Vikings have big hopes for McKinnon

[Eli]

Oh, man! I want some of what you're smoking!

[Texas Vike]

Oh, man! I want some of what you're smoking!

Pass it over here when you're done! Holy smokes, 75% we make a DEEP playoff run? That's some good herb.

[Crax]

I'm not real upset with the pick, but I was hoping we would take a CB there. McKinnon sounds like a project guy with potential, which is what someone like McGill would have been as well.

[mondry]

Pass it over here when you're done! Holy smokes, 75% we make a DEEP playoff run? That's some good herb.

We're the KC Chiefs this year, very talented team that was set up to fail by it's inept coaching staff, that's how you tie a rodger's less packers team and lose 4 other games in the last 60 seconds when you have a lead.

Let's not forget that Chiefs team went TWO AND FOURTEEN, 2-14!!!!! Before going 11-5 last year and making the playoffs. You guys don't think we can win 10 games when we won 5, tied another, and lost 4 in the last 60 seconds? I say again, we had LEADS near the very end of those games, with Ponder, with Musgrave, with Frazier, and with more holes.

The talent just keeps improving rapidly and now we have some real coaches who know defense and offense (zimmer and turner) and we have Teddy who will give us the best chance to win day 1 because he's that good. We've replaced Ponder, we replaced Musgrave and Frazier, and we filled most of those holes.

11-5, win the north, win a home playoff game, and go from there.

[Mothman]

We're the KC Chiefs this year, very talented team that was set up to fail by it's inept coaching staff...

I see this stated so much, and so matter-of-factly, that it's extremely frustrating. It doesn't even seem logical to me.

If they were "inept", how did they win 10 games and get a team to the playoffs in 2012? How did they get a 1-7 team to play above .500 football for the remainder of last season? How did they manage to field the 13th-ranked offense in the league despite their QB problems? I realize they made some mistakes (no timeout at a crucial moment near the end of the game at Chicago, not getting the ball to Patterson more early in the season, etc.) but inept? No way.

Is it not enough to simply say there was room for improvement? Do they have to be portrayed as bumbling incompetents?

Is it really necessary to constantly tear down the previous coaching staff to pump up the new one? Let's just appreciate the new staff based on their own merits.

[Webbfann]

I see this stated so much, and so matter-of-factly, that it's extremely frustrating. It doesn't even seem logical to me.

If they were "inept", how did they win 10 games and get a team to the playoffs in 2012? How did they get a 1-7 team to play above .500 football for the remainder of last season? How did they manage to field the 13th-ranked offense in the league despite their QB problems? I realize they made some mistakes (no timeout at a crucial moment near the end of the game at Chicago, not getting the ball to Patterson more early in the season, etc.) but inept? No way.

Is it not enough to simply say there was room for improvement? Do they have to be portrayed as bumbling incompetents?

Is it really necessary to constantly tear down the previous coaching staff to pump up the new one? Let's just appreciate the new staff based on their own merits.

Our considerable talent rose above the predictable coaching, that's how a 1-7 team finished above 500 for the last half. You may not like to hear it but our coaching was bad nonetheless. Very bad. You like to blame the players for lack of execution when we don't win, and you want to credit the coaches when we do.

[Mothman]

Our considerable talent rose above the predictable coaching, that's how a 1-7 team finished above 500 for the last half. You may not like to hear it but our coaching was bad nonetheless. Very bad. You like to blame the players for lack of execution when we don't win, and you want to credit the coaches when we do.

You're pretty bad at trying to re-state my views so perhaps you should just stick to expressing your own.

I like to blame the team when they lose and credit the team when they win, which actually makes sense, as opposed to the position you take above, which is akin to stating that coaching only matters when there's a negative outcome. I don't exclude the players because they're the people who actually play the games and I don't exclude the coaching staff because their choices, from game plans to teaching to in-game decisions, also influence the outcome of each game.

A statement like "Our considerable talent rose above the predictable coaching, that's how a 1-7 team finished above 500 for the last half" essentially says that coaching only matters when the team loses, which is a laughable position. Heck, let's take it the next logical step: if your view is accurate and the above .500 finish was a case of the players rising above the coaching then the 1-7 start must have been due to the players underachieving and failing to rise above the coaching. Logically, that puts the responsibility for the poor start back on the players. After all, if they were capable of stepping up and overcoming the supposedly inept coaching they were receiving, why didn't they do so sooner?

