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...and then melt the tar and tear open the feather bed
Well fans, wasn’t watching those Vikes last Sunday just about as much fun as passing a kidney stone? Astute analysis at this point must revolve around determining which is worst – offense, defense, or special teams. Would coaching be a rotten element of each of these latter, or a special horrible category of its own?
On offense, the Purple resembles a high school team – run, run, and then pass when hope gives out on third down. The rushing offense is so predictable that the opposition not only stacks the box, but the side of the line where Adrian Peterson is going to run. No team in the NFL regularly allows so much penetration behind the line of scrimmage on running plays. If they could give him one yard of push, Peterson would have well over 1000 yards rushing by now.
Of course, the passing offense is just as predictable, reserved for third and long, so Brett Favre is regularly overrun and plastered by imaginative blitzes which the Purple never picks up. He now is said to have a new injury to his shoulder, which makes about four chronic ones. Considering the punishment he takes, he is lucky to be alive. I expect that in a few years after he retires, he’ll be getting about like the guys you used to see in big cities, on one of those little trolleys propelled by a flat iron in either hand.
In fairness, with Sidney Rice, Bernard Berrian, and Percy Harvin all down with injuries, Favre can wield few weapons, and he did manage to bounce the go ahead TD off the supposedly sure hands of Greg Camarillo. But with his receivers falling down all day long, wouldn’t you think this team could at least make an adjustment to its foot gear?
The Bears adjusted to what the Vikes were doing on offense and totally shut them down in the second half, but could the Vikes conjure an answer to Jay Cutler rolling right and then throwing back to the left flat where there would always be a receiver, all alone like Robinson Crusoe on his island? – no! And what happened to the concept of blitzing when your front four can’t get pressure, one that Leslie Frazier had seemed to grasp last week against the Cardinals. Sometimes, perhaps when his arm would get tired from completing so many passes, Cutler would roll out right and just gambol down the vast empty field for the long gain. Variety is the spice of life, he might say.
I give this team one more chance against the Cheeseheads next week, half hoping they get hammered so that the Chiller can be down the road sooner rather than later, and we can see if there is any point in hanging on to Tarvaris Jackson for next year, when Brett Favre, stuffed, will be the main exhibit in his museum down in Mississippi.
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