Panic-time can wait, for Vikings
Maybe it’s not time to panic yet, because after all we still have another exhibition game to go before the National Football League begins its long run into winter. Exhibition games are, mostly, a joke. Each team works out its own schedule for developing all the elements necessary for a strong regular season, and mainly they don’t play the regulars so that they can take a long look at the potential of new players that might represent the future.
But if you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan, a serious cloud of concern hangs heavily over the club. Not panic, maybe, but definitely concern.
With one exhibition game left, Vikings fans have no idea if the third year of the Christian Ponder Experiment has a chance to be different from Years One and Two, or if the Vikings will try to masquerade as a contender by handing the ball to Adrian Peterson and playing good defense.
Frankly, I refuse to get too excited about any exhibition game. That means I kiss off the apparent ineptitude displayed by the Vikings in three exhibitions and trust their explanation that they aren’t playing Ponder much, and they didn’t play Peterson at all, because they didn’t want to risk any injuries to two such stalwarts.
Then I watch parts of a couple other exhibition games. I notice that nobody gets worked up when Aaron Rodgers doesn’t do much with the Green Bay Packers, but newcomer Vince Young steps in and wins the backup quarterback job with an impressive performance. And Detroit buries the vaunted New England Patriots 40-9, with ace quarterback Drew Stafford looking pretty good, and backup Kellen Moore looking sensational. Chicago looked pretty impressive, too, with Jay Cutler looking very good, armed with a newly replenished arsenal of varied receivers and running backs.
It was not just sarcasm when I projected a few weeks ago that the pressure on Christian Ponder to rise to the role of prominence is emphasized more because of the Vikings division — if Ponder plays his absolute best this season, he might still be only the fourth-best quarterback in the division, behind Rodgers, Stafford and Cutler.
With Ponder looking comparatively shaky, if not entirely lost, in sparse duty through three exhibitions, I now must amend that bleak prospect: If Ponder plays his absolute best this year, he might not be any better than sixth-best in the division — behind Rodgers, Stafford, Cutler, Moore and Young.
I really liked Vince Young when he played at Texas, showing immense skill and capability, and then stepping in with glowing prospects for more than adequate chances in the NFL. He didn’t really make it. In fact, he failed in two starting opportunities with different teams, then he sat out all last season with an injury, and lost his chance to run a team. Personally, I think he came into the NFL at the wrong time, at a time when teams had established offenses, and made any new prospect fit into that system, while Young didn’t. Nobody was about to turn an entire offense over to a guy who would just as soon run as pass, as if an exciting college style might work in the NFL.
Since then, of course, we’ve seen a startling transformation in the NFL. Robert Griffin III took over at Washington, Cam Newton got free reign at Caroline, Russell Wilson burst into the clear in Seattle, and Colin Kaepernick turned San Francisco upside down. All of them are spectacular quarterbacks, capable of game-breaking plays while running or passing with equal explosiveness, and pro football showed that with the right degree of open-mindedness, a new quarterback with a new outlook and a combination of flash and confidence can lift a franchise up from mediocrity to contention.
Perhaps the most intriguing of this fall’s prospects is at Green Bay. Aaron Rodgers is just fully emerging as a true superstar. No, he won’t make us forget Brett Favre, but he is the triggerman for a Packers team that should again be a division, conference and Super Bowl contender. But it seems to be a brilliant bit of strategy for the Packers to displace a fully adequate backup quarterbacking system with the potential of a mercurial alternative in Vince Young. We don’t anticipate Rodgers getting bogged down in any game, but his effectiveness might even be enhanced if the Packers can look at an occasional situation where Vince Young can jog onto the field for a play or two, passing or pitching or scrambling to break loose running in a way nobody wants to see Rodgers run. Then, with a well-qualified intern making the incision for a first down, the master surgeon comes back in and finishes the operation in the end zone.
Personally, though, I will be watching the Detroit Lions as often as possible, because I’ve been a Kellen Moore fan since he was back at Boise State, running the Broncos spectacular offense on that strange blue turf in Idaho. In those days, Boise State was one of the most entertaining college teams to watch. The game plan was always brilliant, and Boise State would come up with trick plays almost every time they got the ball — brilliantly conceived and executed trick plays that worked with astounding effectiveness. And Kellen Moore was that tall, lanky left-handed quarterback who ran the show.
