Chilly, the KAO, and Two Minute Tommy Kramer

by MilCardFan on Oct 28, 2009 9:13 PM CDT Comment 17 comments

A couple things here. First, I think I'm warming to Brad Childress, and it's from a commercial on NFL Network. He talks about doing things right all the time, even when no one is looking. On to my point...

I HATED...I mean HATED 2006-2008 when it came to the Vikings offense, with the exception of Adrian Peterson. I really thought that the offense Childress brought in was the most unimaginative, bland, lifeless offense I had ever watched in my lifetime. Fast forward to this year, and the Minnesota Vikings offense is...kick ass. Yeah, you heard me, it IS a kick ass offense. Well, why?

The obvious answers are Adrian Peterson and Brett Favre, but it goes deeper than that. Let's look at the skill players the Vikings had from 06-08 and what they have now. Well, screw that, let's start with Favre and look what the Vikings had prior to 2009. Brad Johnson, Tarvaris Jackson, Kelly Holcomb, Tarvaris Jackson, Gus Frerotte, and then...say it with me...Tarvaris Jackson again. Johnson, Holcomb, and Gus were smart veteran QB's that just couldn't execute all the throws in the offense. Brad had a weak arm but knew the offense inside and out, Holcomb matched his weak arm with an uncanny inability to hit an open receiver, TJ has a cannon for an arm but is wildly inconsistent, and Gus, God Bless Him, was the closest thing to Tommy Kramer the younger kids will ever see. How do I describe Two Minute Tommy for the little ones?

He was sit on the edge of your seat exciting to facepalm ugly to watch, and then back again several times a game. He'd make a great throw and then throw three picks; he'd win a game in the last minute and then stand in front of a TV camera with a dip the size of a bathroom vanity in his lower lip and then say "aw shucks, we just took what the defense gave us today." Gus didn't have a flair for the game ending dramatics like TK did, but his game resembled Kramer's in the maddening, lovable, kick-a-puppy-he-makes-you-so-mad in a lot of ways. Why, when you compare Kramer's career to similar players over at pro-football-reference.com, two names pop up--Brad Johnson and...wait for it...GUS FREROTTE!!!

And a guy that's so inconsistent like Gus and TJ have been makes Chilly conservative in a Jim 'it's okay to punt' Tressel kind of way. Why? He knew he didn't have a QB that could overcome mistakes and play from behind, and his WR's weren't game changers and guys that could swing momentum in one play. Travis Taylor, Bobby Wade, Marcus Robinson, and Robert Ferguson are nothing but a bunch of...meh when it came to making big plays.

Enter Sidney Rice and Percy Harvin. In 2008, Sidney Rice was really starting to emerge late in the year, and made some clutch, move the chain catches late in the years...and then hurt his knee, pretty much wasting his sophomore season. He is healthy, and is becoming a force. Percy Harvin is explosive, and TE Visanthe Shiancoe is a threat.

Chilly has opened up the playbook because he finally has the weapons to run all the plays in all the down and distance combinations, and the results are tangible.

And if Favre does finally retire at the end of this season, I'll start the Tommy Kramer Comeback Petition.

This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.

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You Mean Rice Started to Emerge Late 2007 year?

Why Do People Question The Vikings' Status?

by UnBannedVikingholic on Oct 28, 2009 9:20 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

LOL

I would love to see Tommy come back and maybe finally put it all together! lol

A bird in the hand is worth about 10.99 at KFC and makes me lick my chops
Yummy!!!!!

by kdog69 on Oct 29, 2009 1:40 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Just say no to Tommy

Good God I hated watching him play. It was like watching Sibyl you never knew who the hell was coming out of the huddle. Not the game but the huddle! He would look good one play then like an epileptic getting tazered the next…

No, please no more Tommy

by Grime on Oct 29, 2009 8:09 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

LOL!

He would look good one play then like an epileptic getting tazered the next…

Dude, that was just wrong. Funny now, lol, but wrong.

