Patriots @ Vikings Game Day Discussion Thread -- Week 2

[frosted]

I definitely see your point but you may have taken that line you highlighted a little more literally than I had intended. I see differences too but my point was that there were too many similar results, right down to the lack of execution and the lack of forced turnovers. To me, they looked more than capable of being that team that blows 4th quarter leads again. I suspect that's one of those things that's very much in the "eye of the beholder" though. Hopefully, they'll have plenty of 4th quarter leads this year and hopefully, they'll hold onto them.

You're right that they are a young team and that leads to some execution issues but that was part of my point. There was so much talk last year about all the games they would have won with Cassel instead of Ponder, about how the coaches were the main problem (not youth, not execution, not talent) and so on that I just hope this game drives home that a lot of that was just magical thinking. The team has to resolve it's talent issues, gain experience and grow into a better team. I think Zimmer has the right idea but solving the team's problems wasn't as simple as just benching Ponder and dumping the coaching staff. Most of the Vikes prior issues are still there, still visible, still problems Zimmer has to resolve. QB performance remains a big issue and the Vikes as a whole still look to me like a project that's going to take some time.

IMO, it's somewhere in between those two extremes. I think both coaching and talent had a negative impact on last season.

[yezzir]

Teddy should only play when he's ready. And only the Vikings will know when that is.

[tmscr]

The punt coverage was brutal today after doing so well last week. We lost the field position battle all day. We always seemed to be kicking/punting into the wind.

[Just Me]

The punt coverage was brutal today after doing so well last week. We lost the field position battle all day. We always seemed to be kicking/punting into the wind.

Well it seemed like we were doing *something* into the wind all day, that's for sure...

[Raptorman]

Ok. My take. The offense stunk it up. Cassel in particular. However, the defense actually played well. Even with the lack of sacks they held Brady to under 200 yards passing and one TD. The only other TD was the one yard after the interception. As far as I am concerned, that one is on Cassel. So after 2 games the Defense has essentially given up one TD at the end of drive. And that drive was 61 yards. That is the longest scoring drive they have given up so far. For 2 games the other teams have 3 drives over 50 yards, one for a TD and one for a FG and one turnover on downs. This is much better than last year.

Now, all we need is the offense to stop screwing up.

[DK Sweets]

Well it seemed like we were doing *something* into the wind all day, that's for sure...

[Just Me]

Glad you caught my meaning...

[Funkytown]

Does Mike Preifer get his suspension reduced to two games?

I assumed that when the Vikings said that they would consider reducing Preifer's three game suspension to two games if he completed sensitivity training (or whatever they call it) that it was almost a foregone conclusion that it would be a two game suspension. Now with the Switch Scandal ... I'm not so sure. It might be that the Vikings don't want to do anything right now that would ignite another distraction.

The way our special teams played today it would probably be a good thing if Preifer comes back now.

ESPN - Vikings to reinstate special teams coach Mike Priefer on Monday, 1 week earlier than expected

[PurpleKoolaid]

ESPN - Vikings to reinstate special teams coach Mike Priefer on Monday, 1 week earlier than expected

Good. Hopefully he can keeps his jokes, or motivation, or whatever he meant by saying what he said, to himself.

[mondry]

I agree with 95% of what you posted. I underlined that point that I wanted to disagree with. To me, the defense looked different (in a good way), and perhaps it should have given we only have 3 of of the same starters from last year on the team. I thought they played well overall. Rhodes has some more growing to do, but he is going to be good. Mark my words. He's not quite there yet, but he will be. Robinson, (in admittedly only 2 games of observation) appears to be back to his 'Rookie form' (of showing promise again, instead of just awful). Much of that may admittedly being switching him back to where he is better suited to play, but still...

Offensively, (to plagiarize Kapp) we were offensive. Defensively, I didn't see a team that was likely to lose 25% of their games in the final two minutes. I saw an effort that never quit, and sans their contributions, the drubbing we took at the hands of offensive and special teams miscues would have been much worse. They were not perfect, and they contributed to the loss, but I see them growing and improving.

