Saturday, August 26, 2006

I've been to Vikingland and you know we've got a hell of a band

1.
This preseason is teaching us something about living in a football-crazed region. The Vikings currently have a quarterback controversy. No, no sensible people are arguing that Brad Johnson shouldn't be the #1 Quarterback. However, we've still got a quarterback controversy that the local coverage is all over that national coverage, I'm sure, doesn't give squat about.

You see, in Minnesota we've got a QB Controversy over who should be the #2 QB.

All evidence suggests Tarvaris Jackson is vastly superior, immediately, to Mike McMahon. But this is probably the #1 topic for Viking fans to talk about right now (and I've yet to hear a single fan opinion arguing for McMahon to be #2). Even the coach is answering questions vaguely and refusing to commit to anything like this is a real live quarterback controversy.

This is what residents of Valhalla chatter about--who should be the backup QB on our football team.

2.
As a Viking fan, I usually try to avoid the local columnists. Besides Patrick Reusse's insults of Viking fans (as documented below), it's pretty much a tossup who enjoys making fun of the Vikings more, Twin Cities columnists or Packer fans.

Currently, the fun thing to make fun of is the Viking offensive strategy. The Pioneer Press's Tom Powers is calling it the "Dink 'Em Dizzy" offense. The Strib's Patrick Reusse calls it the "revolutionary West Crawl offense."

I find two things interesting. One, that columnists are making fun of the Vikings offensive strategy based on what they've seen in THREE PRESEASON GAMES (during which, evidently, all the good coaches show off their big plays in order to impress everybody during these exhibitions), and two, the assumption that a ball control offense is inherently bad, has nothing to do with helping the defense to be good (no, all the three and outs of the past several seasons had no effect whatsoever on our terrible defense), and cannot possible be involved in a championship team.

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