Losing Winfield would be a significant blow to a Vikings defense that has struggled mightily at times in pass defense. This crew was absolutely torched in the second half two weeks ago against Detroit, then followed that up by making a previously inept Chiefs offense look positively competent. This week they will face Kevin Kolb and Larry Fitzgerald. After the games Calvin Johnson and Dwayne Bowe put up against the Vikes, Fitzgerald must be licking his chops.

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There’s no use going over T-Jack’s inadequacies again in any detail – we’ve all heard that song so many times it makes us want to puke. Suffice it to say, Tarvaris is simply not a very good quarterback, and has very little chance of ever significantly improving. We know this because we watched him for five years – watched him never learn how to read defenses, watched his confidence never seem to increase, watched him leave games over the merest of injuries (the kind of stuff Brett Favre would’ve barely even felt).

Despite these realities, Pete Carroll and Darrel Bevell are ready to roll the dice on T-Jack one more time, apparently believing they can get something out of him that was never extracted in Minnesota. They’ve sold themselves on T-Jack’s value, and now they’re trying to sell their fans on it too. This is a very tough sell, for all the reasons outlined above, but Pete Carroll has a strategy in mind. This strategy is built upon a phrase Viking fans have become all-too-familiar with over the past couple of years:

Tarvaris Jackson never got a fair shake in Minnesota.

Or, in Pete Carroll’s own rather more colorful words, “He’s been jerked around. We wanted to put him in a stable situation.”

So T-Jack is like a dog that got kicked around by mean people but after all that trial and tribulation has finally found a home where he’ll be loved and cared for? And now that T-Jack is in the right kind of nurturing environment he’ll finally blossom into the quarterback he always could have been?

Riiiiiiight.
(more…)

The drawback to the Acquire a Veteran to Start Plan is that there aren’t a whole lot of guys out there who fit the requirements and could be had for a reasonable price. The first name that leaps to mind is Kyle Orton, but he only makes sense if he can be gotten for a lowish draft pick. Then there’s Kevin Kolb but everyone knows the Eagles will demand a king’s ransom for Kolb so he’s no dice for the Vikings.

Somewhat farther down the list you find a man named Donovan McNabb, who a year ago was thought of as a viable replacement for Brett Favre, until he was traded to Washington. There are still people, including me, who think McNabb could be a fit in Minnesota – but the number of people willing to take this point-of-view is shrinking every day.

Peter King used to be among those who thought McNabb could end up a Viking, but King has jumped ship too. On PTI King said he thinks the Vikings have “cooled” on McNabb after initially being interested. And King isn’t the only insider who now thinks the Vikings are backing away from McNabb. Sal Paolantonio basically confirmed King’s assertion, saying there is “no buzz” on the former Pro Bowler.

It’s hard to ignore the words of men like King and Paolantonio when they say your team is cold on a guy. That said, I think it would be premature to slam the door on all McNabb-to-the-Vikings talk, and here’s why:

As King and others have pointed out, the beginning of free agency will kick off a game of veteran quarterback musical chairs. This game is expected to sweep Kolb to Arizona, Matt Hasselbeck to Tennessee and Marc Bulger possibly to Seattle. Now if you’re the Vikings and you really covet a veteran, you suddenly have a lot fewer options. Orton would still be there, but what if Denver holds out for a second? Would you really give up a second for one year of Orton?

So under this (perfectly plausible) scenario, we’ve eliminated Kolb, Hasselbeck, Bulger and Orton. What does that leave? Well, it leaves Donovan McNabb.

Now let’s look at it from McNabb’s point-of-view. Washington is going to cut him, because they’re not going to find a team silly enough to give them anything for him in a trade. Seattle, Tennessee and Arizona are eliminated as potential landing spots. That really only leaves the Vikings and possibly Miami looking for a QB. If you’re McNabb, you are suddenly down to a precious few options. If at that point the Vikings come calling, asking you to play under an incentive-laden contract and telling you that you might end up mentoring the young guy rather than starting, what do you tell them?

Maybe McNabb retires under those circumstances. Or maybe he gets a better offer from Miami. Or maybe he sits around and waits for another team to have an injury. I don’t know what he does, I just know that once the QB carousel gets rolling, McNabb might find himself scrambling for the first seat he can get, and it might not be the seat he really wants.

In this case, “no buzz” might actually be a good thing. It could set the stage for McNabb to be had cheaply, under circumstances where he has no choice but to swallow his pride and compete for a job.

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