I did not have the 'fear' when the Pats were on offense that I had when other teams were on offense last year. It's not that we cam't be scored on (clearly) but I feel we will improve to the top 10-15 in defense this year. Coming from #32, that is huge. Offensively, Cassel is a 'minor upgrade' over Ponder. I've always maintained that opinion. He is too inconsistent (as we all know) to be anything other than a stopgap.

I saw a team that still looks much different today than one year ago. And it's for the better. It's not perfect, and with aggressive defenses come big plays (both positively and negatively) so we are likely to get 'burned' on some plays in upcoming games. My confidence in this squad to protect a lead in the 4th quarter (assuming we can get one, that is) is much higher than last year. If we squeak out one more win of the next 3, and finish our first 5 games at 2-3, we'll be sitting pretty good in my estimation.

As far as execution issues: Of course we have issues. We have a very young team and we are getting better every game. Granted, the team ultimately put forth a losing effort, but "not much different today" - I gotta disagree.

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean by "not having fear" and I think it's because the coaching and scheme is fundamentally sound now. Like you said they can still get beat or still make mistakes but it's not because the safeties are playing 25 yards deep with 3 minutes left, only up by 6. With Frazier it was hopeless, you knew Green Bay with Rodgers wouldn't have to punt all game. Now I have no concerns that they aren't being put in the best position to succeed.

Cassel is what he is at this point, when he plays well he's serviceable, when he doesn't he's pretty bad. But when he's "on" or whatever you want to call it, that is when we have the best chance to win so you put him out there hoping for that. I'm not going to call for the guys head after 1 bad game playing his old team who happens to have a mastermind at HC who knew exactly how to attack him as well as having Adrian Peterson pretty much torpedo the team 2 days before a game.

It's important to remember it's a 17 week season and there's a lot of reason to believe the youth will continue to improve and gain experience as well as getting used to zimmer and turner's schemes. Even Frazier's team which started out absolutely terrible managed to pull it together towards the end of the season. I would put money us looking better than we did today in say, week 10 so any win like we had against the Rams just puts us ahead of the curve.

[Mothman]

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean by "not having fear" and I think it's because the coaching and scheme is fundamentally sound now. Like you said they can still get beat or still make mistakes but it's not because the safeties are playing 25 yards deep with 3 minutes left, only up by 6. With Frazier it was hopeless, you knew Green Bay with Rodgers wouldn't have to punt all game. Now I have no concerns that they aren't being put in the best position to succeed.

I lack that degree of faith in Zimmer's coaching ability, even though I like him and think he's a good coach. Man-to-Man coverage is every bit as exploitable as zone if it's not executed well and Brady and Edelman made that pretty clear yesterday.

What bothered me most about the defensive performance was the lack of pressure and the poor run defense. New England is a good running team but allowing 150 yards on the ground simply isn't getting it done on defense.

Cassel is what he is at this point, when he plays well he's serviceable, when he doesn't he's pretty bad. But when he's "on" or whatever you want to call it, that is when we have the best chance to win so you put him out there hoping for that.

Zimmer seems to agree or else he just doesn't think Bridgewater is ready to play but until we see Teddy, I'm not convinced Cassel gives them the best chance to win. Heck, if he delivers another performance like yesterday's I'd rather see Ponder get his shot under Norv than see more of Cassel when he's off. In the past two years I think the Vikes have only had two games with Ponder at QB where the team failed to score more than 14 points. In 8 Cassel starts, they already have 4! Granted, that's an overly simplistic way to look at it but the offense has struggled to score points in half of Cassel's starts now.

I'd love to see Bridgewater start the Falcons game.

It's important to remember it's a 17 week season and there's a lot of reason to believe the youth will continue to improve and gain experience as well as getting used to zimmer and turner's schemes. Even Frazier's team which started out absolutely terrible managed to pull it together towards the end of the season. I would put money us looking better than we did today in say, week 10 so any win like we had against the Rams just puts us ahead of the curve.

