gunnarthor

O-line has been better but not perfect. Wentz seems more happy feet than JJ and bailing a bit. Run game looks good. Darrisaw looks good. KOC calling a bit better, too.

Bengals TE is playing kinda like I hoped Hockinson would.

Probably jinxing it, but Jurgens is playing ok, today

I think this is, more or less, my thinking as well. KOC is a great coach. He motivates his players well, he is a good offensive mind, his teams are, more or less, complete. Where he is weakest though is on Sundays. He doesn't adjust well. Packer fans have stated this for a few years as well. He doesn't stick with the ground game, his PA calls can be pretty obvious, pre-snap. And his passes routinely takes the longest to develop across the NFL. Say what you will about Cousins, but he was tough. He took serious hits. So did Darnold. KOC play-calling was my biggest concern coming into the season. I had really hoped he would hire another offensive mind from somewhere other than the McVay family to help him but he didn't. I know this sounds stupid but I think it would be a good idea for the Vikings to bring in someone to audit the offensive side of the ball and push back a bit on the play-calling. That said, I think this is still stuff that the Vikes can figure out and fix. Like, I think KOC will win a super bowl with us. But he's not perfect, yet.

The one thing I'm really surprised about is how bad this line has looked, as a whole. Jackson looked pretty good week one but not so good week two. Skule has been far worse than even what a Packers fan would have hoped for. I think Kelly and Fries are good, neither has been dominant and the entire line looks like five guys trying to fight the opposing team single-handily. On a lot of running plays, they haven't moved the defense much (but there have been a few runs where it's clear they can) and the pass protection seems like they've never heard of a stunt or how to deal with blitz pick ups. I have no idea how you fix that but it does seem fixable.

Dude, you called for Darnold to be benched in nearly every game thread last year.

I mean, yes, the Vikings season could be over. They could finish 4-13 or whatever. But Viking fans do seem have a doom mentality. Nick has posted that the Twins Cities are cursed. Aggie calls for QBs to be benched during nearly every game thread for years now. Yet the Vikings and O'Connell have generally showed pretty good resilience. Maybe it's better to calm down and relax. The Vikings biggest problem - the o-line - is fixable, esp when Darrisaw is back and the unit has more reps together. I will remain a strong advocate for McCarthy. While his numbers looked bad, I thought he looked ok. No happy feet, no bailing out of the pocket early. He just needs playing time. The defense, even with injuries, has been strong and kept us in both games while the offense was trying to figure things out.

It must absolutely suck to be a Bengals fan. Burrow out for 3 months. Geez.

God, no.

I don't disagree with you but I'm not sure the 3 second thing is helpful. On some plays in the second half, McCarthy had all day to pass. I figured the line and weathered the storm and I thought we were going to win. But on several of the sacks, they just go through, right quick. There wasn't a play that I remember where I was thinking "he held it too long." Nor did I think he had happy feet and bailed out of a clean pocket. (Which is why I'm generally not that concerned with the loss - the oline will get better with Darrisaw, the playcalling will get better because we have smart people). But, generally, I think you're right. But KOC has had long developing plays as his thing since day one. So we will see what sort of adjustments we make.

So, I'll go with a few positives. First, the defense really did a great job. They kept the Vikes in the game a lot longer than they should have. Second, nothing in the game makes me think McCarthy isn't the long term answer at QB. He had a rough game but he kept his head down field, even when running. I think a lot of the bad things that happened weren't his fault and, with more experience, he'll be just fine. A few negatives - The o-line was horrible. As Nick stated, O'Neil struggled. On the strip sack, the line blocked down and O'Neil didn't even put a hand on the edge rusher who had a straight line to the QB. That was clearly a pre-snap blocking call (Jurgens? McCarthy? O'Neil?) that was screwed up by somebody. And, kind of like the Rams playoff game, KOC didn't adjust much to fix it. Oliver wasn't often put in, for example, as a pass blocker to help Skule. I thought both Fries and Jackson mostly were pretty good up the middle but the edges and Jurgens were a bit iffy. Second, we had some opportunities and didn't convert. Some stupid penalties hurt. McCarthy missed Nailor on a (likely) TD and Nailor made a few good catches for him on some other bad throws. Growing pains. But it hurt.

The defense played a lot better then I expected. Totally keeping us in the game but offense ...

First half, I didn't think JJ played all that bad. The line has been really bad. His int was a pretty good play by the defense.

That's KOC. First down, horrible snap, qb sacked, 12 seconds left inside your own 20. Every other coach takes a knee and resets for the second half. Not KOC. Huge play to get a big field goal. Wow.

We should be fine. We blew them out a year ago. At home, primetime. We'll win.

I don't think that is particularly true. The Vikings presumed #1 QB the last two years has missed 26 games. I don't think any other team is close to that. Jefferson missed seven or eight games as well. Darrisaw missed half a season and still isn't back. Hockenson missed a bunch of games. Pace and Cashman missed 10 games combined last season. I think we signed a DE (Davenport) who missed the whole season, IIRC.

Parsons also cost them Kenny Clark and a huge paycheck. Parsons AAV is 47m. This year the Vikings are paying Greenard, AVG, Allen, and Hargrave 47.9m. But I'm not worried about them being better - they're not. I just hate them. It sucks that the NFL gave them a Thursday night home game against a good team since home teams are massive favorites on Thursday games.

Edit; nvmd

Yeah, I like Pace. He's a great story and really strong against the run. But I think I'd like the Vikes to play a bit more safeties (big safety?) to pick up his coverage slack rather than letting him cover their RB or TE. Also, Flores had AVG play some inside LB last year as well so we could see schemes with that.

I hate the Packers.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46225933/vikings-lb-blake-cashman-ir-least-four-games Cashman and Chandler to the IR.

Yeah, as much as we missed him, I'm really glad Darrisaw wasn't playing on that.

Oh, this was a fun bit to read - Next Gen Stats Insights for Vikings-Bears (NFL Pro): In their Vikings debut, Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen generated six pressures each, with Hargrave also recording two sacks and two quick pressures (under 2.5 seconds). They did so despite being double-teamed at 41.9% and 47.1% rates, respectively. All three of the Bears’ newly acquired interior linemen (Joe Thuney, Drew Dalman and Jonah Jackson) yielded at least four pressures to the duo alone.

That was a really nice victory. Few thoughts- 1) Mason and Jones are going to have some nice combined numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if neither hits 1000 yards. But they are both good running backs and both were instrumental in the victory. 2) I thought the Vikings coaching staff did a great job. Williams started 10/10 on passing but went 11/25 the rest of the way. On the Bears posts, someone pointed out that Williams early success was on scripted plays (teams generally script the first 15 plays) and Flores played a very base defense early. After he was out of his script, he struggled and the Vikings defense started doing more exotic packages and blitzes. I'm not sure how much those two things are related but, either way, the defense kept the Vikings in the game until the offense showed up. And KOC made things simpler for McCarthy until he got going. He didn't keep banging his head against the wall like he did in the Rams playoff loss. Really good to see that. 3) Special teams were really amazing last night. Blocked punt, 59-yarder, Price looks legit. Wright is still scary as a punter but huge night for the ST. 4) Lastly, I thought the interior OL was pretty good. On one of Mason's long runs, the replay showed Jackson pushing the DL out and getting into a safety. On the Jones TD, the replay from the endzone shows Fries literally pancaking a Bear in the background. Once Darrisaw is back, the line is going to be really, really good. Even without him, McCarthy had some nice pockets in the 4th quarter.