MVN - Most Valuable Network

Thank You, New York; Vikings Coast to Easy Win

And that, my friends, is why they play the game.

“Stunned” pretty much sums up how I feel about today’s game. I NEVER could have seen this coming. 41-17…not quite as sweet as a 41-0 victory would’ve been, but I’ll gladly take it. The Vikings controlled the game from start to finish, and it’s hard not to feel good about this team after such a convincing win.

The Giants did us many, many favors…to say that New York’s passing game was inept would be a huge understatement. Any way you look at it, Eli Manning and company couldn’t have played much worse. Interceptions, dropped passes, a quarterback who was often out-of-sync with his receivers…it was ugly.

It’s been far too long since we’ve seen this defense force a few turnovers, so I was absolutely thrilled with what I saw today. The aggressiveness of the secondary and the horrible performance from Eli culminated in three interceptions returned for touchdowns, and four total picks. You’ve gotta love it. Thanks, Eli…you were totally flustered and could do absolutely nothing right.

By the way, this game showed what polar opposites Eli and Peyton are. One is a true leader; the other pouts and gets shaken up when his back is against the wall.

Leslie Frazier deserves enormous credit for this win. He gave Eli many different looks, disguised coverages, and kept the Giants offense completely off-balance with his use of EJ Henderson and Ben Leber.

Those two guys would come up to the line, but back off into coverage on one play…and they’d blitz on the next down. That helped to fluster Eli, and Frazier’s willingness to put heavy, consistent pressure on Manning was really the story of the game for the Vikings defense.

Eli just didn’t have the mental toughness to rebound from the pressure and different looks from the Vikings defense. Kudos to Frazier for embarrassing Manning…he did his homework on how to attack Eli, and it showed. Big time.

On the offensive side, Tarvaris Jackson looked pretty dang good. First, though, I’ve gotta hand out some credit to the offensive line…certainly, there were some plays where the pressure reached Tarvaris pretty quickly, but for the most part, the Giants’ pass rush was held at bay. And anyways, with only 12 pass attempts by T-Jack, New York didn’t have many opportunities to rush Jackson.

When the ball was in Tarvaris’ hands, he made positive things happen. His throws were mostly on-target, and he delivered a few bullets on some quick slants (how about that 3rd and 4 strike to Wade?). And he did a great job of making plays with his feet…he made several impressive runs in key situations, and displayed some excellent elusiveness.

One play in particular stands out, in which he broke a Michael Strahan tackle, and scampered for a first down. There are very few quarterbacks in this league who could’ve broken away from Strahan on that play.

And then there was the 60-yard touchdown bomb to Sidney Rice in the opening drive of the game. The ball was a bit underthrown, but Jackson did a great job of looking off the safety (who totally bought T-Jack’s look to the left). It was also great to see him have some success in the intermediate passing game…I’ve been waiting to see Tarvaris do more than throw checkdowns and dump-offs.

Jackson did have a few problems with sensing pressure. Last week, I talked about the importance of Tarvaris’ mental clock (the mental countdown that tells him when he needs to get rid of the ball, or tuck it and run), and there were a few plays where he held onto the ball too long. But that’s a bit nitpicky…really, Tarvaris had a solid game.

Great job by this coaching staff. No, this game didn’t change my mind about Chilly, but I’ve gotta give credit where credit’s due. The gameplan was stellar…Frazier had a phenomenal plan of attack against Eli, and I love that Chester was given 31 carries. They completely controlled the tempo of the game on offense.

I may have to eat my words about the Vikings’ playoff hopes…last week, I said it was delusional to think that this team had any shot at a wild card birth, but I was clearly wrong about that. Of course, we’re finished if we lose next week, but as of now, the Vikings are a team to take pretty seriously in the wild card chase.

Indeed, next week’s game just became very meaningful for this team. Don’t blow it, guys.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Tarvaris Jackson, Brad Childress, Minnesota Vikings, New York Giants, NFL, Eli Manning. 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.