Those Aging Vikings

Hasn’t everyone here been clear enough that we’re concerned about our future QB situation? There’s just no point in re-hashing the issue, we all know that Favre is way up there and I’m sure even he realizes he’s getting old. We weren’t lucky enough to land a Rodgers, Stafford, or Bradford in the past and we’re paying for that now with the uncertainty for the future in that position. Maybe you could lobby over at Lambeau for the Packers to trade us Rodgers for T-Jack :)

Seriously, I’m hoping the Vikings figure out a way to nab McNabb next year, or work some draft magic and pick up Locker. Who knows what the future will bring, but one thing is certain; Spielman has proved his ability to get the job done. I have faith in the Vikings front office.

That’s really what it’s all about there. There aren’t many ‘flash-in-the-pan’ players in the Hall of Fame, most of them played at a high level for at least 7-10 years, and most of them took a couple years to ramp up to that high level of play (based on what I saw when I was looking over the career data).

We can’t assume that our players are going to suddenly, without giving any sign of it, collapse short of that average HoF age. Some may, some may last longer, it’s just an average reasonable expectation. If you tried to produce numbers from the general NFL population, you run into the issue of those who get career-ending injuries or maybe they sucked so bad that they didn’t make it past age 25, or maybe not past their first year. There’s a lot of guys like that and they’d skew the averages much younger.

Remember, we’re not looking at our players getting better, we’re looking for when to expect a significant drop-off in their ability to play their positions so that we can reasonably forecast when a replacement needs to be brought on-board and trained up. Considering what appears to be an average 2 year lead-time for a player to go from green rook to competent NFL vet, if we can expect Hutch to begin dropping off in 2 years, we need his replacement in place this year or next at the latest.

I just admire anyone that can put graphs and tables together. Me and Excell just don’t get along.

Thanks. I had to call my brother and ask him how to make Excel do the averages, the answer turned out to be ridiculously simple, thankfully. Mainly I did it because I read Grime’s piece and was frustrated that I had no reasonable measuring stick on which to determine whether or not I thought we had a guy who needed to be replaced soon.

Any questions about our FO not knowing what they are doing?

Your point is pretty well taken, but I think that 2010 will be the year where the gimme streak ends. As you noted, the Vikings passed on Clausen and McCoy, and they ALSO passed on my dark horse favorite, John Skelton. Skelton looked pretty good with the Cards last week and for the man’s NFL debut, that’s pretty impressive. The Vikings passed on Skelton 5 times, I’m going to be a bit annoyed if they turn out to be wrong, lol.

The bottom line is that Spielmann has significantly improved the team each and every year, and Chilly has improved the team’s record by 2 games every year after his first. If they can maintain this high level of management, I think we’re going to be pretty pleased fans for years to come.

Not sure how useful this is

Hopefully, a tad bit better than saying, “I think the Vikings are getting old” and basing that on what phase of the moon you’re typing under :) . Even basing it on the moon phase is more than what most people use as their justifications, lol.

I would bet that a typical hall of fame player will see his production drop later than the average pro bowl player.

Probably, you’d need to place some controls on the pro bowler careers to set their minimum at around 10 years of play time.

Also you group d backs together but I think as a general rule of thumb guys can play safety longer than corner. Some corners switch at the end of their careers.

That’s part of why I grouped the secondary together. Also, splitting them up gave me a much smaller sample size for each group.

I would bet that a typical hall of fame player will see his production drop later than the average pro bowl player.

Well, you’d certainly have a much large pool of players to look at, if you choose to do the work-up on that group. I’d be interested in seeing your results :)

I really wasn’t worried about Favre, he’s in a category all by himself. I didn’t do kickers either, because A) there’s only 1 HoF kicker who retired after 1980 (Jan Sternerud), and B) I think kickers are also in their own individually unique arena because their wear and tear is much less than the average player who’s in the trenches.

Because he put the really important items in there as well. And that was players who are on the cusp or need to already be replaced. There were about 11 players he showed that need to be replaced in the next 1-4 years. Remember as well he stated that the age he set up was just the average where the players started to decline. this does not mean that it’s the age where they will retire.

I think even at our (from a packers veiw) crappy draft we can get two people a year who can be starters… Plus many of the people who are nearing the end already have people backing them up.

Stick with the age of the starters….

Not really relevant, there’s not enough of them to build a statistically important result. I would have preferred to only go with the guys who make the final 53 but that would have meant waiting a couple more weeks :) . As it is, what the MV Average does show is the age pool that the team has to draw on for each position. They’ll pick the best guys at each spot, but the only one we’re specifically concerned about are the ones who may be nearing the average age where they can reasonably expect to see their performance drop off. A year after that is the point where they need to be replaced.

Mind you, it doesn’t mean they WILL decline, only that’s where the average of excellent players experience the fall off. Guys like Favre and Phat Pat have beat the odds, and Hutch might as well.

Always got to one up me…

That’s what you get for hogging up all the pie ;)

I agree though, I think the Vikings are doing just fine everywhere except the O-line, where our backups aren’t looking like they’re ready to step up.