Sunday, September 28, 2008

Coming off the ledge


The Vikings are built to win games by running the football and playing strong defense.  When you play that way, you're going to be in close games, and you have a thin margin of error.  As such, they can't expect to win a road game when they:

--fumble the ball three times.
--miss a field goal.
--commit seven penalties.
--drop passes.

Once again, the defense played admirably.  They only gave up touchdowns when Viking turnovers gave the Titans a short field.  They prevented first downs on 11 of 17 3rd down plays.

Once again, the offense just didn't have it in them to score more points than the opponent.  But today, the Vikings also made error after error, mistake after mistake, botched play after botched play.  They can't possibly expect to win a road game making that many mistakes.

What are the 1-3 Vikings going to do the rest of the season?  We must certainly temper our most hopeful expectations, but the Vikes are still just one game back of the NFC North leader.  But they look like a fiercely competitive team at home, and an incompetent mistake-prone team on the road.  The schedule does get easier, but for the Vikings to be better than 7-9 this season, they have to win a road game (this is a literal statement).  And they can't make as many big errors as they did today if they expect to win any road games.


5 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:26 PM

    Childress calls a timeout to challenge a play, loses the challenges and another time out!

    Take a time out on your own two yeard line as the play clock is running out. Will that ONE yard penalty kill you?

    3rd and 1, take AP out of the game and throw the bomb.

    The Vikings are not well coached. Can you name an asst. coach other than the great Bevell and Lesilie Frazier?

    The offense is so basic that the average fan can see what is coming most of the time.

    No QB and NO wide receivers. Waste of Peterson's talent.

    I can see Zigi callingthis mess off real quick if things don't change. 1-4 could be 1-5 next Monday night.

    Childress has had time to put in his system and get players to fit it. NOT WORKING!

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  2. Anonymous10:46 AM

    Who Dat!

    Go Saints...

    Get ready for 45 pass attempts on your D next week.

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  3. Anonymous3:01 PM

    i know the chances of scoring a touchdown and recovering an ondisde kick than scoring another TD was remote but how can you just punt the ball on 4th and 13 with a minute and a half left. why quit ?

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  4. I agree: they may have only had a .8% chance of winning at that point, but they traded it for a .1% chance. There are some possible justifications for this ("We may need Jackson and we didn't want to shake his confidence in a bad situation," "With Frerotte injured we didn't want to risk an injury to Jackson"), but they're all stupid.

    It's a minor thing in the whole scheme of the game, but it was a decision to keep the margin close rather than win the game.

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  5. I was at the stadium for this one, and even the Titans fans around me were baffled. It was at this point that I saw a mass exodus from the stadium by almost every purple clad individual in LP field.

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