It Wasn’t Always Pretty, but Vikes Get the Job Done
Let’s get this out of the way: Beating the Raiders is nothing to write home about. But hey, after the embarrassment that was week 10 in Lambeau, I’ll gladly take this one.
You’ve gotta love Chester Taylor…I’ve been feeling pretty bad for the guy, since Adrian Peterson has really caused Taylor’s stats to take a significant drop, but man, Chester made a solid case for himself today.
We saw some great elusiveness from Chester, as well as some explosiveness that was a bit reminiscent of AD himself. He did a stellar job of running between the tackles, and he also had quite a bit of success when he got to the outside…and I also can’t forget to mention that he made some nice plays on a few screens and checkdowns. Any way you look at it, Chester filled in admirably for Adrian.
Just shows the importance of having depth at running back. Although it’s crossed my mind that the Vikes could use Chester as trade bait and maybe acquire a decent draft pick for him, it’s just too important to have a good backup running back. I’d love to see us keep Chester around for the seasons to come.
With a few exceptions, Tarvaris Jackson played pretty well from start to finish. Certainly, T-Jack needs to do a better job of sensing pressure (remember that time when he was sacked from behind?), and he threw a few ill-advised passes, but hey…he didn’t have a horrible game, by any means.
Jackson’s first quarter interception was his major gaff…he never should have lobbed that ball, and the throw was a little late. Also, a pass he threw while getting taken down was very nearly picked. But really, T-Jack showed some accuracy that we’re not accustomed to seeing from him, and he efficiently managed the game. He definitely needs to show us that he can do more than throw checkdowns and short routes, but he did a decent job today.
As much as I’ve been ripping Chilly during this past week, I’ve gotta say that I generally liked the offensive playcalling. Up to this point, the offense has been vanilla and predictable…very little creativity from the playcalling, and nothing to really keep opposing defenses on their toes. Today, though, we opened up the playbook and kept Oakland’s defense off-balance.
Loved the trickery: Two reverse passes, a reverse run to Troy Williamson, finally mixed in a screen or two, and some effective designed runs for Tarvaris. We’ve been missing this stuff all season, and it’s a shame that it took until today to finally see some variety in the playcalling.
The main problem on offense was the Vikings’ inability to take care of the football. It’s inexcusable to have five turnovers against a bad team (especially on your home turf)…our fumbles/interception kept Oakland in the game for way too long.
I can’t help but wonder about our lack of pressure on Daunte. To an extent, I can understand why we didn’t put much pressure on Favre in last week’s game, but I think we should have ditched that conservative approach against Oakland…with Daunte’s lack of mobility, there’s little reason to be reluctant to pressure him. As we’ve seen, he’s a guy who makes plenty of mistakes when he’s under pressure.
Nice job against the run, though. The Williams brothers were as good as ever, and Oakland really puzzled me with their approach to the running game. Green Bay showed exactly how to approach the Vikings’ run defense: Attack the outside, then go back inside. Oakland, though, continuously ran at our tackles…and that approach resulted in 60 rushing yards for Justin Fargas.
Back to Jackson…the rest of this season is all about evaluating what we’ve got in Tarvaris, and today’s game left a lot of questions unanswered. As I said, he delivered several short passes that were on-target, but the intermediate passing game was nonexistent, and he has yet to develop accuracy when throwing the deep ball.
If we want to make a fair assessment of Jackson this season, I want Chilly to mix in more intermediate passes…we’ve seen T-Jack dump the ball off plenty of times, and we’ve seen him throw a few deep balls, but we haven’t seen how he performs in the intermediate passing game. It’s one thing if he has trouble with his deep passes…in time, he can develop greater accuracy in the vertical passing game. But if he struggles with 10-30 yard passes, then that should be a sign that this team needs to think long and hard about the future of their quarterback situation.
Anyways, not a bad game today. We certainly shot ourselves in the foot a few too many times, and I have some problems with how we attacked Culpepper, but a big game from Chester and an efficient performance by Tarvaris got the job done. The offensive line also deserves plenty of kudos.
At the end of the day, though, we beat the Oakland freaking Raiders. Again, I’ll take any win after the disaster at Lambeau, but we beat a bad team.
And unfortunately we face a slightly tougher test next week.
(As always, I want to hear what you guys thought of the game…the comments section is always open!)
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on Sunday, November 18th, 2007 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Brad Childress, Oakland Raiders, Adrian Peterson, Chester Taylor, Minnesota Vikings, Tarvaris Jackson, NFL.
