Monday Open Thread: September 28, 2020

Good morning everyone,

First, an apology to Mark for something I said on Friday (or was it Thursday?). My bad, I own up to my mistakes, and the way I said what I said was wrong of me. My apologies.

Chris said it best in the wrap-up, the Vikings snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. For almost 3 quarters, I began to think that we may be witnessing a pivotal turn-around in the Vikings season. At the end of the third, I saw the meltdown beginning, and I knew what was going to happen, then the game played out as I had sadly accepted that it would.

I saw some positives from this game. Cousins showed that he still knows how to play QB (then he also showed that he is never going to be a consistently productive and reliable leader, and is NOT worth the contract he demanded). Cook showed us that he is one of the best RB in the game. Jefferson showed us that he is a legit WR who will only get better, and we have a very lethal duo at WR once again. The defense showed that they are still formidable, although we will have growing pains to endure with some positions. The team showed signs of life, I liked how they looked and how they played for much of the game. Then the meltdown.

I know some will disagree with this, but that’s why we’re here, and this is my opinion on what went wrong. I’m not going to put all of the meltdown on one person, as there were other components that took part, but there is a key leader on the field whose salary occupies a significant portion of the salary cap, and that key leader played a significant part in the team’s second half failure. The team had a lead, (and Cousins contributed to getting that lead, I’m not denying that or taking that away from him, he played a good game in the first half) and they only needed him to remain serviceable, and lead the offense to a few first downs in order to hold the lead and put a notch in the W column. Instead, he withered, he didn’t get the ball out on time when pressure was coming which led to incompletions or unnecessary sacks, which led to a lot of 3 & outs, and he put up a poor performance in the second half of yesterday’s game. One exception is the nice throw to Jefferson. He did get another TD pass in the second half, but that was a very poor pass that not many NFL players would have been able to catch in bounds, Rudolph made a spectacular catch. I hope to see more of ‘first half Cousins’ in the weeks to come and the next couple years, because let’s face it, Cousins is the Vikings QB through 2022. The structure of his contract makes that almost a guarantee. The only potential scenario for him leaving Minnesota prior to that is a bizarre trade like the Texans pulled off where they paid Cleveland a whole bunch of money, trade picks, and players to take on Osweiler and his contract.

I’m disappointed, yet I find encouragement from some of what I saw yesterday. I still think the Vikings can put together a good season, but they’re going to have to get on their horses.

I’m also mad that they screwed up a perfectly good Monday.

Around the DN since our last open thread:

From Chris, Cook and Jefferson made NFL history yesterday.

Chris has yesterday’s post-game wrap-up.

Other Vikings/NFL news, and random oddities and annoyances:

Over at Vikings.com, hear Coach Zimmer address the media after yesterday’s game, and there’s much more to sift through in the media vault.

Here are the rest of your week 3 NFL scores and highlights, courtesy of ESPN.

We come to today’s media selection:

When navigating the thread, assume sarcasm. Do the same with this video, some of you will get it. Enjoy!

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

-No discussion of politics or religion
-No feeding of the trolls
-Take the gender hatred elsewhere, it won’t be tolerated
-Keep the bad language to a minimum (using the spoiler tags, if you must)
-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}
-If you can’t disagree in a civil manner, feel free to go away
-While navigating the open thread, just assume it’s sarcasm.

With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open. Belly up & tie one on, you’ll have to stand, yesterday’s melt down disintegrated all of the picnic tables.