I'm not a big stats guy when it comes to evaluating players. I thought AP's best season of his career was last year and he rushed for a career low in yards. Yesterday he was meh, but it's not like you could ask him to carry the team with a passing attack like that. Teams are already routinely putting 8 or 9 in the box to try to contain him. That one run was vintage AP though.
I dunno, I haven't had this bleak of an outlook for the Vikings for a very long time. The offense will be bad. Harvin is awesome but he's the only threat in the receiving game. Plus, he's probably going to be questionable to start every week like he has been the last two years. Berrian is absolutely useless for all I'm concerned and Jenkins as a 3rd? Meh. Camarillo has some of the best hands I've seen, but he isn't even close to good enough at the other aspects of the game to be effective. Shiancoe is ok but that beastly season he had a couple years ago was fully a product of Favre. I'm hoping Rudolph can make an impact, but it won't happen for a while if it does. They absolutely needed to replace Rice but didn't for some reason. Again, AP is awesome, but you can't rely on just him every week. And it's going to be pretty rough on him with this decimated O-line (which not too long ago was the best in the league).
On defense, Allen, Williams, Greenway and Winfield are the only guys I have complete faith in, and Williams is dealing with a suspension during the toughest part of the schedule. Henderson is solid as well, but the front 7 (and more notably the front 4) have completely lost that identity of making Minny nearly impenetrable on the ground. It seems Minny has almost always had a terrible secondary and it's no different this year.
On the upside... I wouldn't trade Longwell for any kicker in the league. While he doesn't have the range anymore, he's pretty much an absolute lock to nail anything inside 50, especially in clutch situations.
When you consider that the NFC North might be one of the better divisions in the league this year, even 6-10 might be tough. I say the Vikings suck for Luck as I'm definitely not sold on Ponder.
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