6-0...but just barely

At the start of the season, you might have thought the over/under for the game to be around 30, but I wouldn't be shocked if each team managed 30 points.

I said that yesterday, but I wasn't hoping it would turn out quite like that.

At the start of the season, I thought our defense would win games for us and that Brett Favre would lose them, but I'm turning nearly a full 180 on that assessment. I continue to be amazed by Favre's play, especially his affinity for Sidney Rice, who had a career-high 117 yards receiving on Sunday. And Adrian Peterson was his usual excellent self, bracketing his performance with a pair of good runs in the first and final Vikings scoring drives and finishing with 143 yards on 22 carries.

But what in the name of Carl Eller and Joey Browner is happening with the defense?

We can now officially dismiss the notion that the Vikings' mediocre defensive numbers (14th in yards/game and 9th in points per game) is due to the team giving up chunks in garbage time or with backups in the game. This weeks excuse du jour will be the absence of Antoine Winfield. Karl Paymah certainly looked overmatched and Tyrell Johnson rarely provided any help at safety, but Winfield alone couldn't have made every play. The disastrous fourth quarter, which nearly cost the team the game, was a study in missed tackles, bad downfield coverage, and inability to get off blocks. The final tally: 385 passing yards for Joe Flacco, 194 total yards for Ray Rice, and three Baltimore TDs in just over five minutes.

Rice's numbers are especially galling. Except for his two touchdown runs of 22 and 33 yards, he was completely bottled up, with eight other carries for 22 yards. For a while, it looked like the old Vikings rushing defense was back. Then, suddenly, big holes materialized and Rice strode virtually untouched into the end zone.

Now, the Vikings, who have played all three of their home games against teams with winning records and have squeaked out wins against all three (3 points vs. S.F., 7 points vs. Green Bay, and 2 points vs. Buffalo) have their next two on the road against 4-2 Pittsburgh and 3-2 Green Bay (which will likely be 4-2 after a road trip to Cleveland next week). Both teams have their flaws, but both also like to throw the ball. Let's hope Winfield (not to mention Peterson and Percy Harvin) comes back soon.

Battle of the Purple, 1998

So, the Vikings play the Ravens tomorrow. Despite both teams having a reputation for defense, and both are doing fairly well defensively, neither has been as stifling as might have been predicted. The Vikings are 14th in the league in yards/game allowed, and 9th in points per game allowed. The Ravens are 10th and 12th in the same categories, respectively. There are certainly caveats in those numbers -- the Vikings have only played one good offensive team (Green Bay) but have also given up a lot of yards and points in garbage time -- but it's safe to say that neither team is at the top of the defensive ranks for fantasy football leagues.

Meanwhile, the Vikings are 3rd in the NFL in scoring and the Ravens 5th. At the start of the season, you might have thought the over/under for the game to be around 30, but I wouldn't be shocked if each team managed 30 points. Even so, we probably won't see anything as crazy as the first meeting between these two teams, a 1998 contest that the Vikings won 38-28.

Ah yes, the 1998 Vikings. We remember them well. And this December Vikings/Ravens contest was a typical game for a team that averaged 34.75 yards per game (surprisingly, just a hair more than the 31.2 this year's team is managing). But the offense sputtered a bit in this game, scoring "just" two touchdowns and getting six field goals from Gary Anderson.

Oh, and then there was that first quarter.

Take a look at the box score. After an Anderson field goal, Baltimore's Corey Harris returned the ensuing kickoff for a touchdown to put the Ravens up 7-3. The Vikings kicked another field goal on the ensuing drive and kicked off again. This time, it was Patrick Johnson who brought the kickoff back to the house, putting the Ravens up 14-6. At this point, the special teams looked so bad, you might have thought Paul Ferraro was the coach. (It was actually Gary Zauner.) But on the ensuing Baltimore kickoff, Minnesota's David Palmer (no, not the fictional president) took it back 88 yards for a touchdown of his own. One missed two-point conversion later (nice decision, Denny) and the quarter ended 14-12...

...with three kickoff-return touchdowns. I'm going to bet that's a record for a single quarter, if not a game.

The Vikings scored the next 23 points, part of a 29-point unanswered stretch, and the 10-point margin at the final gun belied the fact that this was a very lopsided game. I'm not betting on three kickoff-return touchdowns (or six+ field goals by Ryan Longwell), but a 38-28 score? Yeah, I could buy that.

Play of the Day

Some people will tell you that the play of the game from yesterday's rout of the Rams was Jared Allen's fumble-recovery-TD. But astute fans who stuck around until the end know that the most improbable, the most unbelievable, the most "How on earth did that happen?" play was, in fact...

Naufahu Tahi's 32-yard catch and run in the late fourth quarter.

Let's put this into perspective. Going into Sunday's game, Tahi had a career 52 yards on 19 receptions, a stellar 2.7 yards per reception. With his 32-yard gain, his career numbers explode to 84 yards on 20 carries, with a Randy Moss-like 4.2 yards per catch!