Ah, ah,
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!
SKOL!

by DCPurple on Oct 31, 2009 12:59 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Do the right thing.

Like, cut your best wide-receiver on Christmas Eve, then say it was for his poor performance. When confronted with the stats pointing out he was your leading receiver take all the credit for his stats because your scheme put him in those positions. When no other receivers on your roster can step up and produce ANYTHING the rest of the season throw your players under the bus and declare your offense a “Kick Ass Offense.”

Another example of doing the right things is asking a veteran receiver that lead your team in catches for the last two season to take a pay cut if he wants to stay on the team. When he agrees to said pay cut, wait until the beginning of the season then cut him anyway.

Hey you know what, if you gave me all the best players in the NFL, I bet I could be a pretty good head coach too.

Sorry to be so negative, I’m actually softening on Chilly a little too, but I still think it’s way too early to, “crown his ass” to quote a wise and mentally stable old coach of ours.

I think the mark of a good coach is winning with the talent that you have and making your players better. If you have to sit around and wait for the front office and ownership to sign a bunch of pro-bowlers and future hall-of-famers, and get lucky in the draft, before you can accomplish anything, the coach isn’t really the one that should get the credit.

Fire Childress!

by dwarg on Oct 29, 2009 9:11 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

I'm not sure I can agree with that.

Albeit they did sign Jared Allen, Bret Favre and Berrian. So you have a point there. But I don’t think you could lcall Berrian a future hall of fame candidate. Ap, Williams wall, Harvin, Rice and to a lesser extant Shiancoe were all based off of good drafts and good reads on what he needed to make his team work.

I’m not sold on the build your team through the draft approach. I think you need a solid core that continues through the seasons and I think hiring aging talent (ala Washington) is a bad idea, but picking up good free agents is just smart football. If this was a Washington, or Dallas to a lesser extent I think your argument would carry more weight.

Personally, I think that Childress is excellent at his personel choices, and would make a great GM. Only issue I have with him is his play calling at times, and his ability to handle pressure situations. Oh and his great desire to think that a seven point lead is a green light to play prevent on defense and offense (yes that was a bit of a stretch but you know what I mean)

by Grime on Oct 29, 2009 10:54 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ap, Williams wall, Harvin, Rice and to a lesser extant Shiancoe were all based off of good drafts and good reads on what he needed to make his team work.

Shanko came from the Giants, and in his first year with the Vikes there were a lot of recriminations. He didn’t seem to get his routes, and had a bad case of the dropsies. Then, last year he seemed to put it all together and emerged as a great acquisition. He’s improving on that this year :)

The Williams Wall was a hold-over from the Tice era, one of the few.

by DCPurple on Oct 31, 2009 1:07 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I agree about those two personnel moves

They were pretty classless. But when you say ‘give me all the best players in the NFL, I bet I could be a pretty good head coach too" is stretching it. It’s not that I take issue with your inflated abilities to coach in the NFL, it’s the amount of talent that the Vikings have and how they got it, and this is my biggest beef with most anti-Chilly folks.

Yes, it starts with Wilf. Yes, Spielman and Studwell do a lot in terms of talent evaluation for free agency and the draft, but at the end of the day, Childress makes the final call, and by God, he’s had a lot more hits than misses when it comes to the draft and to free agent signings. To say he’s ‘waited around for the front office to sign a bunch of future hall of famers and pro-bowlers’ is sophistry. Yeah, they signed them, but Chilly identified areas that needed to be upgraded and figured out who would be the best players to get to make an upgrade. Isn’t it a coach’s job to make his roster as competitive as possible so he gives his team the greatest chance of success?

Actually, I give him a lot of credit for doing a 180 on TJ last year and playing Gus, which saved the season IMHO. And he took a HUGE gamble this year in going after Favre, and it’s paid off so far. Yeah, he could be a better game manager and play caller, you won’t get an argument from me there, but to give him no credit for the roster improvement is completely unfair.

"We're used to Favre-a-palooza now. We're engulfed in Favre-a-palooza. It's not even Favre-a-palooza anymore. He's family now."

