Klint DeFlippio?

[Guest]

On another thread yesterday, I growled about how Zimmer's teams always seem to look lethargic to start the season...and the more I think about it, the more it seems true.  The offense was/is a complete mess, they showed little of the intensity I saw from essentially every offense in every other game, today...and were obviously, brutally, out of sync.  The defense looked a bit better than last year, but Breeland is a massive liability most of the time.

[Guest]

@Wetlander said:

@MaroonBells said:

@minny65 said:

@MaroonBells said:
There are so many places to look to assign blame. I don't even know where to start. 

At the top - HC

Don't disagree. Poor game prep is probably the biggest (again) and that blame ultimately resides with the HC. Just hoping and praying this terrible prep and execution on both sides of the ball doesn't go through the first six games like it did last year. 

Everyone keeps saying poor game prep and blaming it on Zimmer...  what weren't we prepared for?  Our defense was doing their job early in the game and Zimmer mixed in 3-4 looks to confuse the Bengals offense.  Mental errors like false starts are on the players...  if they can't remember the snap count or are too anxious to go... that's on them.  Zimmer can't hold their hand and whisper in their ear, it's OK to go now.

If the offense didn't commit so many preventable penalties by being more mentally tough, we'd have been winning the game from the start and it turns into a blowout.  Instead we fiddle farted around on offense and it really got bad when Abdullah steps out of bounds on the last drive to preserve an extra 30+ seconds for the Bengals to score on a long TD before half.

Maybe I saw something different, but I thought the Vikings had a good gameplan going in.  It was the lack of offense (mostly due to penalties) in the first half that kept the Bengals in the game.

If Burrows had to bring his team back or get in a shoot-out? They'd have been toast. 

Vikings gave this one away...

[Guest]

@Wetlander said:

@MaroonBells said:

@minny65 said:

@MaroonBells said:
There are so many places to look to assign blame. I don't even know where to start. 

At the top - HC

Don't disagree. Poor game prep is probably the biggest (again) and that blame ultimately resides with the HC. Just hoping and praying this terrible prep and execution on both sides of the ball doesn't go through the first six games like it did last year. 

Everyone keeps saying poor game prep and blaming it on Zimmer...  what weren't we prepared for?  Our defense was doing their job early in the game and Zimmer mixed in 3-4 looks to confuse the Bengals offense.  Mental errors like false starts are on the players...  if they can't remember the snap count or are too anxious to go... that's on them.  Zimmer can't hold their hand and whisper in their ear, it's OK to go now.

If the offense didn't commit so many preventable penalties by being more mentally tough, we'd have been winning the game from the start and it turns into a blowout.  Instead we fiddle farted around on offense and it really got bad when Abdullah steps out of bounds on the last drive to preserve an extra 30+ seconds for the Bengals to score on a long TD before half.

Maybe I saw something different, but I thought the Vikings had a good gameplan going in.  It was the lack of offense (mostly due to penalties) in the first half that kept the Bengals in the game.

I saw it differently. Like I said above, there are too many places to look to find blame. Poor execution, sure, but it wasn't just one guy. It was Ham and O'Neill and Udoh and KJ and Cousins and JJ and....miscues all over the place, false starts, holds, dropped passes, missed blitzes, just about everywhere. So because it wasn't isolated, to me that goes to team preparation. Maybe the game plan was solid, but the team, across the board, just wasn't ready....wasn't focused. I don't know who else you could blame for that kind of team-wide lack of focus but the HC. 

[Guest]

@purplefaithful said:

@Wetlander said:

@MaroonBells said:

@minny65 said:

@MaroonBells said:
There are so many places to look to assign blame. I don't even know where to start. 

At the top - HC

Don't disagree. Poor game prep is probably the biggest (again) and that blame ultimately resides with the HC. Just hoping and praying this terrible prep and execution on both sides of the ball doesn't go through the first six games like it did last year. 

Everyone keeps saying poor game prep and blaming it on Zimmer...  what weren't we prepared for?  Our defense was doing their job early in the game and Zimmer mixed in 3-4 looks to confuse the Bengals offense.  Mental errors like false starts are on the players...  if they can't remember the snap count or are too anxious to go... that's on them.  Zimmer can't hold their hand and whisper in their ear, it's OK to go now.

If the offense didn't commit so many preventable penalties by being more mentally tough, we'd have been winning the game from the start and it turns into a blowout.  Instead we fiddle farted around on offense and it really got bad when Abdullah steps out of bounds on the last drive to preserve an extra 30+ seconds for the Bengals to score on a long TD before half.

Maybe I saw something different, but I thought the Vikings had a good gameplan going in.  It was the lack of offense (mostly due to penalties) in the first half that kept the Bengals in the game.

