Thank you, 49ers

The 49ers gave the Vikings a nice holiday gift this year, in the form of a 24-9 whipping of the Arizona Cardinals. To be fair, the Cards beat themselves, making seven turnovers and making me more confident that, apart from New Orleans and maybe Philadelphia (which just frightens me based on last year), I don't think there's an NFC team the Vikings can't handle, and handle fairly easily at home once the playoffs start. (More on the Vikings' playoff potential seeding at the end of this post.)

Around this time of year, once teams start clinching home-field advantage and other playoff positioning, the inevitably tired conversations pop up about whether teams should rest their players or keep playing hard. This year, with two 13-0 teams, the talk is even more spirited. There are, in effect, four possible outcomes, and three of them are bad:

Team rests its starters:
A) They then win their first playoff game -- Good call, coach, they needed the rest!
B) They lose their first playoff game -- Coach, you were too soft on them!

Team doesn't rest its starters:
A) There's a crucial injury in a "meaningless" game -- What were you thinking playing that guy?
B) There are no injuries -- Whew, we got away with that one!

Remember when the Patriots were 15-0 a few years ago and played all-out in that Saturday game against the Giants? What if Tom Brady or Randy Moss would have been injured during that game? It would have gone down at Bill Belichick's second-worst decision ever (after the 4th and 2 this year, of course).

There are simply so many variables that can happen during a game or games that any talk ascribing any particular meaning or consequences to whether guys play or not during their "meaningless" games is just that -- talk. No matter how it's approached, if something bad happens, it will be because the coach played guys he shouldn't have or didn't give them enough rest.

I especially "love" the argument that guys need to keep playing to stay sharp and if they lose in the first round (result B from above), it was because they got too much rest at the end of the season. Consider this: Suppose that Peyton Manning was hurt in, say, week 8. We'll assume it's a type of injury that wouldn't be expected to linger or otherwise affect his football performance when he comes back, say a poke in the eye or a concussion (which I realize is bad, but once you recover from it, it doesn't generally hamper you like, say, a dislocated shoulder or broken leg). When he comes back in, say, week 12, everybody expects him to be at full strength and to play like he always did. Even Peyton himself, who's been able to work out this entire time and still do pretty much everything expected of him except get out on the field, would think that he'll be perfectly fine when he comes back. And he probably will. If he's a little off or has a bad game, hardly anyone would attribute it to rust or other consequences of missing three weeks.

Ah, but now it's week 15 of the regular season. If Peyton misses the next three games -- strictly on a voluntary basis -- and the Colts lay an egg in their playoff game, it'll be because they "took those three games off," and that will be the beginning and the end of the discussion as to why the team lost. Never mind that most teams that do rest their starters do so because they're good teams that have secured a high seed and have the ability to rest them and usually progress far in the playoffs. It's only the failures that we notice and that we try to ascribe some higher meaning to, other than, "The other team was better."

All of which brings us back to the Vikings. If they can beat Carolina next week and if Philadelphia loses either of its next two games, and the Saints can somehow find a way past Dallas and Tampa Bay at home, then, by the time the Vikings take the field against Chicago on Monday night in 13 days, the NFC standings would look like this:

1) New Orleans: 15-0
2) Minnesota: 12-2
3) Philadelphia: 10-5

No other team in the conference could be better than 10-5 except the Packers, who could be 11-4, but the Vikings would still hold tiebreak over them in the division. Thus, the Vikings would be locked into the #2 seed, with two games left to play, thus allowing them to give vital rest to Brett Favre -- who will probably play enough to keep his streak going -- Adrian Peterson, and other vital members of the team. And if that makes the team go 12-4 and keeps everyone fresh for the playoffs, I'm all for it.

If the Saints lose two of their next three games, the Vikings could run the table and tie them at 14-2 and own a better conference record, thus winning the tiebreaker and securing the #1 seed. There's about zero chance the Saints lose to the Bucs at home in two weeks, so that would require them losing to Dallas at home and one the road against Carolina, an unlikely proposition.

But hey, it doesn't hurt to dream.

A case of one-game-itis

Last year about this time, you couldn't hear enough good things, not just from the Vikings coaching staff, but from Vikings fans, about how Tarvaris Jackson might have turned things around and would be a good for the Vikings at the quarterback position in 2008. Most of the optimism centered around his "stellar" 8-4 record as a starter in 2007, but a portion of fans (whom I argued with frequently) pointed at his comeback against Denver in the last game of the season.

Trailing 19-3 in the fourth quarter, Jackson led the team on two late TD drives, each with a two-point conversion, to tie the game at 19 and send it into overtime. To hear some people talk about it, that very good half a quarter nullified the mediocre to bad other 11 7/8 games he'd started, showcasing his "intangibles," his "leadership," and other claptrap and ensuring he'd have a great 2008. After a solid (but short) preseason, the consensus was strong again that he'd turn in a good season and lead the Vikings to the promised land.

