VIKES @ LIONS 11/1/26

[bean5302]

This is Minnesota sports. I can understand why people believe history doesn't matter, but Minnesota teams find ways to collapse. All of them. There's just zero killer instinct in them. None of the teams flop harder than the Vikings, though. The absolute epitome of chokers.

The Vikings have just delivered the reality check to fans. 6-0 is the trick to get people on board before they stab fans through the heart.

[nicksaviking]

13 hours ago, Danchat said:

KOC wanted him out of the building, he wasn't going to develop him. Read - that doesn't justify trading him for a 5th - but Kevin is control of the offense and he gets what he wants. Hopefully that will change soon, but I can get why Teasley executed the move. He'll probably want to draft his own QB next year, though probably not too early.

I'm glad JJM is getting a chance to play elsewhere and he doesn't have to sit around on the bench. I have to wonder if his durability will hold up, but so far he's playing like the guy I thought was a mid-1st round prospect.

Meanwhile, I feel really good about predicting back in August that we end up with Mac Jones in 2027. Good about being right, that is. Not good about the QB situation.

Yeah, I don't want Mac Jones, but this organization is starting to smell desperate. Pittsburgh will be gunning for him too though I bet, since they're the other organization that worries more about being bad than they do about being good.

Funny how McCarthy and Murray have the same biggest flaw; they can't throw over the middle. And that flaw about Murray was widely known before this year.

Not that there really were other free agent options. It was Tua or career largely backups.

[Vanimal46]

Given the state of the NFC North with 0 bad teams, the Vikings can't afford to be patient with Murray anymore. We've now seen 5 full games of him, and the offense looks the same every time. Continuing to play Murray is a disservice to the great defense we have. If Murray isn't willing to run more often, or throw across the middle unless it's a quick seam route to a TE, then we will continue to struggle scoring points. 

[djvang]

59 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

The Vikings have just delivered the reality check to fans. 6-0 is the trick to get people on board before they stab fans through the heart.

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me 66 times shame on me. The Favre interception was the end of Viking fandom for me. I'll still watch but it means nothing anymore.

[Vanimal46]

6 minutes ago, djvang said:

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me 66 times shame on me. The Favre interception was the end of Viking fandom for me. I'll still watch but it means nothing anymore.

If I learned anything from my previously long suffering Cubs friends... All I need to see is 1 Super Bowl win. After that, the Vikings could go 0-17 for the next decade. I won't care. Just one Super Bowl please. 

[Vanimal46]

I don't actually expect this to happen under the Wilfs' ownership... But if they don't want to push the chips in this year and fix the offense, we should start the rebuild instead. 

Lots of important defensive players on an expiring contract - Van Ginkel, Cashman, Rodgers, Redmond (RFA). Plus Hockenson, both RBs, both QBs... Pivoting to selling will piss off a lot of players, and probably push Jefferson over the edge to request a trade in the offseason. But they need to have an honest discussion about it. The NFC North is completely loaded and staying that way for the next couple of years. 

[nicksaviking]

42 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

I don't actually expect this to happen under the Wilfs' ownership... But if they don't want to push the chips in this year and fix the offense, we should start the rebuild instead. 

Lots of important defensive players on an expiring contract - Van Ginkel, Cashman, Rodgers, Redmond (RFA). Plus Hockenson, both RBs, both QBs... Pivoting to selling will piss off a lot of players, and probably push Jefferson over the edge to request a trade in the offseason. But they need to have an honest discussion about it. The NFC North is completely loaded and staying that way for the next couple of years. 

I agree that it will be a hard sell. The Wilfs refused to do this even when the team was demonstrably worse during the Zimmer era and when they were average at best during the Cousins/McCarthy/Darnold transitions.

But I also don't know how they don't look at the legit contenders and see that Buffalo, New England, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Green Bay and San Francisco are where they are because they DRAFTED their own QB (yeah, SF got lucky). With Detroit and the Rams having also drafted their QBs but swapping them. Only Seattle and Pittsburgh didn't draft their QBs. It worked for Seattle last year, but Pittsburgh is the only other team that is loathe to get into draft position to actually have a decent chance to get a franchise QB and they've been good-not-great for two decades now. Just like the Vikings. 

I mean seriously, the Vikings merely traded up to 10th to draft the FIFTH QB in the class and everyone in the state acted like it was the biggest deal in the history of sports and was angry when it didn't work out. That was almost a minimum effort to fix the problem. Once a decade taking a swing on a non-elite QB prospect in the draft isn't going to cut it. I don't understand why nobody is pointing this out to the people in charge.