Was the 7 game improvement from 2011 to 2012 also due to nothing more than considerable talent rising above predictable coaching? If so, when does coaching actually influence positive outcomes or in your view, is it only reflected in negative outcomes? Where does this leave the new staff? Will they deserve any credit when the team wins or will they only deserve blame when it loses?

[PurpleMustReign]

I see this stated so much, and so matter-of-factly, that it's extremely frustrating. It doesn't even seem logical to me.

If they were "inept", how did they win 10 games and get a team to the playoffs in 2012? How did they get a 1-7 team to play above .500 football for the remainder of last season? How did they manage to field the 13th-ranked offense in the league despite their QB problems? I realize they made some mistakes (no timeout at a crucial moment near the end of the game at Chicago, not getting the ball to Patterson more early in the season, etc.) but inept? No way.

Is it not enough to simply say there was room for improvement? Do they have to be portrayed as bumbling incompetents?

Is it really necessary to constantly tear down the previous coaching staff to pump up the new one? Let's just appreciate the new staff based on their own merits.

Because they were forced into playing players with talent rather than "their guys". That's one part of it. Patterson, Rhodes, Cole, even Cassel were all riding the bench. Then all of a sudden, players got hurt, and the actual talent was forced to play. I know you are going to argue with this post, but to me it is no coincidence that when these players (and others) started playing, the team started winning.

[Rus]

I wonder how many Patriot fans are excited about Jimmy Garoppolo? Is McKinnon the heir apparent to Peterson? Is that what you're all excited about? Because I'm trying to imagine how, while the Vikings have Adrian Peterson on the team, anyone would be thrilled to see anyone else carry the ball.

That's part of the reason why they picked McKinnon and not one of the more established collegiate backs that the draftniks felt were better choices.

McKinnon was drafted almost exclusively for potential. The guy was a beast at the combine. He's more an investment than an intended replacement of AP. Third round is a perfectly suitable round for drafting a change of pace back - the Vikings drafted David Palmer in the second round back in 1994. He needs a year or two of practice and limited play to learn the position well enough to be a full time back, though. Unlike Gerhart, who was pretty polished and ready to carry a workload when he was drafted. A guy like Toby was going to be gone after his rookie contract all along as long as AP was still the starter. McKinnon, maybe not so much. And by the time he's ready to be a full time back, AP is going to be hitting the downside of his career. Running backs rarely make it past 30 and still perform at their best. No matter how cybernetic AP's knees are, those surgeries are going to catch up to him. Knees do not regenerate magically on their own.

As for Garoppolo, Patriot fans probably ARE excited about him. That organization has taken lesser talent and done quite well with it. Matt Cassel, for example. Garoppolo is smart and has a very quick release. Tom Brady made those two things work very well for him in the NFL. In an organization that isn't as quarterback friendly, Garoppolo is a camp body. Patriot fans know that, to an annoying degree.

[Mothman]

Because they were forced into playing players with talent rather than "their guys". That's one part of it. Patterson, Rhodes, Cole, even Cassel were all riding the bench. Then all of a sudden, players got hurt, and the actual talent was forced to play. I know you are going to argue with this post, but to me it is no coincidence that when these players (and others) started playing, the team started winning.

I consider the "their guys" theory pretty ridiculous so there's no point in even arguing with it.

[Texas Vike]

That's part of the reason why they picked McKinnon and not one of the more established collegiate backs that the draftniks felt were better choices.

McKinnon was drafted almost exclusively for potential. The guy was a beast at the combine. He's more an investment than an intended replacement of AP. Third round is a perfectly suitable round for drafting a change of pace back - the Vikings drafted David Palmer in the second round back in 1994. He needs a year or two of practice and limited play to learn the position well enough to be a full time back, though. Unlike Gerhart, who was pretty polished and ready to carry a workload when he was drafted. A guy like Toby was going to be gone after his rookie contract all along as long as AP was still the starter. McKinnon, maybe not so much. And by the time he's ready to be a full time back, AP is going to be hitting the downside of his career. Running backs rarely make it past 30 and still perform at their best. No matter how cybernetic AP's knees are, those surgeries are going to catch up to him. Knees do not regenerate magically on their own.