If Burrows had to bring his team back or get in a shoot-out? They'd have been toast. 

Vikings gave this one away...

I think the Bengals also almost gave the game away with that 4th down call that got us back into the game 14-21.  Worst coaching decision of the day by far.  Burrows was pretty much limping after the Hunter sack and they really wanted to run the rest of the game.  But 17 penalties and an overtime fumble is not a winning formula so I guess you can say we gave it away one penalty at a time

[Guest]

I've been a pretty staunch backer of Zim, but this loss was on him. The team was woefully unprepared and a lot of that goes to his decision not to play many starters in the preseason.

Hopefully this serves as a wakeup call and they come out hardcore against the Cardinals, otherwise things are going to get very ugly very quickly.

[Guest]

I'm reserving judgement on Klint Kubiak's play calling, since the penalties are drive killers and make it difficult to evaluate how the offense would ideally be running. That being said, the team had 12 called penalties and I think 17 if you include ones which were declined. Many of which were false starts, holding, and illegal formation on offense line and it is Kubiak along with the OL coach's job to have their players prepared and they were not.

That being said, the team was a bad fumble call away from winning, so it's worth keeping in mind that they were able to stay in the game despite all of their struggles. I do feel like Hill and Udoh will not be starters the whole season and I am looking forward to whenever Darrisaw and Davis are ready to start, though I assume that Darrisaw is still a few games away from taking over. I also think there was a domino effect from losing Irv Smith, losing him as a weapon is a big blow and it's going to take the new guys some time to adapt.

I was not expecting KJ Osborn to look that good, which is great because he was a bust a returner, and with Smith being out someone needs to step up be a third receiving option.

[Guest]

@"BarrNone55" said:

Sam Ekstrom

@SamEkstrom

·55m

67 snaps for the #Vikings WR3, 12 for the TE2. What team is this? (I suppose a team that doesn’t trust the backup tight ends right now.)

This is not who we are.

Well, that WR #3 had 7 catches for 76 yards, so...

[Guest]

@Wetlander said:

@MaroonBells said:

@minny65 said:

@MaroonBells said:
There are so many places to look to assign blame. I don't even know where to start. 

At the top - HC

Don't disagree. Poor game prep is probably the biggest (again) and that blame ultimately resides with the HC. Just hoping and praying this terrible prep and execution on both sides of the ball doesn't go through the first six games like it did last year. 

Everyone keeps saying poor game prep and blaming it on Zimmer...  what weren't we prepared for?  Our defense was doing their job early in the game and Zimmer mixed in 3-4 looks to confuse the Bengals offense.  Mental errors like false starts are on the players...  if they can't remember the snap count or are too anxious to go... that's on them.  Zimmer can't hold their hand and whisper in their ear, it's OK to go now.

If the offense didn't commit so many preventable penalties by being more mentally tough, we'd have been winning the game from the start and it turns into a blowout.  Instead we fiddle farted around on offense and it really got bad when Abdullah steps out of bounds on the last drive to preserve an extra 30+ seconds for the Bengals to score on a long TD before half.

Maybe I saw something different, but I thought the Vikings had a good gameplan going in.  It was the lack of offense (mostly due to penalties) in the first half that kept the Bengals in the game.

Yeah, blaming professional players not being focused or motivated on the coach seems a bit off.

[Guest]

Eric Smith

@Eric_L_Smith

·36m

An interesting early-season note about #Vikings offense:

According to

@SharpFootball, MIN ran 10 total plays in 2020 with 4 WRs on the field.

Vikings already ran 9 plays w/ 4 WRs on field in Week 1.

5 plays in 10 personnel (4WR & RB), and 4 plays in 01 personnel (4WR and TE).

This is not sustainable.

Or

Zim ain't putting up with it.

[Guest]

I don’t think 4 WR is the wrong choice if the OLine looks somewhat
competent.  Westbrook and Osbourne are
probably bigger threats than Conklin and whoever are at TE.  I think the key question is how well can we
run out of a 4 WR set?  I just don’t
think our OLine is able to stand up when the defense can pin there ears back
and ignore the run and we all know that Cousins works best off PA when there’s
a legit threat for run.  If we can’t
establish a balanced offense out of 4 WR, I think you’d want to do whatever you
need to make that happen first.


One of my big criticisms of our offense last year, was that
we had our one look that worked, and the further you pushed us out of our
comfort zone, the less our offense worked. 
I applaud the attempt to try different looks, even if it takes a bit of
time to master all of them.


That said, before we start analyzing the formations too
much, I think you have to figure out how much our offensive line will truly
hinder us going forward, and how much of what we saw could be corrected by
cleaning up the penalties.  We’re not
going to see that big of a shit show every week, but what’s reasonable to
expect going forward?