Oct

13

Post Game Thoughts: The Vikings got lucky again to beat Detroit

Posted by The Jazzy One

October 13, 2008 |

Week 6:  Vikings 12, Lions 10 (Read the NFL.com recap here)

Ugh.   What a terrible game.   For the second straight week I was relieved that the Vikings won, but sickened that it took luck and a couple of bad calls by the refs to get it done.

 

The Defense Showed Up

Let’s start with the Defense, because they actually played well.   4 sacks by Kevin Williams puts him tied for 4th place in the NFL, and only 1 sack behind first place.  Jared Allen chimed in with his third for the year, and Charles Gordon got one, too.  Allen “forced” a safety… it was actually Detroit’s QB Dan Orlovsky that stepped out of bounds, but I think Allen would’ve had him anyway.  The defense only gave up 212 net yards, and they forced the Lions to punt 9 times.  (Nine Times).

The Vikings Offense is TERRIBLE

The stats make them look way better than they are.  Frerotte threw for 296 yards… the most any QB has ever thrown for a Childress coached team.  That looks good on paper, but the fact is, he got 166 of them on three plays…. a short throw to Berrian who made a couple good moves, got a couple good blocks, and turned it into 86 yards, a short pass to Bobby Wade that was turned into a big play for 46 yards due to good downfield blocking, and a dump off pass to Jimmy Kleinsasser, who apparently the Lions completely forgot about, because anytime Kleinsasser can go for 34 yards, there’s some kind of hole in the defense.  I know all those passes have to be counted, of course, but I can’t really say that Frerotte had much to do with them.  If you take away those 3 throws, he only had 130 yards passing.  He completed 18 of 33, which is about 54%.  He threw 1 TD and 1 interception.  That brings his totals for the year to 55% completion percentage, 3 TDs, 3 interceptions, 1 lost fumble.   I don’t know… I know I’m hard on the guy, but I just don’t see him as being this safe bet in at QB.  I have a hard time thinking T-Jack would be doing worse than 55% and a 1-1 TD/Int ratio, and T-Jack gives you some scrambling ability.

Speaking of the lack of scrambling… Gus got sacked 5 times.  The lions had 4 sacks in the previous 4 games.  Those can’t be placed completely on Gus, of course.  We pay our offensive line a TON of money to prevent stuff like that.  We also pay them to open holes for Adrian Peterson, which they did not.  We also pay them not to hold when AP or Taylor do make a big run.

Overall, our offense had 10 points against an 0-4 team.  Something has to change with the offense or else the Bears will kill us next week.

I have no idea how we have the 15th ranked offense in the NFL despite the fact that AP hasn’t had any monster games yet.  No clue at all.  When I watch the Vikings play, they seem so lost and unable to move the ball.

The Officials Help Us Again

The REAL MVPs for the Vikings were the officials.  Wow.  It was bad again.  Calvin Johnson made a great catch even though defenders were on him.  He turned to run and got SANDWICHED.  When he was on the ground, Ben Leber reached in and pulled the ball out, and a Viking grabbed it.  The officials did the right thing on the field by letting the play go, and the Lions coaching staff did the right thing by throwing the flag.  My nephew and I watched the multiple angles on TV, and we knew that it was going to be reversed.  Johnson’s knee was clearly on the ground when Leber grabbed the ball.  Apparently the officials didn’t want to go through the work of reversing the call, though, so they just let it stand.

Later in the game, Frerotte threw a deep pass to a covered Aundrae Allison to try to get the team into field goal range.  The pass was off target, but the refs must know that Frerotte is too smart of a veteran to throw a pass off target, so they threw a flag, assuming that there MUST have been interference.  There wasn’t, but it was helpful.  It set up the only consistent scorer on the team (Ryan Longwell) with a chance to win the game, which he did.

Childress is an idiot

In the third quarter, the Vikings were down 10-2 with an offense that didn’t seem to have any answers.  Berrian stepped up, though, and made a big play, turning a short pass into an 86 yard TD.  At that point, the Vikings were down 10-8, and everyone was sure they’d go for 2.  After all, if they got the two, they’d be tied, and if they didn’t get it, it didn’t really hurt them since a field goal would still put them ahead.

So Childress decides to play the element of surprise, maybe?  I really can’t think of any other reason that he wouldn’t have gone for 2 at that point.  He sends in the kicking team, and the Vikings are still down 10-9.  I’ll probably write more on this later today, because it’s so dumbfounding that it deserves it’s own article.

The Vikings have really changed my attitude this year.  I am usually quite the optimist.  If you read my early posts you’ll see that I always had a great outlook on things.  I’ve always been like that.  But I have lost all faith in any team that Childress puts on the field.  The only things that will give us a shot at winning this year are defensive scores, bad calls, or when Adrian finally has his 300 yard game.  There’s just not enough consistency in our offense that would let us ever rely on them.


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Kevin Klimack on October 13, 2008 9:37 pm

    You said it. Those officials screwed the Lions big time!

    Both teams have a whole lot of work to do if they want to be competitive. At least the Vikes are in the playoff hunt still.

    Have you heard anything about Sharper’s fine or suspension for the cheap shot on Calvin Johnson? Apparently it will be a suspension because someone heard that he wanted to hurt him.

  2. The Jazzy One on October 16, 2008 2:20 pm

    Hmm, nothing about a suspension has popped up on any of the Minnesota news feeds. I’ll watch for it.

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