Vikings screwed early

Usually they start out strong and the wheels come off mid-season, or just whenever they play the Giants. Finally, a New York Football Giants free season, one I can enjoy without an impending sense of dread, and it's starting with terrible omens. They didn't look that great against the Raiders, but I figured I shouldn't read too much into that, but even that seems to be getting worse. Then the St Peter Police Department got involved.

The giant, glaring weakness in this team was the horrible, horrible play at linebacker, so the big off-season debate was whether they'd done enough to shore up those positions. Their first round draft pick was a highly rated linebacker, but after playing one quarter of a preseason game he's out for the whole year. This is following our new strong safety having a season-ending injury while backing up during training camp. So we'll still have the giant glaring hole in the middle of the field on defense... boy that linebacker we got for Moss was a great pick-up. Continued improvement on the defensive line would go a long way, but late in games the wide-open middle and sloppy tackling will apparently still negate the improvement of the line and the secondary the past few years. Don't get me started on how unbelievably bad our coverage teams were.

The talent level of our offensive skill position players has gone down, now that Moss and Culpepper are gone, but theoretically the offensive line should be a lot better, and the running game along with it now that they have a decent runningback who ranks football ahead of weed. On the other hand, the team's best receiver will probably spend the season in jail, after he led the St. Peter police department on a 100 mph chase to avoid a DWI. That certainly worked out well. I'd just like to point out once again, that for all the criticism of Randy Moss, he didn't miss entire seasons because of jail terms and failed drug tests, unlike other recent Vikings offensive starters. At least Tavaris Jackson looks like he might be the real deal at QB for next year.

This just doesn't look good... the improvements to the line and the running game may lead to the offense actually holding the ball long enough to keep our defense from collapsing late in games, which would be an improvement, but they're still not going to score on anybody. 3rd down is still going to be rough with wide open passing lanes across the middle, so the D isn't going to smother anybody either. Mediocrity abounds, and in a year we play the AFC East and the NFC West, I won't get to heckle my friends the Dolphin and 9er fans. I hope they look better by the opener against the Redskins. You know, I'm actually kind of glad that's a road game, I think spending the 5th anniversary of 9/11 with 64,000 people in a building with almost no exits would really unnerve me so much I wouldn't enjoy the game.