Biabreakable

Yeah I agree. He is great too.

Well 6 of those off target throws have been interceptions. To your point though I think Cousins will start playing better as the season goes on. Cousins has been under a lot of pressure so far. Dru Samia who I have been a fan of has not been playing well at right guard. He is worse than Elflien and Elflien isn't really good enough to start either. They are better run blockers than pass protectors. That is somthing that seems to be the case every year and also must be something of their own choosing. Anyhow I was just listening to Arif Hasan if you go to the 59 minute mark of this podcast he talks about how Jefferson demonstrated being able to win in many different ways and that it is projectable going forward. That Jefferson has shown to be enough of a threat that it should help free up coverage on Adam Thielen and the offense as a whole should be more effective because of that.

Mahomes seems to be in his own world as far as QB ability right now. Its not a fair comparison. If Mark Andrews would have caught some of those very catchable balls things would be different. The Ravens still lose but they would have extended more drives and I think one of them would have been a TD. I dont think the Ravens WR are as good as KCs group either although Hardman dropped some too.

FWIW it did seem like Gus Edwards gave the team a spark in what was one of the more effective drives for the Ravens last night. I don't think he is a better player than Ingram or Dobbins but he runs hard.

Just did a search and I dont see anything about the Eagles putting Reagor on IR yet. Some of the reports say he needs surgery on the thumb but I didnt see anything about if he had surgery or not yet. Most recent stuff I found on him was him getting upset with Eagles fans for calling him a bust already. Rough crowd.

I am likely being too optimistic in my above projection. Kirk Cousins has only completed 59% of his attempts so far this year.

Yup. I wonder if he ever uses that pencil? FWIW I agree with menobrown that Peterson looks like a slower version of himself. I saw his spin move to get free for one of his highlight runs and it seemed like it took for ever to complete his rotation. He is still Adrian Peterson but that spin move took him twice as long as I remember it being executed before.

I think it is pretty tough to predict what is going to happen moving forward for Jeffrson with still only 3 games in the league. He doesn't have a sample size big enough to try to project from imo yet. As far as the Vikings needing to throw the ball a lot, that does seem sustainable. Until the Vikings start playing better defense.. maybe when/if Hunter comes back from a herniated disk in his neck they start playing better on that side of the ball and can get conservative with their offense again, but other than that I see the Vikings continue to give up a lot of yards and points and be forced into throwing the ball a lot more than I think they want to. As things stand right now Jefferson has some incredible numbers such as 16.3 yards per target and 80% catch rate. Those numbers are not sustainable over the rest of the season. 10 yards per target is a high mark for any WR over 16 games. I do not know what to do with this 3 game sample right now as far as projecting that forward. I will feel a little better about that after a 4th game. I we are just talking about opportunity Jefferson has averaged 5 targets per game so far. If that continues he would have 80 targets over 16 games. If the targets are higher than that (and based on increasing snap counts that seems likely) then Jefferson may be looking at 100+ targets this year. At this time the Vikings have run a balanced offense 78 passing attempts to 73 rushing attempts, even though they have been behind in the score most of these 3 games. The Vikings haven't had the ball enough due to safeties (yes plural safeties) and interceptions. Over 3 game Cousins is on pace to throw 416 times. He had 444 attempts last season. With the way things are going I would expect that number to go up from last season, to something more like 500 total attempts (31.5 pa/game) if they don't keep turning the ball over so frequently. For sake of making a projection lets say they do throw it 500 times. Adam Thielen gets 28% of the targets and Jefferson gets 20% that would be 100 targets. I would start there as the median range of possible outcomes. Based on what he has shown so far I would expect Jeffersons efficiency numbers to be above average but not as good as they have been so far. Last year Diggs had 12 yards per target. That is phenomenal. 10 yards per target is excellent and too high. Adam Thielen has averaged 10 ypt before in this offense. The focus on the running game and play action did lead to some amazing efficiency stats. Cousins completed 69% of his passes last year and 70% the year before, so Jeffersons catch rate should be helped by that. If Jefferson catches 68% of his targets at 9 yards per target (very good) that would be 68 receptions and 900 yards on 100 targets. Seems optimistic but possible. I don't know. I expected Cooks to do better than he has and I think Hilton is going to get a ton of targets as their main weapon besides Taylor now. I don't think I am trading Jefferson for those guys in redraft right now though and definitely not in dynasty. I do love all of those players too. I would say Jeudy over Jefferson based on talent but I dunno about his QB. That seems like a big problem with Lock hurt. I am not jumping at any of these guys over Jefferson either. As I said above I think the crappy defense of the Vikings is sustainable and as such the passing attempts for the Vikings should be higher than what the coaches of the team would like it to be. I don't know who I would compare Jefferson to. I need to see more.

