Monday, September 17, 2007

Kelly Holcomb

The time for Kelly Holcomb is now!

Holcomb has played average football for his career. He's completed 64% of his passes, and he's thrown as many INTs as TDs. And that's all the Vikes need right now. Average QB play.

If Kelly Holcomb starts against the Chiefs, the Vikings should easily win; if Tarvaris Jackson starts, it could go either way. And then Holcomb can give the Vikes a good shot against the Packers in the Dome. And then when the schedule toughens up, if Holcomb can just play mediocre football and not turn the ball over, he'll give the Viking defense a chance to pull out a couple of wins against good opponents.

Do it! The time is now! The Vikings can even use Tarvaris Jackson's groin injury as an excuse! They can cop out easily! And I can keep using exclamation points!

Tarvaris Jackson isn't ready, but the Viking defense is. So is Adrian Peterson. So is the offensive line.

Put in the average QB. It's better than the suck-ass QB. Viking fans have a long tradition of calling for the backup QB, and I'm happy to continue that tradition.

Kelly Holcomb should be the Vikings' starting quarterback right now. The teams goal should be to win as many games as possible now. And Kelly Holcomb gives the team the best chance to win.

Do it!

26 comments:

  1. If Holcomb goes in, even with the transparent excuse of TJ's groin injury, is TJ's time starting with the Vikings over? Young, annointed QBs don't usually react well to performance-related benchings.

    Not saying it should be. Just saying that's the history.

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  2. this post would've been much funnier if you would've attached the 'our hero' to jackson every time.

    rk

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  3. not to be a homer for my old home but the schedule is going to get a lot tougher in two weeks.

    rk

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  4. I will warn you, Holcomb is great against man coverage. Unreal great.

    Against the cover 2, superman has his kryptonite, man. He's god awful. This is why he's never been a full time starter, cant throw for over 150 and not throw int's against the cover 2.

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  5. Anonymous4:28 PM

    I say fire Brooks Bollinger and bring in Byron Leftwich...the time for Leftwich is now!

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  6. Anonymous8:08 PM

    BRING BACK BRAD!!!

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  7. Anonymous8:34 PM

    Are you all serious? It was a mediocre first game and a terrible second game, true, but where the hell is the patience with your home town team? Two games into the season and everyone is ready to trade him to the Seahawks for a 7th rounder or regulate him to assembling bobble heads in the basement of the Dome.

    You do realize that Drew Brees had a couple of crap seasons before becoming a Pro Bowler, right? The Chargers gave up on him and drafted a first Rivers and lost Brees to Free Agency.

    Kitna was less than not good for Cinnci before they drafted Palmer, but he's been very productive since. Again, once there was a fire under his ass, he delivered.

    The Falcons drafted Farve, but traded him to the Packers before they really got to see what they had in him.

    On the flip side, are we all postive that Matt Schaub is the Bart Starr's animated corpse bringing a bad team to maturity? Derek Anderson sure had a good game, shall we crown his ass?

    We don't know anything yet.

    "Patience, Willow."
    "Courage, Willow." - Willow

    ABE

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  8. Anonymous9:58 PM

    FIRE ABE!!

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  9. Anonymous11:08 PM

    Damnit!!

    "Adrian?!"
    "Rocky!"
    "Adrian! Hey, where's your hat?" - Rocky

    ABE

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  10. We all knew back in June this was a learning year for T.J. throw a little blame at that O-line.Should have been a back in there just to help block a little.Detroit came at T.J. all day and teams in following weeks will do the same.
    I would rather that T.J. just torched them but he reverted under pressure things that young Q.B.s do.
    We shouldnt be fair weather fans but supporters of T.J. we all want a winning season with the last stop at the S.B. Sometimes ya gotta crawl.

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  11. Anonymous7:31 AM

    If Dan Marino can post a 98.0 QB rating his first year as a starter, then I expect nothing less than a triple digit rating from TJack.

    COMPLAIN IN ALL CAPS!

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  12. Anonymous8:17 AM

    i say let the kid play and play very poorly if need be.

    rk

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  13. Anonymous8:22 AM

    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    Admit it, you're starting to AGREE!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!
    FIRE CHILDRESS NOW !!!!!