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7 Responses to “It Wasn’t Always Pretty, but Vikes Get the Job Done”
November 19th, 2007 at 1:16 am
Stopped by to give props on today’s game….
as to the Oakland Freakin Raiders comment… Super Bowl XI
November 19th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
NIce win this week, good for the Vikings. But i have to say, this writer must’ve been smoking or something when he says at the end that they face a SLIGHTLY tougher team next week, how insulting! to call a playoff-bound team like the Giants SLIGHTLY tougher than the FREAKING OAKLAND RAIDERS!! I mean sure, they’re not the Cowboys or Packers yet, but they’re good enough to beat the Vikings. Think about it, most of the key matchups are in our favor. the Vikings can’t defend against the pass(Our passing offense may not be great right now with injuries & age creeping on our top receivers but no matter we’ll still do better than Minny), they can’t pass themselves with such terrible QBs and WRs, and they are most likely not going to get much more production running on us either. Adrian “All Day” Peterson is hurt and out (but i do like they guy he’s great possibly the next great runner) but he could’ve been stopped if he played, Dallas and a few other teams that i can’t remember did so, it would’ve been very hard but not impossible. Chester Taylor is the one playing and though he’s a threat himself he probably won’t have his way either, we’ll never know how AP would’ve fared vs the Gmen but Taylor probably won’t do much better. I guess the Jury is out on the battle of the trenches, from what i’ve heard the Vikings have a decent o-line including whom i believe is a pro-bowler Steve Hutchinson. all i can say about that is that he’s just one man, vs several sack artists, we may have lost Mathias Kiwanuka to injury but there’s still 3 others to worry about. i’m not counting out your o-line at all. i’m just saying it will be a fair matchup.Still, how can this guy compare the Giants to the OAKLAND FREAKING RAIDERS??? WHY is he trying to fill himself and the poor Vikings fans with false confidence like Loins QB Jon Kitna obviously did when the Media revealed to Michael Strahan what he said about losing to the Giants??? this is inconceivable!! i’m sure Vikings fans don’t think like he does… i know Detroit had more than one chance to win at the end with their little rally, but the bottom line is they failed and we came up with the stops, period. Good luck next week Vikings fans, i hope you guys don’t listen to this idiot and take the Giants more seriously than he & Jon Kitna did.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
i’ll admit our offense isn’t looking very good right now and that gives Minny some openings, but just don’t think that means you can have your way with us. why? because our offense isn’t that bad, we have to wait and see what team shows up. i wish it didn’t have to be that way and that we could be a sure thing like Dallas but were not, so we just have to wait and see.
November 19th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Remember when I came on here a month ago saying how I didn’t mind the Browns picking Joe Thomas over Adrian Peterson, and then some of you guys called me out for it?
Well, peep:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/.....l07/week11
“With tailback Adrian Peterson sidelined by a sprained knee ligament, and his return to the Minnesota lineup uncertain, it might be time to start considering Cleveland left offensive tackle Joe Thomas as a viable candidate for offensive rookie of the year. The third overall choice in the draft, Thomas is having a spectacular season at the offensive line’s most challenging position, even if most fans around the NFL don’t realize it.”
A non-skill position player has never won the award before.
No knock on your Vikes, but Chester Taylor’s huge day yesterday should show the world that AD is a product of an amazing offensive line with three Pro Bowlers on it (McKinnie is a Pro Bowler in my mind). No way AD puts up those numbers in Cleveland, and no way Cleveland’s line has Joe Thomas on it if we take AD at #3.
That’s why you don’t judge careers and draft picks after just 10 games.
November 19th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Patrick- All right, ya got me on that one.
Kennster- Loved the rant. Note the italics on “slightly.”
Amar- Fair enough, but you can’t tell me that a 296 yard day is simply a product of a strong offensive line…and Adrian’s made plenty of ridiculously good plays on days when frankly, the offensive line has struggled. It’s fair to say that the offensive line has certainly helped his cause, but let’s not undersell just how unbelievable talented this guy is. Also, while Hutchinson is one of the best linemen in the league, I’d have to disagree with your take on McKinnie. He’s had some dominant games (he’s been especially strong against Oakland, San Diego, and Chicago), but he had a horrible start to this year, and overall I think it’s fair to say that he’s been pretty inconsistent. And Birk’s overrated, in my book. I whole-heartedly agree, though, that we shouldn’t be declaring one pick as better than the other at this point…and besides, it’s comparing apples to oranges anyway.
November 20th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
It’s unbelievable how defensive you NY Giant fans are about your squad. The “slightly tougher” comment was obviously tongue-in-cheek. Relax, guys.
November 20th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
[…] Vikings War Cry: “You’ve gotta love Chester Taylor…I’ve been feeling pretty bad for the guy, since Adrian Peterson has really caused Taylor’s stats to take a significant drop, but man, Chester made a solid case for himself today.” No Comments Leave a Commenttrackback addressThere was an error with your comment, please try again. name (required)email (will not be published) (required)url […]
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