Our Schedule

5—Its really hard to say at this point. Before the 2009 season began I thought we had a pretty tough schedule. Looking back I think it was tougher than most are willing to give credit for. We did play the two super bowl teams from the year before, Carolina was 13-3 in 08 and finished the season strong. We played 5 games againts playoff teams.
On paper, the 2010 schedule does look formidable. I always look to see when we play at Chicago and Green Bay for the weather reasons you referred to. We will be playing at New England, at NYJ and at Philadelphia. That gives us 5 potential cold weather games. We also play at Washington so depending on how late in the season that game is that number could be as high as 6 cold weather games.
Personally I’d like to see all first five games I mentioned to be played by the first week in November. But at the end of the day you have to win the games on your schedule if you want to make the playoffs and compete for a championship.

Good questions, Karl, and worth digging into. Enough things write entire books about, lol. Here’s my initial thoughts on some of it;

1) Weather – We saw the Vikings starting to struggle occur in Dec, but interestingly, the one man who was supposed to have the most difficulties (Favre), handled it pretty well. Let’s face it, when you’re used to (relatively) warm footballs to throw and catch, and suddenly you’re dealing with cold, rock-hard leather, it’s harder to hold onto. The home field advantage in the playoffs is huge, and beyond the weather, the turf they’re playing on will be critical. Someone stated that 10 of our games will be in domes this year, and that should be very helpful.

I recently read about a study which was close to concluding that there are quite a few more injuries on artificial turf than on natural turf. If that does turn out to be conclusive, we may see natural turf even in the domes. This will definitely require some significant adjustment on the part of most of the dome teams, and interestingly, Arizona’s stadium field design may turn out to be the wave of the future (the entire field can roll out of the stadium to sit outdoors).

2) Injuries – The Vikings were pretty banged up by the end of the year and while the early reports on E.J. Henderson and Cedric Griffin seem fairly optimistic, those reports really can’t tell us how well they will be able to step back into their places in the team. We hope they’ll get up to full speed in time for the beginning of the season but the injuries were serious and you never know. Winfield should also be good to go, but he was plagued by injury through most of 2009. You want them to have a few games on the turf they’re accustomed to, to start with, because all those injuries were leg/foot injuries, but there’s no way to control that.

3) Chilly – Well, the Vikings coaching staff has been on a clear improvement curve since their first year.

Chilly – 2009 : 12-4-0
Chilly – 2008 : 10-6-0
Chilly – 2007 : 8-8-0
Chilly – 2006 : 6-10-0
Tice – 2005 : 9-7-0
Tice – 2004 : 8-8-0

I put in Tice’s last two years for comparision (Chilly had a bad rap for his first season), but here’s The Thing; Chilly has improved the Vikings by 2 games in each year that he’s coached the team, going off the baseline of his first season. Really that’s quite remarkable, and actually it continues into the playoffs. In 2008 the Vikings made it to the Wildcard game, and in 2009, they went two games further, to the Championship game. So, if Chilly’s trend continues, 2010 should be the Vikings year to finally bring home the Lombardi Trophy. Fingers crossed.

One of the things that I think the Vikings need to focus on in training camp are the most basic basics.

A) Tackling. The Vikings’ tackling was very suspect at times, failing to bring down the target or missing him altogether.
B) Hold onto the Ball. With emphasis on Adrian Peterson.
C) Ball-Hawking. Yes, the Vikings use a Tampa-2 secondary scheme, also known as the ‘Prevent D’, on the theory that it’s ok to allow some yardage as long as they don’t allow the score. I’m really not thrilled with this, but even in a Tampa-2, the secondary can go for more interceptions. Part of this will mean some catching practice for the secondary, with an emphasis on the LB Corps.
D) Stay in the play! The play isn’t over til it’s over, and each player needs to keep in the play until the end. If the ball moves to another part of the field, hustle over there and contribute, don’t stand around as if you’re job is finished while the rest of the team is fighting for a few more yards. Yeah, I’m staring at McKinnie in particular, there.

It’s the coaching staff’s responsibility to get the team up to speed on those basics, as well as their fancy playbook.

I don’t think you can extrapolate that against projected opponents because of the NFL’s parity-driven team development. Every team is in the mix, every year. Often, a team can be a Super Bowl champion one year, and not even make the playoffs in the next. It’s extremely difficult to build a dynasty as we knew them in the pre-1990s.

4) The playbook – I think I understand your idea on this but I’m not sure it’s the approach I would advocate. I think the team does extremely well with a balanced offense because it offers the option to shift the focus of the attack towards whatever area of weakness that the opponent offers. That’s a decision that the Vikings coaches and the QB have to decide in a strategy going in and then adjust it on the fly at the line of scrimmage. You can only predict it in a general way because teams change their strategies as the year progresses, key players take injuries and new players step up, teams compensate and there’s just no way to know til you’re a lot closer to the game.

1. Weather. I don’t want to research it again, but since 2000 the Vikings track record outdoors is pretty bad. Put them outdoors in cold weather, it’s worse. They struggled against the Browns, Steelers, Bears, Cardinals, and Panthers. The only team they managed to beat was the Browns. And it was warm weather. So let’s look at out 2010 road opponents: Jets, Patriots, Redskins, Eagles, Saints, Bears, Lions, and Packers. 6 of those games are outdoors, and popular thinking is that the VIkings will open up at New Orleans, negating a possible late season dome game. So, unless the Vikings get a lot of road games early, they face a real possibility of 4 outdoor road games in November and December. So pick your bad option: An early schedule with more road games against some tough AFC East teams with a lot of home games late, or a lot of late season road games against quality opponents, in elements that the VIkings historically struggle in. Kind of a Kobyashi Maru scenario, if you ask me. I see, at first glance, 11-5.

2. Injuries: Too tough to predict. As long as Favre, AP, Rice, Harvin, Allen, and Winfield stay healthy, I like the Vikings chances.

3. Chilly Effect: I think it’s time to give the man his due. He has playmakers in his offense, and it kicks ass, like he said it would. Yeah, you can still criticize him for his over-estimation of TJ to this point, but he got Favre to play. Let’s table this issue until 2011, when Favre is really, really, really retired, lol. I think they proved that it didn’t matter who they played and in what conditions, that if everyone was on the same page and they were clicking, that offense was unstoppable. That second half in Chicago was epic. It’s just that on the road, they were very inconsistent.

4 and 5: Pretty much answered earlier. You play your offense, and make the other guy stop you, regardless of conditions.

6. This is a veteran team, and they don’t rattle easily. I don’t see that as a factor at all.

4.