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VikingLord wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:51 pm Still, the team could easily be 2-0 at this point absent a flukey "fumble" in OT and a flukey FG miss late to win in consecutive away games and everyone would be singing their praises and talking about how resilient they are.

I have a lot of issues with the "if only" line of thinking, especially when it comes to individual, concrete events. But by far the biggest hole in this thought process is the implication of luck. That is, it was a bit of bad luck that we are 0-2 and that with better luck we'd be 2-0.

Unfortunately, relying on luck never ever made any team a consistent competitor for post season wins.

These events (questionable fumble, missed high percentage kicks) don't and can't happen in a vacuum. Bill Parcells skipped the probability discussion when he said "you are what your record says you are", but he was dead right. If you are good enough as an organization, you win those games. If you are not, you don't.

You simply can't say "yeah of course we'll keep the low percentage 52 yard field goal we made while saying we should have also made the higher percentage 37 yarder". If you want to play probabilities, it's far more likely we would have missed the 52 and made the 37. What outcome would that have produced?

It's the Barry Sanders analysis in reverse - "yeah he had 140 yards rushing but take away the 94 yarder and he didn't do that well". But you can't simply "take away" the 94 yarder without changing all kinds of other probabilities in the game.

IIsweet wrote: ↑Thu Sep 23, 2021 1:40 pm You know.... CharVike... I agree
After this week, another L lets assume but hope for a W...
0-3, Fire Zim, trade Cousins to Houston with Mattison and Ezra for D Watson and a 2nd rd draft pick.
Start Mond for the year, let DWatson get the legalities finalized. Then become our QB for the next 10 years. We draft a new starting OG next year.
Houston gets a legit starting QB and a new starting RB, and a legit starting OG or OT !
Both parties benefit.

No team is going to trade for Cousin's contract

psjordan wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 8:13 am

VikingLord wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:51 pm Still, the team could easily be 2-0 at this point absent a flukey "fumble" in OT and a flukey FG miss late to win in consecutive away games and everyone would be singing their praises and talking about how resilient they are.

I have a lot of issues with the "if only" line of thinking, especially when it comes to individual, concrete events. But by far the biggest hole in this thought process is the implication of luck. That is, it was a bit of bad luck that we are 0-2 and that with better luck we'd be 2-0.

Naw. Its just a little bit of an overreaction to allow two late, close, flukey road losses to cause Vikings fans to want to blow the whole thing up.

Let's revisit this around Game 12 of the season. If its just a matter of bad opening luck for this team, they'll likely be around .500 by that point.

If they're better than their early record indicates, they'll be in the playoff and division lead hunt.

I personally believe the latter is far more likely to be true than the former, but we'll see.

StumpHunter wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 7:25 am

VikingLord wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:51 pm

It's hard to be excited when the team is 0-2 and staring an 0-3 start in the face with Russell Wilson and the Seahawks coming to town and most prognosticators picking against the Vikings.

Still, the team could easily be 2-0 at this point absent a flukey "fumble" in OT and a flukey FG miss late to win in consecutive away games and everyone would be singing their praises and talking about how resilient they are.

It's just too early with too little evidence to predict the sky is falling yet. The defense has been pretty crappy and can play much better than they've shown. The OL improved light years over their first half performance at the Bengals. Cousins has been strong and efficient. There are many more reasons for optimism than pessimism at this point. Let's all let the season play out a bit more and if we're still talking like this around Week 12-14 and team is well out of it by that point, then its probably time to start talking about the fate of the Spielman-Zimmer-Cousins triumvirate.

The Oline hasn't improved as much as the passing game has focused on getting the ball out quickly over trying to hold the ball and push the ball downfield. Our "efficient" offense is 22nd in points per drive and 24th in yards per drive. We were 20th in points per drive after week 1.

That being said, being a chip shot FG away from winning week 2 is a positive sign. AZ might be a playoff team at the end of the season and since 2018 the Vikings haven't really been close against most playoff teams on the road. The first loss isn't a good sign though. The Bengals appear to be a bad team and we only got to OT against them because their HC stupidly went for it on 4th down inside their own 30.

I don't know - the OL looks improved to me.

I guess its a matter of "improved compared to what". For me that "what" is their first half performance against the Bengals that was marred by penalties and poor execution.

Since then they've given Cousins pretty good protection and consistently opened running lanes while avoiding those mistakes that killed them early. Not flawless by any stretch but much, much better than what they showed early against the Bengals.