Moore’s greatest skill seemed to be an ability to loft passes that were more perfect than high-velocity. He’s lob the ball over safeties who were scrambling to get into position. There were those who wrote him off as a pro because he didn’t have Rodgers-style bullet capabilities. I always thought that his keen ability to find a target and put his passes where only those receivers could get them would make him one of those quarterbacks who only needed a chance to play in order to excel.
For his whole college career, Moore had to play out there in Boise while other teams refused to play Boise State. College football has long had its ridiculous pecking order, where the powers-that-be made sure that no odd newcomers penetrated their realm. It still holds for the Southeast Conference, which has a lot of good teams and might be the best conference in the country, but which also protects its turf by buying off the decision-makers at ESPN with a sinister partnership that assures ESPN of top games to broadcast and perpetrates the illusion that no team from anywhere else should be elevated to the Bowl Championship game. So the routine came about that nobody wanted to play Boise State, so then they could look at Boise’s 11-0 record and say, “They don’t play anybody,” while making sure they couldn’t play a tougher schedule. When they did get a chance, Boise State blitzed even strong teams, which made the other powers more reluctant to play the Broncos.
When Moore’s senior year ended, I thought he would become a great pro quarterback, but he was not a super-high draft pick. Detroit got him to sign a contract, and he quietly played in the shadows. I think he was No. 3 with the Lions while learning the system, but time passes, and now he’s not only No. 2, but he’s capable of stepping in to help Stafford and the long-suffering Lions be a true contender.
Coming back to the Vikings, I’ve believed in Ponder’s future because he, too, is a smart player who knows what must be done, where his pass must go, and how to run an offense. Still, he showed very little except occasional bursts so far. Of the division’s quarterbacks, none has the built-in advantage Ponder has, which is the opportunity to hand the ball to No. 28, Adrian Peterson, for at least half the team’s offensive plays. That should make Ponder’s job easier, because opposing defenses have to psyche themselves up to try to form a posse to head off Peterson before he gets free. That means that Ponder can throw a play-fake at Peterson and should find multiple receivers open for a few pinpoint passes, which, in turn, should open up Peterson even more.
The problem, going into this summer’s exhibition season, is that Ponder rarely if ever showed the capability to get the ball to his receivers with the needed zip and mostly with accuracy. Soem spectacular lunging, leaping, one-handed catches are impressive, but the top quarterbacks on other teams are putting precision passes right on the chest, or into the hands, of top receivers. Sure, Percy Harvin went out with an injury last season, and I, like most Vikings followers, cut Ponder new dimensions of slack. This summer, the Vikings rounded up a new herd of receivers, and even took Joe Webb, the potentially great backup quarterback, and converted him to wide receiver.
With all that playing out, I found it alarmingly strange that the Vikings gave Ponder only two snaps in the first exhibition, and only two series in the second. Yes, you worry about any starting quarterback getting injured in an exhibition game, but Ponder is not a superstar being held out because we know he’s going to come in with Rodgers-style polish when the gun sounds. In the third exhibition, Ponder looked like an untested rookie trying to impress with a scattershot array of passes. That is, after dropping the football on his third play to give the San Francisco 49ers the ball on the Vikings 11. It was a tribute to the Vikings defense that they held the 49ers to a field goal on that sequence.
Matt Cassel didn’t look much better as backup, making it two poor performances after an impressive first game. Joe Webb is still there, and we were reminded of that when he outbattled a D-back to make a spectacular leaping catch for a touchdown. Oh yeah, we thought. There’s Joe Webb! Hmmm…He could be coming in as the ideal back-up QB, couldn’t he? Remember, he looked great in that role — sort of Minnesota’s Vince Young to Aaron Rodgers, stylewise — until last season. When things broke down, the Vikings gave Joe Webb his long-overdue chance, and he flubbed it. Played poorly. But failing in one big, pressure-filled chance isn’t much chance, compared to three years of anointed starting stardom for Christian Ponder. My thought is that using Webb as a ready back-up for Ponder might help make Ponder a better quarterback than he’s become.
Anyway, Vikings fans, three exhibition games don’t mean we should panic. We have a fourth exhibition this week…then we can panic.
SENIOR MOMENTS
Maybe they should change the name of the MSMABA. That stands for Minnesota Senior Men’s Amateur Baseball Association, a wordy title that stands for the Over-35 group of teams I’ve been involved with for over 25 years. I argued at the beginning that it should be MSBA, for Minnesota Senior Baseball Association, because that would be simpler. But maybe “Senior Moments” would be the ideal name.
