Ask A Vikings Fan!

Other than that, though, there are only two big notables: AP (obviously) and Harvin can be a decent option as a WR3 as well. Visanthe Shiancoe is a low TE1 option as he’s been more of a target for Ponder since he’s started, but I wouldn’t roll with him unless desperate. Michael Jenkins is an okay flex starter, but nothing special unless you’re in a 12-team PPR-flex team I don’t think.

I’m hoping we can get up to par with the rest of the division with a good draft or two as well. We have a lot of core talent, like you said, but the rest of the team is strongly lacking. This is especially in areas like the Offensive Line (while you think they might be good, they’ve actually REALLY sucked this year) and secondary. Secondary is weakness numero uno, as you pointed out, and then the O-LIne, which is really, really inconsistent. AP makes a lot of those plays by himself.

Anyways, as for your question about Ponder, I think he’s going to develop into a quality quarterback and has quite a bit of potential. Prior to monday night against the Packers, he had displayed some nice things through a lot of good characteristics; accuracy, quick decisions, poise, etc. He held his own against the Packers at home, and then went and beat the Panthers on the road next week. Obviously, things didn’t go so well this past week (ugh) but with such a high blitz % from the Pack’s D and terrible blocking I don’t blame him for the pedestrian game. Ponder is also a lot more athletic than people give him credit for, and he can move in the pocket. He’s shown a lot of good things thus far, now it’s just putting it all together. His future is much brighter than any other Vikings QB has had in recent memory, with one exception maybe being our backup Joe Webb at the end of last season.

Strengths: Obviously, the Vikings have a pretty potent rushing attack headed by AP and a decent run-blocking game. We have some decent weapons in the passing game with Shiancoe and Harvin, and with Christian Ponder in the game our passing offense looks better than it has (when Christian Ponder has time to throw…I’ll get more on to that, later.) Our pass rush is the strength of our defense, no question, and our run defense is pretty decent as well. That’s about it though…

Weaknesses: Man, I could write pages about this season. Inconsistencies have plagued this team since Game 1, and it’s not looking good for the rest of the season. Our offensive line’s pass blocking is absolutely horrendous at times, which doesn’t make me very optimistic for Sunday’s game. Our pass defense is easily the biggest weakness on our team. We allow huge passes, short and deep, and the corners that do typically play well are either injury prone (no more Winfield/Ced’s surgically repaired knees), are in jail (Chris Cook), or just don’t have good talent/experience (the rest.) Our safeties and linebackers are no better. Jared Allen has more interceptions than half the members of our secondary, and I’ll leave it at that.

Gameplan for the Raiders: Stay balanced on offense. The Vikings are at their weakest on defense when they don’t know what’s coming at them. Run, Pass, Run, Pass is deadly when you’re going against the Vikings, especially considering their inability to cover a passing play (even moreso while they think it’s a run). If they can keep the Vikings defense on their toes, create long drives to keep AP off the field, and take deep shots, I think that would be the way to go. On defense, the big thing is stopping Adrian Peterson. If he goes, it would be easier to stop Ponder than vice versa.

Gameplan for the Vikings: I think that if the Vikings can play solid, ball control offense they have a shot. One area that Christian Ponder has shined in since taking over the starting job is converting third downs. He already has more third down conversions in 3 games (15) than McNabb did in 6 (14). If they can sustain drives with key passing plays and open up things for Adrian Peterson, this game could become a lot more competitive than they think. On defense, the Vikings should pass rush early and often in an effort to get Carson Palmer off rhythm and contain Bush as much as their run defense allows. Although it doesn’t sound like it would be a winning strategy, making Palmer beat the Vikings might be their best shot because of their pass rush.

Anyways, my two cents. Who’s next?!

E.g. our game against Miami with G.B. the following week.

They have the best RB in the league this season statistically and arguably in reality since DMC can’t stay healthy. They also have a great run defense…those 2 things are our 2 biggest cruxes that cause us to lose typically. This may be one of those games where we will need to establish the pass to get the run game going but I still say we need to run the ball as much as possible.

We have lost our starting three corner backs.. One to injury this year, one is playing but poorly from an injury last year and the last one is dealing with some legal issues (who knew choking your girlfriend was illegal?). McFadden might be able to run all over us but if you let Palmer air it out he’ll look like an All Pro for sure.

So you think McFadden is going to play? Because i have him and his back up right now and I’m making some rough decisions..

Our secondary is torched week in and week out, and with the track team that the Raiders have at wide receiver in the dome I’m pretty worried. Our only real chance is by getting the pass rush going early and often, IMO.

Our LB’s kicked butt last year and they are falling apart this year… Just another side affect of sucking though I guess.. McNabb looks worse on film than he does on paper. It looks like he can compete tell you realize all of his passes are so terrible that it took everything the receiver had just to catch the ball in the first place. YAC was very low when he was tossing the rock. By the way if you want him you can have him, his chunky soup and his Mom. We’ll take a stale cracker and a chunk of road kill for him.

