Statistically, if you look at Donovan McNabb's line from Sunday night, it doesn't look like he played all that badly. . .he only threw five incompletions on the evening, and put up 177 passing yards. However, as the fourth quarter started at Soldier Field on Sunday evening, Minnesota Vikings' head coach Leslie Frazier decided that the time had finally come.
And, with that, the Christian Ponder era got underway in Minnesota.
Sure, by the time that Ponder got into the game, the Vikings only had five healthy offensive lineman. . .Phil Loadholt was out of the game with an (as of now) undisclosed injury, and John Sullivan suffered a concussion early in the second half. As the Vikings only had seven offensive linemen dressed on the evening, another injury probably would have seen Jim Kleinsasser lining up at tackle or guard. However, despite that, and despite spending most of the evening running for his life, Ponder was not sacked once in 18 pass attempts, and completed 10 of his passes for 99 yards in his quarter of work.
It wasn't all "dinking and dunking" for Ponder, as his second NFL completion was a 20-yarder to Percy Harvin, converting for a first down a play after the Vikings had gotten called for holding. Ponder distributed his ten completions to seven different receivers, as he managed to find Michael Jenkins, Visanthe Shiancoe, Greg Camarillo, Toby Gerhart, Adrian Peterson. . .and even Bernard Berrian. (Sadly, this means that Berrian will probably still remain on the roster, so thanks for that, Christian.)
Yeah, we'll have plenty of time over the next couple of days to talk about the pounding the team took tonight, with the only non-Ponder Vikings highlights being the sack registered by Jared Allen to bring his total up to 9.5 and the subsequent touchdown by Peterson. But tonight, we got a little glimpse of the future at quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings.
Oh, and it appears we'll have a quarterback "controversy" to talk about over the next couple of days. Those are always fun, aren't they?
But that's about all for tonight, I think. Ted will be along tomorrow with the Stock Market Report after he recovers from his hangover after watching the St. Louis Cardinals move to the World Series. (OH NO, SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED TO A SPORTS TEAM FROM WISCONSIN! OH, THE HUMANITY!) Have a pleasant rest of your Sunday evening, ladies and gentlemen.