Vikings Showed Interest In Pistol Offense Guru

In a story that you may or may not have seen yesterday (though CCNorseman did mention it down in the FanShots before the site started going a little crazy), the Kansas City Chiefs brought on former Nevada Wolfpack coach Chris Ault as a coaching consultant. According to Kevin Seifert of ESPN, our favorite football team (along with the Green Bay Packers and the Baltimore Ravens) showed interest in Ault before he ultimately decided to sign with Kansas City.

The reason for all the interest in Ault? Well, he's the man that's largely credited with designing the "Pistol" offense that has become popular across college football and has started to take root in the National Football League. At first, I was a bit confused about the Vikings' interest. Sure, they could probably implement some of the Pistol into their offense, whether it be with Christian Ponder or. . .and lord help me for even saying this. . .Joe Webb. Though with Ponder's injury history, I'm not sure how many designed runs you'd want to put in for him every week.

More likely, in my opinion, the Minnesota Vikings wanted to bring Ault in to get tips on how to stop the Pistol. After all, who would know more about stopping it than the guy that invented it, right? Now, I don't anticipate Aaron Rodgers, Jay Cutler, and Matthew Stafford lining up in the Pistol a lot or anything, but as long as the San Francisco 49ers (with Colin Kaepernick) and the Seattle Seahawks (with Russell Wilson) are having success with it and are the teams to beat in the NFC, figuring out how to stop a key component of their offense takes on a great deal of importance.

That the Vikings would be looking into bringing Ault in as a consultant shows that they're expecting themselves to be players not just in the NFC North, but in the conference at large as well. (The said can be same for the Packers, too, for that matter.) Hopefully their expectations will be met in the 2013 season.