--Vikings TE Visanthe Shiancoe, on Brett Favre

by MilCardFan on Oct 29, 2009 3:01 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Amen brotha!

by Grime on Oct 29, 2009 3:39 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Credit where it's due

First of all I’m not saying Chili should get no credit for the players brought in during his time here, only that there are others that deserve a lot more credit. Do you think the Vikings were the only team going after Jared Allen or Steve Hutchinson? Obviously not, because it’s a no brainer to go after players of that caliber. So it was up to our money people to get that done.

I fail to see the sophism in saying he’s waited around for the front office to sign a bunch of future hall of famers and pro-bowlers, when that is what the front office has done and before they did it I saw almost no ability to coach up his players or team. Only stubbornly stick to his KAO and watch his quarterbacks flounder. Don’t take my word for it go back and read what Brad Johnson said about Chili when he left here. Then find one other instance Johnson has spoken out against anyone?

A good coach puts in a scheme that maximizes his teams strengths and minimizes their weaknesses and week-to-week tweaks that scheme to do the opposite to their opponent.

As for his 180 on TJ… So you think it was a good idea to hand the starting job to TJack and coddle him like a pro-bowler through the pre-season then pull the plug on him after two games for the back up? Then give the starting job back to him at the end of the season over the guy that got us to the playoffs to begin with? Again, where’s the coaching there? How does that speak to his ability to coach the players he has, make them better, or even show a hint of consistency? His development of TJack has been an absolute joke and that was supposed to be one of his strong suits when he was hired. So we had to do the Favre dance this off-season AFTER doing the Rosenfels dance which lead to the Booty dance this week. mmmmm…. Booty dance…….

Where was I? Oh yes.

I’m not saying we need to punish Chili because we’ve all been the beneficiaries of better players over the course of his tenure. Only that coaching entails a lot more than going out and getting the best players, and outside of whatever his role in accomplishing those things has been, I have seen very little that would make me call him a good coach.

Based on the way his new fans are talking him up it sounds like Chili might make a great personnel director, but I’d still like to see some better coaching.

Now can we get back to how incredibly arrogant it is to shoot a commercial about yourself talking about how you always do the right thing all the time? What an ass.

Fire Childress!

by dwarg on Oct 29, 2009 5:33 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Fair Points

Your post just came across like a lot of others—Chilly gets absolutely no credit for anything, and all the blame for everything. As to the QB issue, you wrote:

As for his 180 on TJ… So you think it was a good idea to hand the starting job to TJack and coddle him like a pro-bowler through the pre-season then pull the plug on him after two games for the back up? Then give the starting job back to him at the end of the season over the guy that got us to the playoffs to begin with? Again, where’s the coaching there? How does that speak to his ability to coach the players he has, make them better, or even show a hint of consistency? His development of TJack has been an absolute joke and that was supposed to be one of his strong suits when he was hired. So we had to do the Favre dance this off-season AFTER doing the Rosenfels dance which lead to the Booty dance this week. mmmmm…. Booty dance…….

I don’t know that he was coddled like a Pro Bowler, but they could of put more pressure on him in terms of competition. Did he do the right thing when TJ wasn’t getting it done? Yes, he did. If the starter isn’t getting it done, you need to realize it and make a change before it’s too late. Did he do the right thing in keeping TJ the starter after Gus got healthy? Yeah, I think he did there, too. TJ threw 8 TD passes in 3 1/2 games; Gus threw 12 over the course of the rest of the season. You can make a legitimate argument for TJ there, at least I think so.

And yeah, TJ’s development has been a joke. No excuses or defense on that.

But I still liked the NFL Network bit, though.

"We're used to Favre-a-palooza now. We're engulfed in Favre-a-palooza. It's not even Favre-a-palooza anymore. He's family now."

--Vikings TE Visanthe Shiancoe, on Brett Favre

by MilCardFan on Oct 29, 2009 9:15 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Who is the Vikes QB coach

Maybe he needs to get canned…

by Grime on Oct 30, 2009 8:09 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Our points are the same...

