Vikings Message Board.Com

VikingPaul73 wrote: YES!!!! It's not like Ponder has been average...... He's been awful! Who throws for under 100 yards er game on a REGULAR basis!?!?!? They are 7-6 with possibly the worst excuse for an nfl QB this decade. With a semi competent QB they'd have won 2-3 more games.

It's not that Sage is great. It's that Ponder is not even backup quality in the NFL!! He's a complete joke! Sage comes close to competent.

And yes....."close to competent" vs. Ponder is worth 2-3 wins.

break down the losses. last week was the only game i could honestly say the vikings would have won had the QB been different. i have railed against ponder because i believe he is not good, but saying "if we plugged in this mediocre QB we would be leading the division" is speculative, especially when that mediocre QB isn't even in the league anymore.

and don't forget, we were less than a minute away from losing to jacksonville until ponder made a few big throws and later helped the vikings win.

VikingPaul73 wrote: YES!!!! It's not like Ponder has been average...... He's been awful! Who throws for under 100 yards er game on a REGULAR basis!?!?!? They are 7-6 with possibly the worst excuse for an nfl QB this decade. With a semi competent QB they'd have won 2-3 more games.

It's not that Sage is great. It's that Ponder is not even backup quality in the NFL!! He's a complete joke! Sage comes close to competent.

And yes....."close to competent" vs. Ponder is worth 2-3 wins.

I agree, but we need to develop a young player. We can't bring in another veteran that were just going to have for a year or so. We need to get a younger person that we can have for a long time. That being said, I still think ponder is absolutely pathetic and needs to be replaced, but playing an average veteran isn't going to help us any. Remember, were a rebuilding team. We need to create a long term plan, not a short one like we tried with favre and McNabb.

tmscr wrote:and don't forget, we were less than a minute away from losing to jacksonville until ponder made a few big throws and later helped the vikings win.

Where did THAT Ponder go? He looked like he had turned a corner early in the season; huge regress since TB game or so.

The only reason ponder had a good average yards per completion was because he didn't have harvin to throw one yard passes to

Dark wrote:The only reason ponder had a good average yards per completion was because he didn't have harvin to throw one yard passes to

I can throw out the stats that shows this is clearly wrong, he had like 10% of his yards from those 1 yard passes. Ponder has been sucking as of late...really really REALLY bad. But don't throw that BS out there because you want to bash him.

Oh and to everyone just take a look at my sig. This forum seems to think there is only one opinion that matters; there's.

Texas Vike wrote: Where did THAT Ponder go? He looked like he had turned a corner early in the season; huge regress since TB game or so.

Keep in mind that when they lost Harvin they lost the ONLY legit receiver on the team and possibly the BEST all around offensive weapon in the entire league. There was a definate correlation in Ponder's play since the offense was designed around AD running and quick explosive passes to Harvin.I am not saying for a second that Ponder has not looked horrible lately but with his crappy wideouts and a OC with zero imagination it compounds the problem.
What is dumbfounding is the fan's reaction to Ponder's play today. Was he great, far from it but other than a long 3rd down int. which turned out to be almost as good as a punt and did not effect the game, he threw only 17 passes all day completing 11 (that is about 4 a quarter) and made some key completions. The Aromashadu pass into the endzone was thrown as good as it could have been and should have been a TD or PI which was not called.
Every one cried to give the ball all day to All Day and that is what the game plan was and it was a successful formula. Stepping away from all the Ponder hate has anyone given any credit to Frazier for getting this team fired up and beating the division leading Bears Or the good job that the defense played most of the day
Without exception most fans believed that this team might win 3-6 games at the most and have exceeded thos expectations. I for one am pleased that in the middle of December the "rebuilding team" is in contention for a play-off spot.
Get some decent wideouts next year, upgrade the line, get a good outside backer and this team will be right on schedule. I was all for giving Ponder this year to make it or not and if by the last game (even playing with these crappy receivers ) he continues to struggle then I hope that they bring in someone who can compete.
In the mean time, I enjoyed this win today, give a lot of credit to AD and the o-line run blocking, Fraziers getting them "UP" for the task and look forward to watching how the rest of the season unfolds.

Dark wrote:

that's a great point. they haven't benched ponder yet, so even if they hadn't cut rosenfels, he wouldn't be playing. and as bad as it is, ponder is proving that he may NOT be the future QB the vikings need, and it's hard to prove anything by holding a clipboard on the sidelines

Arma wrote: I can throw out the stats that shows this is clearly wrong, he had like 10% of his yards from those 1 yard passes. Ponder has been sucking as of late...really really REALLY bad. But don't throw that BS out there because you want to bash him.

