fullback Jerome Felton to a three-year deal.

At the Daily Norseman, KJSegall pens a tribute to a great player:

You hear about Ray Lewis and how he would motivate a locker room, fire up teammates, blah blah blah. You hear about it because the guy is the biggest media whore since… OK, I sat here for no less than four minutes and really couldn’t come up with a good follow up. Winfield was so much like Lewis, and yet the total opposite at the same time. He was the heart and soul of the defense, an aging vet who cared far more about his teammates all along than he ever did himself. He bought into the idea that football is a team sport, and that football players are team players. Arif pointed out in the comments section that he himself watched Winfield coaching the very players who could take his job as deeply as an actual coach. Winfield was a Viking, and that was always first and foremost.

Last season, three times, Winfield put team before self as fiercely as any football player could have. First, after his younger brother died, he fought through the emotional agony that he surely must have felt and returned to play in a September game. Then, when things were looking bleak for the team, he silenced the locker room to even beyond a whisper, giving a fiery speech that spurred his team on, helping in a key way to propel the Vikings to an amazing finish and a playoff berth. And then, in the last, he suffered through a broken hand, playing in the season finale (before finally yielding to the pain halfway through) and then returning for the playoff game.

That speech, by the way- do you have any clue what was said? I don’t. No one really does. And there is the oxymoronic comparison between him and Ray Lewis. Sure, Lewis too could spark his team with a big speech. But then he wanted cameras around, he wanted reporters to know what happened and what was said. Winfield, however, had none of that. His words were for his team and his team alone. He didn’t want the glory or the adulation, he just wanted the win. That was always good enough for him.

Reactions to the Percy Harvin trade

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:31

As reported yesterday, the Minnesota Vikings struck a trade agreement with the Seattle Seahawks, sending disgruntled wide receiver Percy Harvin and getting three draft picks in return (Seattle’s first and seventh round picks this year and their third round pick in 2014). Under the circumstances, the Vikings got a very generous deal for the extremely talented player. Just a few weeks ago, the guessing among NFL writers seemed to be that Minnesota might be lucky to get just a third-round pick in exchange for Harvin’s services.

1500ESPN‘s Tom Pelissero:

One veteran starter told 1500ESPN.com on Monday the trade ” is genius.” Another said he’s happy for Harvin but Spielman did “a great job” getting so much value for a player much of the league thought the Vikings were desperate to dump.

Harvin had demanded trades. He had clashed with coaches. He had complained about the offense and the quarterback. He once stormed out over a disagreement about medication.

He was, and is, one of the NFL’s most dynamic players for 3 hours after Sunday. It’s the other 165 hours a week the Vikings had begun to fear having a basket case on their hands.

Dressing down mild-mannered coach Leslie Frazier on the sideline in Seattle and again at the team facility weeks later was just the most overt signal Harvin had worn out his welcome and probably wanted out anyway.

Leslie Frazier is reportedly the most even-tempered coach in the NFL: if you can’t get along with Frazier, you probably can’t get along with anyone. Harvin has had arguments and confrontations with his coaches at college and in the NFL, so it will be interesting to see how long he can go in Seattle before the cameras catch him on the sideline giving a coach a dressing-down (or chucking weights at him).

All that, and Spielman still found — or perhaps created — a marketplace and yielded a better return than most around the NFL expected.

“Vikes got very good return for (a) player with no future there,” one NFL personnel man said.

(more…)

March 10, 2013

Rumour: Percy Harvin is demanding a trade (again)

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:42

There’s no such thing as an off-season in the NFL, even if they still use the term. There’s a brief downtime between the end of the SuperBowl and the start of free agency, but that’s about it. In the case of the Minnesota Vikings, the big drama so far this year is around Percy Harvin:

The Percy Harvin saga continues with another report of his discontent. Nothing has really changed, however, as Harvin’s status has been precarious for quite some time.

