No surprise: Shanahan out in DC

Shanahan's mistake was taking the HC job for the Redskins and the worst owner in the NFL. I don't know what specific things you're referring to, but Shanahan is smarter than Snyder. Read this and tell me who the bigger maroon is.

There's plenty of talent on the offense, except perhaps for the average, at best, QB, but the defense is old and slow.

No, Adrian Peterson's contract is not why the Vikings are bad. His contract only takes up 11% of the cap. He's not even the highest paid player on the team. The Vikings problems are a defense that's old and slow and they chose Christian Ponder as their franchise QB and he wasn't good enough.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here. This was a huge surprise. Cleveland is such a disaster.

 

Before they fired their coach this year, Cleveland fired another coach prior to after only one year. As Cleveland GM and President or what have you really have no class or no taste in coaches.

Plus the Redskins want to probably blame Robert Griffin III over their season. But Mike Shanahan has had problems with QBs in the past like Jay Cutler and Jake Plummer in Denver. Donovan McNabb in Redskins. Plus like someone says, Dan Snyder is the worst NFL owner of all time!

 

Pretty good analysis. Other than two guys on defense--Kevin Williams and Jared Allen--they're not old and they're not slow, they're just not very good. Their secondary has been dreadful the entire time Frazier has been coach and that was his expertise.

Frazier's choices for coordinators were terrible.

Adrian Peterson has lost a step. He puts up good fantasy stats but really, I wish the Vikings could trade him for some draft picks. Watching him week after week as I do I see perhaps 10-12 carries per game for negative yards or less than 2 yards gained and then he will bust a couple for 30 yards or so, which makes his overall stats look good. When you absolutely need to convert a 4th and 2 I can think of plenty of other running backs I'd rather hand the ball to than Peterson.

 

Fair enough.

He ran for over 1,200 yards! Regression was to be expected after he ran for over 2,000 last year. For all RB's who ran for 2,000 one year, running for over 1200 yards the next year was the third highest total ever. When I watched Vikings football, I saw a RB who still ran with power and was one of the best RB's in the game. He's likely not running for 2,000 again, but another 1,200 yard season would be a great year for a 29 yo RB.

Surely you're not a Vikings fan speaking this blasphemy?! :tonofbricks:

There are plenty of comparable RB's I would give to in this situation, like Jamaal Charles, Shady and Forte, but it's not absolute that I would choose them over AD.

 

To avoid confusion, my last post was Vikings centric and this one will address the other one.

The Browns real problem was that they hired their HC a week before they hired Lombardi for the GM. They should have waited on hiring a HC until after they hired Lombardi. Now, they look like they don't know what they're doing. Again.

No, that's not what Snyder wants at all. The point of firing Shanahan was to pin the blame for the season on him, not on their popular franchise QB.

Shanahan and Cutler had problems? This is news to me. I know Plummer and Shanahan had problems, but that might be because Plummer wasn't very good. Remember, Josh McDaniels is the one who ran Cutler out of town, not Shanahan. McNabb was washed up by the time he got to Washington.

Here, here. :wavey:

 

Yep, puts up good numbers if that's all you look at. Again, when looking at stats 3 runs of 20-30 yards erases a dozen rushes for losses or no gain. Hey look--Peterson had 15 rushes for 70 yards, a 4.6 yard per carry.

The Vikings won 5 games this year, Peterson did not play in 2 of those games.

There is a new stat in football for running backs called Success Rate. Basically it's successful running plays divided by total number of running plays. It's a measure of consistency. Peterson ranked 32nd in this metric. http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/rb

Look at the first game of the season. It's a microcosm of Peterson overall. He gained 78 yards on his first carry. After his first carry of the game, the 28-year-old back added just 15 more over his next 17 carries. The following are the yardage gained in each subsequent attempt: 2, -3, -4, 4, -3, -4, no gain, 2, 1, 7, 2, -1, 5, 1, 1, 3.

Not one gain longer than seven yards. Only two longer than four. He had six carries that went nowhere or for negative yardage. Peterson began the first half with a 78-yard run. He finished it with 70 yards on eight carries.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-start-shouldnt-inflate-expectations-for-2013

Viking fan all my life. Trading Peterson for draft picks can fix this team. Keeping him will consign the team to mediocrity.

 

Only one problem with this idea. Nobody is going to trade the kind of draft picks needed to rebuild for a soon to be 29 yo RB, even one as good as AD. The Colts traded a first rounder for Trent Richardson and he's 23. Best the Vikings could do is maybe a 3rd rounder and are they really trading AD for that?

Besides, the tank isn't empty. AD's got a few more years of being one of the best RB's in the game. Did you see the piece on Grantland about ACL's a couple of months ago and the insane training regimen that AD put himself through to come back? There's no way a guy who works like that isn't going to be good next season.

AD is really the least of the Vikings problems.

 

The Vikings would need to find a team with deep pockets, a good QB, good offense, but lacks a running game to make them a playoff team. That sounds a lot like the NY Giants. Other candidates would be the Steelers and Colts. I think he would return more than just a 3rd rounder.

Yes, Peterson will continue to put up good numbers. But what winning team in the NFL in the past 5-7 years, even 10 years has built their offense on a running back? Instead of a team with a good/great QB and a passing game? None.