Oh and to everyone just take a look at my sig. This forum seems to think there is only one opinion that matters; there's.

That's my point. He doesn't get a lot of yards on those plays, thus making his average yards per completion lower.

Good win! Wish I could have been in the Metrodome with my father today.


Peterson is simply stunning. I cannot even imagine how terrible we would be without him.

Ponder sucks. I am not going to say much more than that.

Defense was outstanding today! Glad to see Josh Robinson and Harrison Smith get picks. (Side note: Why in the hell did Robinson not get more help? FFS, the guy is a rookie going against one of the best wide receivers in the entire NFL. Robinson is good but he is still developing).

Just think how good we could be with a real NFL QB. Hell, we may be in the division lead! Sadly, we are doomed to witness four more games with terrible QB play. Probably next season too...

Something this team needs to improve on as a unit is finding consistency. At home they find ways to win, on the road they find ways to lose. That isn't gonna be enough to ever transition into being a top tier team.

What really bothered me during the game was when the announcers were talking about potential Comeback Player of the Year and showed Manning and AD side-by-side. The thought flitted through my mind that the Vikings could have been in the hunt for Manning. I don't know how bad he wanted to play in Denver, and I know his injury was scary, but can you imagine the Vikings right now if they had Manning in addition to AD?

That comparison also underscores the need for the Vikings to remain flexible when thinking about the QB position and how best to address it. There is a real risk they will focus on "developing" Ponder by giving him however many games or years Spielman or Frazier (or both) think is necessary to give him a fair shake, and that the only way to do this is to put him out there and let him struggle through it. To do that, obviously they can't have another QB on the roster who could supplant him, so that approach would lead them to take passes on vets like Manning who might actually be able to come in and win the job outright.

I think Denny Green had the basic approach down. He knew how rare truly great QB's are and he didn't fixate on the best one in a given draft and then try to force it. He went with vets who could run his offense competently while he waited for the right guy to come up in a draft, and Culpepper was that guy. One can argue about whether Culpepper merited the pick that was used on him, but he showed a lot of promise during his years with the Vikings.

Ponder appears to have been a real reach by a team desperate to find its long-term answer at QB, and right now it appears equally apparent that the guys running the show have every intent on forcing Ponder to become that answer even if the on-field results suggest it will never happen. This offseason will tell a lot about whether Spielman and Frazier get it and will do what it takes to win, or whether they are blindly committed to proving that Ponder was worth the 12th selection in last year's draft.

If you can run the football like AD did against the Bears, and play defense where your D is essentially contributing to more points than it is giving up, then the team will definitely be just fine. The QBs and WRs wouldn't even need to be any good. I'm not worried about AD. But I still don't see our D being this dominant over the long haul.

I thought it was a nice game from Brinkley, a very nice game. If that can keep up, we could have an excellent front seven. Smith has been great most of the year. And everyone here should know how much I love Winfield. But I'm still not sold on the other CB position. Maybe when Cook comes back that position would be improved, still though -- we need one of these other corners to step it up. I know Robinson had that near pick 6, but he was beaten a lot too, as was Jefferson.

Anyway, the good if not great news about today, is that enough things were going right, that it actually made me wonder if the Vikes have few enough holes to fill that they can do it in one or two off-seasons. At least a guy can wonder that, right?

VikingLord wrote:I think Denny Green had the basic approach down. He knew how rare truly great QB's are and he didn't fixate on the best one in a given draft and then try to force it. He went with vets who could run his offense competently while he waited for the right guy to come up in a draft, and Culpepper was that guy. One can argue about whether Culpepper merited the pick that was used on him, but he showed a lot of promise during his years with the Vikings.

Yes, he did but I think it's a stretch to say Green had the right approach unless years of one and done playoff appearances were the goal. Culpepper was drafted after Green had been head coach of the Vikings for 8 years. I think going with years of stopgaps was the wrong approach and the team would have been better off establishing stability at the position. Howevr, I'll cut Green a little slack since Brad Johnson was developed during that time. Of course, they also traded him away...

HardcoreVikesFan wrote:Just think how good we could be with a real NFL QB. Hell, we may be in the division lead! Sadly, we are doomed to witness four more games with terrible QB play. Probably next season too...

I like the way you think! Four more games this season with Ponder means the playoffs (although one and done), since there are only three games left in the regular season.