A local Twin Cities media columnist, Sid Hartman, is reporting the Vikings are planning to cut ties with Percy Harvin. The short and the long of it is that Harvin wants to be traded and doesn’t want to remain with the Vikings.

Before your Harvin jerseys become de facto lighter fluid to get a bonfire flame kicking up, let’s climb in the Wayback Machine and go where people implore, “Never mind the man behind the curtain.”

[. . .]

The source of this “breaking news” is an anomaly unto itself in that it could have legitimately been intentionally “leaked” by either side. If the leak came from the Harvin side, it’s directed at the bottom half of the first round – teams convinced they’re “one player” away from being a Super Bowl team. If the “leak” came from the Vikings, it’s putting those in the Sweet 16 on notice – Percy comes with a price.

The future of the Vikings and Harvin is no different today than it was Friday – before the window for free agent chatter was opened or not. Harvin is available for the taking. Still. Again. But now it’s only for the right price – whether a mutually leaked story has surfaced or not. Serious bidders only.

Does Percy stay? Does Percy go? Nothing has changed. It has only served to put 31 teams on notice … as if that hadn’t already been going on.

Update, March 11: The Star Tribune is reporting that Harvin has been traded to the Seattle Seahawks:

Percy Harvin’s time as a Viking has come to end. According to an NFL source, the Vikings have agreed in principle to a trade with Seattle, formally ending a rocky relationship with their ultra-talented yet mercurial receiver.

The NFL’s free agency period will open at 3 p.m. Tuesday, which is also the opening of the new league year. That’s the earliest a trade could be rubber-stamped and completed. But as of right now, the deal has been finalized and Harvin will simply have to pass a team physical in Seattle.

[. . .]

If the trade to Seattle doesn’t hit any unforeseen snags and is indeed finalized, Harvin would reunite with Darrell Bevell, the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator who held the same position with the Vikings during Harvin’s first two seasons. Harvin would also join forced with Pete Carroll, who in his previous post at the University of Southern Cal, had recruited Harvin out of Landstown High School in Virginia.

If this is confirmed (as it appears likely to be), I’ll be sorry to see Percy leave, but it might be the best of a bad situation for both the team and the player. Harvin is a great talent, but the long list of troubling signs indicated he wasn’t happy as a Viking. If he prefers playing in Seattle (where several Vikings receivers have gone in recent years: Nate Burleson and Sidney Rice also became Seahawks), I hope he does well. If the Vikings get good value for the trade — talk right now says they get Seattle’s first round pick (at #25), a 7th rounder, and a mid-round pick in 2014 — then I’m happy. (Just a few weeks back, the wiser heads “in the know” were talking about Harvin only being worth a second- or even a third-round pick.)

March 3, 2013

The brief lives of fireflies and NFL offensive co-ordinators

Filed under: Football — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:05

As a professional career, being an NFL assistant coach requires a lot of flexibility and the ever-present risk of job upheaval. Among NFL assistant coaches, the offensive co-ordinator is an especially short-tenured position:

When they talk about the average career of an NFL player being somewhere plus or minus three years, it comes as a shock to many casual NFL fans. To achieve that, for every Brett Favre, there have to be about 10 guys who only last one year. It’s not an easy way to make a living. It’s a hard reality to realize how brief so many NFL careers are.

At times, doing some background research can glean surprising results. Starting from the premise that Bill Musgrave’s offense is entering its third year, the thought of trying to compare the third seasons of other NFL offensive coordinators came to mind. Therein lay the problem.

Being an offensive coordinator isn’t an occupation anyone wants to have long-term in the same town. You rent. You don’t own.

It’s a job in which coordinators are happy to have at the moment, but it’s not one he actually wants to keep. With the combination of head coaches being fired, offensive coordinators being forcibly pushed onto their own sword by a head coach looking to save his own job for another year, or a coordinator being successful and landing a head coaching job, the attrition rate among OC’s is unsettling.

