Vikings Season Over- My Thoughts

I believe, like my brother Todd, that Coach Frazier deserves another season as head coach. However, unlike Todd I believe Offensive Coordinator Bill Musgrave deserves to stay as well.  D Coordinator needs to be gone.  Will I get my wish on this? Probably not, but I put it out there.  If Frazier is gone then Brian Billick is my first choice.

As far as how the season played out.  I am most disappointed with the way Peterson was used in the 3 game stretch from Carolina to Green Bay.  Seriously, what was our play calling about in those 3 games.  It's to bad he got injured at Baltimore, otherwise he would have been in the race for another rushing title this year.

I am equally disappointed that Ponder proved he was not up to the task. To me, the play out of Cassel was only marginally better and I believe the statistics back me up on that.  And like everyone else I have no clue what the deal with Freeman was all about.  I don't know what we should do about QB for next year.  I would prefer we go for a defensive player with our #1 draft pick rather than reaching for a QB..  It was clear to me this year that our #1 problem was our defense, not our QB play.  It will be interesting to see what our off season moves will be.

The biggest positive from the season has to be the play of Cordarrelle Patterson.  We got a bigger, stronger Percy Harvin.

   

Give AP The Rock! It's About Time

(Photo: Brace Hemmelgarn, USA TODAY Sports)

"68% Pass 32% rush on a day they were not shutting down Peterson. Peterson 18 carries for 106 yards. That was just absurd. He should of had 10 more carries, easily. Well there is always next week."

I wrote this two weeks ago when the Vikes played the Bears in Chicago.  Then last week Peterson had 210 on 21 carries versus Green Bay.  Once again I thought that was about 5-10 carries less than he should of had.

Finally this week we gave Peterson the Rock 31 times.  He went for 154 and 2 TD's and we beat the bears 21-14.  IT IS ABOUT TIME!!!

With Percy Harvin out for the season there is no reason why Peterson should't carry the ball on the order of the number snaps he did today.  The first game Percy was out versus the Lions Peterson carried the ball 27 times for 171 yards with 1TD and we won that game as well. Peterson is looking better than he ever has in his carrier and that's saying something.  The last seven games he has run well over 100 yards per game.  If Peterson can run at 5 yards or more per carry we've got to keep feeding him the ball. It makes no sense not to do it.

If it means that Ponder only attempts to throw the ball 21 times like he did in yesterday's game so be it.



 

Some Viking Blogging: Pondering Ponder

This is my first Vikings blog of 2012 and what a start to the season it has been.  Who would have thought the Vikes would have a 5-2 record at this point.  I know I sure didn't.  The Vikes got lucky to win their first game in overtime verses a poor Jacksonville team after giving up the lead on a late touchdown.  Then we lost to the Colts in Week 2 and it didn't look good.  But then we soundly beat the 49ers when a light went on in our Defense and since then our only loss was to Washington last week.  Ponder had a terrible game today but we won 21-14 thanks to a pick 6 by our Rookie Safety, some solid running by Adrian Peterson, and of coarse the play of Percy Harvin.

This season Ponder has really only had two games that were stinkers.  This game with only 58 yards passing with 2 INT's and at Detroit where he had just over 100 yards passing.  Sure he made a bad throw in Washington that went for 6, but as far as I'm concerned his second Int in Washington was on tight end Kyle Rudolph for jumping the gun on a play in which Peterson would have scored the touchdown that would have put us within a field goal of winning provided we got an on-side kick.

Ponder is going to have uneven performances just like every other young quarterback.  Personally I don't think he was getting that much time to throw in today's game especially in the 2nd Half.   Hopefully Ponder will bounce back verses Tampa on Thursday.