Friday's football post – October 30 edition

Vikings-Packers

The Vikings don't win at Lambeau Field very often. They've only done it four times in their last 16 tries. So why should we expect it to happen this year?

Well, from what I’ve seen this season, the Vikings are the better team, that’s why. I don’t think it’s by a wide margin, but it’s a margin nonetheless. And if you’re the better team, you should beat your opponent, provided you don’t make a bunch of silly mistakes, don’t turn the ball over, and your opponent doesn’t have a day for the ages.

Unfortunately, those things seem to happen all the time to the Vikings at Lambeau Field. The place gives me chills. I don’t mean that in a good way.

Let's move on.

In the first meeting between the two teams, the Vikings won partly because Aaron Rodgers was running for his life behind a terrible offensive line that couldn’t handle the Vikings strong pass rush. But I was also surprised by how long Rodgers held onto the ball and how few short throws the Packers attempted.

I really thought Mike McCarthy would have had dialed up a series of short slants and whatnot, protecting Rodgers from getting pummeled and forcing the Vikings to tackle well against guys like Donald Driver and Greg Jennings. Instead the Packers seemed to play right into the Vikings hands.

However, this is how the 2009 Packers roll. They go for big pass plays, but those pass plays require more time to develop. Sometimes it works and leads to big gains and touchdowns. Sometimes it leads to Aaron Rodgers getting sacked.

It looks like rookie T.J. Lang will be the guy responsible for blocking Jared Allen in this game and he’s getting rave reviews for his play the past few weeks. It’s hard to imagine Allen and the rest of the Vikings having a better day rushing the passer than they did in the last meeting. And they have been susceptible to giving up a lot of passing yards all season. With Rodgers on pace to throw for 4,500 yards and 29 touchdown passes, this is worrying. The Vikings defence is coming off a surprisingly fine performance against another very good quarterback in Ben Roethlisberger, but my bet is Rodgers will have more success than Big Ben did. The Vikings pass defence just doesn’t look good this season.

Another thing that struck me about the first game was Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers gambled and focused completely on stopping Adrian Peterson. He decided to see if Brett Favre could beat the Packers throwing the ball. The Packers did stop Peterson, but they also got no pressure on Favre. He picked his old team apart.

I don’t think we’ll see that kind of strategy again. Capers has to find some way to pressure Favre. I expect the Packers will blitz a lot more in this game and focus a little less on Peterson. But that could be fine for the Vikes. Peterson’s carry total has been fairly low by his standards the past three weeks (15, 22 and 18), so he’s ready for a heavier workload. I’d like to see Favre pass the ball about 30 times, tops, not 50 times like he did against the Steelers. A big game from Peterson – the kind of game he normally has against Green Bay – would provide the Vikes offence with the kind of balance that would make them very hard to stop.

One other thing. Much has been written about how the reaction of the Green Bay crowd will affect Favre’s play.

I don’t think it’s going to bother Favre much. He’s seen (and heard) it all before. But I am worried about how the Vikings offensive line and tight ends handle the crowd noise. Noisy home crowds can lead to a lot of false start penalties for the visitors, which can kill drives.

The Vikings committed several of them at noisy Heinz Field last week and Lambeau Field will probably be even noisier on Sunday. If the Vikings offensive line can keep their composure and not commit penalties that cripple drives, the offence should be able to move the ball consistently on the Packers once again.

I’m picking the Vikings to win for the eighth straight week. I can’t say I’m confident in doing so because they are playing at Lambeau Field. But I think this Vikings team is better and more mentally tough than Vikings teams in the past who have failed to beat Green Bay on the road.

It should be close. It should be entertaining. But the Vikings should win – barely.

Vikings 28 – Packers 24

Other stuff

Alternative thinking
Good news! Brett Favre’s interception fetish is a myth. At least that’s what Larry Canale writes on the NY Times Fifth Down Blog.

I don’t know about Canale’s thesis, but at least it makes me feel good heading into Sunday’s Green Bay game.

I’ve noticed this ….
Percy Harvin uses an odd technique when receiving kick-offs. Most returners catch the ball at the chest level, sort of cradling it in there with their arms.

Harvin doesn’t do that. Instead he catches it with his two hands at about eye-level or higher.

I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I can’t remember another kick-off returner ever catching the ball this way. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to be affecting Harvin’s returns. He’s leading the league in kick-off return average.

Concerns about E.J.
I don’t chart games or watch specific players that closely during games. I just don't have the time. But it appears to me E.J. Henderson is not having a good year. I’m surprised to feel this way because the past two seasons, I thought Henderson was as good as any middle linebacker in the league (admittedly, I’m biased.) Henderson flew through gaps in the opponent’s offensive line and repeatedly took down ball carries for minimal gains or losses. Few linebackers I watched seemed to do this better.