I understand where you are coming from as far as focusing on improving the offensive line as the priority. We have been over that several times now. I pretty much agree with you philosophically on that. The practicality of doing that hasn't always been there though. It would have made sense to take Will Hernandez in 2018 instead of Mike Hughes. That is the only specific time I can think of where they passed on a guard when they shouldn't have. I am not sure how good Hernandez has been so far but he has started all 35 games he could have so far. I don't think the offensive linemen available at pick 22 were good enough to pass up Jefferson. The ones who maybe were had already been taken by then. As we talked about before my choice would have been Gross-Matos or Ross Blaylock. Both of these guys have only played limited snaps for their teams so far. I think either of them could make an impact on the defense, especially Blaylock as I don't think the Vikings defensive tackles are very good right now. I have some hope for Watts. How do you feel about the way Reiff, ONeil and Bradbury have played? I think Bradbury has really improved after a year of seasoning and Reiff has been doing ok. Its more the guards that are an issue right now. I love the depth they have at tackle. Its more depth than they need. If one of those players could play guard they might be in better shape right now. As you know they were using Cleveland there in training camp to see if he could do it better than the guys they have at guard. He isn't playing yet, but they did draft Cleveland in the 2nd round and I think he will be a starter eventually. Likely replacing Reiff in a year or two. As far as the defense goes they have been using high picks on defensive backs while using 3rd round or later picks on defensive linemen, Hunter is an elite DE and they only used a 3rd round pick on him. Griffen 4th round pick. Ifeadi Odenigbo 7th round pick, Stephen Weatherly 7th round pick. So there is where the Vikings have been able to develop guys into good players with lower investment on the defensive side of the ball. That said Anthony Harris was a UDFA and has developed into a top safety with this coaching staff. Holton Hill is also a UDFA so there have been some wins there as well. The difference being many 1st round picks used on corners. They haven't used a 1st round pick on a defensive lineman since Sharrif Floyd, but they have had a lot of success there with their later picks instead. The Vikings do badly need better play from their DTs but they had tried to address that when they signed Michael Pierce who is not playing because of Covid.

There was some talk this offseason about how difficult it is to maintain a top level defense in the NFL. Most teams cannot sustain top 10 defense for more than a few seasons in a row. Because of personnel changes and so many other random factors. As you say Jim for a defense to really stay on top like this requires constant investment into it which means cutting corners somewhere else on the team and doing so may not be the most optimal path to winning a championship at some point in a NFL dominated by offense and especially passing offense right now. So all of that circles back to the decision to sign Kirk Cousins. With a rookie QB contract they could afford to overspend on the defensive side of the ball. They cant do that now with Cousins contract. I think philosophically prioritizing investment in the QB position makes sense, Kirk just cant cut the mustard. Most QBs can't. Now the bill has come due. Thinking back on Zimmers comments during the draft its light hearted, but with how the season has gone so far it reveals that Zimmer did not have confidence in the players they had and wanted to use more draft capital on that side of the ball if he could. After Jeffersons game yesterday I think they made the right choice in that case. Anyhow still a lot of games to be played. The defense is at the bottom of the league right now so they can't get much worse.

As I have said before I think Gibson needs to work on his route running, his footwork, his releases, changing his speeds during a route all of the little things that matter for earning trust of the coaches and the QB that you will be open and in the right spot on time. I think this is a lot less complicated for RB routes than WR routes but not surprising to me that McKissic is trusted more than Gibson for these types of things right now. We know they want Gibson to be an all around RB for them in time. I think he will get there but he isn't there yet. If he were just trying to earn snaps at WR I think that would be a longer learning curve for him.

Vikings defense off to worst three-game start in their 60-year history

The Vikings’ Defense Sucks. Why?

Sigh. Great player.

You wish. LOL