Here's the thing: I actually think the Vikings are good

RELAX... It will come together

They are really good, that is what is so frustrating about yesterday's game.  That, and Cousins is not going to take them to the promised land.

There is no reasons why this team shouldnt be 3-2 at worst over the next 3.  

Despite Cousins, i see us winning the next 3, getting to 4-1 where Kirk will have one of those BIG games he should win.  Vs Philly

Outside of Kirk, you have to like what you see.  A very strong running game, a top defense.  The best safety duo in the game, one of the best WR duos in the game and a damn good coaching tree. 

This team will get to 5-1

With fair officiating, we win.

same Lambeau home cooking 

It was a frustrating loss to a game that Minnesota had several opportunities to win after starting off in a gigantic hole. A typical Vikings loss, but the difference IMO is that this is a very good team. I'm usually not this optimistic after such a f#$%ing horrible INT by Cousins, but that's really my gut feel and what I continued to feel watching it: optimism. 

I think the Vikings are good too; as in 8-8 or 9-7.   A legit NFL stud QB would do wonders with this roster, but Cousins is dragging them down.  He won't beat a decent team.  He reminds me of Wade Wilson back in the day.  He could make a few good plays to get you excited, but when you play him as a starter against strong teams, and he wilts.

Too bad we're stuck with him for two more seasons.

@"StickyBun" said: It was a frustrating loss to a game that Minnesota had several opportunities to win after starting off in a gigantic hole. A typical Vikings loss, but the difference IMO is that this is a very good team. I'm usually not this optimistic after such a f#$%ing horrible INT by Cousins, but that's really my gut feel and what I continued to feel watching it: optimism. 

This team is very good.  The defense got fooled early, but to Zimmer's credit he made the right adjustments and we shut them out from the early 2nd quarter on...  Bailey missing that FG gave the Packers great field position on their second score and Cousin's fumble gifted them great field position again for their 3rd TD.

I wasn't too pissed after the game.  I actually felt like we should have won that game and was impressed we came back.  That said, we'll only go as far as Cousins can take us and I actually feel less optimistic about him than I did last season.  He can't be forcing balls into questionable coverage... he's lucky he only had the 2 interceptions.

We need our QB to play better (and smarter).

I'm more concerned about KC vs year-ago too. There were times last year he reminded me of a combo platter mixing the best of Bradford and Favre.

I like the rest of the team a great deal. We're already reaping the benefits of Kubiak and improved OL personnel. I still see double-digit wins on the horizon. 

I think there was a lot of positives from this game and a lot
of negatives.  I think our record is
going to primarily come down to how well we can pass block.  We’ve been pretty horrible these first 2
games at pass blocking, and they’ll need to be noticeably better if we want to
get good Cousins on a more frequent basis. 
I think we’re right at .500 without improvement.  We very possibly could have won that game if this
was week 5 and our coaching staff had more tape on the Packers.  I think they were outscheming us from the get
go, and then we made adjustments which was good.

The ground game was solid, but mostly due to scheme and Cook’s/Mattison’s
ability.  We stuck with it, which was
huge.  I think JDF would have passed the
ball 85% of the time and we would have lost big.

Cousins is what he is, and we aren’t expecting him to be
elite.  We need better OLine play and we
need Diggs to have his head on straight (Although I don’t think this is a
perennial problem).  I also think we’ll
be tweaking our offensive scheme a bit to hide our weaknesses a little bit.

@"Skodin" said: There is no reasons why this team shouldnt be 3-2 at worst over the next 3.  

Despite Cousins, i see us winning the next 3, getting to 4-1 where Kirk will have one of those BIG games he should win.  Vs Philly

Outside of Kirk, you have to like what you see.  A very strong running game, a top defense.  The best safety duo in the game, one of the best WR duos in the game and a damn good coaching tree. 

This team will get to 5-1

Sure, they should. But they should have won yesterday, and the failure was not just because of Cousins: they let the Packers jump out to an early lead because they seem to need a while to get interested in some games, the kicking left 4 points on the table, and - yeah, Cousins. That's 3 big areas where this team's performance doesn't match it's potential, and the same 3 that have been issues for several years. Yes, it's early, but an early loss in our conference, in our division, to the likely leader of the conference, doesn't just go away.
Maybe they will revive now, or will they lay an egg like Buffalo and Chicago last year, Indianapolis in 2016, in the next month? I think it depends on the mood of the team, especially about its quarterback. Do they rally behind Cousins - or feel like the rest of the team could have won and he held them back? I think the team's attitude towards Cousins will depend on Zimmer's. 

I'm not sure anyone in the locker room will sour on KC when they look at who's next in line...

Unless Cousins is just an absolute Richard of a team-mate. He strikes me as genuinely nice, a bit goofy.

I'm sure Zimmer was ready to throttle the QB for a couple plays yesterday.

He choose his post-game words carefully

"“Today he made a couple mistakes, but he made some great throws as well — the throw to Diggs ,” coach Mike Zimmer said. “He’s got all the talent, and we just need to continue to coach him the way we want to play.”