But this season the Vikings – who have been the number one defence against the run the previous three seasons – are giving up 95.4 yards per game on the ground – 10th in the NFL. Meanwhile, Henderson is leading the team in tackles, but too often I am noticing him getting caught up in the wash at the line of scrimmage and not making the tackles he used to. Opposing runners are gashing the Vikings with long runs. I think this is partly because Henderson isn't there often enough to tackle them before they get to the second level.

Am I wrong about this? I’d sure like to be because Henderson turns 30 next year and I worry that he’s about to encounter a steep decline in his skills and the Vikes have no obvious successor to replace him.

The replacements
Despite my concerns, Benny Sapp, Karl Paymah and Asher Allen did a fine job subbing for Antoine Winfield against Pittsburgh last Sunday. Paymah missed a couple of tackles and Sapp committed a bad penalty against Ben Roethlisberger that cost the Vikes 15 yards, but other than that the trio did quite well.

They’ll have to repeat that performance against Aaron Rodgers and the Packers offence. I wish them the best in their endeavors. It will be a difficult.

Quarterback of the future
The National Football Post’s Jack Bechta writes about where Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford might land in the 2010 draft.

Bradford is a guy we should keep an eye on (and I mean Viking fandom when I write "we.") Last year he won the Heisman. This year shoulder injuries limited him to three games and ended his season. Watching Bradford play last year when the Sooners were really rolling, my untrained eyes saw a kid who seemed a little thin to hold up in the NFL but a kid who could also make all the throws an NFL quarterback needs to make.

Bechta suspects Bradford will be a late first round pick. I suspect the Vikings will be picking late in the first round. This could work out very well. Obviously, the Vikings need to find a quarterback of the future. Brett Favre is 40 and probably done after this season and Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels are not the long-term answers to the quarterback question.

It’s rare to get a quarterback with Bradford’s resume late in the first round. But concerns about Bradford’s health could drop him there. If that happens, the Vikings will have to think seriously about taking him.

Injuries
Football Outsiders’ Will Carroll deals with injuries in his weekly “Black and Blue Report” and mentions our Bernard Berrian and Antoine Winfield. While he says we won’t see either of them against the Packers this week and that’s not good – they’re starters after all – he does make a good point about Berrian being Favre’s #3 receiving option this year behind Sidney Rice and Harvin. So Berrian’s absence against Green Bay wouldn’t be as big a blow to the Vikings offence as it would have been last year when Rice was a non-factor because of injuries, Harvin wasn’t here and Bobby Wade was the other starting wide receiver.

I just hope people don’t start thinking Berrian is turning into a free agent bust. I really think the two hamstring injuries he's had this season have robbed him of some of his speed and effectiveness. With this latest injury, I suspect the rest of the year could be a write-off for him, much like it was for Rice last year when he injured his knee. But that doesn’t mean Berrian won’t be an effective player for the remainder of his contract.

Australia
This has diddly to do with the Vikings, but a long-time reader of this blog, Peter, wanted to hear how my trip to Australia went, so I’m belatedly humoring him with this section. (For the rest of you, feel free to skip it.)

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my reason for going to Australia was to attend the World Masters Games. I was competing in fastball (for you Yanks, that’s fastpitch softball, the kind of thing you see on ESPN9 occasionally) and I played for a team from Christchurch, New Zealand (don’t ask) in the 35-45 “B” age category.

Anyway, the good news for me is we won our category at the games, so I got a gold medal out of the trip. While that was satisfying, even more satisfying was playing for a team from another part of the world. That was far more interesting for me than if I had played with a Canadian team. It was a chance to meet new people and experience a different culture. The Kiwis refer to everyone as “bro” or “cuz” and they have a zest for life and an easy-going nature that we’d do well to emulate here in North America. They also like to curse a lot. But maybe that was just the group of guys I was with.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be posting this on a blog for everybody to see, but in a bit of navel-gazing, here’s a picture of me in action at the Games. (The pants I was given were a bit tight, so for the six days we played ball, I had one great ass.) And after we won our final game, the New Zealand boys performed the Haka, which was quite a thrill for me (I’m right in the middle, #14, in the photo.)

The next games are in Torino, Italy in August of 2013. If you play sports at all, I’d suggest looking into going. You’ll meet a lot of great people and have a great time. And if you haven’t been to Australia, please do that as well. The people are great and it’s not often you can go to another country, enjoy fantastic weather, no language barrier and experience it all while living in First World conditions around you. The only downside is the 15 hours, at least, you'll spend on a plane to get there. But it’s a small downside.