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  14. Anonymous8:43 AM

    Uh, no, other anonymous guy, nobody with an ounce of sense, and who wants the Vikings to win, wants Childress to be fired now. There is no benefit to firing NFL coaches during the season, so if you are greatly hoping for Childress to be fired, what you are really hoping for is for the Chiefs to win Sunday, the Packers to win the week after, etc., etc..
    If The Vikings win eight games, there is no way Childress gets fired, and even seven games may save his job. Six or less makes things dicey. If your greatest wish is for Childress to be gone, what you are really pulling for is a 4-12 or a 5-11 season. Look, if you want to root for the Vikings' opponents, fine, but just do so openly.

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  15. Anonymous9:15 AM

    Firing Childress now would be a signal to the players that it's ok to give up on the year.

    For the Vikes to get a new stadium and stay in MN they need to build a winner, and firing a coach after the 2nd game is not exactly helping that happen.

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  16. Anonymous9:41 AM

    I'm a little disappointed in you P.V.. I thought you were more rational than this. Jackson played terribly last week, but that doesn't mean we jerk him outta there in favor of a career backup. We need to evaluate TJ and see if he has what it takes to be our QB of the future. Nobody thinks we're SuperBowl contenders this year, so we need to let Jackson try to play out of this slump.

    I say start him the next two weeks, assuming his groin allows it, then head into the bye week and evaluate his play. If he has shown improvement you go with him for the rest of the season. If he turns in a couple more miserable performances, you probably have to go with Holcomb and hope that Jackson can learn a few things from watching him.

    You certainly don't bench him after the 2nd game of the season.

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  17. Anonymous10:26 AM

    It wasn't written by PV but by one of the other contributers to the Blog. I don't know "What Was That Bang?" but I know Holy Hitter and PV. They are a little more rational usually.

    ABE

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  18. Childress' greatest fault right now is whatever role he played in the team's failure to upgrade the passing game personnel sufficiently in two years. I haven't seen this evidence that has convinced some people Childress can't coach. But there's been a lot of evidence that there are serious personnel issues at QB and WR. For whatever part Childress has played in that situation, he deserves blame.

    I want to be patient with Tarvaris Jackson. But I also don't want to see this defense wasted. Now, many of the productive defensive players are in their 20s, so it's not like "now or never" for this defense to win. But it seems the team can win with even average, turnover-free quarterbacking.

    WWTB has one good point: with Kelly Holcomb, I'd feel very confident the Vikes would beat the Chiefs this week. With Jackson, I worry it could go either way.

    So patience and growing pains? Or try to win as many games as possible now, even with a QB that doesn't appear to be your Super Bowl QB? It's at least worth the question.

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  19. Anonymous11:23 AM

    One reason I might favor (and I emphasize "might") having Holcomb start is that if you want to ruin a young qb with some talent, having him play week after week with receivers who can't get open, and don't catch well when they do, helps the cause. The young qb often ends up trying to make stuff happen when the odds are greatly stacked against success, beginning a self-reinforcing spiral of failure. Yes, there are some exceptional guys who are immune to this pitfall, and let the failures roll off their shoulders, but there are also a lot of guys who had successful careers who would have been ruined if they had been stuck with bad surrounding talent too early. HOFer Steve Young talks about how that was the track he was on before being rescued by Bill Walsh and the megatalented 49ers.

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  20. Anonymous12:03 PM

    I thought the original post was tongue in cheek, referencing the short fuse that many have with the Vikings.

    PV makes some good points though, we're sort of at a crossroads, if we expect TJack to play like he did against Detroit, we can't start him.

    If Chilly thinks that was a one time thing, then by all means, get him back in there.

    So which is it? There is no way of knowing.. one thing that bothers me is I don't recall seeing TJack impress me in any game he's played in. There has been no game where he put it together even for a half.

    I'm completely on the fence on this, part of me thinks that with this D and run game a Holcomb can get us to the playoffs, and the other part of me thinks that #7 will be a SB QB at some point then we HAVE to let him play through it.

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  21. m_meat, I think you got it right. If that Detroit game was a one (or even two) time thing for Jackson, then we can call it the expected growing pains, and the team should stick with him. But the team absolutely can't have Jackson playing like that consistently (though I don't lay it all on T-Jack: the WRs didn't do anything, and T-Jack was under constant pressure).

    Oh, and WWTB is sort of the Id of this website: he's willing to be irrational, and he's usually half-serious and half-joking.

    Another thing regarding Childress: for years I've listened to Viking fans convinced the team had the talent to win the Super Bowl, and was just being held back by bad coaching. And certainly Dennis Green and Mike Tice had their issues. But I think eventually we have to stop the cycle of calling the coach a bum and blaming him for not getting the most of the talent. The hatred of Childress in many circles amazes me in part because I can't recall a single really, really stupid incident, where he really botched it as a coach (and there were several such incidents with Tice). It really seems like a lot of Viking fans just believe the players are good enough and want to blame the coach for everything.

