Cap'n Piranha

I’ve been here all year buddy. Anytime you want to admit I was right to question the ability of this team to win in the playoffs you go right ahead. Those 6 games include the only 2 that matter—a start to finish loss to a not-good Giants team that got ROLLED the next week, and has been possibly the worst team in the NFL since then, and tonight’s utter throttling at the hands of a team that had scored 44 points in the last 3 games it took seriously. Keep thinking KOC is the answer, when all he’s proven is that he can beat a bunch of mediocre to bad teams, and then get lit up just about anytime he plays an actual championship-level team.

No, he’ll run backwards 12 yards after holding the ball for 5 seconds, and then take a sack. And maybe fumble. Much better. Oh, and just for fun—why did offensive genius Kevin O’Connell call a play with a checkdown on 4th and 8?

KOC is 1-5 in games played in the month of January (4 regular season, 2 playoff). He’s been outscored 173-108, which is more or less 29-18. I’ve been saying it for weeks—KOC has not yet proven he is an upper tier NFL HC (or OC for that matter), and it’s beyond time we stop assuming he is.

It starts with the inability to draft solid starters, let alone impact ones. It continues with not valuing draft picks, leaving the Vikings with an old roster (oldest team in the NFL by weighted snap) and no real way to get younger until 2026–when either McCarthy and Turner have become busts, or you're getting ready to pay them a combined $80M a year. It ends with all the chips on McCarthy to be better than Darnold, or at least better when it counts, sometime in the next 2 years. If it doesn’t happen by then, either Kwesi needs to figure out how to draft or the window is closed. There’s possibility to compete next year—another good FA class, minimal to no regression from the current roster, and the right guy in round 1, and we will have a shot. The money in FA will need to be spent well, because right now, I think the roster needs 3 CB, 2 S, at least 1 DL, 1 RB, and 3 IOL. It will be tough to get 10 quality players for $80M or so—it took almost $37M to get Greenard/AVG/Cashman.

Penn State should no longer have a football program after what they allowed to happen for decades.

This is why more people should be fans of Notre Dame--ND consistently graduates over 90% of football players (if you exclude athletes who transfer out/go pro early, it raises to 99ish%). Furthermore, in order to graduate from Notre Dame, every student (including athletes) must pass calculus. On top of that, in order to get a 5th year of eligibility, an ND athlete must have earned their undergrad degree, and be pursuing an advanced degree. There are only a handful of schools actually trying to live up to the student part of student-athlete, and no one (at least in football) is anywhere near as successful at ND.

Bears asking to talk to Mike McCarthy. Reaction 1–what in the name of all that is holy is wrong with the “brain” trust in Chicago? Reaction 2–please please please let the Bears hire McCarthy.

It’s been a good year, but it’s pretty clear that this is a good-not-great team that lucked its way into a favorable schedule. The Vikings only played 4 playoff teams all year (6 games) and went 3-3. The three wins came against Houston, who finished with a 0 point differential, and is widely viewed as the weakest team in the playoffs, and the Packers, who only had two wins against a playoff team—the aforementioned Texans, and the Rams in a game that neither Nucua or Kupp played in. Even in the 9 game win streak, 8 of the victories were against non-playoff teams, and non-playoff teams to the point that only one of those 8 teams (the Falcons) was playing a meaningful game today. That said—there’s no reason we can’t turn into the Giants or the Packers, and get hot in the playoffs and win the Super Bowl out of nowhere. But it sure seems like Detroit provided a pretty good blueprint to beat us tonight—continue to pound away in the run game on offense, and pressure Darnold on every single snap on defense. I feel reasonably confident about beating the Rams, because I don’t think they can do the former (although the last time we played in LA after playing Detroit, it did not go well). However, both Philly and obviously Detroit are pretty well equipped to execute the Vikings-beating strategies, so I’m not super high on our chances to beat either, much less both in consecutive weeks. Given that, I think we should all be cheering very hard for Washington next week, and Green Bay the next two.

Yup, definitely my mistake. I missed the tiny line on NFL.com where it said the procedures following were for intra-division tiebreakers.

True, but this isn’t a game thread, so my understanding is it’s allowed.

We do not. Have not beat them head to head, and the next tie-breaker is divisional record. Philly is 3-0, we’re 3-1. So if Philly wins out, we cannot win a tiebreak against them. Even if they lose a divisional game, the next one is common opponents—we have 5 opponents in common with 6 games for each team (we have 2 against GB, they have 2 against NYG), so we would need them to lose a week 18 game against the NYG 4th string QB potentially to win that tiebreak. Then it’s conference opponents, where we have each lost to 2 conference opponents, so no tiebreak for us there. After that it’s strength of victory, where Philly currently has the advantage over us—maybe that changes if we win 2 of 3 against our slate compared to ours, but I don’t know. And of course all of this is meaningless if we don’t win the North. So long story short, unless Philly loses at least one of their final three games (@Was, Dal, NYG) there is no possibility for the one seed.

Which in no way means they will be willing to spend $100M or more a year every year over revenue. Do that for a decade, and I bet they’re not the second-richest anymore.