If they stay healthy enough, I think we'll see improvement over the course of the season too but yesterday's results speak for themselves. Between the Peterson situation, a blowout loss and some tough games ahead, we're now going to get a sense of how this coaching staff, and this year's Vikings team, responds to adversity. Maybe that's good?

[mondry]

I lack that degree of faith in Zimmer's coaching ability, even though I like him and think he's a good coach. Man-to-Man coverage is every bit as exploitable as zone if it's not executed well and Brady and Edelman made that pretty clear yesterday.

What bothered me most about the defensive performance was the lack of pressure and the poor run defense. New England is a good running team but allowing 150 yards on the ground simply isn't getting it done on defense.

The recipe for beating an elite QB has always been moving the chains, being efficient, putting up points, and ball control when you're on offense, unless you have an extremely talented / ELITE defense. We didn't get that yesterday and no we aren't an elite talented defense. In fact we pretty much got the opposite which is not moving the ball well and turning it over as many times as we did.

Every team's players make mistakes or fail to execute at times, even Seattle's defense got trounced last night, that's just football, there is no way to be perfect and dominate that hard so I think you're just way too tough on the players.

Forget about the players for a second and the execution or the talent, what about yesterday's game made you think "we would have been better off with Frazier?"

Zimmer seems to agree or else he just doesn't think Bridgewater is ready to play but until we see Teddy, I'm not convinced Cassel gives them the best chance to win. Heck, if he delivers another performance like yesterday's I'd rather see Ponder get his shot under Norv than see more of Cassel when he's off. In the past two years I think the Vikes have only had two games with Ponder at QB where the team failed to score more than 14 points. In 8 Cassel starts, they already have 4! Granted, that's an overly simplistic way to look at it but the offense has struggled to score points in half of Cassel's starts now.

I'd love to see Bridgewater start the Falcons game.

That's fair, I would like to see BW too but like I said, I'm not bailing on Cassel after one game against his old team with the AD scandal breaking out 2 days before the game. For Cassel I think it's always been about his consistency and how often you get good matt vs bad matt. Obviously I had hoped under Norv in a favorable system we would see more good matt than bad matt, but another stinker that bad in the next 1-2 games I think you gotta let Teddy take over and start thinking about his Era.

If they stay healthy enough, I think we'll see improvement over the course of the season too but yesterday's results speak for themselves. Between the Peterson situation, a blowout loss and some tough games ahead, we're now going to get a sense of how this coaching staff, and this year's Vikings team, responds to adversity. Maybe that's good?

It's definitely good for the young guys, in my opinion you always learn more after a loss than a blowout win like we had against the Rams. There should be plenty of tape the coaches can show the players and if they're as good as I think they are, they'll start to address the issues and begin working on fixing / improving / getting better at it.

There are three things to consider for this team this year though.

1. We knew going in the schedule would be pretty tough or we were at least facing a lot of good QB's.

2. As is the case with new coaches you get new strategies, schemes, tactics, philosophies, etc. Some of these guys have been playing the way Frazier wanted them to play (and I'm not knocking Frazier here, this is just the absolute truth of it, ANYTIME there is a coaching change and they don't use the exact same systems, they have to adapt to the new ones) so you can expect some growing pains.

3. The team is pretty young so even more reason to expect growing pains.

I know you know about these, as you've posted plenty of times that these very reasons are why you wouldn't predict better than an 8-8 record and I know you don't think they should be PERFECT by week 2! It'll take some time but again, I'm confident we'll get there.

[Just Me]

In the past two years I think the Vikes have only had two games with Ponder at QB where the team failed to score more than 14 points. In 8 Cassel starts, they already have 4! Granted, that's an overly simplistic way to look at it but the offense has struggled to score points in half of Cassel's starts now.

