vikeinmontana wrote: ↑Thu Sep 30, 2021 9:37 am
StumpHunter wrote: ↑Thu Sep 30, 2021 8:04 am
He spent those picks on Hughes and Gladney? He wrote up the contracts that limited the ability to sign or keep veterans? What exactly is Rick's role with this team?
Let me try this again, because I wasn't obvious enough before. Zimmer is just unlucky and has only had a team that even came close to being good enough to compete for a SB once since he became HC. The Olines he has been given have all been terrible, he has been limited by play calling due to limitations of his QB, and recently his defenses haven't had the talent to stop teams. His defense did stop Seattle from scoring in the second half for a big win though, and he is clearly a coach of the year candidate. Sure he is no Bill Bellichek, but who are we going to get that is better?
Man, that is a take.
I respect your posts overall. You usually try and back up claims with research and in other cases are pretty objective. But I think you're starting to let your feelings of our QB situation really sway your thinking.
Zimmer is "unlucky"? Football is the ultimate TEAM game. They all need one another to be successful. A Cousins supporter could just as easily say he is "unlucky" to be playing for an old-school, defensive minded coach like Zimmer.
You say he is limited to his play calling because of his QB. How do you know that? Looking at last week, it appears that if we open the playbook a bit Cousins is more than capable. Couldn't a Cousins supporter say he's limited in what he does because of coaching and playcalling?
Our O-lines have been bad. Spielman is to blame. But so is Zimmer. Coaching in the NFL is hard. Coaches need a lot more than luck. They need the ability to coach up groups and always have them improving from one game to the next. It's not like every good team in the NFL has all-star offensive lines. Many do. Others have great coaching. Some have dominant defenses. Others have elite QB play. But when is all said and done, it's on the coach to use what he has to make the team most successful. Or they lose their job and become a coordinator on another team.
Bottom line is I'm far from a passionate Cousins supporter. I'm far from a passionate Zimmer supporter. I think they BOTH have strengths and weaknesses. But I'm not willing to throw one under the bus in favor of another. I want them both to perform to the best of their abilities. And through three games, from a fans perspective, (where we know far less about what is going on than we like to admit) I think Cousins is performing amazingly. Hoping he can continue and we keep getting better every week.
He doesn’t know that.
I’ve been wanting to post this, and I may start a new thread for it because it’s an important topic. It comes from Arif Hasan at The Athletic. It’s behind a paywall, so I’ll post an excerpt.
The Vikings’ win against Seattle might have cemented what fans have suspected would be the case for 2021 — that the Vikings are an offense-forward team that needs to be supported by its defense, not the other way around. The team is a long way away from what it was striving to be in 2018, when it signed Kirk Cousins — a team with a top-tier defense supported by an offense that does enough to win.
What might make this work is new offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak.
The offense is playing like one of the better ones in the NFL, and it looks very little like the offenses of the past two seasons that have defined the team and have kept hope alive for a competitive Vikings roster. Nevertheless, the offense is performing at a high level. The Vikings rank seventh in the NFL in expected points added per play and sixth in expected points added per passing dropback. They rank ninth in points per drive despite having the second-worst starting field position in the NFL, and Cousins ranks fourth in the NFL in passer rating. The offense seems to be rolling.
The Vikings have done this while shying away from the things Cousins has traditionally been good at. Their play-action rate is one of the lowest in the NFL, Cousins ranks second-to-last in deep ball rate and has thus far stayed away from the sideline more than ever. Their 30-point showing against the Seahawks was the fourth best among NFL teams in per-play efficiency by expected points in Week 3.
Hasan breaks down several plays in the article, something he’s very good at doing.
Unlike some on this board, I don’t claim to be an expert at the NFL. I also don’t cherry pick obscure, out-of-context stats to support a narrow-minded narrative that I refuse to set aside when faced with actual facts. For example, not more than a week ago, I said on this board that we don’t have a very good play caller — this article shows conclusively how wrong I was about that. Klint Kubiak appears to be the first OC we’ve had who actually understands how to play to Cousins’ strengths. As a result, Kirk is off to the best start of his career. I am perfectly happy to admit to being wrong about this opinion, and it’s far from the first time I’ve done so.
What I AM good at is searching out and finding the analyses of experts such as Hasan and using those to inform my opinion.
As for Rick Spielman, it’s completely ridiculous to say that Zimmer has no say in who’s drafted. The Vikings’ failures in recent drafts (Treadwell, Hughes, Gladney, et.al.) are on both of them, as are their successes (Cook, O’Neill, Jefferson). However, Zimmer’s week-to-week roster decisions are completely his responsibility. When you start Brashaud Breeland, the worst-rated PFF corner in the NFL with an overall grade of less than 30, and you fail to send out Cam Dantzler for a single snap against the Seahawks, you have to own that decision. Yet Zimmer refuses to do that. The NFL’s highest-rated cornerback for December 2020 has suddenly “lost his confidence,” as Zimmer asserts? Gets scratched from the active roster because he refuses to play special teams? I call bullish!t. Zimmer put Dantzler in for 16 snaps against the Cardinals when Breeland was ailing (Hopkinsitis, perhaps?), and he out-played Breeland by a mile. Then — zero snaps against Seattle, even though Metcalf was owning Breeland. Actually, anybody Breeland was covering owned Breeland.
I’d simply like Mike Zimmer to explain it. But he won’t.
Bottom line, and back to the topic at hand — Kirk Cousins is playing the best football of his career. I don’t give a damn what his won-lost record is. In his 10th season, Cousins is somehow elevating his game, and I for one am happy about it. The guy is balling. The stats bear it out, the eye test bears it out, the experts bear it out, his teammates bear it out, and even Mike Zimmer — historically no lover of Kirk Cousins — bears it out. I’ll go with all that over the opinions of a few haters.