As for Garoppolo, Patriot fans probably ARE excited about him. That organization has taken lesser talent and done quite well with it. Matt Cassel, for example. Garoppolo is smart and has a very quick release. Tom Brady made those two things work very well for him in the NFL. In an organization that isn't as quarterback friendly, Garoppolo is a camp body. Patriot fans know that, to an annoying degree.

Solid post.

[Mothman]

Gotta admit, the whole ponder thing throws that statement right out of left field

Only if you think playing favorites was the only reason to start him... and it wasn't.

[Mothman]

Whatever the reasons, I believe that the personnel decisions about who to play was one of the biggest weaknesses of that coaching staff. They seemed stubbornly slow to make changes to who was on the field even when they were clearly struggling and when they did change we often found that there was in fact a better option who had been riding the pine. They waited too long to make changes in my opinion. If you recall, I didn't even want Frazier fired and figured we would go after some hot young coordinator who would only manage to be worse anyway. I really do like the hiring of Zimmer though, which is a better hire than I could have imagined, so I have changed my tune.

Given the stubborn consistency about personnel decisions (which can have value in the right circumstances too, so I don't mean to say that its always a negative or that it was a negative about Frazier and co., but it was a negative given our circumstances in my opinion) one has to wonder if the same things weren't going on with scheme, especially defensively. At some point it became obvious that our particular players in our particular scheme were producing a terrible result. There was not a lot of creativity to adjust to maybe find a way to fit what our players could do well. Perhaps the players were only capable of very little and the talent level left the coaching staff behind the 8 ball. The number of personnel moves made to improve the talent of the defense in the offseason by Zimmer and Spielman certainly could lend credence to that idea.

Perhaps another coach could have done better with that team last season, but nobody was going to the superbowl with that roster. Sure Frazier has weaknesses but he also has strengths. I think his particular weaknesses made for a bad combo with the Vikings last year and overall he had a poor coaching performance. Having said that, I'm sure there are teams who would have done better than they did last year had they had Coach Frazier instead of whoever was coaching their team, because he also has strengths. At the point that we were 1-7, a lot of coaches would not have been able to hold that team together and playing hard, despite being on a losing team and playing a dysfunctional scheme. Nobody is perfect and Frazier had significant strengths and weaknesses. Right now we are focused on Zimmer's strengths and they are exciting. In some ways they are just the areas where Frazier may have been weaker (scheme creativity, holding players accountable) but it remains to be seen what his weaknesses will be. Perhaps he will be terrible in game, ala Andy Reid. Perhaps his personality will make players quit following him should times get tough. I'm not saying this will be the case but who knows.

In the end. I don't find it necessary to bludgeon Frazier and co. to be optimistic that Zimmer/Turner and co. will be able to produce a real turn around. I do think this team will improve defensively in a big way with the transition to another scheme and the influx of talent designed to fit that scheme.

Excellent post. Thank you for that!

[Mothman]

.... and to in an effort to steer this thread back toward it's original topic, here's a link to a new PP article about McKinnon:

http://www.twincities.com/vikings/ci_25 ... his-sights

[mansquatch]

Jim, I agree with Mondry on this. However, I do not think you are out to lunch either: The offense has all the pieces to be successful... IF the QB play is competent. Cassel will be better than Ponder, I think that is safe to say, but will he be that much better? There is plenty of reason to be skeptical there. (As an aside, I'm wondering if we see Bridgewater start... He intrigues me, but it could be draft day hysteria...)

On the defensive side of the ball I think our DL is going to be excellent. However, why does anyone think the back 7 are going to be magnificent? Sure we've got some up and comers back there, but really the only proven player is Harrison Smith. Beyond that we are HOPING Zimmer can make these guys better. I think Zimmer is the guy to do it, but I'm not sure even the Zimmer Magic is going to fix it all by September, there just isn't a great deal of talent back there.

Still, we are gong to have a 4th place schedule and that will help. Also, as Mondry pointed out, we lost quite a few games in the 4th quarter last year. I have to think that under Zimmer that will get better, not worse. If they win those games that is a 10-11 win season. So it is certainly possible.

It is going to be a fun start to the season. Hopefully we are not just completely deflated by week 4 like we were last year.