You already acknowledged this analysis was overly simplistic, but I still want to add some context:

(Source for 2013 NFL Defensive Stats - Yards given up per game)

Let's look at those 4 games:

1) - Road Game (Carolina Panthers on 10-13-13) the #2 Ranked Defense in the NFL in 2013. Second only to Seattle. Cassel's offense put up 10 points with a 74.1 Passer Rating. Not great, but considering Ponder's season average last year was 77.9, I'm not sure that he'd have performed much better against the #2 defense in the NFL.

2) - Road Game (Cincinnati Bengals on 12-22-13) the #3 Ranked Defense in the NFL in 2013. Cassel's Offense put up 14 points with a 32.6 passer rating. Pretty abysmal. I can hardly see where Ponder could have done much worse, but I don't want to underestimate him.

3) - Home Game (Detroit Lions on 12-29-13) the #16 Ranked defense in the NFL in 2013 (Basically Average). Cassel's offense puts up 14 points again (but we win this time) with a passer rating of 73.9.

4) - Home Game (New England Patriots on 9/14/14). (It's a little early to make the evaluation, but let's do it anyway) the [so far to date] #4 (Source here) defense in the NFL. Cassel's offense puts up 7 points against the #4 defense (thus far) with a passer rating of 39.1.


3 of his 4 'bad games' have been against top 4 defenses in the NFL. The one that wasn't was still in the upper half and we won that game. I'm not saying Cassel is the 'end-all' to quarterbacks. I'm still saying he is only marginally better than Ponder, but I still believe he is better. (in full disclosure - The Pats were #26 in Defense last year, and I don't think they will hold onto the #4 defensive ranking when they have to play teams other than the Vikings, so I probably shouldn't use that stat to make my point. - but it is what it is.)

Last year Ponder put up more than 14 points against:

1) Bears - #30 Defense
2) Browns - #9 Defense
3) Packers - #25 Defense
4) Cowboys - #32 Defense
5) Packers (again #25)

I left out Seattle (the #1 Defense) because Ponder's offense didn't score more than 30 (neither did Cassel, since they split the scores) So lets look at their respective passer ratings for that game, since both played:

Ponder: 53.0
Cassel: 52.7 (in much more limited action - but basically a 'wash')

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Cassel is facing the top defenses (with Detroit being his 'easiest' at #16) when he is scoring less than 14. Ponder's best defensive test was the #9 defense in which he put up 30 points. I'm just not seeing that as moving my position from Cassel being (albeit only slightly) a better option than Ponder. YMMV

[Mothman]

The recipe for beating an elite QB has always been moving the chains, being efficient, putting up points, and ball control when you're on offense, unless you have an extremely talented / ELITE defense. We didn't get that yesterday and no we aren't an elite talented defense. In fact we pretty much got the opposite which is not moving the ball well and turning it over as many times as we did.

Every team's players make mistakes or fail to execute at times, even Seattle's defense got trounced last night, that's just football, there is no way to be perfect and dominate that hard so I think you're just way too tough on the players.

I fail to see how stating that "allowing 150 yards on the ground simply isn't getting it done on defense" is being too tough on the players. I'm just stating the obvious. You can bet that Zimmer isn't happy with the run defense they played in that game. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, he said during his press conference yesterday that they needed to be better against the run.

Forget about the players for a second and the execution or the talent, what about yesterday's game made you think "we would have been better off with Frazier?"

Why are you quoting me saying something I didn't say (or type)? I didn't say they would have been better off with Frazier. I think they're in good hands with Mike Zimmer.

It's definitely good for the young guys, in my opinion you always learn more after a loss than a blowout win like we had against the Rams. There should be plenty of tape the coaches can show the players and if they're as good as I think they are, they'll start to address the issues and begin working on fixing / improving / getting better at it.

There are three things to consider for this team this year though.

1. We knew going in the schedule would be pretty tough or we were at least facing a lot of good QB's.

2. As is the case with new coaches you get new strategies, schemes, tactics, philosophies, etc. Some of these guys have been playing the way Frazier wanted them to play (and I'm not knocking Frazier here, this is just the absolute truth of it, ANYTIME there is a coaching change and they don't use the exact same systems, they have to adapt to the new ones) so you can expect some growing pains.

