Over the cap thinks these are the best front offices

Bingo! I just can't even ... every time I think about that whole situation. Not to mention how your HoF RB likes to run from the I, so you draft a QB who prefers the shotgun.

Oh boy, we almost became mortal enemies over that comment. I refuse to give credit to Frazier for whatever the Bills have been doing on defense these past couple of years lol. I have to believe he's just a puppet a la George Edwards and McDermott is actually the mastermind over there. Nothing else makes sense. I've heard Frazier is calling the plays and have seen him talking into the headset on the sidelines, but he's just reading the notes McDermott gave him before the game or something. Because Frazier wasn't just awful with the Vikings, he was even worse with the Bucs. He was so bad Lovie had to take over play calling duties. So when did the miracle occur with Frazier? Has he been talking to the same witch doctor Lamar Jackson has been talking to?

That's what I was asking in another thread. We sank 38% of our cap into a headcase of a QB who we're not even going to rely on because we're going to try to bring back 1970's ball for a 7th time since the Tice administration. Makes sense. And it appears we're going to ignore the OL yet again. Elf is still here but Kline is gone? And Bradbury might be another 1st round dud for Spielman. What's going on?

Are we talking about the Vikings or the Panthers?

But no, that's why we have a countdown clock on the Cousins contract in the sidebar. It's down to 999 days 16 hours and 58 minutes. Stupid extension.

I dont twist facts lol. If you would like to go ahead and point out somewhere you think I did that, then feel free.

They all miss in the first round at one point or another.  Rick sh*t the bed on qb's until they had Norv evaluating Teddy.   Not that Teddy is HOF material but he is above average.  Unfortunately his knee blew up, etc.   Point is g.m.'s are only as good as the scouts and coaches who feed them info.   Drafting is a consensus process but the average fan thinks the g.m. sits in the war room on draft day and calls out "his" picks.   He settles arguments but other than that it's group decisions.   I think our drafting of defensive guys got better when Zim joined the team, again because his input shaped the consensus and scouting.   

Teams often have consensus on guys who go bust too.   There aren't any genius front offices in the NFL that I'm aware of.  They all have their ups and downs.  

It seems to me that the evidence is piling up now that Spielman is the underlying root of the problem.  Even if you hate Frazier, well who gave him the promotion?  Who drafted a physical press man corner for his cover 2 defense?  Even if you hated Norv, who hired him and drafted Teddy for that system?  I've seen fans turning on Zimmer and maybe he's the real problem, I tend to think otherwise, but even so, who hired Zimmer?  

Then you have DeFilippo who saw we had 2 amazing WR's and passed the ball lol.  At one point Thielen was the #1 WR in the NFL by yardage, not Julio, not Hopkins, not Thomas, ADAM FREAKING THIELEN!  I'm not trying to say DeFilippo was the right option, just another example of Spielman having no clue how to make a marriage with Mike Zimmer work.  

Basically I look at the Titans, I don't think they were more talented than us in 2019, they had Ryan Tannehill at QB for crying out loud, but they certainly knew what their identity and strengths were and played around them.  We don't have an identity, we had a hodgepodge of talented players but that's because Spielman loves to extend his home grown talent.  If you want to run the ball and play defense you can't pay Kyle Rudolph, who doesn't block, that kind of money.  You don't have the luxury of paying a Diggs that much.  I just fear Spielman isn't capable of putting a TEAM together that can win the superbowl.  

I knew you'd LOVE that Frazier comment but you managed to get me back with the "Go Teddy" so we're even LOL. 

Teddy was right around league-average for us in a lot of ways IMO. Maybe not above average though. I'll give you Kirk's 2019 season over Teddy - not Kirk's '18 season so much. Keenum's '17 season was better than Teddy's '15 season albeit with vastly better offensive coaching/playcalling.

Bradford wasn't way better than Teddy though. They had very similar seasons to each other. It's almost as if they were both facing some of the same problems like a terrible OL and Norv. Teddy's 2015 QBR was 57.5. Bradford's 2016 QBR was 57.3.