We all know how that went. He wasn't altogether horrific in his first two starts of the season, but was bad enough to (rightfully) be benched in favor of Gus Frerotte, who led the team as far as he could before getting injured and giving way to the seemingly new and improved Tarvaris Jackson, who played three and a half games of excellent football to close out the regular season and secure a division title and playoff spot for the Vikings.

Now, after what happened last year -- that is to say, that Jackson was bad mostly all year, showed a very brief spurt of excellence near the end that led people to believe he was good and to trust in him, only to have him revert to form at the start of the next season -- you'd think that, regardless of how he played against Philadelphia in the playoff opener, that fans would remember his good final month of the season and be behind him -- at least partially -- going into 2009.

Nuh-uh.

Most of what I'm seeing out there is the same kind of talk I heard after week two -- namely that, unequivably, Jackson must go. Forget those good games he played at the end of the year. Forget his 95.6 passer rating over his last five games (which includes the Philly game). Forget his 8-2 TD/Int. ratio. His last game was awful. Therefore, he's no good.

Really, have we learned nothing?

First and foremost, fans need to understand that Tarvaris Jackson's play wasn't the only reason the Vikings lost. For the second week in a row, Adrian Peterson had one and only one good carry -- his 40-yard touchdown run, to go with his 67-yarder against the Giants. 12 of his 20 carries against the Eagles went for two yards or less. Combined, Peterson and Chester Taylor ran for just 89 yards on 31 carries -- a 2.9 average -- if you take out the 40-yard run, and, in the second half, when the Vikings were shut out, the two running backs managed just 24 yards on 10 carries.

That's not the fault of the quarterback, people, though it may not have been the fault of the running backs, either. The offensive line routinely allowed multiple defenders into the backfield, making it difficult for any runner to gain yardage. Jackson was only sacked once, but he rarely had time to comfortably look downfield and pick out receivers, and do we need to talk about Matt Birk's bad snap that essentially ended the game for the Vikings?

All this came against the #4 scoring defense in the league, so it's understandable that any team would struggle on offense against them. And, given the horrific state of the Vikings' special teams, it's a tribute to the defense that they were even in the game at all in the final quarter. But Tarvaris Jackson shouldn't necessarily receive the brunt of the criticism for this loss, just as he should never have received the lion's share of the praise for the team's record in his starts in 2007.

Now, I'm not saying that Tarvaris Jackson should be a stone-cold lock to start for the Vikings in 2009. Ideally, I'd like to see Gus Frerotte replaced with a slightly less fossilized quarterback who can compete with Jackson in training camp while John David Booty bides his time on the bench and, in perfect world, develops to the point that he can compete for the starting job. In any case, if you thought Tarvaris Jackson was a halfway decent quarterback a week ago, there's no reason for you to think otherwise after a game where the entire offense -- quarterback and the other 10 guys -- fell flat.

Time to pause

Despite making the playoffs for the first time since 2004 and capturing its first division title since 2000, the 2008 Minnesota Vikings will probably be remembered as little different from previous recent incarnations of the team: as an above-average squad that ultimately failed to live up to its expectations and perceived talent level.

I'm not going to go into great depth about how or why the Vikings lost on Sunday or their general performance throughout the season. I've always felt that, at the end of a season, you take a little time off to decompress and not jump all over whatever flaws or other negative thoughts about the team. After all, you've got nearly eight months to get into all that.

I will say that, while I did think the Vikings had a chance Sunday, if I had been picking completely objectively, I would have been hard pressed not to pick the Eagles to win the game. And, even though the game remained a two-point affair until Brian Westbrook's 71-yard catch-and-run gave Philly a nine-point edge in the fourth, you could just tell that the Vikings had nothing left in the tank offensively and that just one mistake on defense would spell their immediate doom. In a sense, by the middle of the fourth quarter, it was already looking dire, even though the team just trailed 16-14, and the Westbrook play almost came with a sigh of relief, like seeing someone pass away after a long illness and knowing there was no real chance of recovery.

I'll call my mother later today, and she'll probably give me her usual line this time of year: "I'm glad the Vikings are done because now I can actually enjoy football." I know the feeling. With sky-high expectations coming into the year, the Vikings turned in one of their better "just good enough to give you hope but not good enough to really accomplish anything" performances, culminating in a first-round playoff exit. 2009 might be better...and it might not. For better or worse, it doesn't look like Brad Childress and Tarvaris Jackson are going anywhere, but I'll get into the implications of that later. For now, like my mom, I'll just enjoy football for a little while. At least, after the networks are finished showing the recaps of Sunday's game.

