The End Of An Era

The Vikings have a rare opportunity to start completely over next year. Here are my thoughts on what they should do.

The first thing they need to do is fire coach Leslie Frazier. In three years with the team, he couldn't judge his talent accurately. Matt Cassel was the primary quarterback in ALL FIVE Vikings wins this season, twice in relief of an injured Ponder. What was Frazier's battle cry for two straight seasons? "Ponder is our best chance to win."

He couldn't come up with a decent game plan either. He felt our best chance to win was to keep Ponder in  the pocket and to run Peterson 25-30 times a game, ignoring the fact that the only games won under Ponder were when he regularly rolled out and ran bootlegs. He was far more accurate when on the move than in the pocket, and he got sacked less often as well. Ponder actually looked GOOD in games where he wasn't restricted by the pocket. But Frazier, inexplicably kept muzzling him to the team's detriment. As head coach, it was Frazier's job to see patterns that worked and did not work in the Vikings offense. For two seasons, he failed to see those tendencies.

How about something radical for another change? Dump Peterson.  Peterson is a good back who has had spectacular seasons, BUT he's also an aging back who is injury prone. And the more you watch him LOSE yards on basic plays up the middle the more you realize that he's a guy always looking for the BIG run rather than the guy content to get the yards that are there. I've mentioned it in the past, but he often had more significant negative yard plays in a game than positive yard plays in a game. It LOOKS good in highlight reels on Sportscenter when he breaks the long one, but it causes a team to punt far more than they should when you're ALWAYS looking for more yards than taking what the other defense is giving you. He dances at the line of scrimmage so often that he looks like he's auditioning for Dancing With the Stars. He no longer hits the hole that's there, he jukes behind the line hoping for a larger hole.  And he loses big yardage several times a game doing that.

In the Vikings last two wins, without Peterson, the backs did their job without the flair and rarely had a backward step. THAT'S how the game is meant to be played. It would also stop us from relying on an unreliable back for our wins. It also allows a team to have several long sustained drives a game. You know, the ones that cause you to dominate clock time, get the opposing team's defense tired, and keeps opposing quarterbacks on the bench where they can't hurt you.

IF another quarterback is available in the draft when we get our choice, we should draft him as a backup to Cassel, and dump Ponder. Ponder brings this team down in so many ways. I admit much of that is Frazier's USE of Ponder in this system, but Ponder even at his BEST is just average. It's time for a QB who is GREAT, not just adequate.

Yesterday's win was good for three reasons. No Ponder. No Peterson. A great Patterson.

More of that please. And the sooner we dump Peterson, the more we'll get to USE Patterson.