After just two years in the job, Bill Musgrave is tied for sixth-longest tenure among NFL offensive co-ordinators. That’s an incredible rate of job turnover.

March 1, 2013

Kickstarter promotion: win a day with Chris Kluwe

Filed under: Business, Football, Gaming — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe has been in the news a heck of a lot for any non-quarterback. He’s probably the most newsworthy punter in the NFL in the last 25 years or more. A new Kickstarter initiative is trying to take advantage of Kluwe’s popularity to raise money for their project:

Former Chicago Bears’ linebacker Hunter Hillenmeyer has designs on launching something called “Overdog.” According to this interview with Hillenmeyer in Forbes, what Overdog is designed to do is connect athletes that like to play video games to … well … other people that like to play video games.

[. . .]

Before Overdog can launch, Hillenmeyer wants to raise $100,000 for various aspects of the project. In order to do this, they’ve done what pretty much everyone with a project is doing these days. . .started their own Kickstarter to raise money. Like other Kickstarter drives, there are various levels of pledges you can give, with a higher pledge giving you a higher level of recognition, access, whatever. One of the levels you can pledge at … and there are only four spots available at this level … will give you the following:

    The Kluwe Experience. Describing a day with OverDog advisory board member Chris Kluwe any other way would be shortchanging him. One lucky fan will have the chance to receive a punting lesson (in Minneapolis), play some video games (likely World of Warcraft), and soak in the wisdom from the NFL’s most interesting man. Unfortunately, travel is not included but a Forever Subscription is.

February 12, 2013

The State of the Union address is the political version of the NFL’s Pro Bowl

Filed under: Football, Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:05

Jim Geraghty explains:

If you said to me, “let’s end the NFL Pro Bowl,” I’d probably disagree. Because while I haven’t watched a Pro Bowl in its entirety in decades, I’d hate to see a tradition end. But as any football fan will acknowledge, the Pro Bowl is a quasi-necessary event that is executed in a fundamentally flawed fashion. For starters, it occurs at the end of the season, instead of at the halfway point of the season like in other sports. This is because of players’ legitimate fear of injury in a game that has only pride on the line; as a result, everybody plays at about half-speed. Selected players decline to go, so you get the second, third, and sometimes fourth-best players at each position. The NFL moved it to the week before the Super Bowl, to make it less of an afterthought to the season, but now the players on teams in the Super Bowl skip the game.

My friends, the president’s State of the Union Address is our national pro bowl — a simulation of the art of persuasion and politics featuring all the big stars, played at about half speed, with no real consequence.

[. . .]

You’ll recall Matt Welch’s discovery from last year about just how interchangeable the rhetoric is:

    Starting with John F. Kennedy’s address to a joint session of Congress in 1961, you could take one sentence from each SOTU since, in chronological order, and cobble together a speech that will likely resemble much of what you’ll hear tonight. So that’s precisely what I’ve done.

Every president uses the event as just another speech, and avoids anything resembling a hard-nosed assessment of where they’ve made progress and where they need to improve their performance. What’s fascinating is the ritual news articles about drafts of the speech and previews, as if you or I couldn’t predict a half dozen points and themes. This is why we have State of the Union drinking games — because people can often predict the precise phrases, never mind the topics or arguments.

February 4, 2013

CBS Sports fumbles during SuperBowl blackout

Filed under: Football, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

In the New York Daily News, Bob Raissman asks why CBS didn’t bother to do any actual “journalism” about the blackout:

The fans inside the Superdome were not the only ones left in the dark when half the building’s power went out in the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVII Sunday night. Viewers were left with unanswered questions as CBS Sports’ sideline reporters, and the rest of the cast, failed to go into a reporting mode.

There was no outrage, no questioning how a thing like this could happen on the NFL’s biggest night of the year.

