Matt Kalil Could Learn a Thing Or Two From Christian Ponder

Matt Kalil is on the defensive again. In a chat with the Pioneer-Press, the Vikings’ embattled left tackle once again went toe-to-toe with the grading site Pro Football Focus, a site that currently has Kalil ranked as one of the worst tackles in the NFL.

More from Minnesota Vikings News

• Former Vikings first-round pick could reportedly return to NFC North
• Bears analyst has extremely embarrassing Kirk Cousins take
• 6 Vikings who (maybe) won’t make the 53-man roster in 2023
• Predicting what the Vikings will do in the 2023 NFL Draft based on 2022
• Vikings have reportedly begun extension talks with T.J. Hockenson

Kalil not only takes issue with his own ranking but with the entire PFF operation and their staff of alleged uninformed amateurs (via Pioneer-Press):

"Pro Football Focus, he said, hires “random fans and give(s) them a training camp on how to grade people.”“I’m not going against them because they hammer me,” he added, “but, I mean, it’s not a credible site. … They don’t know the blocking schemes, they don’t know who’s (at) fault” for a bad play."

In the same Pioneer-Press piece, Kalil revisits the incident after the Green Bay game where he went toe-to-toe with a fan in the parking lot outside the stadium.

Kalil previously apologized for knocking the hat off the head of a heckler, but in his latest remarks he doesn’t sound that apologetic, blaming his behavior on a combination of being mad over Phil Loadholt’s injury and one fan happening to catch him at the worst possible moment:

"“He was out for the season, so I was already pissed off,” he said. “I mean, usually those guys, they’re not even worth my time to do anything. But he kind of caught me at a perfect moment, when I was just kind of already mad.”"

My question for Matt Kalil would be, why are you still going over all this stuff?

Whoever is advising Matt Kalil is doing a terrible job of it. The endless griping about PFF just sounds like sour grapes, and going back over the fan incident that was already apologized for? What purpose does that serve?

Kalil had already put the fan incident to bed but here he is dredging it back up, making a new excuse for his inexcusable behavior. The fact is ALL players deal with idiot fans from time to time. Most players do not get into altercations with those fans in the parking lot.

It seems to me that Kalil needs a new person advising him on how to deal with these controversies. You know who I would turn to if I were Matt? Christian Ponder.

Matt has someone right on his very own team who is an expert at ignoring criticism. Ponder knows all about getting ripped by media and fans. He has taken far more s–t in his life than Matt Kalil will ever experience.

Somehow, Christian Ponder managed to ride out all those months of being brutalized by fans and media without ever once making the kind of excuses Matt Kalil keeps throwing out there. Never once did Ponder question the expertise of the media people attacking him. Never once did he go after a fan physically and then try to explain away the behavior by saying it was just a bad day.

Kalil should sit down with Ponder and pick his brain for tips on how to not make a bad situation worse by endlessly rehashing things that seemingly were already put to bed. He should pump Ponder for advice on how not to look like a whining turdbucket.

It shouldn’t be that hard really: just keep your mouth shut and play. But clearly this is not an option for Kalil. So he needs advice from someone who has already gone through it. He needs counsel from a man who knows everything there is to know about being ripped on a daily basis, sometimes unfairly.

If anyone can advise Kalil on the fine art of deflecting media criticism through blandness, remaining polite in the face of fan ripping and generally conveying a non-confrontational, blase attitude throughout all adversity, it’s Ponder.

Ponder mastered all of this a long time ago. The secret is to remain generic at all times and, most importantly, to never ever ever bring stuff back up that’s been forgotten.

Why give people a second chance to rip you about something you already got ripped about? Why open yourself up to it unnecessarily? Why act like any of it even bothers you for one second?

Ponder gets all of that. Matt Kalil needs to knock on that door and get a lesson from the king of dealing with bulls–t from fans and reporters. Cause the way he’s going about it now, it’s not going to work. He’s only going to wind up a basket case.