Minnesota Vikings News and Links: January 13, 2020

‘Mornin everyone,

Okay, that sucked. On Saturday, we saw an abysmal performance by the Vikings offense. The defense kept the game close for a while, but with the offense firing on one cylinder (one out of eight, no blasphemy on this site with any talk of four cylinder motors), the NFL’s top offense eventually wore the defense down, and we saw the results. At one point, the Vikings had run nine offensive series, and 7 of them were three-and-outs. That’s 77.7% of the plays, and that’s beyond bad, it’s garbage. The offense did have one good series, which resulted in their only touchdown. Other than that, nothing. If they made a movie about the Vikings offense on Saturday, it would be called ‘The Pathetic, the Bad, and the Ugly’.

A loss is a team effort, so there is always blame to go around to every player and every unit, but in my opinion, there are several places deserving of a higher percentage of the blame for Saturday’s loss. I’ll list my top three below, and I think first place has a huge margin over the rest of them.

Kevin Stefanski was out-coached in this game so badly that it is almost comical. He put the offense in a position to do........nothing, and that’s pretty much what they did. Predictable play calling was.......predicted! Go figure. In response to having his plays being predicted, he chose to continue to run the same plays throughout the game. The result was as expected. I’ve always been of the opinion that it is utterly stupid to allow teams to interview coordinators on teams playing in the playoffs. I still hold that opinion. Did interviewing for another job interfere with Stefanski’s preperation for this game (or Shurmur’s ability to prep for the Eagles game in 2017)? I don’t know, I honestly hope it did affect them, because if Saturday was his best effort, I cringe to see the results in Cleveland. Honestly, my thought on his leaving is “good riddance” at this point.

The offensive line was not good. Now, how much of that is talent, and how much of that is play design and play calling? I honestly don’t know, but I do plan to do some digging to find some relevant stats over the next month or so, and will put something together some time this off-season after my anger subsides, because I’m still p***ed. I will also add some commentary over the next day or two on the direction I’d like to see the team to take going forward, but for now, let’s just give ourselves a day to be p***ed. For me, it’s therapeutic. My give-a-damn is not working today.

Cousins.........I’ll save it for the comments, because the two extreme sides in this debate make it impossible to converse the subject, so I’ll just put a poll up and let people add their opinion that way for now.

I’m still upset about Saturday. I missed out on ice fishing to watch a pile of doo-doo, and there are many other reasons to be disgusted. I just feel obligated to say it up front. Please be cool to each other today, because I won’t have a ton of patience for stupidity. We always like to see fans of other teams stop by, and we usually get along great, and you are all very welcome here any time. 99.9% of you have been awesome. For the 0.1%, it’s two days after an ugly loss, so if you came here to be a jerk, just click that little ‘x’ in the upper right hand corner. I don’t plan to watch any more football this year, I went ice fishing yesterday. I didn’t have any weights with, so kiddo and I just ate Doritos and played Uno, and it was still a billion times more fun than if I would have stayed home and watched football. I’ll watch football again in the fall of 2020, and will be cheering loud and proud for the Vikings once again. I’ve been through worse. SKOL

Around the DN since our last open thread:

Stefanski left for Cleveland, per Ted.

The Vikes made some low-level roster moves.

Shurmur went to Denver, per Chris. One potential replacement off the list.

I’m just posting a link to scores, because I just don’t care ‘bout football right now:

Here are the scores from this weekend, courtesy of ESPN.

Here’s something to watch:

We all know the rules, but in case someone is new:

-No discussion of politics or religion
-No feeding of the trolls
-Leave the gender hatred at the door
-Keep the bad language to a minimum (using the spoiler tags, if you must)
-Speaking of which, if discussing a newer show or movie, please use spoiler tags
-No pictures that could get someone fired or in serious trouble with their employer
-While navigating the open thread, just assume it’s sarcasm.
-If you can’t disagree in a civil manner, feel free to go away

With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open. Belly up & tie one on. Don’t talk to the waiter, he’s crazy and he’s not in a good mood. He keeps mumbling about some guy named Kevin stealing his fishing time from him, and waving that meat cleaver around.