The Viking Ship

The Vikings have improved to 8-1 on the season and 4-0 in the NFC North.

Sunday afternoon the now 8-1 Vikings beat the now 1-8 Lions by a score of 27-10 at Mall of America Field in the Hubert H Humphrey Metrodome (that’s a mouthful!)  It wasn’t pretty, but what matters is the final score, and the Vikings won by 17.

The Vikings have now swept 2 of the 3 teams in their division this year, even though in a weird scheduling coincidence, they haven’t played the third team at all yet.  (The first Vikings-Bears game of the year will come in 2 weeks)

The Vikings were not sharp in their win

Since the beginning of this year, the Vikings have been among league leaders in 3rd down conversions and in fewest penalty yards.  Somehow, though, the team forgot how to accomplish these things  during their week-long vacation.

The team went 3 for 11 (27%) on third down conversions,  and had 13 penalties for 91 yards.  Luckily, they were playing the Lions.  If they were that bad against a good team, Minnesota would have a hard time winning.

Peterson needs to hold onto the ball.

I’m not going to completely blame the fumbled pitch on the reverse on Peterson.  It was a bad pitch (Peterson’s fault),  but it was still catchable (Harvin’s fault), and they were running a trick play when they probably didn’t really need to (Childress’s Fault).  So I’ll give Peterson 1/3 of the blame for that.

On the other hand, the long run where he got the ball punched out of his hands was completely his fault.  I don’t know if he thought that he had already outrun everyone or what, but he was not holding onto that ball well, and the defender knew it.  The ball was punched out easily, and the Vikings lost out on 7 points because of it.

Ray Edwards is a beast

5 tackles, 2 sacks, who knows how many hits and hurries on Stafford, 1 forced fumble, 1 recovered fumble.  The man was all over the place.

The Lions came into the game determined to stop Jared Allen.  They were determined to stop Pat and/or Kevin Williams.  Edwards reaped the benefits by facing lots of tight ends and fullbacks.  He didn’t hesitate to take advantage of that.  If it wasn’t for a few monstrous offensive performances, everyone in Minnesota would be talking about nothing but Ray Edwards today.

Adrian Peterson is a beast

133 yards, 2 more TDs.   He had two big break away runs, including a 22 yard touchdown run where it looked like he was going to be stopped for a loss.  Somehow he ducked under a defender, powered his way through the crowd, and took off for the score.

If it wasn’t for the fumble, he would’ve had another long touchdown run as well.

And he wasn’t used a lot in the passing game, but he did take one short catch and turn it into an 11 yard gain.

Brett Favre is a beast.

He continues to play smart, good football, but yet his stats keep anyone from labeling him as a “game manager”.

Sunday he threw for 344 yards and a touchdown.  He completed 20 of 29 passes.  He hit several long passes, including a 56 yard pass to Sidney Rice, and a 40 yard pass to Percy Harvin.    He was only sacked 1 time, and he had a QB rating of 120.5.   He threw for 1 touchdown and no interceptions.  That brings his total for the year to 17 TDs and only 3 interceptions.

Speaking of interceptions, this is his best year of his career for keeping the picks under control.  After 9 games, he has had 3 interceptions.  Since he has been a full time starter (so not counting his first 2 years in the league), after 9 games he has averaged 10.7 interceptions per game.  The only year he has been close to his numbers this year was in 2002 when he only had 4 interceptions after the first 9 games.

Sidney Rice is a Beast

7 Catches for 201 yards.  Only 10 yards short of setting a Minnesota Vikings record.  In fact, he knew that on his final route when Tarvaris Jackson threw him the ball, but he couldn’t come down with the pass.

Sidney Rice has turned into the ultimate reliable receiver.  He’s the team’s leading receiver, but because so much attention in the passing game has to be put on Bernard Berrian and Percy Harvin, and even Adrian Peterson to some extent, teams have a hard time justifying a double team on Rice.  I’m sure Sidney doesn’t mind.

His sure handedness has built up a lot of trust in him with Brett Favre, so Brett keeps delivering him the ball.

His play Sunday was unbelievable.

Overall?

Overall it was a sloppy game for the Vikings, but they were still impressive.  Hopefully they’ll work the rust out of their system before next week when they host the Seattle Seahawks.