2019 Regular Season

[Jedzz]

OK, biggest Wuss since being drafted = Pat Elfein? No practice Wed. Limited today.

Has he had a 6 game stretch of healthy play yet?


Note: Barr Limited on Wed. (Knee), not listed at all for today as participating or not. That defense needs him rushing the passer this week, period.

[hermes]

i'm worried about our o-line depth (starters are ok but the backups seem like a bleak option), but elflein didn't get off to a great start so i guess we'll see what dozier has (if he has to go)

[Jedzz]

i'm worried about our o-line depth (starters are ok but the backups seem like a bleak option), but elflein didn't get off to a great start so i guess we'll see what dozier has (if he has to go)

Elfein should have been the center this season anyway. With whoever this scrub they drafted backing him up and getting mixed in slowly. But I suppose you can't trust Elfein to play through the general soreness issues so they had to do something.

[hermes]

it doesn't seem like league practice to draft a guy in the first round and sit him anymore - they are expected to start

[Jedzz]

it doesn't seem like league practice to draft a guy in the first round and sit him anymore - they are expected to start

League wide? Or just the foolish teams? But that's besides the point. They drafted a Center when they already had one. But I'm starting to understand given the softness that is proving to be Elfein. Lineman can get hurt, sure. But these are the biggest players on the field and they aren't ever getting up to speed for any large collisions. Elfien appears to be just plain soft. He's a walking constant injury threat. This hurts the team because he looked promising starting as a rookie. However this team sure seems to find the soft ones more times than not. To have to draft a center again and expect him to start just royally stunk.

The Center is just too important and demanding a role to always expect a rookie to be able to do it well early. In 2009 they let Birk go and chose to start a greenhorn called Sullivan at center and it honestly may have been the difference between a superbowl or not that year. Birk could have made a huge difference in keeping Favre on his feet. I'm sure plenty will disagree, but when you are going all in after a run to and thru the playoffs it's not a great idea to have a greenhorn at Center. A vet would be wiser for the position. Right now, given the shakiness this Oline has been still to this day, Center being a rookie may be the weakpoint of this offense. Well that or expecting Elfien to last a season in any role. Just a pissy situation to still see them in.

[Duke4life831]

Same as last year. Inconsistent defense and a horrible line that doesn't give Cousins any time at all to sit in the pocket. This team is just essentially the Marvin Lewis Bengals. A good enough regular season every year to where the head coach will never get fired, but year by year no change in getting good enough to be an elite team.

[Jedzz]

Same as last year. Inconsistent defense and a horrible line that doesn't give Cousins any time at all to sit in the pocket. This team is just essentially the Marvin Lewis Bengals. A good enough regular season every year to where the head coach will never get fired, but year by year no change in getting good enough to be an elite team.

They will have to start passing with the Packers in the second half, start chewing up yards faster, after the defense let Packers get a fast start. Couple of nasty coverage issues already today. They can put up 20 a quarter if they play aggressive. If.

[Jedzz]

Cousins tunnel visioning on single receiver once again, throwing into triple endzone corner coffin, again.

We suck, again. Packers defense is better than Vikings, thank you Mike Zimmer.

Best Vikings player of the game? Toss up between the only decent defender today, Jayron Kearse, and then Dalvin Cook who ran pretty well against a defense protecting against the big play.

I wonder if while viewing tape of the game this week whether anyone will point out that passing just far enough to get the first down is acceptable in this league. Instead of launching every 3rd down to the endzone 40 yards away. Probably not.

[Worm Guts]

Terrible start by the defense and a couple bad mistakes cost us this game. I don’t know what happened on the last interception. Cousins is usually willing to throw it away if necessary. Just a horrible decision.

