Leslie Frazier and Bill Musgrave Talk Dirty. . .And I Like It

feeling like a schoolgirl with all the giggling.

Childress surrounded himself largely with yes-men, and if they weren’t, he practically bullied them into being yes-men. Frazier, on the other hand, simply has a grand scheme in mind and brings in people who believe in that scheme.

That scheme? Win a f———g Super Bowl. It’s OK if your yes-men are yes-men for saying yes to THAT.

At this point, it’s hard to argue that the Vikings now have one of, if not arguably the, most talented coaching staff in the NFL. Now granted- it’s an untested staff, so let’s reserve the full judgement till about 2 or 3 seasons.

At the end of the day, that’s where it all begins. Great coaches and great coaching staffs have great teams.

…and so now it begins.

Before the last few weeks, I was fearing next year would basically be lost given the shambles we were going to be in. But the staff we acquired, staff we let go, and other moves have already given me hope. You made a few great points, and I definitely am looking forward to see how things shape up come Week 1 next year.

But it seems clear he has a clear desire to do what it takes as a coach to win rather than prove his intelligence to everyone else. So color me cautiously optimistic.

I love that Frazier and Musgrave are planning to build around players’ strengths. That’s not only sound football scheming, but very much the focus of more than one Gallup book about management and talent in general.

Frazier’s real tests will come whenever the offense and/or defense doesn’t do much for a few games in a row. Will he throw the other coaches or players under the bus, especially if some rival games were involved? It’s way too early to call him any sort of genius (esp. since the pass D was never very good while he was DC), but at least he was absolutely right about planning around the offensive players’ strengths.

I talk dirty all the time, and no one wants to listen to me.

Pieces seem to be falling into place at an exaggerated speed, and that will give the staff all that much more to to prepare. Feeling very hopeful.

It’s easy to forget how talented this team really is after such a bad season. With a new and vastly improved coaching staff, this team should bounce back really well if we can get a QB that can develop quickly (or a solid veteran stopgap while the new kid learns).

BTW: Musgrave, Singletary, Johnson, Davidson and Saxon ALL have me excited. Each one was an amazing hire in my opinion. This team is gonna show next year just how bad Childress was and the difference a well coached team can make.

HOW DARE YOU BUILD AN OFFENSE AROUND THE STRENGTHS OF YOUR TEAM. It’s been well documented that cramming people into an offense that doesn’t work to their skill set! You then stubbornly stick to it to the point that you’ll be close to benching a QB for audibling into a play that goes for a game sealing TD! I mean everyone saw how well it worked when we tried to cram Percy Harvin outside when Sydney Rice went down with injury, we need more of that!

Seriously thought, look at arguably the most successful team this year, the Patriots. They traded Moss away and had absolutely no one to stretch the defense. What Childress would have done was to force Welker outside, even thought he is clearly a slot receiver (like he did with Harvin). Instead Belichick changed his scheme to a more TE-centric offense and had a lot of success. Very happy to see Frazier istaking note of this. I’m very excited for the future of our beloved Vikings.

That sums up perfectly why Childress was a failure as a coach. I’m excited by all the coaching hires. Also, I think the fact that most of them have NFL playing experience garners respect from the players.

To think, a coach that understands how to use his tools properly rather than trying to pound in a nail with a socket wrench.

I love that Quote. So far I like all the moves Frasier has done.

Particularly for the notion that even if we get another QB, we will find a way to get Webb on the field, as he is an insane athlete.

He wasn’t the offensive coordinator in Atlanta, so it’s debatable how much the Vikings new offense will resemble that of the Falcons.

But I’m pretty sure that working to a players strength won’t work. If it did then Chilly the genius would have done it. What really messed me up was that Childress had this grand design in his head but never drafted players that could pull it off. Boggles me actually.

He didn’t mean to, I mean, it’s just that he had this quarterback that loved to scramble, but he had a really good arm for short throws. And he had this receiver that practically invented the tippy toes catch on the sideline… And then he got this awesome running back who could catch screen passes like crazy. An undersized offensive line that could shift and move really well.

See what I mean? Jerry Burns didn’t actually invent the West Coast offense; he just figured out the best way to use the offensive players on his roster. A decade later Bill Walsh set out to re-create what Burns had done by going out of his way to acquire the same kinds of players Burns had used, and then Walsh added slants to Jerry Rice and middle screens to Roger Craig. The “West Coast” label was just a name for a pass-first offense that used short passes to maintain possession.

There’s nothing wrong in theory with having a “system” that you want to install, but you better have the players to do it, or it will look nasty. That was the main problem with the Brad Childress era. From the offensive line to the quarterback, he didn’t have the players to make his system work.

I hope Musgrave is successful with his players-based approach to designing an offense. Something with a man-on-man blocking scheme, something that will take advantage of the way a guy like Joe Webb can move, if the QB is Joe Webb.

That’s one of the reasons I don’t want Mallet – the offensive line today is not good at protecting the pocket. Gotta have a QB that can scramble, which to me argues strongly for a guy like Jake Locker.