Why The Vikings Will Stink Until Some Hard Decisions Are Made

how do you figure out linebacker corp is “beast.” ? Teams are running all over us when it counts…they don’t stop them on third down. EJ may have come back from a horrific injury but that doesn’t make him a great LB. The Bears have a beast LB corp..the Vikes do not.

Now is the time to bail. Frazier has a long career of mediocrity…this is not his first bite at the apple. He never built a great D..that’s why we couldn’t get through the playoffs. The same guys is coaching the secondary who’s been there for 5 years and we’ve been the LAUGHING STOCK OF THE LEAGUE for our DB’s.

It is that kind of fear that repeatedly has us making these poor head coaching choices? Mike Tice? He should have been canned after his first year. Childress? What a horrible coach he was. Now we have Leslie…and we’re actually worse. So what’s the best decision: get rid of Frazier after one year and worry about being the “Joke of the League”? Or keeping him and actually BEING the joke of the league. This is exactly the kind of “hard” decision that we accuse Leslie of not being able to make.

The Vikings try to save a few dollars and they repeatedly do it in their coaching staff. We have had very many good assistant coaches who have gone on to success elsewhere. Why do we not recognize the quality ones and then spend the money to keep them here? Here’s a partial list of ex-assistants we let get away: Billick; Belicheck; Dungy; Tomlin.

Here’s my plan: Start throwing money and control at Gruden or Cowher., (Let Leslie finish the year and he can coach the D-Backs next year). Get rid of McNabb and play Ponder (maybe he will play worse than McNabb but he can’t possibly lose more games). If Ponder plays well, trade him for draft picks (or keep him as a back up to Andrew Luck). We probably won’t go Oh and sixteen but we might. Anyway, draft Andrew Luck. In the space of one year we have a great Head Coach and a QB for the next twelve years. All we need is for Ziggy to cut loose with more money and have the imperative to make this happen. We still need a shut-down corner and a premier receiver, but the rest of our team is serviceable as is (with the right coaching and the right schemes and a game plan that doesn’t get filed under “You Did What?”).

Much simpler to write than to do but our track record of bad coaches demands we try. Let me add a few names to our coaching experiments: Les Steckel and Dennis Green.

Thanks for the opportunity to release this.

Team is in dire straits, for multitude of reasons. OLine should have been rebuilt from three seasons back. BAD draft choices have led to the state of despair they are in. Loadholt is a BUST. Sullivan is too. The entire O-Line must be rebuilt, since Hutch is old and worn down. Massive issue, to have to rebuild across the entire Line!!! Most teams do not find themselves in such a quandry. And great O-Linemen cost a lot of cash these days. I wanted this team to make draft day moves and get the QB otF for about a decade now. They never did the right things at that position. Tarvaris Jackson’s selection was a colossal blunder. Reaching for Christian Ponder (instead of trading up to get a Mallett or Locker) will also hold this team back for the foreseeable. The Defense needs rebuilding too. The backfield is a mess, the Linebackers are substandard (except Greenway), and as Kevin Williams ages and lacks the impact of Phat Pat next to him, the Line is going to deteriorate soon. Across the board, this team needs revamping. The, you have the issue of a limp Head Coach and a clueless OC, a RB who never really delivers in crunch time (go look it up!) and the stadium debacle this team allowed to happen.

Personnel is an enormous problem for the team, but their future is definitely up in the air and you can’t tell me you know for a fact they will remain in Minnesota. I am convinced they are going to be sold to the highest bidder, some corporation out of LA, who will say ‘Sorry folks, but we bought the team and can place them in LA with League approval." For all we know, this has already been ironed out between Wilf, the new ownership group and our friends in the NFL Front Office. It’s a win-win for Goodell and the League. Take a franchise that is in a smaller market, where it can’t secure stadium funding, and place an established team in LA, where the League seems Hell-bent to try it again! When that day comes, I cease being a fan of the Vikings (or whatever they call them), Until then, I pray the owner will make a series of tough and smart decisions to right this ship. He has a LOT of work to do to make things improve, and I’m losing faith that he is up to it. At the end of the day, it falls in the owner’s lap.