I know that adding Brett Favre was supposed to help the passing game (and that it was actually Tarvaris Jackson who threw the pass to Tahi -- work with me here), but if his mere presence can even turn Naufahu Tahi into a receiving "threat," then the Vikings are nigh-unstoppable.

Happy birthday (and anniversary)

Happy 40th, you old coot.

Meanwhile, 20 years ago, while the Brett Favre in that picture (or thereabouts) was celebrating his 20th birthday, the Minnesota Vikings were, by all appearances, deep in discussions with the Dallas Cowboys regarding a monumental trade that would reverberate through the NFL for years to come.

Yes, it's been nearly 20 years to the day since the infamous Herschel Walker trade. The deal went down on Oct. 12, 1989 and, while it did pave the way for the Cowboy championships of the early '90s and hamstring the Vikings' development for a similar period of time, it did have the positive effect of, for whatever reason, getting me interested in football. The graphic of a bunch of Viking helmets vs. 1 Cowboy helmet on SportsCenter that night somehow grabbed my attention and sticks with me to that day. That Sunday, I watched...well, not my first Vikings game, technically...but it was the first one that I really paid attention to as a fan and tried to understand and enjoy.

Plus, it was against Green Bay. What better way to break into the realm of Viking fandom than to watch the Vikes trounce the Pack 26-14. Interestingly, it was Walker's second straight game against the Packers, having played them as a Cowboy the previous week. With Dallas, Walker ran for just 44 yards 12 carries; with Minnesota, Walker ran for 148 yards on 18 carries, his third-highest single-game total ever and the most he'd ever have as a Viking. It was all downhill from there.

When a team makes a trade for an aging. past-his-prime veteran, we often hear that the reason is not just to add that player's eroding skills to the team but also as a PR move to sell tickets and generate interest. Ken Griffey Jr. didn't do much to boost the Mariners' on-field product in 2008, but he likely evoked a lot of nostalgic thoughts in Seattle. Will Shaquille O'Neal really help Lebron James and the Cavaliers this season on the court or is he just in Cleveland for his charisma and draw at the ticket office? Oh, and then there was that guy the Vikings picked up this year who's starting to look like he might have actually been worth the hassle.

Herschel Walker was 27 when he was traded -- a bit long-in-the-tooth for a running back, but not overly so. The price in players and draft picks was a net +8 for the Cowboys (1 player and 4 picks from the Cowboys vs. 5 players and 8 picks from the Vikings), and, when you look at who the Cowboys selected with those draft picks -- Emmitt Smith, Alvin Harper, and Darren Woodson, most notably -- it could only be termed a disaster for the Vikings (though we did net Jake Reed with one of the picks we got from Dallas). Walker was run out of town just two and a half years later and the entire affair lives on in NFL front-office infamy.

But it did get people talking, and keeps them talking to this day. And it got at least one person interested in the on-field product, even if that product was damaged goods. Maybe it wasn't such a bad deal after all.

What's in a typical drive?

This post is about drives in the NFL. So, naturally, I'll be closing it out by talking about baseball.

A few months ago, I wrote an article about the merits of "grinding it out" versus "airing it out." In that article, I made the assertion that "I read somewhere that the typical NFL game has about 10 drives per team. I'm too lazy to do any real research on that, but it seems about right."

Well, I decided to get over my laziness and see what I could find out, not only about how many drives a team tends to get, but what the results of those drives usually are. I also read somewhere that about 1/3 of drives result in scores for the offense (probably in some article espousing the merits of the current overtime system), and I wanted to see if that matched up, too.

So, with a lot of help from Pro-Football-Reference's 2008 season stats (and a little help from ESPN.com's 4th down stats), I simply added up every "drive-ending occurrence" I could find. I counted a "drive-ender" as any instance of a:

Rush/Receive Touchdown
Field Goal
Missed Field Goal
Lost Fumble
Interception
Safety
Turnover on Downs
Punt
Blocked Punt

What I didn't count:

* Touchdown returns, since those aren't "drives" for the offense

* End-of-half/game drives that didn't result in one of the other options (like a FG attempt). The main reason was because I didn't have stats for them. But I don't think this is a huge problem. These drives usually fall into one of two categories: non-attempts to score, like kneeldowns or "protect-the-ball" runs, which I have no problem omitting; and actual attempts to score by teams in desperation at the end of the game. These should be counted, but, each team probably only experiences a few drives like this per year; often, they turn it over on downs or have a turnover before the clock runs out. Only plays that fail to score a TD on the last play of the half on 1st-3rd down should be counted, and those are really relatively rare.

