He has put together a very talented 53 man roster. The in game management and play calling were horrible the last couple years, but has been much improved this season. Clearly he was protecting T-Jack from himself, but it was still bad.

I totally agree.
Kudos to the entire front office, coaches and scouts!
Also in another post somewhere it was said that Favre in a sense let the rest of the team
know it was okay to believe in themselves.
Thanx Chilly!

Brian Murphy took over as special teams coach after Paul Ferraro left. Ferraro tried to turn Kluwe into a directional kicker instead of letting him do what he does best, kick it long and high. Murphy has instructed Kluwe to do just that. It has really paid off. A good indication of the success in the different coaching philosophies can be seen in the number of fair catches.

2005 – Kluwe’s first year – 14 fair catches
2006 – 21 fair catches
2007 – Ferraro is hired – 6 fair catches
2008 – 8 fair catches
2009 – Ferraro out and Murphy in – 8 through 8 games

The problem with us doing it through the draft is two things.

1. We are likely going to have the 32nd pick. :)

2. First round QB’s are hit or miss.

The key here is that we don’t need a Peyton Manning, or a Drew Brees to win with the talent we have on the field. We need a smart Quarterback first and foremost.

We could take a gamble in the draft, but then we are still going to need him to sit for a year or so to get used to the game at this level. Players like Matt Ryan don’t come along very often.

The Vikes simply do not have the luxury of drafting a QB and letting him ride the bench a few years until he gets it. We need a guy who gets it now, who simply hasn’t been put in the right position with a solid supporting cast.

His rating was higher last year and this year because he’s padded his stats in garbage time as a backup. Look at the games he started. If it was against a good team, he was horrible. If he faced one of the 10 worst secondaries, he seemed to do well, although he still didn’t manage his career high against the worst team ever. It’s ok that he threw 2 more TDs than INTs, but that is not spectacular. It’s a backup’s ratio, not a starter’s. He is simply not Donovan McNabb AT ALL.

Hes is a joke compare to a really NFL QB.
1. He can not read defense.
2. He can only operate on half of the field.
3. If they take out the roll out he can’t even function properly

You compare that to Joe the rookies Flacco, Matt the rookies Ryan, Mark the rookies sanchaez. do i need to list more. He is a joke. He will be a joke until he prove he can read defense. In the words of Steve Young he is making mistake of a high school QB. Jaws said the samething. I am not saying it. This does not mean he can’t be a good QB. He has lots of learning. It start now to hit the film room. He need to start learning the play book.

Part of my point is that it is indeed very difficult to separate a HC’s influence from his talent.

That said, I can name a few who had distinct influences over their talent levels:

• Josh McDaniels was expected to be coaching a losing team, especially after running Jay Cutler out of town and replacing him with Kyle Orton.
• Marvin Lewis has always gotten more out of his Bengals than they were thought capable of being because they were almost always TERRIBLE in at least one major way. Cedric Benson has gone from bust to NFL rushing leader.
• Coaches Harbaugh (BAL) and Ryan (NYJ) and Smith (ATL) recently had successful seasons with rookie QBs, and that’s no small feat. Smith’s team was rebuilt through FA, but that shouldn’t count against him if Chilly gets credit for big FA signings.
• MIA coach’s name escapes me, but nobody thought that the Dolphins would win last year.
• I think I’d rather have Ken Whisenhunt or Mike Tomlin, to name just 2 more.
• (that is enough to rule out Childress as a top 8/top 25% NFL HC.)
• Bill Belichick hasn’t had a strong RB or even much of a running game in his NE tenure. Wes Welker was a nobody before arriving in town, and nobody else made serious bids on Randy Moss who was considered to be washed up. Before the current receiving corps, they had a lot of ho-hum receivers and more of a system. Once different types of talent arrived, they seem to have adjusted their system.
• Bill Walsh (Joe Montana may have otherwise been an ok weak-armed QB elsewhere)
• Marv Levy’s Bills (rather than impose a system onto his very talented QB and force him to adjust to his system, they developed the K-Gun together, and Kelly ended up calling most of his own plays) were always overachievers.
• Denny Green didn’t have a defense in his best W-L seasons, and his decision to take a knee rather than throw downfield in 1998 negatively influenced the team despite the (offensive) talent level. Before that, he had run a QB carousel (again, without a real defense) and still managed to contend for the division title and beyond. Other coaches’ careers came and went with new QBs.