Pat Williams to play? I say no.

Pat Williams intends to play this Sunday when the Vikings face the Eagles in their opening-round playoff game, even though there's some concern that he could injure his broken shoulder even worse by playing instead of giving it further rest. Should he play and risk further injury? The answer, I feel, is "no."

Now, I've been critical of Williams in the past, not because he isn't a good player, but because he's one-dimensional (probably). He stops the run, but is a (probably) non-factor against the pass. (It could be argued that, even though he's not much of a pass rusher, he occupies bodies up front and allows the other Viking pass rushers to take shots at the opposing quarterback.) Also, I think that results matter far more than perception, and the "result" of missing Williams for two games was 3.76 yards per carry by the opposing Atlanta Falcons and New York Giants. That's not as phenomenal a run-stuffing as the Vikings are used to, but it's far from porous and would have ranked 7th overall in the league in 2008. And those two games came the #1 and #8 teams in the league in yards per carry, teams that combined for a 4.67 YPC average in 2008. So, even without Pat Williams, the Vikings allowed nearly a yard less per carry than what the Falcons and the Giants were used to! Granted, it's a small sample size of two games, and the Giants regulars took a good part of the afternoon off, but it's still worth noting that without Williams our run defense only drops from "stifling" to "very good."

Next up, the Vikings face a team that isn't quite the pass-happy team the media makes it out to be (especially the Philadelphia media), but it still definitely prefers the pass. The Eagles were 17th in the league in rushing attempts and 4th in passing attempts, while also ranking 24th in YPC, at 3.97 yards per rush. Some of those runs were called pass plays that Donovan McNabb turned into positive rushing yards, but still, this is not the kind of team you need Pat Williams against. I have no idea if Fred Evans is better at rushing the passer, but if he is, just a little bit, then what's the harm in his playing on Sunday and Williams getting another game of rest? If the Vikings win, they play Carolina and then potentially the Giants (or even Atlanta) for their next two playoff games. Guess who the #1 and #2 teams in yards per carry were in 2008? New York and Carolina, respectively.

I'm still of the mind that Pat Williams should be on the trading block in the offseason. His perceived value, thanks to his mirthful girth (317 pounds!) and highlight-reel stuffs (which count the same as any other tackle) is as high as it ever will be, he makes (I think) $7 million/year, and he'll turn 37 years old next season. If losing him means we drop from the #1 rushing defense to the #7 rushing defense but gives us another piece (either a player or a draft pick) that improves the team in another area, why not make the deal? Losing Williams for nothing, as is the case right now while he's injured, is perhaps a minor downgrade to our defense. Losing him and gaining something in return seems like a no-brainer.

Vikings prep for Eagles

The playoffs are upon us! For the first time in four seasons, the Vikings will be playing January football, and they'll have a chance to avenge their last playoff loss, a 27-14 second round loss to the Eagles after the 2004 season. In fact, the Vikings have never beaten the Donovan McNabb-led Eagles in four attempts. The last win over Gang Green came in 1997, when Ty Detmer threw for nearly 300 yards, but Brad Johnson threw for 3 TDs and Robert Smith ran for 125 and a TD in the 28-19 win.

Of course, none of that has anything to do with the current state of the Eagles or the Vikings, for that matter. But you'll probably hear several times this week that the Vikings haven't beaten the Eagles in 11 years, so why not let me be the first you hear it from?

As I was watching the Eagles/Cowboys play-in game yesterday (before it became a laugher), I said to myself, "I really hate the Cowboys and want them to miss the playoffs so the networks have a conniption, but the Eagles give me nightmares. Little pass-catching backs like Brian Westbrook always seem to kill us." Westbrook only had 92 combined yards (46 each rushing and receiving) in last year's 23-16 Eagles victory, but he accounted for both Philadelphia touchdowns. As has been the case throughout McNabb's tenure with the team, the Eagles lack a real #1 receiver, with rookie DeSean Jackson leading the team with 60 catches for 866 yards, and no receiver had more than 3 touchdowns through the air (Westbrook had 5). So, defensively, stopping Westbrook is key, since it'll be difficult to get pressure on Donovan McNabb, sacked just 3.9% of the time this season.

On offense....well, who knows what to expect? Adrian Peterson had exactly one good play Sunday against the Giants, his 67-yard touchdown run. Other than that, he managed just 37 yards on 20 carries and, BTW, had another fumble, after which I was begging for Brad Childress to bench him, at least for a series or two, and bring in Chester Taylor. Of course, that seemed foolish when Peterson ripped off his big run, but when all was said and done, Peterson's other 20 carries could have just as easily been partially doled out to Taylor, who had just four carries (and one catch) on the day. Peterson finished the year with 363 carries, second only to Michael Turner. I pondered a couple months ago that Peterson might be getting too many carries, strange as it may have sounded, and I fear we might be seeing the results.

