Championship Mindset

You must really hate Cousins if thats how you feel about Case. Ignorance is bliss, and you are a happy man.

Doesn't sound like a championship mindset to me. What do you think dvike27? Your absence hasn't gone unnoticed.

If only there were a more effective strategy to keep that 0 below 28.

Well now there we agree. The problem is, we didn't even do that much lol. Hence the argument?

Says the guy who cheers for a team that has been known to choke a time or 2 because of that very mentality.

Ok captain hindsight. It didn't matter. Are you saying it's not possible to learn how to finish a game or that it's not important? Which attitude do you suppose is more likely to to fill the trophy case? Will we always have a 28 point 4th quarter lead, or at some point will it be important that our team knows how to finish a game? And why couldn't this game been used to instill that mindset into the players like BB does with his?

Well it depends, who's defining what the situation is and what the proper approach is of handling that particular situation? Why is the phrase, "prevent defense only prevents you from winning" so well known? Does the guy with the empty trophy case, 1 miracle playoff win, and 2 blown 4th quarter leads have the right approach, or does the guy with 5 Lombardi's, 8 straight conference championship appearances, and who has won 10+ games in 16 straight seasons have the right approach? Because both these guys found themselves in the same "situation" yesterday, but took very different approaches. Objectively different results as well.

Thanks Captain Strawman, because that's what I wanted lol. I wanted Zim to open up the playbook and run up the score. You got me. There's no other possibility. It's either air the ball out or rush for 22 yards on 11 carries. Nothing in between. You're not allowed to run PA and hit a TE in the flat to pick up an easy first down to keep the chains and clock moving I guess. Nah, gotta run up the middle 3 times and punt the ball back to the other team who is going to run a bunch of plays in hurry up mode against your defense when you're trying to prevent injury lol. You're right, there's no way to play safe and still be successful. All you can do is run the safest most predictable plays ever.

Victory! Reign 178, people who are wrong 0. That's how you finish a game. Just keep matriculating the ball down the field boys.

Next!

The irony is that the Vikings were playing the Falcons - the same Falcons that tried to run out the clock too early in Superbowl LI and lost.

First downs and a long drive would have sealed the deal. The Vikings coaches showed they don't have faith in Cousins or the offense to do that.

Except they did comfortably finish the game.  None of the fears you list here ever were even remotely at play.  

They showed the Packers nothing, kept everyone healthy, and made the Falcons dink and dunk to meaningless scores.

You are letting personal fan paranoia matter as much as sound decision making.  Recognize that and come off the ledge.

No they didn’t, they did the exact opposite. They abandoned the run in the second half


And the 5 minute drive at the end of the game DID seal the game. People act like passing is the only way to get first downs. In two drives the Vikings ran 6 times and gained 18 yards. They killed 5 minutes of clock leaving the Falcons 4 minutes to score 22 points. 2 yards shy of a second first down.

Maybe it wasn’t that they “didn’t have faith in Cousins” and more that they DID have have faith in the run game? You know, the group that carried us to the 28 point lead to begin with.

Alright, I’ll bite. Although I’m not here to “win” the argument, pretty childish approach to discussing anything if you ask me.

Last time I checked, 12 is less than 28... seems like this strategy worked just fine.



Might want to check again. With 9 mins 17 seconds left in the game, the Vikings took over leading 28-6. They then drove 20 yards, took a 5 yard penalty on 4th down for delay of game. With 4 mins 51 seconds left, they the punted the ball away capping a 15 yard drive that took 4 mins 51 seconds. So unless that 9 seconds is important to you, than it sounds like we agree that was a successful drive.





Says the guy who cheers for a team that just won using that exact strategy. Care to list examples where we blew a 28 point lead in the 4th quarter?



First of all, it has nothing to do with hindsight. I wasn’t here to give you my opinion at the time, but others were. There were people in this thread I believe pointing out how those points, those drives were meaningless. And I would have said the same thing. It was clear to anyone watching that the game was over at that point.

And second, what about my post even suggests that I don’t believe finishing a game is important or possible? What are you even implying?

It seems to me that you are the one using hindsight, looking at the outcome of those three drives to suggest the approach was not to, as you call it, “finish the game”. But the point is, we DID try to finish the game, and we DID accomplish that strategy. It wasn’t perfect, but at that point, it didn’t need to be. Zimmer didn’t tell his defense to give up two touchdowns and he didn’t tell the offence not get first downs. But in determining how aggressive the play calling would be, he opted for an approach that would control the clock and make it virtually impossible for Falcons to score the amount of points they needed in the time they had left. It’s not that Zimmer didn’t want to score more points, it’s that he prioritized the clock. It was more important for our offence to manage the clock than it was to score, and the playcalling reflected that. Zimmer would have been happy to shut the Falcons out, but he prioritized protecting against a, quick, easy TD. Again the priority was the clock, whether or not the falcons scored on their drives ultimately wasn’t as important, as long as it took them too long to score to feasibly score 4 times.




Because that is a cliche term? Prevent defense is a viable strategy that is effective WHEN applied to the correct situation (and like any other strategy, executed properly). Sometimes, teams fall back into a shell too early or in too close of a game and it does hurt them. But I’d say it’s more a term used because it’s easier to identify a prevent defense and point to it as the cause of the loss, even if it’s just as likely to lose in similar situations by staying in aggressive coverages, and getting beat because you’re not protecting against a deep pass.

But regardless, are you suggesting the Patriots never use prevent defense?

As for the Patriots, like I said before I don’t really care. The argument of “BB has won lots and we haven’t” is so lazy and carries no actual substance. We are not the Patriots, we should not emulate the Patriots just because they are the Patriots. Our personnel is different, our strengths and weaknesses are different. Just because the Patriots and Vikings had a similar score on Sunday at one point, doesn’t mean both teams should approach the rest of the game the same. That doesn’t account for the differences in the team’s makeup, it doesn’t account for the differences in opponents, and it doesn’t account for HOW those teams got to those leads. What is the point of discussing football if you’re going to just go back to the same old “but we’re losers and the Patriots are winners” argument? It’s the ultimate meaningless “gotcha”.



I’ll be sure to inform Zim that a PA to the TE in the flat will always be open for an easy first down in that situation, I guess he must not of known.




Congrats on your victory, what kind of medals are they giving out this year at the Internet Debate Club?

Sure, next time Kirk throws two TDs in the 4th to lose a game 28-12 I hope you're thrilled with how he finished the game.