Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Wednesday Blizzard

Vikings-Raiders
Chester Taylor is still a pretty good running back. And the Raiders don't have much of a passing game (look at their passing stat rankings: 31st, 29th, 29th, 25th, 24th, 30th). At home, this is the sort of game the Vikings should win. I'm still excited to go to the game. Of course if the players have already quit on Brad Childress, it could be another ugly bit of Autumn afternoon.

Jim Souhan: still not a good columnist
Jim Souhan has written a lot of columns criticizing Brad Childress and the Vikings, and I've written a lot of posts criticizing some of these columns. Now that I've come around to giving up on Childress, I just want to make it clear that I still don't think Souhan is a good columnist.

It is not the fact that Souhan has criticized Childress and the Vikes, but the manner in which he does it. Childress has done much that is worthy of criticism, and any professional sports team, especially one that has struggled as the Vikings have in the past two seasons, is open to criticism. But my critque of Souhan has always been that his criticisms lack any real insight. He works at the major newspaper in this market, he presumably has significant contacts, and he has access to information and direct observation. And yet, most of his criticisms have been pretty uninsightful screeds designed more to inject as many unfunny jokes as possible into a column than actually illuminate anything (my critique in posts like this, this, and this--despite his position covering sports at a major newspaper, Souhan does nothing more than--and often less than--bloggers do with no inside access) . That Souhan was right to criticize Childress and the Vikings doesn't change the fact that his actual criticisms were devoid of analysis.

Tarvaris!
Kelly Holcomb and Brooks Bollinger are combined 0-4 as starters for the Vikings. Tarvaris Jackson is 3-2. So there. He's the quarterback for this team (of course, in one of Tarvaris' wins, the Viking defense outscored the opponent 14-3, and in the other two Adrian Peterson had 300 total yards--and in one of those Tarvaris didn't even play in the dominant second half anyway. And of course Tarvaris' lack of durability is its own problem. And of course all statistics and observation suggests Tarvaris sucks).

Links
Interesting article at Outsports about a gay triathlon coach at West Point.

Dr. Z praises Peyton Manning, and this column (beginning as it does with a story about messing with ants, and with it's "Man can be destroyed but not defeated" sort of theme) reminds me of Ernest Hemingway.

Adrian Peterson's jersey from the 296 yard game is going to the Hall of Fame (Access Vikings). Once again, no matter what else happens, we'll always have that.

Judd Zulgad writes about the Vikings' horrible third down conversion rate.

The Ragnarok responds to Sunday's "debacle," and like everybody else he's convinced Brad Childress hasn't worked and won't work.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7:45 PM

    funny you mentioned papa concerning that Z article. what ticked me about it was it reminded me of this longish 'old man and the sea' brett favre thing i wrote during the 2005 season. i didn't read enough of the Z to make the comparison myself but evidently I sensed it and bristled.

    rk

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