With the painful demise of the SeaFoam Hawks to something more of a rebuilding hopeful team for the future than a contender, we have depended form a few years on a bit of an upsurge at state tournament time to make the long winter easier to endure before trying again. This past season, we had a diversity of talent. When we had all our top players on the field, we could compete with anybody; when we didn’t, we couldn’t. My guys would always say it was still fun, to which I would counter that it can be fun while winning, also.
When it came time to schedule the two-weekend state tournament, I made one request of the league. If we were going to be scheduled on Friday, could we get the late game, because we had three players who were working late and would miss the earlier game? The result: We were scheduled for 6:30 p.m., the earliest game, in Prior Lake, with Interstates 35W and 494 under construction, and the likely alternative of Hwy. 169 closed down to one congested lane. That meant we had to play without the left side of our infield, including two of our top three hitters, and we got hammered 10-0 by New Hope, a good team.
We had to come back and play an early game on Saturday, against the K-Town Outlaws from Kensington. We were missing a half-dozen players because of the hour, so we were down to nine players. I played second base, and I moved Sam, our first baseman, to right field, and played Jay, our backup relief pitcher, to first base. Mike, our first-game pitcher, played shortstop, and Matt, our left-fielder, went to third base for my son, Jack, who was stuck at work. You could call it a makeshift lineup, and I was something less than confident.
But Gary pitched a masterful game, and we played our best game of the season — winning 6-2 and outhitting K-Town 15-3. Unbelievable. Personally, it has been a tough season for me, after years of being comfortable making big plays that might help us win, to the realization that I might make a misplay that costs us a game. But on that hot afternoon, I hit two fastballs squarely to left for my best two hits of the season, and Jay, at first base, hit three shots among our 15.
That brought us back all flushed with confidence for this past weekend, where we had our top guns back, to face an Edina team we had beaten early in the season. This time, their big left-hander screwed us into the ground with a great curveball, and we were unable to make up a late deficit, losing 5-3. Mike Snow, back on the mound, pitched one of his best games of the season, giving up only four hits, but we wasted his effort.
In the world of bracketing, we wound up playing our final game Sunday against K-Town, and it was a disaster that started manifesting itself over Saturday night. Around midnight, I got a text message from former Gopher hockey star Jay Moser, our shortstop and No. 3 hitter, saying he had wrenched his back, couldn’t move, and wouldn’t be able to play the next day. I was counting on him to back up Gary, our pitcher, then I got a text from Gary, who said he was injured working on a rock wall late Saturday, and definitely would be unable to play, let alone pitch Sunday. With Jack, our third baseman and next in line to pitch, facing an important meeting at work, we were in bad shape for our finale. Mike, our speedy center-fielder, was solid, as was Sam at first base. Matt and Huck, our top two rookies, were also set, as was big Steve, who has become a good catcher while constantly begging for the chance to pitch, and Derek, who faces a weekly battle with his wife whether he should be freed to play.
As I drove from Duluth to Shakopee for the game Sunday morning, I was almost constantly on the phone. I was about a half-hour from Shakopee when Jack informed me he could get free to play, but he was in Oakdale, on the far east end of the Twin Cities, and he had damaged a suspension piece on his car and couldn’t drive it that far. I immediately called our players already in the dugout and told them to start without me, and I turned abruptly to go pick up Jack.
Negotiating construction highlights on the roads to Shakopee, we missed the start of the game, and our team, playing with eight players, was trailing 4-1 when we arrived. Jack ran onto the field and took third base, while I hauled the equipment belatedly to the dugout. With no warmup, Jack got up twice and got two hits. I went in at second base, and got up twice without two hits. We lost, 6-1. Most impressively, Mike Snow said he felt fine, instead of exhausted, and pitched all the way for the second day in a row. Again he gave up only four hits, and for the second day in a row we wasted his effort.
I thought it seemed pretty hot, which I attributed to anxiety, then I heard the temperature was an all-time record 97 degrees in Shakopee, with a heat index of 115.
My plan was to hang it up after this season, to turn over the equipment and the anxiety to some younger player, closer to the scene in the Twin Cities. After we were done, though, a half dozen players said how much they were looking forward to next season, and pleaded with me to continue. I didn’t commit. But like an unspecified addict, after a terrible year hitting, I had gotten three hits in two tournament games — more than I attained all season. Nothing makes next year look better than that.
Comments
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
For those who want to keep up with John Gilbert's view of sports, mainly hockey with a Minnesota slant, click on the following:
Click here for sports