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NORV~! Cares Not For Your Quarterback Rankings

Photograph provided by Thad Chesley

Over the course of the preseason, we saw a lot of different sets of quarterback ratings pop up across the internet. Most of them have not been overly kind to Minnesota Vikings' second-year signal caller Teddy Bridgewater, with many of said ratings putting him well into the bottom tier of NFL starting quarterbacks.

To these ratings, Vikings' offensive coordinator Norv Turner says "hogwash." Or "poppycock." Perhaps, even, "balderdash."

"There is only four or five guys I would trust in evaluating quarterbacks because I don't think there are many guys that understand what you're trying to do at the position and understand the evaluation process," Turner said. "That really makes those evaluations less meaningful. The one evaluation we care about is ours, and I think based on where we got to last year and where we think we're going, I think we have a top-flight quarterback."

. . .

"He's got great vision, he understands what we're trying to do, he's very disciplined and I think guys lose sight of that," Turner said. "You talked about quarterback rankings -- I think some of these guys go out and evaluate quarterbacks, if a guy can't throw a ball through the wall, his value goes down. Well, we don't like guys who throw it through a wall. We like guys who have a good feel for playing, and Teddy certainly does have a great feel for playing the game."

Turner's comments initially caused a mini-meltdown on the Twitter because some of the folks in Mankato, apparently, thought that Turner said "top five" quarterback rather than "top-flight" quarterback. I get that NORV~! loves him some Teddy and all, but even he knows that Bridgewater isn't one of the NFL's five best quarterbacks.

Yet.

As NORV~! said, there aren't a whole lot of people out there that can really, accurately evaluate quarterback play. Given his track record over the years, I happen to think that he's one of them, and if he thinks the Vikings are on the right track with Bridgewater at the helm, then I'm certainly not going to argue with him about it.