[hermes]

Terrible start by the defense and a couple bad mistakes cost us this game. I don’t know what happened on the last interception. Cousins is usually willing to throw it away if necessary. Just a horrible decision.

shades of matt ryan from week 1

[hermes]

well it seems like we can run the ball really well now. dalvin cook is really good. defense had an awful first quarter but seemed to clamp down afterwards, but some of that could be green bay easing off some

pass protection is a really big issue. i don't know if we absolutely need to play with a lead (or at least be tied) but it sure seems to help. i guess we were well on our way to a comeback so who knows. we knew cousins turns the ball over a lot so fretting about that seems like a waste of time. all the penalties i thought were out of character. haven't past zimmer teams been more well disciplined on that front (aside from getting handsy in the secondary) or am i mis-remembering that?

but the worst news of all i think is that green bay is a really good team again

[Worm Guts]

With all the criticism of Cousins, I don't think I've seen enough criticism of Diggs who dropped a couple of passes and got that stupid helmet penalty. He has to be better.

[Jedzz]

The problem is they feel forced in those moments. All the conservative decisions beforehand add up to forced last minute aggressive moves later. Cousins probably felt there was no more time available to "throw it away". But if you see three deep coverage on your only deep route, you have to find someone else. They probably only had one real available target on that play. Such is the Vikings way because they both A, need extra blockers as usual, and B, have no clue what offensive passing needs. Your QB needs multiple outlets. The opposing defense has a job to cover your receivers. You have to expect your #1 target on a play may draw blanket coverage. So where is the second option that can also attain a similar yet maybe not as fantastic goal? Answer: There typically isn't one on the Vikings offense. Their second option is usually a check down way short of the first down and in some situations this won't cut it, such as behind late in the game.

I'll have to review that play to see if Diggs was put on an island as the sole real target of that play. Maybe they had someone just beyond the first down marker, maybe not. But I saw many plays where they did not and checking down for a 4 yard gain isn't going to cut it late in the game. But if all you need is 6 yards for a first down, 8 yards will do nicely. Are you scared of their corners, yet not scared of throwing a drive away on a low percentage deep shot?

The coaches, the fans, and even Diggs himself seem to believe he is Desean Jackson. He is not. Plain and simple, he's is not as good of a deep route receiver. Diggs is capable of it occasionally, but it's not high percentage enough. He is an excellent and dangerous mid range receiver and can gobble up yards after the catch. Why push him over his extreme every time?

Thielen is a better deep target only because he adjusts to poor throws better, and can get over and around defenders better when waiting on late or floating passes. Besides that they are very similar and neither should be expected to be perfect chasing down Hail Mary's at their top speed and fully stretched out just to reach it.

Once again the Vikings have done this to themselves. They had to prove how they can have a running only identity in week 1 and totally remove the passing element. I can't fathom the level of stupidity it takes to purposely revert your team to a one trick running team and purposely attempt to convince everyone that you don't need passing one game, and then expect to throw hail mary type throws on every 3rd down the very next game. Who does this? The Minnesota Vikings of course.

[Jedzz]

How about our great OC this year? "He's earned it" they say, having worked his way up behind some of the absolute worst offensive minds this team has ever had. Maybe that's why he kept calling that short screenish type pass to the short right all game long and it failed every single time to gain any yardage. Never mind it's the one play that is maybe the easiest to intercept for a pick 6 of all NFL plays and the Vikings have 4 recent QBs known to get sniped by it. Great, let's set up Cousins for one of those now too. The game commentator even suggested that he would back away from calling that anymore.

[Worm Guts]

The problem is they feel forced in those moments. All the conservative decisions beforehand add up to forced last minute aggressive moves later. Cousins probably felt there was no more time available to "throw it away". But if you see three deep coverage on your only deep route, you have to find someone else. They probably only had one real available target on that play. Such is the Vikings way because they both A, need extra blockers as usual, and B, have no clue what offensive passing needs. Your QB needs multiple outlets. The opposing defense has a job to cover your receivers. You have to expect your #1 target on a play may draw blanket coverage. So where is the second option that can also attain a similar yet maybe not as fantastic goal? Answer: There typically isn't one on the Vikings offense. Their second option is usually a check down way short of the first down and in some situations this won't cut it, such as behind late in the game.