#15 is not a small market in the grand scheme of the total United States. It is in the grand scheme of United States metro areas with professional sports franchises. Especially when you consider that the 3 largest areas each have multiple teams, and the divided markets are still larger the the Twins market. The Twins aren’t small like Milwaukee, or Oakland was. But they are small in comparison to NY, LA, Bos, Phi, ATL, etc. To pretend that the Twins will ever be able to compete financially with those markets in a league that to a substantial degree eschews national revenue splits is foolish. The only way the Twins go toe-to-toe financially is if one of the 30 or so richest people in the country buy the team—neither Ishbia is on that list.

As I understand it, almost every team in the NBA pays some amount of luxury tax, so that’s not exactly the badge of honor you might think it is. We should also consider whether or not that luxury tax payment resulted in defecit spending—if the NBA’s revenue generation and distribution models are better and flatter, then perhaps the Ishbias are simply spending to what revenues allow—which is precisely what numerous posters are vilifying the “cheap” Pohlads for. It should also be noted that all this spending resulted in a 6 seed and first round sweep last year, and currently an 8 seed and trip to the play-in this year.

Or the Pohlads rightsized their investment right when they lost about $50M in annual revenue in only 2 years.

The team whose payroll the Twins can never ever ever match, no matter who owns the team, beat the team whose payroll the Twins can never ever match, no matter who owns the team.

In 2019, when they signed Nelson Cruz, and won 103 games. In 2020, when they traded for Kenta Maeda, and signed Josh Donaldson. In 2021, when they traded multiple high-level prospects for Mahle and Jorge Lopez. In 2022, when they signed Carlos Correa, and traded a recent first round pick for Sonny Gray In 2023, when they signed Correa again, and traded for Pablo Lopez, then extended him.

The point I’m making is that they would not have even been in line for a 1 seed, or in the NFCCG were it not for the culture he’s instilled. And if keeping that culture thriving requires some highly aggressive moves that result in less than desirable outcomes, then he made the right move. I don’t think aggressiveness is a switch that can be turned on or off—it’s why the Vikings offense is so mercurial, scoring 42 on Atlanta only weeks after scoring 12 on JAX. The Vikings offense doesn’t seem to play with an edge, which is why it can get stuck in the doldrums so easily. Campbell clearly values and demands toughness and aggressiveness in his players, and as a good leader, he therefore demands it in himself as well. Not being aggressive would show a lack of conviction, and would erode the very foundation that has so quickly invigorated what had been one of the very worst franchises in all of sports.

Dan Campbell is so aggressive on 4th down because he cares strongly about building and maintaining a specific culture—a culture that emphasizes toughness and aggression. He would rather turn it over on downs on occasion—even if it means short fields for the opponent—in service of furthering that culture than do the “smart” thing and erode the culture. Since the Lions have gone from laughingstock to Super Bowl favorite in about 4 years, I think he’s right.

If I were forced to keep the current kickoff rules (I would prefer not to), I would change it so that each subsequent touchback, and each subsequent fair catch, costs the team 5 more yards of field position. So the first touchback puts the ball at the 25 yard line, the second puts it at the 30, then the 35. All touchbacks after the third put the ball at the 40. The first fair catch puts the ball at the 25, then 20, 15, and 10 going forward. This incents kicking teams to keep the ball out of the end zone, and returning teams to actually attempt returns.

Reaction caveat—couldn’t see the game, so I’m going off the stats and play-by-play. The Positives; Another win—it’s essentially impossible for this team to miss the playoffs now (if I’m doing my math right, 1 more Vikings win/Rams loss, or 2 more Wash losses, and the Vikes are in). The offense finally had the kind of game I’ve wanted them to have for almost 3 years now. Perhaps I’m forgetting a game, but I think this was the highest scoring output of the KOC era. Whatever was slowing Addison down to start the year seems to be in the rear view. If he continues to play like this, there’s not a lot of teams with enough players in the secondary to slow us down. The Negatives Now that the offense is finally starting to come around, the defense seems to be having issues. Almost 500 yards to the Falcons today; I get they have a lot of weapons, but that’s still an unconscionable amount of yards to give up. The loss drops the Falcons below .500 and out of the playoff picture. That means the Vikings have played only 4 teams with winning records, and 3 currently in the playoffs, with records of 2-2 and 2-1 against those teams. The 11-2 record is built mainly on beating bad to terrible teams, so playing 3 winning playoff teams in the last 3 weeks will be telling, in my opinion—finishing with 14 or 15 wins will go a long way towards making me feel better about our chances in the playoffs. Overall, I’m feeling optimistic, and hopeful this can be a building block win.

It all depends on your view of the team. If you think the team can win 95 games, the answer is trade neither. If you think the team will win 75 games, the answer is trade both. If you think somewhere in between, the answer is wait until the trade deadline, or wait to be blown away by the offer.

Always possible the Niners trade Purdy to one of the teams ahead of them in the draft pecking order. If the Niners have one of the 10 worst records, they could theoretically have 3 top 40 picks, which would probably be enough to get you anywhere you want to go in this draft, assuming they don't think they can just sit back and wait for Sanders/Ward.

I'm waiting for the first NFL team to decide that the path forward is to draft a new QB in the mid-rounds every third year, develop him into at least a serviceable starter (or hopefully a star), and trade the previous QB for additional draft compensation. The Niners seem like one of the few teams that might actually decide to do that.

Riley Leonard from ND could surprise some people IF he goes to the right spot. Solid ground game, OC who gives him quick, easy looks. He'd be an interesting pick for New England in the 4th or 5th, if they deliberately plan on building up their O-Line in earlier rounds.