[Mike Sixel]

1 hour ago, Vanimal46 said:

I don't actually expect this to happen under the Wilfs' ownership... But if they don't want to push the chips in this year and fix the offense, we should start the rebuild instead. 

Lots of important defensive players on an expiring contract - Van Ginkel, Cashman, Rodgers, Redmond (RFA). Plus Hockenson, both RBs, both QBs... Pivoting to selling will piss off a lot of players, and probably push Jefferson over the edge to request a trade in the offseason. But they need to have an honest discussion about it. The NFC North is completely loaded and staying that way for the next couple of years. 

Agreed on all counts. They won't, but they should if they don't deal for a QB.....

I'm keeping Cashman and Rodgers, but the rest (and Addisson) should be dealt if they don't deal for Kirk. 

[nicksaviking]

14 minutes ago, Mike Sixel said:

Agreed on all counts. They won't, but they should if they don't deal for a QB.....

I'm keeping Cashman and Rodgers, but the rest (and Addisson) should be dealt if they don't deal for Kirk. 

Yeah, Cashman is number one with a bullet in terms of pending free agents this team needs to try to retain under any of the possible circumstances.

[Danchat]

4 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

Not that there really were other free agent options. It was Tua or career largely backups.

Geno Smith is at least at 1900/12/3 yards/TDs/Ints with the Jets and would fit KOC's system. Kirk is playing shockingly well for the Raiders. KOC just inexplicably chose a QB that didn't fit his system and thought he could get it to work.

[nicksaviking]

4 minutes ago, Danchat said:

Geno Smith is at least at 1900/12/3 yards/TDs/Ints with the Jets and would fit KOC's system. Kirk is playing shockingly well for the Raiders. KOC just inexplicably chose a QB that didn't fit his system and thought he could get it to work.

That's true, I would have absolutely hated it after his prior two years of constant interceptions, but Smith could have worked. 

The Vikings couldn't afford to give Jonathan Greenard a 5M pay bump though, so I'm not sure Cousins' 11M deal would have worked back when he signed. And then there would be the optics of the situation. That being the Vikings would have had to admit they made a mistake; even if they felt they didn't. Warranted or not, taking blame has thus far been a bit elusive for the people running the show last spring.

[TheLeviathan]

11 minutes ago, Danchat said:

Geno Smith is at least at 1900/12/3 yards/TDs/Ints with the Jets and would fit KOC's system. Kirk is playing shockingly well for the Raiders. KOC just inexplicably chose a QB that didn't fit his system and thought he could get it to work.

Him choosing Murray of the available options is the thing I just can't wrap my head around.  What did he see on film?  

I haven't been one to question KOC much because I genuinely think he's a good coach.  But this decision is just baffling.

It's like a math teacher choosing the kid who can't add to come up and demonstrate calculus every week.

[TheLeviathan]

3 minutes ago, nicksaviking said:

That's true, I would have absolutely hated it after his prior two years of constant interceptions, but Smith could have worked. 

The Vikings couldn't afford to give Jonathan Greenard a 5M pay bump though, so I'm not sure Cousins' 11M deal would have worked back when he signed. And then there would be the optics of the situation. That being the Vikings would have had to admit they made a mistake; even if they felt they didn't. Warranted or not, taking blame has thus far been a bit elusive for the people running the show last spring.

They had levers they could've pulled - O'Neill, not signing Jennings, more aggressively reworking Hockenson, Ginkel, etc.

[nicksaviking]

30 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

They had levers they could've pulled - O'Neill, not signing Jennings, more aggressively reworking Hockenson, Ginkel, etc.

Sure, but they didn't do that for Geenard, so I presume there was little chance they'd do that for Cousins, which would imply they made a mistake to being with.

[Vanimal46]

39 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Him choosing Murray of the available options is the thing I just can't wrap my head around.  What did he see on film?  

I haven't been one to question KOC much because I genuinely think he's a good coach.  But this decision is just baffling.

It's like a math teacher choosing the kid who can't add to come up and demonstrate calculus every week.

The national media is finally catching on to this bad marriage of KOC and Murray... But Vikings fans knew from the day he was rumored to sign here that it was going to require a complete overhaul of KOC's offense. 

[Vanimal46]

First play on offense yesterday.... Kyler Murray PA bootleg to the right and hits the backup TE Yurosek for a 20+ yard gain. Where did that go the rest of the game? 

[Danchat]

4 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

That's true, I would have absolutely hated it after his prior two years of constant interceptions, but Smith could have worked. 

