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Vikes Coach Brad Childress Dead Right in His Assessment of Sunday’s Blowout.

Posted on January 17, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Here is what our local football guru wrote in a Winnipeg newspaper this week:

“The Vikes have a lot of people thinking their Week 17 walloping of the Giants was a playoff primer. Not us. Their defence is suspect and their offensive line could prove porous to a big D like the one in Dallas.”

He went on to say: “The Vikings have lost three of their last five games and while many believe their season-ending thumping of the Giants was a show of strength, we believe it was smoke and mirrors. The Cowboys match up very well against the Vikings with a huge offensive line that can slow down the pass rush and move the ball on the ground. Look for the Dallas defence to push the Vikes around at the line of scrimmage.”

I wouldn’t bring it up if it had been a close football game, but like Vikings coach Brad Childress suggested on Sunday afternoon, it was so off-base it was hard to ignore. Now, to be fair, that’s just what was written in Winnipeg about Sunday afternoon’s game between the Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys. It wasn’t a whole lot different anywhere else. In fact, Childress heard the talk in the Twin Cities all week and it pissed him off.

So yesterday, after the Vikings drilled the Cowboys 34-3 here at Mall of America Field, Childress took a little time to go off on all those who thought Dallas was the be-all and end-all of professional football teams.

“I heard all the nonsense and all the hype about the Dallas Cowboys coming to town, the hottest team in the playoffs,” Childress said. “I asked my players this week to just choke it back and shut up. And we’ll play the game when they get here on Sunday.

“The game is always won on the football field so I’m tickled to death for our guys. I knew they’d play their tails off and dispel the myth about whoever was coming to town.

“All I heard all week was that the Tasmainian Devils from Dallas were coming in to bombard the state of Minnesota and were about to run through us like Sherman through the south. That was the aura that was left after last week’s games. Our guys had enough of it by Tuesday. They did a great job by shuttimng up because sometimes it’s hard to listen to that stuff.

“So that was a team victory. We were a good football team all season and a good football team today.”

You can check the numbers at www.nfl.com. Needless to say, the Vikings were much the superior team.

But while so many of the so-called experts were calling for Dallas to win easily on Sunday, it took former Vikings coach, Mike Tice, to assess the situation best.

On Friday, Tice was interviewed by Dan Barreiro on 1130-The FAN in Minneapolis. Tice said: “Under duress, Romo will revert, get sloppy and then go fetal.”

That’s exactly what he did. That’s why the Vikings had six sacks, why Romo fumbled three times, threw an interception and got his ass kicked. So much for “Their (Minnesota’s) defence is suspect and their offensive line could prove porous to a big D like the one in Dallas.”

Brett Favre was brilliant, Sidney Rice was unstoppable and the Vikings defence was a monster. 34-3. This one wasn’t even close.

But now comes the real test. Can the Vikings win on the road, in New Orleans?

Sure, But will they? Guess all the experts will know in seven days.

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Vikings Go To 8-1 With Easy Win Over Detroit.

Posted on November 15, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

MINNEAPOLIS — OK, so it wasn’t their best effort of the season, but in front of 63,854 spectators — including thousands of Winnipeggers — the Minnesota Vikings drilled the Detroit Lions 27-10 at Mall of America Field on Sunday afternoon.

With the win, the Vikings improved to 8-1. The Lions fell to 1-8.

The Vikings were handed a load of penalties (there were times when this thing looked fixed), many of which, head coach Brad Childress had little trouble questioning. In fact, a roughing the passer penalty against Ray Edwards, caused Childress to call out the official who made the call.

“I said to the official, ‘Ray never hit the quarterback on the head and he didn’t tackle him low so where did he tackle him that would result in a penalty?’,” a frustrated Childress explained. “The official said, ‘He (Edwards) launched himself at the quarterback and hit him high.’ And I said, ‘Where does it say in the rules that you can’t launch yourself at the quarterback?’ When I looked at the replay I noticed that Ray didn’t make contact at all. That wasn’t a very good call.”

It didn’t help that the Vikings lost a couple of fumbles, one by Adrian Peterson near the Detroit goal line, but Minnesota’s Sidney Rice did pitch-in with a career-high 201 yards receiving (on only seven catches) while Peterson did rush for 133 yards (100 in the first half) and scored two touchdowns.

The win gave Minnesota its best start since 1998 when the Vikes went 15-1 and then lost the NFC championship game to Atlanta.