I believe Teddy was decent, with potential to become great. As others on this thread have pointed out Teddy wasn't a good fit for Norv's offense. He was playing behind the worst OL in the league and was saddled with an obsolete OC. A decent showing from a young QB in that situation is more impressive than people realize.

No he wasn't. Teddy was absolute garbage for us, it was just excused because he was young. He had 14 tds to 12 INTs his first season, then 14 TDs and 9 INTs the next. In both seasons, we had the leagues worst ranked passing O.

Kirk's 2018 was well beyond anything Teddy has ever even sniffed in the league. Cousins had 30 TDs to 11 INTs that year. Compared to Teddys 28 TDs to 21 INTs in two years. Cousins had a much higher rating of course too.

QBR is a made up stat from ESPN. You should be using passer rating if anything, as it's an actual NFL stat. Nothing is going to excuse the fact that Bradford's 2016 saw him have 25 TDs to 8 INTs, which once again, is safely better then any season Bridgwater ever had.

Bridgewater's numbers for us were absolute garbage, and for the Saints he was a game manager. Not sure how anyone could look at him or his awful numbers and think he could be great. In addition, he has a noodle arm.

There's more to QB play than TD/Int ratio, you know. One big reason why Bridgewater's 2015 numbers look bad is due to the amount the Vikings ran the ball - Teddy only got to throw the ball 447 times, which was easiest the least compared to any other QB who started 16 games.

Let's see how Teddy's 2015 numbers project if he got to throw the ball as many times as 2018 Cousins did:

447 attempts: 3231/14/9 (3 rushing TDs)
606 attempts: 4079/17-18/11 (4 rushing TDs)

Still not great, but certainly not "absolute garbage". One of my biggest problem with Teddy was his big fumbles in the Cardinals and Broncos game, two quality opponents that we got close to beating but Teddy lost fumbles on the final drives of those games when we were within one possession. He ended up fumbling the ball 8 times in 2015.


Also worth taking a look at is yards per attempt, which tells you how well the QB was moving the ball. Bridgewater's Y/A in 2015 was 7.2, which was good for 16th out of 35 QBs, though 7 other QBs were tied with him in that 16th spot.

Heck, I'd take 2015 Bridgewater over 2016 Bradford. And I know what you're going to say - 2016 Bradford had 25 TDs and Teddy only had 14! Clearly I'm wrong! Well, here's the thing... I care about scoring points, no matter who the TD is credited to. It just so happens that Teddy's 2015 Vikings scored 365 points and Sammy's scored 327 points. The discrepancy is mostly caused by rushing TDs, as the 2015 Vikings scored 18 on the ground and the 2016 Vikings only scored 9 (2015 Vikings also scored 21 more points off field goals). Bradford got to throw the ball 80 more times in one less game than Teddy, and also only had a 7.0 Y/A. If Teddy was truly trash and Bradford wasn't, the offense should have seen a major uptick in 2016, but that wasn't the case.

If a QB completes a 79 yard pass to the 1 yard line, and a HB runs the ball in, why does the HB get 100% of the credit for the TD? And why is a TD in garbage time equal to a game-winning TD? These stats aren't all that useful without any context. This is why after Cousins had a statically great 2018 season with a sexy 4298/30/10 line nobody cared and he was called a choker and a mediocre QB! QBs should be judged more heavily on important drives, 3rd downs, how effectively they move the football, and not just on yards/TDs/Ints. QBs are penalized performance-wise when their team is ahead and they decide to run the ball, by your standards, and when a QB is down a bunch late and picks on prevent defenses for free yardage, they get rewarded despite not changing the outcome of the game.


Exactly, he's a game manager, but not absolute trash. Just because he doesn't put up the fantasy football statlines that win you games doesn't mean he sucks, but he's not likely going to bring Carolina on a playoff run.