..only our conclusions are different.

Your post just came across like a lot of others—Chilly gets absolutely no credit for anything, and all the blame for everything.

You’re opening statement from this fanpost is about how much you HATED (emphasis yours) Chili’s offense from ‘06 to ’08. You then conclude that it’s better now because we have better players. Then I’m a sophist for saying Chili did nothing with his offense until the front office signed a bunch of pro-bowlers and hall-of-famers, which is basically a restatement of your original point. It sounds like now that we’ve won a few games and the NFL network shot a self-serving promo piece on Childress you think he can do no wrong.

Did he do the right thing when TJ wasn’t getting it done? Yes, he did. If the starter isn’t getting it done, you need to realize it and make a change before it’s too late. Did he do the right thing in keeping TJ the starter after Gus got healthy? Yeah, I think he did there, too.

So did he also do the right thing trading for Sage, and then do the right thing playing footsie with Favre all off-season, and then bring him in after training camp after he said there was no chance he would do that? Is that another example of him doing the right thing all the time? I understand that in and of themselves each of these moves has a certain appeal, but I see no overarching strategy to any of them. Except bringing Favre in to bail his ass out of the mess he’s created (or at least done nothing to solve) in the time he’s been here.

The point of contention is this:

Yes, it starts with Wilf. Yes, Spielman and Studwell do a lot in terms of talent evaluation for free agency and the draft, but at the end of the day, Childress makes the final call…

No, at the end of the day the player and his agent make the call signing on the dotted line of the contract the team’s bean counters have drawn up. That’s where this team has excelled since Zygi took over and I give credit where it’s due. Childress has certainly made his contributions in the personnel department, but if you’re going to rate your coaches based on the personnel they have don’t be surprised when your team’s performance falls off a cliff when you run out of cap space, or an injury derails your season.

You want examples of good new coaches? Tony Sparano, took a 1-15 team to 11-5 in one year. Mike Singletary, took over a 2-5 team mid-season (that had finished 5-11 the year before) and went 5-4 the rest of that year and has them looking like a division winner this year—even while going through a QB change themselves. They didn’t wait around for great players to fall in their lap, they used the players they had, put in strategies to help them win, and inspired both players and assistant coaches with a winning mentality.

As I’ve said before, let’s see the season play-out. There will be plenty of coaching challenges before the season is done and we’ll see how Chili handles them. Then we can rate him as a coach and not as a personnel director.

Fire Childress!

by dwarg on Oct 30, 2009 9:20 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I feel that.

Which is why I wish we could Tony Dungy up here…

Man wished we’d kept him.

by Grime on Oct 30, 2009 3:58 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

"Lucky" In The Draft

I’ve read that a few times today, that the Vikes, more specifically, Childress, got “lucky” in the draft.

I’m not a huge Chilly fan, but last I recall we haven’t had the #1 overall pick in the draft in awhile. Several other teams/coaches passed over the players that Chilly was “lucky” to select, so maybe luck doesn’t have much to do with it at all.

by JasonAve6413 on Oct 29, 2009 12:51 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Better team than before

I’m with you Milcardfan. The talent on this team is much better at the skill positions. We gave up great picks for Jared Allen ( one was used by Baltimore to select Flacco) but who would say that wasn’t a good use of picks. We have drafted well in the last two years. This year is the one that counts. Free agency can be used but it is difficult to get a player that isn’t teetering on the edge of retirement for way to much money. Draft well and pay them on their next contract. Thats how you keep a team healthy for years.

For more on this method just study the New England draft strategy.

I will say this again. Spielman, head of player personnel for the Vikes, had a terrible time drafting a QB at Miami. T-Jax is another of his choices. This draft at quarterback is crucial for the Vikes and Childress. In all other aspects they have done a fine job. Hopefully, this is a year where they can find the right new guy at QB.

by lifelongvike on Oct 29, 2009 3:05 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs