Seems like he thinks he is on the way out. Makes me wonder if we will draft a QB, trade for one, or Rosenfels becomes that man if Favre finally does pull the plug. Just like last off season, only time will tell.

Sounds to me like he is just trying to drum up some potential offers to maybe get a little more money on his next contract.

There are a few teams that would kick his tires. The general consensus among other coaches is that Chilly and Bevell are not the brightest bulbs in the league. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more than a few teams who thought they could get more out of Tjack than we have.

when our D was on the field and they would show the bench, Sage was always
right there with Brett going over the glossies not TJax.
Pride may be an issue here.

on your way out……Dont let the door hit ya, where the good lord split ya !!!

The main reason Jackson has not lit up the NFL is accuracy. It is a common issue for quarterbacks with cannon arms. The good news? Accuracy can be improved through practice. The way Sammy Baugh and Joe Montana would practice it would be to tie an old tire with rope to a tree limb. Swing the tire back and forth. Throw footballs through the tire. Every time I see an old clip of Joe Montana hitting Jerry Rice in stride on his way to the endzone, I think of that. The even better news is that Jackson’s accuracy has improved all along. As his accuracy improves, he can throw harder. That allows him to hit more receivers, because more receivers will be open for more of the time.

So what does Tarvaris Jackson need? More time practicing throwing the football. Ideally, he gets more throws in games, but that might not happen right away. Once he has that, he is going to be awesome.

What really sickens me is fans who say Jackson doesn’t have the intelligence to do his job. That is just garbage. Jackson is an intelliget person, and more than enough to do his job to perfection. Jackson knows the playbook. Reading defenses is what takes time. Remember, Brett Favre said that only after nine years in the league did he learn to read defenses.

One common mistake that people make is to assume that people who are quiet are not intelligent, while people who talk a lot are highly intelligent. It’s just not true. Consider talk show hosts. Some really are intelligent, but many are just talkers who often say incorrect things or make logically invalid arguments.

Tarvaris Jackson’s personality is pretty quiet. His quiet nature should not be confused with a lack of intelligence. If you ever listened to him talk during an interview you would know he is a smart guy who easily has the brains to do a great job.

Now what about leadership? A quarterback needs to be a leader. A leader needs to talk a lot in certain circumstances. Leadership is a skill that Jackson is getting better at. We saw that in his come-from-behind victory against the Giants in 2009, and in the never-say-die attitude he brought to the playoff game against the Eagles. Leadership is not something you pick up at a seminar. It’s a skill learned over time.

Yet, Jackson’s quiet nature is a tremendous asset to him. In clutch situations, remaining calm and focused can be highly important. Calm quarterbacks like Bart Starr and Joe Montana have lots of championships.

What about confidence? It’s something any football player needs. Jackson’s confidence is growing along with his playing ability. Once his accuracy improves another notch, and he starts making some great throws, his confidence will be there.

Here is a guy, Tarvaris Jackson, who has never said one negative word about the Vikings, fans, players, coaches, organization, or anything. We have no reason to think he has ever said anything like that. Even in that blog post.

Meanwhile, he has been criticized quite a lot by fans. Fans have a right to criticize players, and that’s fine. But it speaks to Jackson’s character and intangibles that he has taken all that criticism like a man.

It sometimes takes a long time to develop a quarterback. We put a lot of investment in Brad Johnson and Rich Gannon, and other teams got the benefit of our investment. We got very little out of all that time and money we invested in them. Now we have invested a lot of money and time in Jackson. If we allow Jackson to walk, it will be an incredible waste of our investment, but for some other lucky team in the NFL, they will get a quarterback who has not yet hit his prime, who has learned under Brett Favre, whose passer rating has improved every year, who runs a 4.6 40-yard dash, who has a cannon arm, and whose play has improved each and every single year. Lucky for the Browns or whoever, very unlucky for us if we lose Jackson.

The whole point of developing a quarterback is to eventually win the Super Bowl. Jackson can win games. Even at this early point in his career, he is 10-10 as a starter. Peyton Manning was 5-15 in his first 20 games.

The Vikings are built to win now. Not in a year or two. Now. The Vikings were the most talented team in the NFL in 2009, and only a lack of playoff experience and an injury here and there stopped them from going all the way.

No quarterback has ever started for a Super Bowl winning team in his first year with the team. If that precedent holds true, our only chance to win Super Bowl XLV is with Brett Favre, Tarvaris Jackson, or Sage Rosenfels. We should bring all three quarterbacks back for 2010.

Now this post comes along and says Jackson is hedging his bets. Well, I don’t blame him. If the Vikings do the stupid thing and don’t resign Jackson, he will need to find work elsewhere. Having a blog with a highlight film on it might help his chances in that case.

While it must be frustrating for Jackson and Rosenfels to sit on the sideline and watch Brett Favre, if the Vikings do the right thing and re-sign Jackson, that would mean both of them will have the chance to start in 2011. I feel for these guys, though. If you are in the NFL, you want to play. The 2011 season might not even happen, but we fans are hoping it will happen very much. If the 2011 season does not happen, it would mean Jackson would not have a chance to start again until age 29, but at least he would be paid in the 2010 season, and there is always the chance the 2011 season will happen. Furthermore, if Jackson keeps working hard, he will be even better at that point.

If Favre, Jackson, and Rosenfels all return, no team in the NFL will have a deeper quarterback position in 2010, and we would have two solid players for the long term. Jackson is really our quarterback of the future, and Rosenfels is likely to be our backup quarterback of the future. But nobody knows for sure.

