Issues With Leslie, Part Two

in the latter parts of games we give up on the run. We work really hard to ware down the teams over the course of a game then in the last 5 minutes we completely give up on the run. I do not understand this and it happened a lot in games this year. You can run the ball at the end of the game even if you have to go the distance of the field!

Great example. It is clear that the Vikings lost this game as a team; coaching staff and players. As a previous commenter noted, winning does nothing for the Vikings at this point. Does a 3-9 team inspire you any more than 2-10 team? Besides the turnovers by a young qb and the at-this-point-to-be-expected horrible coverage by a depleted secondary the Vikes played a competative game.

One stat line proves the Vikings coaches weren’t trying to win this game: 47 pass attempts. Ponder showed a lot Sunday, but if you’re putting the game in his hands at this point, game killing turnovers are exactly what should be expected. The Vikings have some leeway to allow him to gamble.

is the seeming lack of understanding/ communication/ whatever it is between the corners and safeties. How often are we blowing coverage because nobody seems to know who’s covering who? SportsCenter did a great (and painful) job yesterday breaking down one particular instance of the Vikes simply being clueless in coverage- the corner dropped off as if he expected the safety to take the WR, but the safety was completely in the wrong position to do so (and the blame would be with both safety and corner in that situation). That was just one example of multiple times I’ve seen that this season. I’ve got to put a large chunk of that on the coaching/ coordinating staff- either our ‘fillers’ in the secondary are so terrible they can’t learn responsibilities and plays in practice, or our coaches are doing a horrible job in outlining and explaining the plays. I know that defense is largely reactionary playmaking, but all the same that kind of boneheaded error, especially when repeated over and over, is unexcusable, and once again in a big way on our defensive staff.

There are other examples of poor clock management too:

Week 2 vs Tampa: saved 3 timeouts at the end for absolutely no reason, could have stopped the clock and given the defense a fighting chance. Tampa was at the 9 yard line with 1:08 to go, and we saved all 3 timeouts there. Dumb.

Week 6: Burned an unnecessary timeout immediately after a commercial timeout. Dumb.

Week 11: Took a timeout after the 104 return, and then another with 3:54 to go, both for odd reasons. Shouldn’t we have preserved those timeouts for stopping the clock when the other team had the ball, or during a desperation 2-minute offense?

I’m sure there are others, but those are the 3 big glaring clock management errors I’ve noticed this season. I can’t wait for Part Three!

First, the decision to not let the Broncos score at the end of the game was the correct one for the situation. If we were still in the playoff hunt, things might be different. But at this point, winning only hurts us.

As far as not trying to run the clock down, the Broncos were keying on the run at that point. They knew that we would be trying to run the clock out, so we went the other way. If it had worked, everyone would have claimed brilliance on the part of Frazier.

There are a few red flags here and there, but can you honestly say to yourself that Frazier is worse at clock management than Childress was? I mean, Childress was terrible 4 years into his HC career, and this is Frazier’s first.

The play calling was intended to score 7, which is as it should have been. Had Ponder not made the critical mistake at the end we could have used the 1:30 to score the winning FG.

Also, for everyone who needs to criticize Frazier for always looking calm and composed (clueless is usually how it is characterized), his composure actually reminds me of Bud Grant… another stoic man who’s emotions were completely unreadable. Admittedly, Grant had a more serious demeanor, still…

This game actually made me more comfortable with Frazier. After watching the debacle that was our secondary Sunday, I now have confidence that our coaches have been putting the best players on the field.

I could be missing something, but Musgrave’s play calling has been very inconsistent this year. I wouldn’t put three passes in a row on Frazier, per say, but I understand the gripe.

who’da thunk it…

And I am willing to cut Musgrave some slack because he had no offseason to implement his playbook (any notice his play card on the sidelines? It’s the size of an index card) and he has a rookie QB running the show.

Pagac is another story. He is actually regressing IMO. I will give him the benefit that he has a depleted secondary. However the fact that he was sticking to the Cover 2 on Sunday, despite the fact that Denver was mostly employing a doubles formation, leads me to believe that he is out of touch. A lot of people wanted to blame the communication between the corners and safeties, however I will gladly clear the air and tell you that had nothing to do with it. In the Cover 2, the corners generally play within 10-15 yards of the LOS and have the area commonly referred to as the “flats.” The flats are the area from the sideline to approx 5 yards to the TE or OT in width and up to 15 yards from the LOS in depth. After that depth, the corner releases the receivers to the safety. So how do you beat cover 2? You line up 2 receivers to each side, send the slot receivers on deep routes that occupy the middle of the field (a post or 7 route) and send the wide receivers on verticle or 9 routes, which is exactly denver was running against us.

So when our corners were releasing the outside receivers to the safety, the safety was being occupied by the slot receiver running to the post. Essentially they were damned either way. I blame Pagac for sticking with the defense, not our DBs.

… and let’s leave it at that. They should have won that game, but they lost it.

I wouldn’t think that hard about getting a win that just moves them down in the draft picks. Losing wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened.

We found out that basically none of the substitute secondary players are able to play. We found out what we suspected, that Rudolph could become a very, very good tight end (in fact, why he isn’t already hauling in tons of passes is the most disappointing and mysterious thing right now). That’s progress, if they put what we all learned to good effect in the draft.