Vikings Need A Plan B at QB

[YikesVikes]

Full disclosure: I am a Bridge fan and was happy he feel to us.
With that said, we need to start preparing to replace Teddy. It should be done like a Drew Brees and Rivers situation. At this point I don't have faith that Teddy will ever be what we need him to be. I don't think it's the our terrible Oline. Even at his best he looks above average. I can't think of the last stellar game he has had. A few decent throws a game simply isn't enough to mortgage the potential of this team on. Draft a back up and if Bridge can't get it done. Move on by year 4.

[mosscarter]

yikesvikes is exactly what i think about this team. you are right a contingency plan needs to be in place. this kid has a weak arm, bad mechanics, zero confidence, and a dumb blank look on his face as if he is totally lost. if you consider any of these traits to be a franchise qb then please enlighten me.

[Raptorman]

yikesvikes is exactly what i think about this team. you are right a contingency plan needs to be in place. this kid has a weak arm, bad mechanics, zero confidence, and a dumb blank look on his face as if he is totally lost. if you consider any of these traits to be a franchise qb then please enlighten me.

Please let us know what your answer is. You make a lot of post's bashing the kid left and right. But as far as I can tell, unless I missed it, you have not put forth one idea as to who they could replace him with.

[Bigwehrm]

Heinecke at least has an arm that can go downfeld. That might be one place to start.

[mosscarter]

raptorman what are you talking about? how exactly would you replace a qb in the final stretch of the season? if you've actually read my previous posts, i've systematically stated how teddy has been horrible this entire year. and aside from 2 games, i'm right. so, i don't have a magic wand. my first plan would be to sign manning if he is available (but i don't think he will be). or, obviously sign or draft someone else. bridgewater clearly doesn't have it how much more incompetence will it take for people to realize? tune in thursday when we get murdered. palmer has close to 30, if not more than 30 passing td's this year over 3 times teddy.

[Raptorman]

raptorman what are you talking about? how exactly would you replace a qb in the final stretch of the season? if you've actually read my previous posts, i've systematically stated how teddy has been horrible this entire year. and aside from 2 games, i'm right. so, i don't have a magic wand. my first plan would be to sign manning if he is available (but i don't think he will be). or, obviously sign or draft someone else. bridgewater clearly doesn't have it how much more incompetence will it take for people to realize? tune in thursday when we get murdered. palmer has close to 30, if not more than 30 passing td's this year over 3 times teddy.

I'm not talking now. I am talking after the season is over. I see though, just draft someone other than Teddy.

[mosscarter]

but i don't think they will do that raptorman. i think they will continue to stick by teddy for at least another full year, which will set us back even further. peterson has hidden our qb's weaknesses for many years now and today is no different. he helped hide ponder's and he has tried with all his might to help hide teddy's too, but this is too much. our schedule down the stretch is too difficult to even compete with when you can't pass for over 200 yds a game.

[DK Sweets]

How many Teddy threads do we need?

[Mothman]

How many Teddy threads do we need?

This one is technically about a yet-to-be-named "Plan B" quarterback. If it just becomes another Bridgewater thread, I'll lock it or merge it or something.

[Just Me]

Which is why it has been a little maddening that the Vikings don't seem to be learning from the past. I'm still hopeful that Bridgewater can come out of this...whatever you want to call it: slump, doesn't have it, or whatever. But let's assume for my point, that Teddy never improves and we have to replace him a year from now. Can we please STOP putting all of our eggs in one basket and have a contingency plan for once?

Am I being unfair to the Vikings? Is Heinicke our back-up plan? Sure, he looked pretty good against 3rd stringers, but I'm assuming he is third string for a reason.

[Boon]

Sure, he looked pretty good against 3rd stringers, but I'm assuming he is third string for a reason.

Given how they're dealing with CP84, my money is on norv not liking something about him, which doesn't tell me much at all. In my opinion, Zimmer is putting way too much confidence in turner to make offensive decisions so he can focus on the defense. It's like a two headed head coach, except one of the heads is cancerous and needs to be removed for the other one to survive. It's that simple.

Here's a better explanation of my view on this subject. It's almost like the mcclown/manziel deal going on in Cleveland. You have a guy who has been on something like 9 teams in 11 years or so, can't remember exactly. Then you have the up and comer, who I'm convinced is despised by his head coach. You are literally gaining NOTHING by starting mccown. They decided to go with Austin davis on sunday because manziel lied about drinking, on his day off of all things. So today they had an empty stadium. They start him every three weeks against upper tier teams and it almost seems like they want him to fail. I don't get it. He is in a very bad situation.

Meanwhile in Minneapolis, Teddy on "paper" has the "guru" and his kid to bring him along. Last year he was thrown into the starting job in a trial by fire. But the facade covering all these shenanigans is that the media, talking heads, however you want to spin it, are basically clinging on to the notion that the Vikings were a perfect fit for teddy ever since he was drafted. That norv turner is the quarterback whisperer and teddy couldn't possibly have landed with a better organization. They might have a point with zimmer leading the show seeing as his players love him, but as I've said before, and many others have as well, our head coach is SEEMINGLY taking a hands off approach on offense and letting norv do his thing.

Big mistake.

Teddy finished strong last season. For 4 games. Kinda. It's pretty deceiving though. The one thing I can't stand is when people focus on one stat to basically try to justify whether or not a player is doing ok. Sure he had a nice completion percentage but the rest of his stats were lackluster. Lets take his first game vs new Orleans where he came in in the second qtr I believe. He was 12-20 for 150 yards. But take away that 41 yard check down to asiata and he's 11-19 for 109 yards in 3 quarters. Mind you that was his first game and his emotions were probably haywire, but the point is not to show anything other than the focus on his completion % has been disguising a lot of his shortcomings up until recently. Now people are starting to see that the completion % shield has a hole right in the center that makes the person behind it vulnerable.

