No Offence, But Your Offence Is Terrible

On Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings took on the Seattle Seahawks in Seattle. It was a game I was hoping the Vikings would win, but was not expecting it as it is tough to win in Seattle (Just ask New England and Green Bay). This second-half of the schedule for the Vikings is going to be a tough one, and if they can't find a way to move the ball through the air, it could be a VERY long 7-game stretch.

There are a lot of people piling onto the "Bench Christian Ponder" bandwagon after he failed to even reach 100 yards passing for the 2nd time in 3 games. But how much of that blame goes to Ponder? We have exactly one wide reciever that can get open, and his name is Percy Harvin. The rest have not been able to do anything other than get pass-interference calls (Thank you Jerome Simpson for all two of those). So who exactly is Ponder supposed to throw to? There is also the issue of the offensive line not being able to block what the opponents are throwing at them, giving Ponder no time to figure out where to throw the ball. And then finally, we have Bill Musgrave and Leslie Frasier. These two guys need to figure out how to get this passing attack going. It has appeared that there has been zero plan of a)How are we going to attack this defense, and b) what is our identity over these last four games. The opening four games of the season, we had good plans, and they worked. Lately? It's like they completely forgot how to game plan. And then that brings us to Ponder. Yes, he has no WR's to throw to, yes, he has no time to even think about throwing it to them, and yes, the coaching staff has failed miserably in how to fix these issues. But there HAS been times where Ponder DID have open receivers and DID have time to throw it. And he missed.

The Vikings right now have possibly the two best offensive players in the league right now in Adrian Peterson and Percy Harvin. Adrian is easily the best runningback in the league. And Percy is the best weapon in the league. Opponents have to defend Peterson, which should be leaving the passing game wide open. Why is that not happening? Even with the defense stacked against Peterson and leaving the WR's alone, we still see AP blowing up and putting up numbers that can only make you shake your head in amazement. And our offence can only put up 44 net yards through the air despite no one defending it. This shouldn't be too difficult to figure out. What is going to be difficult is figuring it out while playing a schedule that has us facing Detroit, Chicago twice, Green Bay twice, Houston, and the Rams.

I'll be very happy if we can sneak 3 more wins out of the season. Anything more than that will be a complete shock, and perhaps a sign Fraiser, Musgrave, and Ponder have figured out that the football does travel through the air.