3. The team is pretty young so even more reason to expect growing pains.

I know you know about these, as you've posted plenty of times that these very reasons are why you wouldn't predict better than an 8-8 record and I know you don't think they should be PERFECT by week 2! It'll take some time but again, I'm confident we'll get there.

I realize there's always an adjustment period and I'm certainly not expecting perfection from Zimmer's team in week 2 but I do expect better than what we saw yesterday and I doubt I'm going out on a limb to suggest he expects better too.

[Mothman]

You already acknowledged this analysis was overly simplistic...

It was so simplistic that I think you're being kind to refer to it as analysis.

... but I still want to add some context:

(Source for 2013 NFL Defensive Stats - Yards given up per game)

Let's look at those 4 games:

1) - Road Game (Carolina Panthers on 10-13-13) the #2 Ranked Defense in the NFL in 2013. Second only to Seattle. Cassel's offense put up 10 points with a 74.1 Passer Rating. Not great, but considering Ponder's season average last year was 77.9, I'm not sure that he'd have performed much better against the #2 defense in the NFL.

2) - Road Game (Cincinnati Bengals on 12-22-13) the #3 Ranked Defense in the NFL in 2013. Cassel's Offense put up 14 points with a 32.6 passer rating. Pretty abysmal. I can hardly see where Ponder could have done much worse, but I don't want to underestimate him.

3) - Home Game (Detroit Lions on 12-29-13) the #16 Ranked defense in the NFL in 2013 (Basically Average). Cassel's offense puts up 14 points again (but we win this time) with a passer rating of 73.9.

4) - Home Game (New England Patriots on 9/14/14). (It's a little early to make the evaluation, but let's do it anyway) the [so far to date] #4 (Source here) defense in the NFL. Cassel's offense puts up 7 points against the #4 defense (thus far) with a passer rating of 39.1.


3 of his 4 'bad games' have been against top 4 defenses in the NFL. The one that wasn't was still in the upper half and we won that game. I'm not saying Cassel is the 'end-all' to quarterbacks. I'm still saying he is only marginally better than Ponder, but I still believe he is better. (in full disclosure - The Pats were #26 in Defense last year, and I don't think they will hold onto the #4 defensive ranking when they have to play teams other than the Vikings, so I probably shouldn't use that stat to make my point. - but it is what it is.)

Last year Ponder put up more than 14 points against:

1) Bears - #30 Defense
2) Browns - #9 Defense
3) Packers - #25 Defense
4) Cowboys - #32 Defense
5) Packers (again #25)

I left out Seattle (the #1 Defense) because Ponder's offense didn't score more than 30 (neither did Cassel, since they split the scores) So lets look at their respective passer ratings for that game, since both played:

Ponder: 53.0
Cassel: 52.7 (in much more limited action - but basically a 'wash')

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Cassel is facing the top defenses (with Detroit being his 'easiest' at #16) when he is scoring less than 14. Ponder's best defensive test was the #9 defense in which he put up 30 points. I'm just not seeing that as moving my position from Cassel being (albeit only slightly) a better option than Ponder. YMMV

Thanks for putting all of that together but you needn't have gone to so much trouble. I'm aware of the quality of the defenses Cassel faced in those 4 games but that doesn't make the low scoring totals much more palatable (to me anyway). I'm not putting them all on Cassel alone either, which is why my comment really was simplistic. I don't care at this point if Cassel and Ponder are equally good, equally bad, if Cassel is marginally better than Ponder, etc. I think we agree that being a little better than Ponder is hardly the standard we want set for the Vikings starter. My point was just that even with Ponder, who everyone agrees was not good enough to keep the starting job, the Vikings ended up with 14 or fewer points on the board at the end of a game less frequently than it's happening with Cassel. I want to see a QB and an offense that can actually put up 21+ points against those good defenses. That's why I said I'd love to see Bridgewater start the Falcons game. I'm ready to move on to a QB with a better chance to do that. Ponder belongs on the bench and I think Cassel belongs there too.