At a time when they should have been aggressively gathering news, CBS’ crew was satisfied with the crumbs the NFL dropped on them. And they swallowed the scraps gladly. Not once during the 34-minute delay did a representative of the National Football League appear on camera to attempt to explain what caused half the Superdome to lose power. Why should they? No one from CBS put any pressure on them.

[. . .]

Think about it. CBS pays billions for the right to air NFL games. Much of that dough is shelled out to secure rights to the Super Bowl. So, on the big night, there is a major screwup and the NFL won’t put someone on the air — and CBS won’t push the league — to try to explain what’s going on? That’s mind-boggling.

But not quite as wacked as CBS’ laid-back approach to reporting this story, which will go down as one of the more unusual moments in Super Bowl history. All the players were on the field, waiting, stretching. Why not take a camera and microphone on the sidelines for an interview? If they blow you off, fine — at least viewers would have something worth watching.

A legal spectre is haunting the NFL

Filed under: Football, Health, Law, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:12

In the wake of a vastly entertaining SuperBowl contest between the “San Francisco 50-1’ers”* and the “Baltimore Black Birds”*, Steve Chapman outlines the possibility that we won’t see too many more SuperBowl games:

Professional football is the most popular spectator sport in America, which is one reason yesterday’s Super Bowl was expected to draw 110 million viewers. With its famous athletes, storied franchises, and lucrative TV contracts, it’s an industry whose future appears limitless.

But football has a problem: the specter of mass brain damage among current and former players. So far, the steady trickle of disturbing revelations has had no apparent effect on ticket sales or TV ratings. What it has done, though, is more ominous: It has invited lawsuits.

If football falls into decline, it may not be the result of fans turning away, athletes avoiding it, or parents forbidding it. It may be from lawyers representing players who sustained chronic traumatic encephalopathy and expect to be compensated for the damage.

[. . .]

Walter Olson, a Cato Institute fellow, blogger (Overlawyered.com), and author of several books on liability, knows well how a tide of litigation can transform a landscape. And he has a bold prediction: “If we were to apply the same legal principles to football as we do to other industries, it would have to become extremely different, if not go out of business.”

“Seriously?” you may ask. A guy who made a good living engaging in high-speed collisions with 300-lb. blocks of granite can say he didn’t understand the risks involved? It may seem that case will be laughed out of court.

But Olson thinks not. “Courts have not been very friendly to this argument, particularly when something as grave as permanent brain damage is involved,” he told me. And it’s become apparent that while players were aware of the possibility of mangled knees, broken bones, and concussions, they didn’t grasp that repeated blows to the head could produce debilitating and irreversible mental harms.

* See the Samsung commercial in this post for explanation of the team names.

February 3, 2013

Adrian Peterson named NFL MVP

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:02

The man who almost single-handedly pushed the Minnesota Vikings into the playoffs has won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award (and is the first Viking to win the award since Fran Tarkenton back in 1975):

Adrian Peterson racked up a bunch of awards on the night, starting with the NFL Fantasy Football Player of the Year Award. Peterson thanked the folks that drafted him in fantasy football this year … NO PROBLEM, ADRIAN … because that’s just the kind of guy he is.

The next award Peterson racked up on the evening was the award for NFL Offensive Player of the Year, which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

The biggest highlight, however, was when Peterson was named the Most Valuable Player of the National Football League. This morning, I wondered whether or not Peterson would be able to fend off the challenge of Peyton Manning for the award, and it turns out that he did. In a season that started just eight months after Peterson had surgery on his left knee to repair a torn ACL (among other damage), he put together a season for the ages, rushing for 2,097 yards. That’s the second-highest total in NFL history, and just eight yards fewer than Eric Dickerson’s all-time single-season record of 2,105 yards. He also led the way in taking a Vikings’ team that was a 3-13 disaster the year before to a 10-6 record and a spot in the 2012 NFL playoffs.