Jets game later in the year. 19-27 for 309. Yeah that's cool. 70% completion! wow! Wait a minute, take away that bubble screen to Jwright and he's 18-26 for 222. That is rather pedestrian. Players make plays, I know, but lets be real here. You see a check engine light come on in your car. An old school mechanic will kick the tires, try to listen for things, use his prowess to try to come up with a solution without digging too much into it. He'll find something broken, assume that's what caused the light to trigger, and be ok with his work afterwards. This is the media. And to an even bigger extent, Turner. Here's the flip side though. Tech saavy kid comes along, plugs in a little device that can send codes to his smart phone with detailed information about what's really going on under that hood, and the old school dude doesn't want any part of it.

Teddy is in his second season. We are so used to .........cough....you get what I'm about to say, that his mediocrity was being put on a pedestal because we had all become accustomed to seeing failure wearing a #7. Its still mediocrity. That mediocrity has been slowly falling backwards and now it's becoming failure. I'm not in the camp of bailing out on a qb so fast, but I'm also not in the camp of just handing someone the job because they were a first rounder. Screw that. But NOTHING so far has had me believing that this kid is worth banking the franchise on. Nothing. You don't bank an nfl franchise on character. You don't bet all your rent money on a horse that has lost 12 straight races. And what is even WORSE is the notion, that to recover from a QB blunder, you need to draft another first rounder. Lets look at this sideways for a second....

Heineke played against third stringers in the preseason. He did pretty good against third stringers. Everyone focuses on that last part. Here's what I don't get. If someone is a third stringer on defense, that has nothing to do with the quarterbacks arm strength or decision making. It has nothing to do with how well he throws a deep ball. If the ball is on target it's on target, if he makes a bad decision he makes a bad decision. If he makes a bad pass, it's a bad pass. It doesn't matter if its ray lewis or joe schmoe on the other side defending it, whether or not its picked off, defended or it's caught, if he shouldn't have thrown it, he just flat out shouldn't have thrown it. The fact that he made a horrible throw into coverage and it got picked off is on HIM, on the surface. It's not like playing against third stringers makes his arm stronger or makes him more accurate. He's going to have the same skillset regardless who he's playing against, the outcome is what is dependent on the competition.

Now I'm not talking about skills on the third string players. I don't want people to get it twisted. Of course the skills on third stringers are not up to par with starters, that's not what I mean. But if a quarterback is inaccurate on deep balls, he is going to be inaccurate on deep balls vs good or bad teams, that's my point. It really doesn't matter. So if he SEEMS accurate vs third stringers, even in tight coverage, which he was, he will be accurate vs starters. Now whether or not he can run an offense is a different question. But you won't find that out having him hold a clipboard in street clothes.

I would much rather play someone on my roster, to see if we have something there and avoid wasting a draft pick reaching on something that has been in front of my face the whole time, than to just discard it and not have even given it a chance.

[mosscarter]

excellent post boon. you pointed out how several of his statistically solid games were masked by 1 or 2 long plays. i would also mention the green bay game this year and the rudolph td. take that out of the equation and then what? teddy is simply getting worse each week and zimmer doesn't even appear to want to make a change. that is what scares me. i would also throw into the equation how weak the tail end of our schedule was last year and the start of this year as well. people point out teddy's winning record, well the vast majority of those wins came against bad teams. i suspect next week will be our third loss in a row (barring a miracle).

[Raptorman]

Yup. Lets pick out plays now to make him even worse. Let's see how that works. Rodgers against Detroit the other day. 24/36 273 yards 2 td's 1 int. But lets take out that 61 yard hail mary for a td and it becomes a pedestrian 23/35 212 1 td 1 int game. Or how about Rodgers against the Chargers. 16/29 255 yards 2 Td. Take out that one throw of 46 yards and it goes to 15/28 209 yards.

I know, lets do it for Peterson. Oakland game 26 att 203 yard 1 td. Let's take out that 80 yard run. So thats 25 att 123 yards 0 tds.
Or how about against the Chargers. 20 for 126 2 tds. But take out that 43 yarder, it's 19 for 83 and 1 td.

Very pedestrian. Let's dump him.

When you start nit picking and taking out individual plays, you are just looking for more reasons to get rid of the guy.

[mosscarter]

the second you even tried to compare any stats between rodgers and bridgewater you lost me. i stopped reading. they are on two different planets. and i'm not sure why you would bring peterson into the equation at all; without him we are 4-8. russel wilson has as many td's in the past two weeks as teddy does all year. what game and or team are you watching? our quarterback is beyond terrible.

[Raptorman]

the second you even tried to compare any stats between rodgers and bridgewater you lost me. i stopped reading. they are on two different planets. and i'm not sure why you would bring peterson into the equation at all; without him we are 4-8. russel wilson has as many td's in the past two weeks as teddy does all year. what game and or team are you watching? our quarterback is beyond terrible.

I was not comparing him to Rodger's, I was showing how ridiculous it is to pick take his stats a pick one play out to make him look worse than what he already is. But apparently it's ok to do this with Bridgewater but not ok to do with the QB God of Rodgers or Peterson. If you take one or two plays out of most QB stats they become very pedestrian. That's the point. But I guess that was lost on you.