Vikings quarterback Brett Favre (in his 300th consecutive start) completed 20 of 29 passes for a season-high 344 yards with one touchdown pass to backup tight end Jeff Dugan. Meanwhile, Rice’s 201-yard game was the fourth 200-yard receiving game in team history. It was just nine yards short of Sammy White’s team record (210 against Detroit in 1976).

“Wde were coming out of the bye and we were loose,” said Childress. “Maybe we were too loose. We have to tighten things up and play better next week against Seattle. It’s all about improving. We still need to improve.”

THE NOTEBOOK: The Vikings have won 15 of their last 16 games with Detroit… Minnesota was just 3-of-11 on third-down and had 13 penalties for 91 yards, which kept the game close until the fourth quarter… What a great game for Ray Edwards. The Vikings defensive end/linebacker had five tackles, two sacks and a forced fumble… There were 63,854 people inside the Metrodome (the 121st consecutive sellout in Minneapolis) and they were all breathing the same air. Obviously nobody really cared about H1N1… It’s shocking that 16 teams failed to draft Percy Harvin before the Vikings selected him. As Favre said yesterday, “He runs like a runningback, he’s built like a runningback and plays like a receiver. He’s one of the best players I’ve ever seen.” And yet 16 teams passed on him. What does that say about scouting in the NFL?

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The Insanity Continues. And the Local Media Proves How Hypocritical It Is Once Again.

Posted on November 14, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

MINNEAPOLIS — If the Minnesota Vikings win the Super Bowl, it won’t be because they were threatened in their own division.

I mean, how good do the Vikings look after both the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers were clobbered last Sunday and then the Bears lost again on Thursday night?

Well, we’re here in the Twin Cities to watch the Vikings pummel the Lions at Mall of America Field on Sunday and then we’ll be back to watch the Vikings beat the Seahawks next weekend and the Bears on the 29th. Three straight home games against inferior talent should have the Vikes at 10-1 by the end of this month. And that means the Vikings could have the NFC North sewn up and their ticket to the playoffs punched.

It’s been a fun week in Winnipeg, made even more fun by Winnipeg drivers who need a little NASCAR fix and the local mainstream media who just can’t stop taking out all their frustrations on the only person who has the guts to call them what they are — belligerent, obnoxious, childish, ignorant and thin-skinned.

1) Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly made them all crazy again, just by saying he’ll be back next season. They whined and moaned and cried and bitched. Even the ones who have never, ever interviewed Kelly, screamed for his firing.

Then the hypocrisy of the local media mob reached comical levels.

Remember when the Bombers got to 7-9 and suddenly the local media made Manny Matzakis the darling of the masses. According to the tall foreheads with the cameras and microphones, Kelly had nothing to do with the team’s resurgence and it was all Matzakis.

Then, after the Bombers were drilled in the final two games of the season, Matzakis suddenly got a pass. The lousy offence wasn’t his fault, it was Kelly’s. Nowhere in the local media was Matzakis even mentioned as a culprit.

The smartest thing anyone in Winnipeg can do is this: Don’t believe a thing you read in a newspaper. They’re just making it up.

2) I love NASCAR for plenty of reasons, but this is the biggest: There are no turn signals on the cars. In Winnipeg, turn signals are the most frightening things you can give a driver.

Seems that in this town we have two types of drivers: the ones who turn on their signals and then never make the turn and the ones who don’t turn on their turn signals until they’re in the middle of an intersection, backing up traffic for blocks.

No wonder Manitoba Public Insurance pays out hundreds of millions of dollars in claims each year.

3) This is why I love it when the Green Bay Packers lose. The franchise is run by a heartless GM and an ignorant, heartless head coach…

According to the Associated Press: “A maintenance employee who’s worked for the Green Bay Packers for more than two decades was fired after making a comment to head coach Mike McCarthy.”

WTMJ radio then reported on Friday that 53-year-old Mike Wood was sitting in a maintenance cart in a stadium tunnel a few days before the Minnesota Vikings visited Lambeau Field. As McCarthy talked to members of the ground crew, Wood says he yelled out to McCarthy to “get the boys ready to kick some butt this weekend.”

A few days later, Wood was fired from the franchise he loves.

Wood says his supervisors thought he told McCarthy not to lay an egg, or something similar which Wood says was a lie. McCarthy said he didn’t fire the maintenance worker, but my insiders say he told the maintenance department to run the guy out of the organization.

Can’t wait to watch that paranoid Packer organization lose again. Those clowns need to worry a lot more about their offensive line and a lot less about the maintenance department.

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