• In 2001, Denny Green led the Vikings to an 11-5 season. The Vikings were not among the highest payrolls (22nd). He was fired the following year for having a losing record with the very lowest payroll (this also highlights what a good job Tice did, given what little he had to work with other than Culpepper and Moss). When Chilly led the 2006 team to a 6-10 record (following a winning season), he had the 2nd highest payroll. When Chilly led last year’s team to a 10-7 one-and-done year, he had the benefit of the 3rd highest payroll. Of course, the Vikings were not the 3rd or 4th or even 5th best team in the NFL last year, unfortunately.
• The Ravens were a playoff team last year despite the 31st payroll.
• The Patriots won 11 games last year in a tough division with the 30th payroll.
• The Falcons were a playoff team with the 25th ranked payroll.
• Gruden and the Bucs had a winning record with the 23rd ranked payroll in 2008.
• The Colts were a 12-4 playoff team despite the 29th payroll in 2008.
• The Eagles were a playoff winner with the 21st payroll in 2008.
• The Chargers were a playoff team with the 19th payroll in 2008.
• The Carolina Panthers were a division-winning playoff team in 2008 with the 17th payroll.
• Washington had an 8-8 (average) record with the 18th (below average) payroll.
• Houston had an 8-8 (average) record with the 22nd (below average) payroll.
• Denver had an 8-8 record with the 27th (below average) payroll.
• Miami was a division winning playoff team with the 15th payroll.
• The Giants won 12 games in a tough division with the 14th payroll.
• The Steelers, Titans, and Cardinals ranked 6th, 7th, and 8th in payroll, respectively, and won more games than the Vikings.
• That’s a short list (16, or half the league) of teams that achieved more with less, and there are more, but

I already went through this in another post and I was waiting to see if there was someone out there who actually remembers what it is a coach is supposed to do.

It’s amazing Chili underachieves for 3 years, then after stacking a roster with pro-bowlers and a future hall-of-famer and suddenly he’s a brilliant coach. By this logic Chili could be a great personnel director, but it tells us very little about his coaching ability. Norv Turner would have just as much success with this roster as Chili… Dare I say it’s even possible Les Steckle could probably get to .500 with them.

But when a self-proclaimed QB guru and offensive coordinator with a philosophy of making the most out of small talents makes that many moves to NOT meet the objective, then questions should be asked. The worst thing was that those trades were not necessarily made to add talent as they were to get familiar faces (Holcomb, McMullen, and Hicks had worked with Chilly, Bollinger was a Wisconsin QB while either both Chilly and/or Bevell were there). It’s either that or Chilly had been around 3/4 of them quite a bit and STILL misgauged their talent level by a huge margin.

As soon as one sticks one’s head out of one’s Chilly bubble and examines similar moves that other coaches made, one will see a major difference: good coaches made trades to acquire talent first, sometimes passing over guys they’d worked with.

Dick Vermeil, for instance, wanted to bring QB Trent Green with him, and that turned out well. Not just Artis Hicks well, but Pro Bowl well. And that wasn’t the only move he made! He also brought in RB Priest Holmes and WR/KR Dante Hall (both went on to have Pro Bowl years, too!) and WR Eddie Kennison put up the best numbers of his career in a Chiefs uni after a brief retirement, too. Vermeil even inherited a worse team (7-9 in 2000) than Chilly did (9-7 in 2005).

Prior to that, Vermeil had led the Rams to a SB Championship (and really another appearance even though Mike Martz vultured the credit for that one) with a team that had busted on a high #1 draft choice (RB Lawrence Phillips), traded 2nd and 5th round picks for Marshall Faulk, brought in Kurt Warner as a castoff from at least 2 other teams, and suffered a season-ending injury to their free agent golden boy anointed starter, Trent Green. Vermeil’s first major move was to trade 4 draft picks to the Jets in order to draft T Orlando Pace first overall (cheaper than the Hutchinson move). In his 3rd draft with the Rams, he selected WR Torry Holt in the first round. (Do you think that Percy Harvin = Torry Holt? Or that Chester = Faulk?)

Jeff Fischer’s moves would make quite a story, too, and so would most quality head coaches’.

CT’s contract is up this year. He will be a free agent. Hard to trade a player with no contract.