There will be some people that will jump up and down and throw a fit about Manning not getting the award, but really … and yes, I’m biased … but Peterson really was the best choice for the award. If you base the award on who had the best season, nobody had a better year in 2012 than Adrian Peterson. If you base the award on who meant the most to their team, nobody meant more to their team than Adrian Peterson meant to the Vikings in 2012.

Judd Zulgad has more:

Peterson, who suffered torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his left knee late in 2011, finished this season with 2,097 yards rushing on 348 carries, giving him an average of 6 yards per attempt, and 12 touchdowns.

His rushing total was the second best in NFL history behind the 2,105 yards that Eric Dickerson had in 1984 with the Los Angeles Rams.

Peterson beat out Peyton Manning, who in his first season as Denver’s quarterback contended for a fifth MVP trophy. Manning’s four are a record.

Peterson received 30½ votes from a nationwide panel of 50 media members who regularly cover the NFL. Manning, who also won the Comeback Player of the Year award after missing the 2011 season following neck surgery, got the other 19½ votes for MVP.

“It’s truly an honor to be recognized as the league’s most valuable player,” Peterson said in a statement issued by the team. “While the award is considered an individual achievement, I couldn’t have had the success that I did without my teammates, my coaches and the Vikings organization. I’m blessed to be a member of the Vikings, and I hope next year we can get the ultimate team award by bringing a Super Bowl championship to Minnesota.”

Cris Carter (finally) voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame

Filed under: Football — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:49

The “receiver log-jam” has finally broken in favour of former Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Cris Carter. Picking him up off waivers was the best $100 the Vikings ever spent. After all, “all he does is catch touchdowns“:

Carter’s numbers, as they have for years, speak for themselves. His 1,101 career receptions are still fourth in National Football League history. He is ninth all time in receiving yards with 13,899, and his 130 receiving touchdowns is fourth-best in NFL history. When he retired from the game after the 2002 season, he had more receptions, yardage, and touchdowns than any wide receiver in NFL history not named Jerry Rice.

1500ESPN’s Judd Zulgad has the full story:

Carter began his career with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1987 after being a fourth-round pick in the supplemental draft out of Ohio State. Carter had 19 touchdowns among his 89 catches in three years with the Eagles. That caused then-Eagles coach Buddy Ryan to utter the now famous phrase, “All he does is catch touchdowns,” when talking about Carter.

The Vikings landed Carter before the 1990 season, paying only $100 to get him off of waivers. Carter, who had some issues early in his career with the Eagles, spent the next 12 seasons with the Vikings.

Carter is still fourth in NFL history in career receptions and fourth in receiving touchdowns. He is now ninth in receiving yards (13,899).

Asked if he thought he might not get elected to the Hall, Carter said: “No. I never let people do that. Those years I didn’t make it, I took two or three hours to cry or mourn or think about it, then right after that I went right back to what I had to do. I’ve got stuff, I’m busy. It’s a great experience but, no, I thought I was going to get in.

“Then this year, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to get in the Hall. I believe I’m going to get in the Hall.’ I just believed. It’s always the right time to do the right thing. With this list and these players, and the wide receivers, eventually one of us had to get in. Eventually, one of us had to get in.”

February 1, 2013

Nicely played, Samsung

Filed under: Business, Football, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:05

At Techdirt, Timothy Geigner tries to talk about something to do with football or advertising:

It’s almost that time of year again, when many of us lesser beings will gather together to watch super-human men on all manner of PEDs and deer antler urine sprays smack each other around while an oblong leather ball sits somewhere in the background. We’ll leap for the pizza and chili like salmon during mating season while, between whistles, obligatory commercials with Avatar-like production budgets glow at us. That’s right sports fans, it’s [editor redacted] time!

Wait, hey! What the hell? I said it’s [editor redacted] time! Oh, come on. I can’t say [editor redacted]? Fine, what about a euphemism, like [editor redacted]? No, can’t say that either? Maybe [editor redacted]? Damn it, this is stupid. I’m talking about something that rhymes with “Pooper Hole” (heh, got you, editor!).

Fortunately for our entertainment sensibilities, Samsung decided this year to combine a distaste for trademark stupidity and our concept of advertising being content in this gem of a spot.

January 31, 2013

Randy Moss is not the greatest NFL receiver … but he could have been

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Judd Zulgad agrees that Randy Moss was a great wide receiver during his career in Minnesota, was even better in New England, but he was not the best ever:

Randy Moss declared this week that he believes he is the greatest wide receiver to ever play the game.

Moss is wrong. He’s not.

That honor belongs to Jerry Rice and from there the debate about who is second can begin.

But in giving ESPN and sports-talk shows invaluable fodder to discuss during Super Bowl week, one has to wonder this about Moss: Will he wake up one day long after his NFL career is over and realize that he could have been the greatest receiver to have played if only he had elected to apply himself.

There are no denying Moss’ talents.

Moss, who at 35 is spending the twilight of his career with the San Francisco 49ers, served almost immediate notice upon his arrival with the Minnesota Vikings in 1998 that NFL teams had made a mistake by passing on him 19 times in the first round of that draft.

In his rookie season, Moss helped to redefine how we thought about the wide receiver position.

[. . .]

Cris Carter might not have been beloved by the media, but he tried his best to mold Moss into a professional in 1998. Moss arrived back in Minnesota for a tumultuous month in 2010 and did far more damage than good in numerous areas, including when it came to Percy Harvin’s development.

Moss attempted to point out Wednesday the quality of quarterbacks that Rice had to work with during the majority of his career. What Moss failed to mention is that he spent three-plus seasons with a first-ballot Hall of Famer in Tom Brady and broke Rice’s record by catching 23 touchdown passes in 2007.

Guess who ruined the relationship between Moss and the Patriots? It wasn’t the football team. Rice bounced around late in his career because he wanted to hang on too long. Moss began to bounce around during the prime of his career because he had become a pain.

Moss, like Brady, should go into Canton, Ohio, on the first ballot when he’s eligible — it looks like he wants to stick around for at least one more season — and he should go down as a receiver who helped change the NFL as we know it.

What he won’t go down as is the greatest receiver of all time. For that, Randy Moss has no one to blame but himself.

January 27, 2013

Another Viking to the Pro Bowl in last-minute switch

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:45

The Minnesota Vikings 2012 season ended at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, but the individual efforts of a number of players has been recognized by nominations to the NFC Pro Bowl team. Originally the Viking contingent consisted of running back Adrian Peterson, fullback Jerome Felton, and rookie kicker Blair Walsh. Alternates who were added to the team included defensive end Jared Allen, linebacker Chad Greenway, and tight end Kyle Rudolph. Yesterday, it was announced that rookie offensive tackle Matt Kalil would be going to Hawaii as an injury replacement for the Washington Redskins’ Trent Williams:

Whoever invented the term “the more the merrier” must’ve been looking into the future at the Vikings’ 2013 Pro Bowl contingent. That contingent stood at six as of Friday morning. And now it stands at seven after the last-second addition of left tackle Matt Kalil to the team. Kalil replaces Trent Williams of the Redskins who dropped out. I think every original member of the team has now dropped out except the four Vikings. And Jeff Saturday who is the one guy who totally does not belong there.

Update: There’s apparently a bit of a backstory to why Williams won’t be playing:

January 12, 2013

Looking back at the ups and downs of the Vikings’ 2012 season

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:22

In the Daily Norseman, Eric Thompson reviews the Minnesota Vikings 10-6 season:

…let’s take a moment to appreciate how surprisingly well the 2012 season went as a whole. I thought the Vikings would finish with the exact inverse of their 10-6 regular season record. I felt that if everything went well for them, maybe they could scratch their way to .500. But the [insert Jim Mora voice here] playoffs? You kiddin’ me?! Only the rubiest of rubes could have predicted that with a straight face before the season. The Vikings struck gold multiple times in the draft: Matt Kalil, Harrison Smith, and Blair Walsh all made an immediate impact. Josh Robinson, Rhett Ellison, and Jarius Wright chipped in with noticeable contributions as well. When you come off a 3-13 season where you were the third worst team in the league, you better kick ass in the draft. Rick Spielman & company did just that and it paid off.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have your all-world cyborg running back return from major knee surgery to come within nine yards of the single-season rushing record either. Adrian Peterson surprised everyone but himself this year. He put the team (and multiple defenders) on his back time and time again throughout the season. If he doesn’t win the MVP in a few weeks, Webster is going to have to change the definition of “valuable”.

[. . .]

So yeah…about that internal quarterback controversy. The Joe Webb bandwagon didn’t just come to a halt last Saturday. It went down like the Hindenburg. Webb confirmed what Arif, Skol Girl, and I all thought after covering training camp this summer. He’s an amazing athlete — it’s just too bad he can’t throw a football. He has an arm like a Civil War cannon; unfortunately, he also has the accuracy of one. At least in the cannon’s case it was usually OK if you missed the target by a few yards. I’ve always rooted for Joe Webb and marveled at his ridiculous athleticism. But if he’s the backup quarterback again next year, something is seriously wrong. That said, I can’t hate on Webb too much. He was thrust into an impossible situation with virtually no game reps to prepare himself. I didn’t think that the Vikings were going to win that game regardless of who was under center. And outside of the first drive it’s not like the play calling did him too many favors. [. . .]

Christian Ponder’s “Injury”: [. . .] the bruising on Christian Ponder’s arm was there for everyone to see. It was definitely a shock when it was announced Ponder couldn’t go just hours before kickoff. The sudden drastic change in Ponder’s status led people to believe that he was being soft and unwilling to play through pain. I saw all sorts of tweets and comments to the effect of “LOL PONDER’S A WUSS HE DOESN’T WANT TO SUCK AGAINST GB AGAIN” or “DURRR FAVRE WOULD HAVE BEEN OUT THERE WITH BOTH ELBOWS AMPUTATED NO DOUBT”. But then we saw Ponder’s arm, which looked like it talked back to Ike Turner too many times. And Rich Eisen said on his podcast this week that he heard the Vikings knew that Ponder wouldn’t be able to go on Friday night. Not exactly your run of the mill owwie, is it?

January 6, 2013

Vikings lose in Green Bay

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:48

Yesterday, I said “Everyone is expecting Green Bay to romp over the Vikings today“. That became an even more likely outcome just a few hours before game time, as the Vikings announced that starting quarterback Christian Ponder would be inactive with an elbow injury suffered in last week’s win. Backup Joe Webb would be the Vikings quarterback for the Green Bay game, not having thrown a pass since the preseason. After the game, it was made clear that the problem wasn’t pain, it was range of motion: Ponder couldn’t move his elbow enough to make the throws.

The Vikings got the opening kickoff and put on an entertaining drive that ended with a Blair Walsh field goal. Webb didn’t complete a single pass on the drive: it was all Adrian Peterson or Joe Webb running the ball. After the first drive, however, the Vikings went away from what had worked in the opening drive and were unable to move the ball consistently.

Jesse Reed at Bleacher Report:

Maybe we all took Christian Ponder for granted in 2012.

Joe Webb proved an invaluable lesson on Saturday night: The NFL is a quarterback-driven league, and it doesn’t matter if you have the best running back in the world; without one, you won’t win in the playoffs.

Webb started the game because Ponder couldn’t overcome an elbow injury he suffered in Week 17, and the Minnesota Vikings offense was a hopeless mess without Ponder.

That’s right.

As much as many (myself included) have ripped Ponder for his flaws, his value to the Vikings was made apparent in the worst way against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on Saturday night.

Webb was simply atrocious.

1500ESPN’s Judd Zulgad and Tom Pelissero:

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