As for Tarvaris Jackson and the passing game, I give him a "meh" on this game, which is still light-years better than the marks I was giving him a year ago. A few nice deep balls (against a bungling Giants secondary comprised greatly of backup players) was offset by a "That's the T-Jack I know and loathe" interception in the end zone that killed a promising drive. I know my opinion shifts probably more often than it should on a weekly basis, but I think the Vikings need to at least bring in another, non-fossilized quarterback (i.e., no more Gus Frerottes) to compete with Jackson in training camp or at least to provide a decent alternative in case he turns back into a pumpkin.

And what was with the clock management on the final drive of the game? Really. What...the...hell...was...that?

On the bright side, who knew that Maurice Hicks could actually be a good kick returner, at least for one game?

The Eagles hold pretty much every statistical edge on the Vikings going into next Sunday's playoff game. They scored more points. They allowed fewer points. They had more yards. They allowed fewer yards. They have a better turnover differential. They have fewer penalties.

But there's one thing they don't have: Chris Kluwe.

They don't stand a chance.

The worst running games in NFL history

Since my posts about the worst teams in NFL history seemed so popular, I thought I'd try and revisit the topic. But since I've already covered some of the worst teams ever, I didn't think I could top my previous efforts. Instead, considering that the Vikings had the best running game in the NFL last season, I thought I'd go in the opposite direction and try to find some of the worst rushing teams in NFL history. They say that today is the era of the passer in the NFL, and, consequently, the earlier days were dominated by the running game. If that's true, then these teams need a history lesson.

* The NFL Record and Fact Book lists the 1940 Philadelphia Eagles as having the fewest rushing yards ever in a season for an NFL team, and it's hard to argue with that. In the Eagles' eighth season, they managed a paltry 298 yards on the ground all season. Adrian Peterson alone rushed for just two yards less than that in one game in 2007. True, the season was only 11 games back then (and the Eagles went 1-10), but that still averages out to just 27 yards per game.

There might be a catch, though. Note that quarterback Davey O'Brien is listed has having 100 carries for -180 yards. Since sacks wouldn't become an official statistic for another 40 years, I'm guessing that his sack yardage is counted among that negative yardage. Even so, there are probably some legitimate runs in there, and, if you removed all of O'Brien's negative yardage, you'd have just 478 total rushing yards for the team. My Record and Fact Book lists the 1946 Detroit Lions and the 1944 Boston Yanks as #2 and #3 in fewest rushing yards for a season, with 467 and 471 respectively, and that's including negative rushing yardage for likely sacks. I think that cements the 1940 Eagles as the worst rushing team of all time. If only Donovan McNabb had been born 60 years earlier (and, being black, allowed to play in the league).

* The last team to rush for less than 1,000 yards in a non-strike year? You have to go all the way back to the AFL and the 1963 New York Jets, who managed a paltry 978 yards on the ground (while giving up 2,129). Even for the pass-happy AFL, this is the only team in the league's history with such an anemic rushing game. Fullback Mark Smolinski led the team with 561 of his career 1,323 rushing yards, and his reasonable 3.7-yard average would make you think they should have given him the ball more. Then again, when you have a quarterback named Dick Wood on your team, you probably want him going long...

...to the tight end...

...as long as it isn't man-to-man...

...OK, I'll stop now.

* When I got my first Strat-O-Matic football set in the late '80s, it included cards from the 1986 season. A friend and I took five teams each and played a kind of mini-season. I took the Jets, Bears, Bengals, Giants, and the New England Patriots, just because the Patriots had been so bad for so long (by my reckoning), I wanted to see if I could win with them. And the '86 Patriots were a pretty good team overall, winning their division at 11-5 and making the playoffs.

Then I took at look at the team's running back cards. Here were the average yards per carry for each of the team's backs:

Craig James: 2.8
Robert Weathers: 2.8
Tony Collins: 2.6
Reggie Dupard: 2.6
Mosi Tatupu: 2.4

I passed a lot with that team. When I did run, it came as such a surprise to Ted (my opponent) that he would likely be in some sort of prevent, three-man rush, six DB defense -- and I'd get maybe four or five yards. With a good roll.

As a whole, the 1986 Patriots only managed 2.9 yards per carry, and that's including quarterback Tony Eason's 4.9 average on 39 runs. All this came just a year after the Pats' 1985 Super Bowl run, where James and Collins average 4.7 and 4.0 yards per carry on the season. Maybe they were still sore from the pounding the Bears gave them in Super Bowl XX.