Brad Childress has perfected the fine art of using arcane football lingo to make incredibly simple stuff seem really complicated, thereby making himself seem really smart. A case in point – Childress’s rundown of the Vikings’ mini-camp schedule (via Star-Tribune.com ):
We’ll go morning and afternoon and have an installation in between. There are many similar plays but the volume is there and we accelerate the pace. There is an install before Friday’s morning practice, before Friday’s afternoon, the same for Saturday, and then we usually work in the red area on Sunday, but it happens faster.
Inside Childress’s own bald [...]

Adrian Peterson has admitted to using video games as a means of venting his frustration after a loss. Said Peterson to SportsGamer.com :
I did that with the Oregon game. After the way that game worked out in Eugene, I went back on NCAA Football 07 and replayed it and got some payback. It made me feel a little better.
The “Oregon game,” of course, featured a pair of infamous blown calls by the refs late, allowing the Ducks to come back on Peterson’s Oklahoma Sooners. And Peterson got some measure of pay-back by beating the Ducks on NCAA ‘07? [...]

Almost everyone has been positive about the Vikings drafting RB Adrian Peterson with the number 7 pick. The consensus seems to be that Peterson will be not only a good back but a great one – one prognosticator even has him making the Hall-of-Fame. There are, however, a few people willing to toss a bit of cold water over Viking fans who are stoked about Peterson’s potential – like Fox Sports “football outsider” Ned Macey, who says the following in his NFC North off-season review:
When Adrian Peterson fell to the seventh spot, the Vikings snatched up [...]

ESPN.com has a Madden ‘08 preview up (okay, it’s been up there for awhile, but I only just discovered it – so sue me). It looks real pretty, but even if I had an Xbox 360, I don’t know if I’d buy it. The Madden games are fun to play but have always infuriated me in certain of their details. Like, for instance, the fact that when I play Franchise Mode, my entire offensive line always ends up making the Pro-Bowl. I know it’s a quibble but still – these games sell themselves on their [...]

Randy Hill of FoxSports.com has graced us with his list of rookies he thinks will make an immediate impact in the NFL. Among these is the Minnesota Vikings‘ very own Adrian Peterson, about whom Hill says the following (the superstitious may now want to avert their eyes):
If the Vikes can use the pass to keep defenses even reasonably honest and if his health isn’t a future concern, this guy should run all the way to Canton.
And he doesn’t mean run all the way to Canton as part of some charity fund-raising marathon – he means run all the way [...]

Mock drafts seem to be all the rage right now. At the rate we’re going I fully expect them to start looking ahead 10 years or more, to guess which grade schoolers will have a huge impact down the road. “Little Timmy could be a beast at defensive end if he improves his footwork. He has a tendency to poop his pants in the third quarter which could put some teams off.”
Sort of an odd preface to my own 2008 mock draft, isn’t it? It’s almost as if I’m not taking the whole thing seriously…
2008 Mock [...]