@"purplefaithful" said: I'm not sure anyone in the locker room will sour on KC when they look at who's next in line...

Unless Cousins is just an absolute Richard of a team-mate. He strikes me as genuinely nice, a bit goofy.

I'm sure Zimmer was ready to throttle the QB for a couple plays yesterday.

He choose his post-game words carefully

"“Today he made a couple mistakes, but he made some great throws as well — the throw to Diggs ,” coach Mike Zimmer said. “He’s got all the talent, and we just need to continue to coach him the way we want to play.”

You can like a guy as a teammate but still have no confidence he will help your team win.
And I don't think players think, "I trust Cousins because Mannion sucks."

@"Jor-El" said:

@"purplefaithful" said: I'm not sure anyone in the locker room will sour on KC when they look at who's next in line...

Unless Cousins is just an absolute Richard of a team-mate. He strikes me as genuinely nice, a bit goofy.

I'm sure Zimmer was ready to throttle the QB for a couple plays yesterday.

He choose his post-game words carefully

"“Today he made a couple mistakes, but he made some great throws as well — the throw to Diggs ,” coach Mike Zimmer said. “He’s got all the talent, and we just need to continue to coach him the way we want to play.”

You can like a guy as a teammate but still have no confidence he will help your team win.
And I don't think players think, "I trust Cousins because Mannion sucks."

If you compare the two QBs, Rodgers would be top 2 or 3 and Cousins would be somewhere between 15 and 20, and considering that the QB's performance is the single biggest factor in determining wins and losses, it kinda makes you wonder just how much better the Vikings are than the Packers...outside of the QB position. 

Cousins made some crap decisions yesterday and had a terrible game. And he'll have (hopefully only) a couple more, but he's going to have games where he's hot too. It's just what he does. The big question is will the Vikings want to move on from that? 

One of my biggest problems with Zimmer is his game prep. How many times have we seen it where the Vikings are utterly clueless going into a game. The other team has scouted us well and their early-game script works flawlessly. That's what happened yesterday. To his credit, though, he typically seems to make the necessary adjustments. From Vikings.com: "Green Bay’s final 11 possessions ended like this: fumble, punt, punt, downs, punt, fumble, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt. In that span, Green Bay was just two of 12 on 3rd downs and they had six drives of four plays or fewer." Good stuff. But maybe you could go into the game being a little less predictable on defense, foiling whatever plan the opponent may have devised based on film? 

Onto the Raiders. 15 and 1 ain't so bad. 

Agree MB...

I posted yesterday that this team (defense in particular) seems to be out schemed on the road and quite a bit. A familiar refrain from year-ago (see Rams replay). Significant damage is done by the time the bleeding is stopped with adjustments.

That's absolutely on Zimm and the staff. Don't know how much to allocate to the players just not executing and panicking. This should be a battle tested, dont scare easily D. 

This is not a come-from behind to win offensive scheme or QB either. 

@"purplefaithful" said: Agree MB...

I posted yesterday that this team (defense in particular) seems to be out schemed on the road and quite a bit. A familiar refrain from year-ago (see Rams replay). Significant damage is done by the time the bleeding is stopped with adjustments.

That's absolutely on Zimm and the staff. Don't know how much to allocate to the players just not executing and panicking. This should be a battle tested, dont scare easily D. 

This is not a come-from behind to win offensive scheme or QB either. 

Agree. But here's a positive, sort of supporting Sticky's OP: Due to a flawless Packer opening game script, we spot the Packers 21 points, Cousins plays the worst game I've seen him play since he put on a purple shirt, we miss a field goal and a PAT, and we get a record number of OPIs, one taking a TD off the board...and despite all this we actually could have easily won the game, taking one from the Packers in Lambeau. This was one of those games Burnsie used to call getting "snakebit." Sucks. 

Even packer fans at the bar were mad at the refs.   I go are you sure your a packer fan, he says to me he wants border battles to be legit wins.   I told him he will never see that and he agreed. 

@"SDCAVIKESFAN" said: Even packer fans at the bar were mad at the refs.   I go are you sure your a packer fan, he says to me he wants border battles to be legit wins.   I told him he will never see that and he agreed. 

Then he went home and had a peaceful, filled with content nights sleep with his beloved Packers 2/0 in the division...

@"purplefaithful" said:

@"SDCAVIKESFAN" said: Even packer fans at the bar were mad at the refs.   I go are you sure your a packer fan, he says to me he wants border battles to be legit wins.   I told him he will never see that and he agreed. 

Then he went home and had a peaceful, filled with content nights sleep with his beloved Packers 2/0 in the division...

@"MaroonBells" said:

@"purplefaithful" said: Agree MB...

I posted yesterday that this team (defense in particular) seems to be out schemed on the road and quite a bit. A familiar refrain from year-ago (see Rams replay). Significant damage is done by the time the bleeding is stopped with adjustments.

That's absolutely on Zimm and the staff. Don't know how much to allocate to the players just not executing and panicking. This should be a battle tested, dont scare easily D. 

This is not a come-from behind to win offensive scheme or QB either. 

Due to a flawless Packer opening game script, we spot the Packers 21 points