MVN - Most Valuable Network

It’s Miller Time! (And Other Vikings News)

It’s the high life…

The Vikings announced today that Miller Brewing Company is the corporate sponsor that stepped forward to help ensure a sellout for Sunday’s game against Oakland at the Metrodome. The move allows the game to be televised locally on WCCO-Ch. 4.

Notice how the ticket sales situation has gotten progressively bleaker…earlier in the season, for each of the two times that Fox and CBS had to buy the remaining tickets, roughly 700 tickets remained. This week, the Vikings had 2,000 remaining tickets that needed to be sold to corporations. The trend is clear…the December 2nd game against Detroit could very likely be the first blackout in over 10 years for the Vikings.

I don’t think we would’ve been missing much, had this week’s game been blacked out. It’s easy to see that this is a horrible matchup…not even worth a discounted price of admission through the scalpers, if you’d ask me.

By the way, this is the Vikings’ 101th consecutive “sell out.”

*Well, I guess Daunte’s return to Minnesota could give people a reason to watch. Pro Football Talk discusses a developing storyline of the game:

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the first high-profile veteran that Childress sent packing from Minnesota delivers the death blow to Brad’s coaching career there? Though it might be premature to think that owner Zygi Wilf would dump the second-year head coach during the season, a posting on a little-known Vikings blog suggests that Wilf is pondering the possibility. Though we previously hadn’t heard of the blog in question and know nothing of its track record, there’s something eerily plausible about the tone and content of the report/rumor/whatever.

My attitude’s been changing about this. If you’d have asked me a few weeks ago about Chilly’s job status, I’d have told you that The ‘Stache would be packing his bags at the end of the season- but I can’t help but think that last week’s game may have changed everything. It was such an embarrassment for this organization, that I certainly have to believe that the possibility of booting Chilly midseason is weighing heavily on Wilf’s mind.

Could a loss to Oakland be the last straw? Well, although the odds of Chilly getting the pink slip in the next few weeks remain slim, I think there’s an emerging possibility that Wilf will make a move during the season.

Here’s why: It’s not often that a fanbase is in such an overwhelming consensus about disliking a coach. Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to find too many Vikings fans that remain supporters of Childress…just check out ESPN.com’s NFL coaches approval ratings. I don’t even need to tell you which coach has the lowest approval rating in the league.

9% of the voters on ESPN.com approve of the job Childress is doing in Minnesota…and most of that 9% are probably Packers fans. Anyways, the coaching situation has gotta be keeping Wilf up at night…he’s undoubtedly feeling the pressure to make a move- and soon.

*Elsewhere, Antoine Winfield perfectly sums up the problem with the Childress regime:

“This game is real simple,” Winfield said. “You have to put certain players in position to make plays. If you’re not doing that, you’re going to get the result that we had [Sunday]. Thirty-four-0.”

I’m honestly not wild about him saying this stuff to PA & Dubay…we’ve seen plenty of evidence that this team is quitting on their coaching staff, so the last thing we need is for players to start saying this kind of stuff to the media.

But regardless of whether or not Antoine was right to publicly speak his mind, I must say that he did an excellent job of stating a major problem with Chilly’s approach. Chilly’s system was forced on this team, even though our guys clearly weren’t suited to his apparent vision of a football team. He doesn’t take advantage of his players’ strengths…he went with his system, and ignored any schemes that would take better advantage of his roster. It’s Chilly’s way or the highway, in short.

You’ve gotta make the best of what you have. Chilly has failed miserably, in that respect.

*Finally, tonight, Judd Zulgad has an article on our offense’s complete ineptitude on third downs…nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it is interesting to note that we rank 31st in the league in third-down efficiency (I was honestly surprised that we weren’t the worst in the league). Perhaps more noteworthy is that our defense is giving up 44% of third downs, and ranks 23rd in the NFL in that area.

(All right, one more thing…I just won the “Battle of the Bloggers” contest on Timberwolves.com. Just thought I’d do some shameless self-promotion before getting outta here for the night)

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Brad Childress, Minnesota Vikings, NFL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.