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  22. Anonymous1:57 PM

    By the way my Leftwich comment was a joke.

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  23. Perhaps the hatred of Childress might come from the fact that he came in billing himself as a stickler for discipline and a sharp offensive mind. Yet under his watch in 2006 the Vikings (I believe) were the most penalized team in the NFL with one of the worst offences. When you brand yourself as something and your team doesn't come through, fans tend to get irate.

    Except for the Les Steckel season, I have never seen the Vikings look as consistently terrible as they did during that 2-8 stretch last season. Certainly the players – on offence anyway – weren't very good. But Childress is the guy that signs off on the personnel changes and thought he could coach up guys like Billy McMullen and turn them into productive players. Maybe you can't point to any Tice-like game blunders with Childress but you could argue he's had a hand in several personnel blunders that makes how he coaches during a game almost irrelevant.

    I'm more than willing to be patient with Chilly – what choice do I have. But the early returns aren't encouraging.

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  24. Anonymous4:47 PM

    dc, apparently you didn't watch the Vikings in Dennis Green's last year. The Vikings biggest problem, since the mid 70s, is that they don't have enough good football players, with the obvious exception of 1998, and maybe 1987. Jerry Burns and Co. were unlucky enough to be in the NFC when they had enough talent to win the AFC, but then Bud Grant was lucky enough to be in the NFC when they didn't probably have enough talent to win the AFC.

    Dennis Green wasn't a great coach, but the only year he had more talent than anybody in the conference, or even close to the same talent as the best NFC team, was '98. Of course, as time went on, he gained more influence over personnel, and showed himself to be deficient in this area. Where are you Demetrius Underwood??

    Tice never had a chance, personnel-wise, because McCombs was more interested in squeezing every last nickle out of owning the team. A good owner who was finacially committed to winning may have meant Dre Bly and Ogunleye coming to Minnesota instead of division rivals, and if that happens, there's a pretty good chance the Vikings make the playoffs in '03, make the conference championship in '04, along with winning the division, which likely means Moss never gets traded, and the Tice doesn't get fired. This doesn't even begin to address how Tice's coaching staff was screwed up due to McCombs' cheapskaterey.

    Childress inherited a bad situation personnel-wise, aggravated by the lousy 2005 draft, which netted two first rounders who have yet to make any significant contribution. Childress has had extremely little opportunity to improve the receiver corps, given the paucity of good free agents at the position, and the fact that the Vikings haven't had a qb in this period that will attract a good free agent receiver. Obviously, Childress has placed his chips on a Man Called Tavaris, and Childress' head coaching career likely will depend on how that bet turns out. It's a tough industry which places so much emphasis on a single judgement call, but that's why the job pays so well.

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  25. Anonymous5:33 PM

    I became curious, so I looked it up. If you want to know why the Vikings are in the position they are in today, look at the 2005 draft.

    Troy Williamson
    Erasmus James
    Marcus Johnson
    Dustin Fox
    Ciatrick Fason
    C.J. Mosley
    Adrian Ward

    Two first rounders who have consumed first round bonuses without contributing much, a back-up ot who can't push 2nd year Ryan Cook, a safety who never saw the field, a running back who played minimally before getting cut, a dt who was traded for Brooks Bollinger, and a guy who I can't recall. That, my friends, is a bad, bad draft, so far, and if Williamson and James don't contribute much eventually (time is running out on Williamson especially) it will qualify as an utter disaster. When you draft like this, you end up having to draft like the team did this year, still in search of a receiver with skills and a pass rusher from the edge, which may turn out, but in the meantime you've lost a couple of years.

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  26. Adrian Peterson (plus Chester Taylor) - exiting...

    This year's defense - exciting...

    Pass rush - MUCH improved, so far exciting...

    Wide receivers - too early to judge, but improvement already from Troy, and the new additions look pretty good so far actually...

    Childress deserves credit for all of this, versus the one sided bashing he seems to get consistently

    Too early to judge TJ, though he has not really given any indication of big potential. QB is clearly the weak link by far on this current Vikings team - really weak unfortunately, because as we all know, guys like Favre rock not only because they have skills, but because they lead.

    Real leadership on this team has been lacking for a long, long time. Jeez, think about the raw talent we've had over the years...

    One hopeful Vikings fan's thoughts (and I live in NY!!!)

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