Quick thoughts on the Vikings
 

1. Campbell is talented but he just isn’t going to work out.

2. We are better off with hooker not on the field.

3. Those are 2 busts for ballard. I know everyone loves ballard but those turned out to be bad picks. He has had more than we want to acknowledge

4. Rivers was ok today. Can’t really complain about his play. Accurate all day and the int wasn’t on him. Would have been much better if ty would have made that catch.

5. Stop opening the fucking roof. Nobody wants it open. Just stop it. Giant waste of taxpayer money.

6. Ty has to play better. Period. We need him to step up and dominate. These drops are fucking killer

7. Oline was pretty good except a terrible play by AC and a couple miscues from smith. We need to take shots down the field more. Teams are keying on the run and we need the defenses to back the fuck off. We can’t consistently just impose our will. Reich needs to figure this out

8. Pittman was fucking clutch. We need that guy. The Reggie Wayne of 2012 that will just make a key catch when you need it. Good for him. Clean up the blocking though

9. Mo Cox? Very well done sir

10. Hopefully hooker is ok but he is done as a starter. Blackmon or Odum can handle it. Willis hasn’t looked so great so far imo.

11. We need more pass rush. Buckner was good against a backup rg. Autry is ok at de and is good at stunts but Grover sucks and Houston is not consistent at this point in his career. Lewis did have some good snaps late in the game which is promising

12. Can’t complain about the corners.

13. Leonard was getting after it. Walker was a no show. We need consistency out of these dudes

I will add that Taylor looked decent. He also left lots of yards on the field. Hopefully he gets better with his vision there. Because he does so much well. He may take some time to really hit his stride.

There was one running play by Cook, early in the the 1st half, where both Walker and Leonard overran the play and did not play their gaps that really pissed me off.

Yeah, Blackmon already looks better than Hooker. Most of Ballard's bad draft picks though, came when he was teamed with Pagano.

Stop drafting Ohio St. players. The Colts are cursed when they do.

Time for Rivers and TY to start hooking up.

Who would've guessed that Mo-Allie would lead us in receiving yards?

So impressed with the secondary, with how many guys went down.

How about a little love for Hot Rod?

Gotta clean p the drive killing penalties on offense and the drive sustaining penalties on defense.

I'm predicting 1500 yards for JT this season.

Is there any word on how bad Campbell’s injury is? I’m surprised to see you give up on him that fast Omaha. Injuries happen and sometimes they’re just bad luck. Edit-stampede blue says it’s not an ACL tear but they’re waiting on MRI to determine how serious it is. That’s good news. I’m certainly not giving up on him.

I’ve liked Pittman since he was drafted. He’s gonna be a good one. Same with Taylor. Once they get a few games under their belt, look out.

Blackmon is fast. Kenny Moore has a good game. So did Autry. Alie-Cox would also get mentioned if not for that stone handed int.

I was going to praise the kicker but he is a kicker

Agree. opening the roof is stupid. That is probably what caused TY to miss that catch. The sun is either in your face or behind you all game long.

Campbell is hurt constantly. Maybe he can turn it around but some dudes just can’t take an nfl beating

Should have drafted Metcalf, he was there for the taking. As I write that he catches a TD pass and shrugs off Gilmore’s tackle like he’s a scrub.

Seems like Anthony Gonzalez all over again

Yeah, another Buckeye.

another fragile broken buckeye

The roof is probably open because of both pleasant weather and covid-19 (letting the place air out).

I doubt Covid played a role since there were like 23 people there. The roof should be shut and sealed

Why not, here's another dopey Kravitz imitation

Passing offense: B
No major complaints outside the TY drop (and I mean really, TY?), but it wasn't a dominating passing performance, just good enough. (and that INT where Alie-Cox should have fought a little harder for the ball, but he made it up for it later)

Rushing offense: B+
Did what we should have, but I was surprised to see fewer snaps for Hines after he did a lot last week. I noticed less success running outside than is typical for us, whether that is because it isn't Taylor's strength (in comparison to Mack who could really break those outside runs) or whether Taylor isn't reading those blocks as well, or whether its a strength of the Vikings defense. I'm leaning to the latter, since we could run right up the middle on them pretty well.