The Vikings couldn't afford to give Jonathan Greenard a 5M pay bump though, so I'm not sure Cousins' 11M deal would have worked back when he signed. And then there would be the optics of the situation. That being the Vikings would have had to admit they made a mistake; even if they felt they didn't. Warranted or not, taking blame has thus far been a bit elusive for the people running the show last spring.

They could have afforded Greenard's deal (they spent $20M combined on Jennings and Harry post Wave 1 of free agency), they didn't want to give him a 2/$60M extension with $50M guaranteed over the now four years of the deal. He's actually playing really poorly in Philly so getting 2 3rds for him seems to be the right move.

4 hours ago, TheLeviathan said:

They had levers they could've pulled - O'Neill, not signing Jennings, more aggressively reworking Hockenson, Ginkel, etc.

We could still see a couple of those levers pulled so they can make a trade or two. There was a report yesterday that a Jennings trade to SF nearly happened this week which would have saved a few million.

3 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

First play on offense yesterday.... Kyler Murray PA bootleg to the right and hits the backup TE Yurosek for a 20+ yard gain. Where did that go the rest of the game? 

Yeah... having Kyler sit in the pocket just doesn't work for him. Also, saw a mind-blowing stat this morning:

2 pressures allowed by the entire OL in 35 dropbacks. Somehow, some way Kyler gets sacked 3 times. That's stunningly bad for a QB to have that many clean pockets (at least for the first couple seconds) and not do anything with it.

Another strange stat on the season is that Darrisaw has allowed an alarming 5 sacks in 6 games... but has only allowed 7 pressures in total, which is pretty good. For a guy with some escapability, Kyler still takes a lot of sacks. 

[Mike Sixel]

32 minutes ago, Danchat said:

They could have afforded Greenard's deal (they spent $20M combined on Jennings and Harry post Wave 1 of free agency), they didn't want to give him a 2/$60M extension with $50M guaranteed over the now four years of the deal. He's actually playing really poorly in Philly so getting 2 3rds for him seems to be the right move.

We could still see a couple of those levers pulled so they can make a trade or two. There was a report yesterday that a Jennings trade to SF nearly happened this week which would have saved a few million.

Yeah... having Kyler sit in the pocket just doesn't work for him. Also, saw a mind-blowing stat this morning:

2 pressures allowed by the entire OL in 35 dropbacks. Somehow, some way Kyler gets sacked 3 times. That's stunningly bad for a QB to have that many clean pockets (at least for the first couple seconds) and not do anything with it.

Another strange stat on the season is that Darrisaw has allowed an alarming 5 sacks in 6 games... but has only allowed 7 pressures in total, which is pretty good. For a guy with some capability, Kyler still takes a lot of sacks. 

Zero pocket awareness.

[TheLeviathan]

49 minutes ago, Danchat said:

 

Another strange stat on the season is that Darrisaw has allowed an alarming 5 sacks in 6 games... but has only allowed 7 pressures in total, which is pretty good. For a guy with some capability, Kyler still takes a lot of sacks. 

Wait....so running around in circles like a chicken after 8 seconds of good protection behind the line of scrimmage isn't wise?

[TheLeviathan]

2 hours ago, nicksaviking said:

Sure, but they didn't do that for Geenard, so I presume there was little chance they'd do that for Cousins, which would imply they made a mistake to being with.

Well, in Greenard's case they had a replacement.  A good one at least.

[Vanimal46]

It certainly sounds like Murray lost the WR room. A visibly pissed off JJ and Addison calling out that they’re open 

[nicksaviking]

3 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

It certainly sounds like Murray lost the WR room. A visibly pissed off JJ and Addison calling out that they’re open 

Murray's 'hamstring injury' is going to be pretext for putting Wentz back in. Which at this point, duh.

But the fact that the Vikings did the exact same thing with McCarthy and Wentz last year is going to be a pretty transparent facade.

 

[Autist75]

11 hours ago, djvang said:

Fool me once shame on you. Fool me 66 times shame on me. The Favre interception was the end of Viking fandom for me. I'll still watch but it means nothing anymore.

     You're generous.  The '98 NFCCG was the end for me.

[TheLeviathan]

1 hour ago, nicksaviking said:

Murray's 'hamstring injury' is going to be pretext for putting Wentz back in. Which at this point, duh.

But the fact that the Vikings did the exact same thing with McCarthy and Wentz last year is going to be a pretty transparent facade.

 

Nick...have you heard of Tonya Harding and how much would it take for you to be the Jeff Gillooly in this situation for the sake of the fandom?

[nicksaviking]

6 minutes ago, TheLeviathan said:

Nick...have you heard of Tonya Harding and how much would it take for you to be the Jeff Gillooly in this situation for the sake of the fandom?

Sounds like Addison is already willing.