Bernard Berrian Continues To Reflect Poorly On Leslie Frazier

As most everyone knows right now, Bernard Berrian was a healthy scratch today. He caught two balls in the teams first four games, was benched in the victory versus the Cardinals, responded with his best game of the season against the Bears (mind you that was overshadowed with a horrific drop) and didn’t play again today. Following the game there was uncertainty of if Berrian would be cut this week or be back with the Vikings.

Regardless of if the Vikings send Berrian packing this week or not, therein lies the problem with this absolute joke of a football team. We’ve written in the past that Berrian should have been cut after the Vikings failed to re-sign downfield threat Sidney Rice, wrote again that that Frazier loyalty has done more harm than good and here we are with a 1-6 last place football team that has stadium issues. Is it expected of a head coach to follow to the football media’s command? Nope. But when Leslie Frazier comes out and says in his introductory press conference that he considers Brad Childress a friend and a mentor Frazier should well know that stubbornness played a role in Childress getting fired. Frazier has failed us thus far to come out admitting this was a rebuilding year and we’ve wasted 7 games giving guys that have a future in this league job experience to grow. There was simply no chance we could have kept pace when the Packers over a 16-game season when their roster has come into their prime while ours has aged. The same could be said about the resurgent Lions and the Bears who always seem to be competitive.

If Frazier has anything going for him right now it’s Christian Ponder. His stats were far from spectacular today, but the fact is we were in the game against a superior team and had a chance of winning in the 4th quarter. Also in the post-game press conference Ponder said, “I made some mistakes personally. I put this loss on me.” That’s more than we’ve heard from an accountability standpoint than any other Viking in 2011, especially Donovan McNabb. And if Frazier is out to allow folks to learn on the job it’d be nice to see what DeMarcus Love, Brandon Burton, Emmanuel Arceneaux, Mistral Raymond and Stephen Burton could do in a regular season game.

As we’ve said before a young team that cares about improvement is much more enjoyable to watch than a washed up veteran team who’s fine with losing. Then again, it’s going to take a coach to admit he’s rebuilding. We certainly have our doubts. But cutting Berrian would be a small step in the right direction.

Jon Merckle may be followed on Twitter @thevikingpig