1. About Those Effort Comments…

There’s one sure-fire way to make fans even more angry after a loss where you blow a 17-point halftime lead, and that’s to suggest you didn’t try hard all the way to the gun. Percy Harvin dropped perhaps the most controversial comment along these lines, saying, “You can chop it up as whatever you want. We’re just going to say we didn’t play hard all the way to the end of the game.” So when did the Vikings start phoning it in? Straight away at the start of the second half or later on after it became clear their defensive approach of not rushing the passer, playing incredibly soft zone coverage and missing tackles was not going to get the job done? I can’t crawl inside the players’ heads and know what they were feeling during the game, so I can’t say for sure if Percy is stating a fact or just picking an incredibly bad way to express frustration. I do know that if you’re a player and at some point during a game you become too mentally or physically drained to give a full effort anymore, it’s better not to admit that especially if you lose. Obviously Percy learned nothing from Brett Favre.

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1. LeGarrette Blount

This guy is an absolute tackle-breaking monster – the stat “yards after contact” should just be renamed “Blounts.” If the Vikings want to avoid giving up lots of Blounts to Blount, they need to wrap up a lot better than they did last week against San Diego and Mike Tolbert. Did I mention that E.J. Henderson has a knee issue and might not be able to play? So Blount against our crap defensive tackles with no E.J. Henderson roaming the middle at linebacker and guys like Jamarca Sanford trying to come up and make sticks? Yeah that sounds promising.

2. Tampa Bay’s Offensive Line

I’m looking forward to seeing our pass rush against Tampa’s offensive line. They’re not a great pass-blocking line and last week Detroit put a lot of heat on Josh Freeman (when he was actually on the field and not on the sideline dealing with cramps). The rush from Jared Allen, Brian Robison and various blitzers last week really frustrated Philip Rivers at least in the first half, and I expect a greater level of frustration for Freeman. The heat should be ratcheted up even more against Tampa because the game is at the Dome where it will be loud and where Allen/Robison will be that much quicker off the ball thanks to the turf.

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