So how you all feeling about Al Davis? I know I have friends who are Raiders fans, and their feelings were mixed to say the least.

Our linebackers haven’t really been producing up to par with the rest of the defense (namely, the defensive line) and have blown huge holes in the passing game, also have lost some serious tackling ability that they’ve shown in previous seasons. Maybe it’s just the age of the linebackers, but I haven’t seen any improvement to be honest.

And McNabb…just sucks. Have you heard about the time that a Vikings fan ordered a McNabb at McDonalds and the cashier threw the food at his feet? Yeah, well if you get that joke, then you know what the problem is. :P

To give you the brief, in essence, the Vikings have wanted a stadium for around 10 years. Red McCombs, the previous owner of the Minnesota Vikings, didn’t want to spend his money on a new stadium, knowing that he would be leaving, so just kept the lease because the future didn’t concern him. This also had to do with the state of Minnesota procrastinating on getting a new stadium deal done as well.

Fast forward to the present, the stadium deal has a couple of problems. Around last spring, the Minnesota legislature (Mark Dayton is the governor) said that if the Vikings found a willing partner and paid for a third of the stadium’s overall cost, then they would be given a stadium. The Vikings have found a partner in an Arden Hills site, a suburb in Minnesota, and the 400-acre land deal was approved yesterday. The Vikings want the stadium to cost about 1.1 billion dollars, and have committed approximately 400 million dollars to the site. However, now that the Vikings have followed up on their end of the deal, the legislature has yet to do so. Namely, Kurt Zellers and Amy Koch are strongly apposed to the Vikings getting a new stadium because they don’t want to come up with ways to fund it. Supposedly, they would call a special session by Thanksgiving. However, it was recently announced that they won’t address the issue until the regular session opens in January, when the lease to the Metrodome expires. If there is no deal when the lease expires, the Vikings will be “franchise free agents”, although the state of Minnesota will likely be their primary destination.

While Los Angeles has been discussed as a possible solution to the stadium issue, a couple of things came up with the situation; A) The Vikings probably won’t be leaving Minnesota if they can’t get a stadium in Arden Hills done, because a new Minneapolis stadium would be the runner up, as it has also proposed a plan…
And B) Three California stadiums have been pronounced below-average for the NFL standard. The NFL would probably not approve of another until serious funding goes into fixation of the 3 that are already there.

Personally, I think a deal will get done. It’s just a matter of when. So there you go! A brief summarization of the stadium issue.

if the Raiders can shut down the run and force Ponder to win the game on his own, they have a better chance of winning. It’d be much harder to stop the Vikings by solely taking away their passing game when the running game is their strength. Similarly, I think that if the Vikings can keep the Raider offense off the field and score points, then they’ll win the game. I think this’ll be a very competitive game. And a good one! :)

Since our secondary has been decimated are only chance of you not just going ape wild with passes will be in keeping your QB hopping back there with our defensive line. Honestly though I’m playing two of your receivers in my fantasy leagues this week. That’s how sure I am you’ll be getting some yards through the air.

He stabilized a turbulent offense and his experience helped cover up a lot of otherwise glaring holes in our offense, mostly on the oline and receiving core. You guys probably wouldn’t know this but there was a quite a bit of tug and pull between Favre and Childress, Childress would call a play and Favre would change it at the line based on what he saw in the defense and sometimes would change the entire formation at the line. I have no doubt that we wouldn’t have made it to the NFCCG without Favre.

Then the ‘10 season started and we didn’t address any of our needs and our oline was plagued by injuries and poor play and basically got Favre hammered into the dirt and out of the league.

A lot of our problems stem from poor drafting. We tend to swing it out of the ballpark on our 1st and 2nd round picks but completely whiff on later rounds, which forces us to bring in not so great FAs who don’t solve the problem.

The Lions are legit. They’re slipping right now but they’re definitely a team to contend with and not underestimate.

The easiest way to stop AP is run up points on our laughable defense, forcing us to call pass plays to our mostly-laughable receiving core. AP carried the ball 14 times against GB on Monday night and was largely a non-factor aside from scoring our only touchdown. If they do give it to AP more, stack the right side of the box. Our runs to the right have statistically been for more yardage than to the left or up the gut, if you can take those away, it would go a ways to slowing AP down.

An oline protecting the QB? What a novel idea. I wish someone would tell that to our oline coach.

On the collapses, I have no idea. I don’t think anyone really does. They seem to have tapered off a bit since Ponder took the reins but I couldn’t pin point a definitive source, one way or the other.

What kinds of things has he been saying?

We can’t even hang with the big dogs of D like the Ravens, Steelers, San Fran, and Green Bay.

Vikes are killing themselves with penalties as well. Green Bay was going to pretty much kill us anyway but I think we had 90 yards of penalties in that game, and you just can’t allow that. So if you want a penalty tug of war I think you might get luckier than you think on this one.. :p

Especially because of how bad the Lions have looked as of late (as well as the fact that they only beat the Vikes by 3 last time with McNabb at QB…) A little more worried about the Bears. They look really good.