So, with that exception, I should have compiled the results of every drive in 2008. And the results are:

Drive	Number	Pct.
Touchdown	1122	20.4%
FG	845	15.4%
Missed FG	155	2.8%
Lost fumble	328	6.0%
Interception	465	8.5%
TO on downs	231	4.2%
Safety	21	0.4%
Punt	2307	42.0%
Blocked punt	13	0.2%
TOTAL DRIVES	5487
Drives per team	171.5
Drives per team/game	10.7
Scoring drives	1967	35.8%
"TO" drives	1213	22.1%

My early estimate -- that 1/3 of drives result in scores -- isn't too far off, as 35.8% of drives in 2008 resulted in either a touchdown or a field goal. But look at the last row. I count a "TO Drive" as a drive that ends in a very bad result for the offense: a turnover (fumble, interception, or downs), blocked punt, missed FG, or safety. In fact, your team has a better chance of bungling an offensive possession than it does of scoring a touchdown! 22.1% seems strangely high for me, but then again, I don't watch many Cleveland Browns games (ha!).

Bonus stat: The average drive scores its offense 1.89 points, if you count a safety as -2 points for the offense (and if you don't, it only raises the average by less than 1/100 of a point).

I'm also pretty close on my "10 drives per game" metric, although that 10.7 statistic would probably be pushed over 11 if it included those game-ending and half-ending drives I'm omitting. I also thought about baseball while putting this together. With 16 games in the NFL season and 162 in the MLB season, people often equate each game in the NFL to 10 MLB games, such as by saying that a three-game losing streak in the NFL is like a 30-game streak in MLB. When I was putting this together, I thought of the 10 drives/game concept and wondered if you could possibly equate each drive to an individual MLB game.

The answer is "yeah, if you're into that." With about 171 drives per season (maybe closer to 180 if we include the "invisible" drives), it's a fair comparison. And it makes one-game playoffs (which the Twins should be experts in by now) even more statistically dubious for their sample size. Imagine that two NFL teams finish with the same record on top of their division. Forget tiebreakers or even a tiebreaker game. We'll determine the division champion by giving each team one drive! It'll be just like a college football overtime game! I love what the Twins did on Tuesday night, but, in the grand scheme of things (especially when you consider how they won -- in extra innings with the lead flip-flopping back and forth), those two teams were identical in ability and the Twins got lucky, thanks to the results of an extremely small sample size.

I warned you there'd be baseball.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

When I lived in Wisconsin for three years, a fellow Vikings fan said to me, on a Monday morning in the office after the Vikings had beaten the Packers, "There's nothing I like to see more than sad Packer fans."

I don't know if Packer fans worldwide are more sad than they are enraged by their team's shoddy performance last night. Give credit to the Vikings pass rush, Jared Allen and his 4.5 sacks in particular, but no quarterback should be forced to spend time behind that purgatory of an offensive line. And any lingering Brett Favre fans in Packerland should have pretty much completely expunged whatever lingering love they had for #4 as he carved up the Packer secondary like...well, like he's carved up the Viking secondary for years.

Yes, I said it. I can grouse about Adrian Peterson's lousy 2.2 yards per carry (and fumble), or about the Vikings' letting the Packers back into the game late, or about Brad Childress's awe-inspiring new way to fail. (We didn't challenge because you couldn't get the red flag out of your pants?!? Are you actually an NFL head coach or just some guy the Wilfs found on the street outside the Metrodome?) But, apart from an interception that was overturned by a dubious pass interference call in the end zone, Brett Favre played a flawless game, completing 77.4 percent of his passes for 271 yards and three TDs, pump-faking the Green Bay defense to death while not taking a single sack. And he even threw passes consistently more than 6 yards downfield. Gee, this guy might actually have something left in the tank, at least in October. I'll have to reserve final judgment for January, though.

Admittedly, the Vikings got some help from the officials. In addition to that "pass interference" call, there were a few more that seemed almost suspiciously like some kind of "We have to make sure Favre wins" conspiracy by the NFL and ESPN. In total, the Packers were flagged for seven infractions while the Vikings, officially, only were hit with two yellow hankies, for a total of 10 yards. That said, when Jared Allen wasn't getting to Aaron Rodgers, especially on those final two Packer scoring drives, he was often egregiously held by the Packers' third-string left tackle, which was about the only way he could stop the man.

And how about that Sidney Rice? When we play pickup basketball, I want him on my team!

There were a few more flaws -- and some good plays -- in the Vikings' performance Monday night, but for now I'm happy to gloss over them and bask in the glow of a 4-0 team that's enjoying a two-game lead in its division and has a bye next week...

Wait, we play St. Louis? Same thing.

Showdown

I hear there's some big football game tonight. I don't know, have you guys heard anything about this?

All kidding aside, I'll be turning ESPN on at about 8:37 p.m., and not a minute earlier, so as to avoid the HYPE (there's so much, it uses capital letters) that will be spewing out incessantly all day long. Here's hoping that I won't have to mute the TV when Official Cheerleader of Monday Night Football Jon Gruden is canonizing Brett Favre.

Short post today, as I don't want to get too heavily into the HYPE machine myself. I'll have more thoughts and analysis tomorrow, which will be the beginning of the 27-day countdown until Brett Favre goes to Green Bay to play the Packers at Lambeau. Then we can all relax.