Vikings Message Board.Com

While it has been pointed out a few times already to some extent......I just am not sure exactly what people are criticizing as to strategies taken to make this team competitive this year or surprise why this is now hurting us. Discount altogether bad luck....we were a 5-11 team a year ago. Zimmer/Speilman were under pressure, like every other coach/GM in the NFL, to find a way to compete and improve. Did they make an irrational decision to base the offensive foundation around Peterson....perhaps the best FB player in the league...certainly the best FB player on the roster they inherited....and the FB [layer on their team where we were most invested? Losing him certainly makes that choice easy to second guess now. But was that a poor choice to try and transition from a 5-11 team with holes everywhere in the roster to a competitive team to hopefully buy time to have a SF or SEA type roster strength in two years to be a legitimate contender? I think not. Peterson certainly had proven his ability to stay healthy and pack the load and cover other weaknesses on offense while we tried to right the defense this year and groom a hopeful answer to QB. The moves on D look to be well considered and working as well as we could ever hope for to this point. But lose the Queen on the board early in the season....its impossible to adjust strategy in a move or two or three with pawns and a few limited pieces while you develop enough depth and skill to cover for the unexpected loss of your center piece.

Was it a risk to place so much of the ability to compete on offense in one player who may go down....sure....we did not have a QB in place that we could make the same risk decision on (see Brady/Manning/Luck/Bradshaw (that outcome on display tonight)...but the real risk there was made with the contract before this year's strategies were set...and for everything we know, it sure seemed like best practice risk management available at the time to work into a place where we were not so dependent....and we could then shed or re-evaluate that reliance and resulting contract. We are a carpenter without a hammer in our tool bag right now on offense trying to drive nails with the back of a pipe wrench....a few nails will get bent and the work will look ugly even when we can make it functional. If we get Adrian back next year we will actually be further ahead of plans for new stadium team....if we don't we will be further ahead of plans of how new stadium team is built without him....until then, we will continue to bend a few nails over and try and cover it up with some cheap trim.

It is the modern NFL....we cant enslave people to our roster through indefinite retention of the draft picks that do hit....so we have to roll the dice and hope our risk management works out until we are deep enough and diversified enough to absorb risk fails. The irony to me is that the lowest risk decision to getting where we need to be would actually be to have traded/cut Peterson and accept we will be a 3-5 win team for a few years to get better quicker (ala "the trade") if they wanted to cut the time to true perennial contender status....but they don't do that as they would have lost the fan base and been roasted for the move in light of the public money spent on new stadium deal...and now the fans want to burn the brain trust at the stake for it because the full house did not hold up to lady luck house hand at the table this year. The true irony is that it is the fans and OUR lack of any interest in supporting a good business decision with support (with our ticket purchases) through the short term pain that gets in the way sometimes of what we demand from our teams...long term success! But instead there is the reality that every single coach/GM lives with; the NFL stands for Not For Long if decisions cause short term win/loss pain to the fans in favor of better long term win/loss business decisions.

So it's the fans fault. And we should support a bad product even if that means it continues to be a bad product, because some day it might get better?



It's a results league. If you don't get results, you won't be in the league. And the fans have little to nothing to do with it.

No, it is a BUSINESS with irrational and shortsided clients! I see it as one of the most difficult businesses in the world.....you cant make the kind of 5/10 year plans required to have acceptable risk management as to success (if you judge that as a realistic shot to be the best team). Knee jerk reactions to short term pain and voting the management out with our need to get a quick fix ensure we don't have managers and owners that will make good long term decisions. So....in a large way....yes it is somewhat the stockholders' fault! Look to where we see a 10 year window of dominance roll every 20 years or so...GB (as hard as it is to say that), Pittsburg, NE...their clients/stockholders sell out every year in good and bad times. The antithesis is the fart in a skillet markets with irrational fan expectations and knee jerk reactions....Philly, LA (which is why they have no team anymore), and unfortunately....Min for the last 20 years. For 20 years we are sold on Denny Green and Childress type ideas of give them what they want for a one or two year shot of high entertainment with a decade long hangover.....truth is both Chilly and Green had their moments in the sun where they were the toast of the town for their short term runs at being competitive....and hated now for the very same thing.

I will admit that in your particular case, this is not true....you are a rock of consistency....every Vikings hierarchy is/has been incompetent and every player eventually is the wash out you predicted on any given Sunday or season.

The Dome sells out year in and year out. Regardless of the teams performance. The team makes millions every year. Don't blame the clients because the CEO makes poor management decisions...which result in poor employee performance. If this was a business, it wouldn't be getting a new headquarters, it'd be bankrupt and wouldn't exist...

5/10 year plans are great, if the person putting the plan in place and executing are capable of doing so. The NEs and GBs have success and people in place...and have for decades.

The Dome sells out year in and year out....sold out each Sunday weeks/years in advance???? Blackout concerns never exist? The property itself does not fail to return acceptable returns to the investment of the franchise??? Owners don't but facilities.....they buy community fanaticism and love....the good ones but teams to be loved and revered by their communities.....same investment in anything else allows them much more control and upside. Its not the old AFL Demi....guys don't buy teams and management don't take the job because they are looking for a way to fight their way into the next tax bracket (save aside Red!). I am not even certain we see this end of it different. I just think that Business people respond to markets....if your market requires what they want right now, at any cost, and will revolt once the buzz wears off.....you sell them what they want.....In a glam town that's the Jets....in the marsh its Min. A double latte and a new sign out front promising a new and better quick fix is what has sold in Min for too damn long. We have folks in place, I think, who are trying to build a 17 year Scotch in the basement.....albeit the basement the MN folks paid for....but all must be willing to let it age a year or two before we fire the barrels and scatter the master distillers off to better pastures where they can exercise their creative/practical abilities in better environs....i.e.....Billick/Tomlin or Gannon/Habib/Birk etc...

Demi wrote:The Dome sells out year in and year out. Regardless of the teams performance. The team makes millions every year. Don't blame the clients because the CEO makes poor management decisions...which result in poor employee performance. If this was a business, it wouldn't be getting a new headquarters, it'd be bankrupt and wouldn't exist...

5/10 year plans are great, if the person putting the plan in place and executing are capable of doing so. The NEs and GBs have success and people in place...and have for decades.

Your two examples have one thing in a common. They each have one of the top five quarterbacks to ever play. The formula for sustained success is simple. Just get a hall-of-fame quarterback.