I want Tarvaris Jackson in a Vikings uniform for his entire career. I want him to be given the opportunity to be the starter again, whether that is 2010, 2011, or 2012. I believe in him 100%, and have been cheering for him the whole time. I am disappointed in my fellow fans for booing him too much and not giving our young, highly talented quarterback a real chance to develop and excel with the Vikings. I believe, though, that fans are starting to turn in favor of Jackson. The trend is fans backing Jackson. With Jackson’s improved play, the positive trend will continue. I am optimistic that all this is going to work out great for the Vikings and Jackson.

I see a big future for Tarvaris Jackson, and I want him more than anyone else to be the Vikings’ quarterback of the future, even if Favre returns for one more year.

I see Jackson playing for the Vikings as our starter long into his later 30s, with the potential for multiple achievements like the Pro Bowl, and helping the Vikings win Super Bowls.

Keep the faith.

TJ needs Favre to retire. If Favre retired, that would seriously increase TJ’s chances of not only getting a job with the Vikings, but he could be a starter as well.
At this point, the only thing TJ can do is sit, and hope somebody offers him $Contract$.
 

T-Jack will never be the QB Chilly thought he was going to be. Jackson is a backup QB at best, he is inaccurate to say the least and has no presence in the pocket.. His best games came against team with terrible pass defenses.

If the Vikes were smart I keep him as a backup and seek a QB for the future possibly McNabb, he is on the black every year. It is getting as bad as the Favre drama.

“I’m really not sweating if Brett comes back, or not, because I’m a free agent.”

Lets say you are a salesperson under contract with your company. You are the #2 salesperson. Your contract is up this year but you can not do anything ( like go out for another job interview) until March 5, 2010. It doesn’t matter whether the #1 salesperson is retiring or not. Your responsibility is to sit back and wait for your employer to make you an offer. If it isn’t for enough money you can simply go out and test the market. If you get a better offer your current employer can match it.

As Tarvaris said. “I’m not sweating it because I’m a free agent”. I believe he could have phrased it differently but I think that is what he meant.

for all the great comments to my post. it’s great to see all the involvement by the Viking faithful. i hope that i didn’t come accross as questioning tj for his loyalty to the orginization. he has been a great Viking, and i really hope he continues his carreer with us. i support any and all players that put on the purple uniform, no matter who they are, or that they never turn out to be of any help. i appreciate the effort they put forth to make our team better. i just wanted to get some feedback from other Viking fans as how they would perceive his comments, and as always, you guys did not disappoint!
GO VIKES!!!

“If I am going to be a free agent and its clear I’m going to be a backup on my current team, I’m going to sign with them anyway and not even look for opportunities to start (and get a bigger contract probably) somewhere else”

I don’t understand why this is so confusing to you. Any young player at any position — not just Tarvaris Jackson, not just at quarterback — is gonna say that.

If he had said anything other than that, I would be stunned.

We’ve watched him from the beginning and if there’s one word to describe him, it’s ‘inconsistent’. One thing we haven’t had recently is the ability to watch him over a decent stretch to see if he’s actually progressed. I can’t see how, as Favre’s understudy, he couldn’t have become better in the past year. In fact, on the few plays he did have, he looked very Favre-like behind the center.

He’s had a chance to play behind, and talk to, a highly experienced QB who likely advised him on what sort of film to watch, and told T-Jack what he saw when he was looking at the defenses. These guys do watch tape together, and they do talk. The question is, how much did T-Jack pick up? How much attention was he paying and how well did he understand it? Can he translate that understanding into actually looking at a ‘live’ defense and reading it? Can he adjust plays on the fly to adapt to what the D is doing and take advantage of it’s weaknesses? Does he even understand what the weaknesses of various defensive forms, setups, and tactics are?

All of that is what we hope Tarvaris Jackson picked up this past year. Even if he didn’t master it, I’d like to know if at least he understood it and has a place to start now in his progress forward. Or is he just going to call the play that Bevel sends in to him and hope for the best?

What I’d like to hear is an assessment from Childress. A straight-up honest assessment of how good Jackson is NOW, and if Chilly and Bevel admit that the man can’t do the job, then we know. Until then, we’re trying to form an opinon based on information at least a year old.

The same people would want him traded after throwing the pick in the Super Bowl.

Sometimes you have to break off your pursuit of immediate gratification and ultimate perfection, and just go with what you have. With Tarvaris Jackson, at least we have a quarterback with potential. Aren’t you glad we don’t have Jamarcus Russell or Jake Delhomme?

One of the topics has been "Childress benched T-Jack in 2008. A reason given was that Jackson was trying not to lose, trying not to make a mistake. Instead of trying to win.

Here is Jason Worilds, defensive end, Virginia Tech. He is a prospect in the 2010 NFL draft.

Football is such a warrior sport, you don’t want to go out on the field at any time and have doubts. Any time you have doubts, your opponent has an edge on you. I was going out there every week knowing that my shoulder could come out at any moment, so it told me a lot about myself—how far I was willing to go, how much I loved this game, and what I was willing to do for this game and my teammates.

That is good football knowledge.

Jackson was playing with doubts, ergo Childress did the wise thing and let him regain his confidence on the sideline. When his doubts had left him and his confidence returned, and Frerrotte happened to get injured, Childress put Jackson back in the starting line-up, and kept him there until all-time great Brett Favre arrived. To me it sounds like both Childress and Jackson have been doing the right thing.

He’s started 19 games, and averaged less than 120 yds/game passing. Even with the argument that the Vikes were a run first offense, that won’t cut it. Favre, proved that the Vikes were run first only because TJ offered no consistent passing attack. With today’s rules protecting QBs and making the game so pass happy, we are seeing rookies outperforming him by wide margins. Do you really believe that one year with Favre will improve him that much? LET HIM GO! He’s a disease that will only cause the Vikes to be mediocre at best as all of the young stars age, or leave. Then, thanks to him, we will be back to square one…