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I don't buy that Cousins felt he needed to force it. It was first and goal, if he felt he needed to force it, then that's an indictment on him, although I believe he had thrown it away earlier on that same drive.

[Jedzz]

I don't buy that Cousins felt he needed to force it. It was first and goal, if he felt he needed to force it, then that's an indictment on him, although I believe he had thrown it away earlier on that same drive.

Ok, this was the play that was called by the OC. This is classic Vikings to throw all the way to the endzone on first down, or on a short 3rd down. This OC has learned from all our past idiots and any fan of this team should be noticing it.

What I'm saying is yes, Cousins probably felt the overall game coming to an end. This was likely to be their last drive. He forced it because of that overall gametime pressure. They finally call these plays, you think he doesn't want to throw them? No doubt it was a mistake on his part, I agree.

He's said on record in the past a few times, including in the first few weeks last season, that he doesn't mind if the coaches want to keep the game short and safe early on, that he often agrees with that, but that there will be times late in games where you just have to throw it and live with the results because now you have no other choice. He should have had and made other choices here. Whether he had another route or not, those three defenders should have forced him to make a different choice. He didn't. It has to do with what he has learned over the years and also with not having a very good rhythm going in passing right now. And why? Because all they did is run the first game. It's not clicking. It was just 'throw deep' when they don't expect it offense this game. Our 84 MM QB is not prepped to be a starting QB right now and it shows. It's on our Coaches.

He'll probably make more of the right choices a number of games into the season. But he hasn't been prepared to make them early, and the offense had not yet been prepared to pass deep like they were asking them to Sunday.

[Jedzz]

This team won't change and we shouldn't expect it to until we see them finally prove it. They will never win a superbowl with this leadership and playing this way unless they somehow get out on top in score early in every single game they play. You can't scream from the top of the hill, "WE HATE PASSING FOOTBALL" and then fall behind in a game and have to use passing to try to save yourself. At least you can't expect it to work very often. Maybe once or twice a season, the ones they end up calling miracles. Doesn't seem like a wise way to go about it. Does it?

I'm starting to think the reason they paid Cousins what they did is because they thought that this way they could keep playing the exact same hapless offense as always and that a better QB would somehow magically just pull a hot hand out the few rare times they need one. Sorry, there is only one Tom Brady and that guy would have run this team's leadership out of here by now.

[Jedzz]

It isn't the loss that bugs me. Like others mentioned, they had this final drive's chance to retake the lead. That's the Zimmer way anyway. I would venture to guess Zimmer has already said as much and that the interception killed them.

What is annoying now is that now they get to reinforce their hate and fear of passing and become even more one dimensional, more conservative early on and get into even larger pickles late that will no doubt need perfection from your newly created hand off game manager at QB.

It's 3rd and 5. Just throw it 8 yards and stop getting cute.
It's first and 10 and you have a time, use the time and get as close as you can before cranking up the miracle shots.

After a packer fumble, the Vikings came right out and tried to launch a hail mary. Commentator says something about it being a good idea. Why? Could you explain that with any kind of logic for us? Wouldn't it make more sense to methodically march down the field and just score to truly take advantage of their turnover? Nah let us instead chuck it. Free gift right?

[Duke4life831]

Again I just think the Zimmer Vikings are the Lewis Bengals. Talent on the team, most years they're going to put up a solid record, but you can just tell something isn't right with the team. They're the equivalent of a treadmill team in the NFL. I think that is what we are.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Cousins is this elite level QB. But with that said, I do think he has been given an almost impossible hand to work with. He has no protection and playing for a coach that is petty much vocal about how much he hates throwing the ball. So Cousins is in a system that is designed for him to throw the ball as less as possible, when he does get to throw, most of the time he has built up no rhythm, the plays are simple, usually throws when defenses are expecting him to throw and has a horrible line.

I think this year we end up 8-8 or 9-7. We either just miss our just barely make the playoffs. Zimmer will still have a good regular season record and the ownership will bring him back for next year. We end up with a draft pick in the late teens, and do it again next year.

[Jedzz]

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