Passing defense: A-
Coverage was much improved, I'd still like to see more consistent pressure on the QB. But I'll take that stat line any day: 11/26, 113 yards, 4.3 YPA, 3 sacks, 3 INTs, 0 TDs.

Rushing defense: B
Good but still a lot of inconsistency on this d-line. 4.4 yards per attempt isn't great.

Special teams: A
That's 2 weeks that special teams gets the highest grade, though its not such a big deal this week. But perfect on kicks, good coverage, good enough returns.

Coaching: B-
I'm going to continue to put penalties on the coaches, at least for the most part. It was a better called game compared to the prev week, but still not perfect. Pass/run balance was good but then its easy to do that when you're leading and the run is working well. I'll hold judgment for when its a tougher opponent. I still get the sense that Reich tries to get cute at the complete wrong time.

Overall B
A win's a win, but the Vikings look like shit, so we'll see. Still a lot of projections had us 1-1 at this point, just different in terms of who we beat and who beat us. I'd rather have the edge in the division though.

I'll be curious to see how Tennessee looks vs Vikings next week. We get another bad team next week, do we play down to them or crush them? That will inform my reaction both to this team's potential as well as the coaches.

will Houston start 0-3? They've got an easier schedule down the road but that's tough to overcome, not sure they can handle the "first place schedule".

Hooker I agree with you on, as his performance never lived up to his draft status (the '17 draft overall was pretty bad for Ballard), but don't see how you can pin Campbell's injury proneness on Ballard. Campbell played in 29/31 games for OSU from his Sophomore through Senior season, so it's not like he was unable to stay healthy in college.

All good stuff, thanks. As to points 1-3, I gotta agree with Norm above, that it's tough to place blame on Ballard for Campbell's injury problems as there's no indication these problems were apparent when he was drafted. Now, you can say that doesn't matter, and only the results matter and Campbell has not panned out yet, but I think if we're trying to accurately assess anyone's performance you want to exclude stuff that they have no control over.

Hooker has been a disappointment, no question, but even with that pick there are some additional factors I think need to be considered - most notably, it was Ballard's first draft after being hired a couple month earlier and by necessity he had to use the Grigson scouting staff he inherited - all of whom were replaced shortly after the draft. So Ballard gets the blame certainly, but maybe with an asterisk. And I'll add that he didn't try to justify the pick to protect his reputation this last offseason, and did not pick up the fifth year option.

Lastly, I did not feel like Taylor's performance was all that great yesterday. Nice to get 100 yards and all, but it felt a lot more like quantity over quality to me.

I mostly agree. The most impressive thing I saw from him was the additional 2-3 yards after contact. He almost always drove and fell forward instead of being stood up up knocked back. However, from the TV angle it looked like he definitely left some yards on the field as well. It’s way too early to worry about his vision, but what I saw yesterday wasn’t significantly better than Wilkins.

Ballard gets judged on if a player works out or not. That’s just how it goes. Regardless of if ballard had anything to do about it

I think Taylor will just take a bit of time to adjust. He should be fine

Drafting Metcalf would've been stupid, just ask Omaha.

You can't blame injury luck on a GM. Campbell is talented. Hopefully he avoided the ACL injury and can be back this season.

In the court of public opinion, that’s absolutely true. However, if we are trying to fairly evaluate his real-world performance, it’s irrelevant unless it can be tied to something Ballard knew or should have known at the time Campbell was drafted.

And to address Chromeburn’s comment, yes, in retrospect of course it would have been nice to draft Metcalf instead. At the time, I believe Metcalf was considered pretty raw and potentially too muscle-bound to be as flexible as a WR needs to be, but obviously that appears to be wrong. That one is on Ballard and every other GM who didn’t pick him I guess. I will say that when healthy, Campbell has been every bit the explosive receiver that was projected when he was drafted, so it’s not like we took a talentless player instead. Just a different type of receiver, and one who unfortunately appears to be more injury prone than advertised.

The majority of his fumbles came on second effort I believe. He will have to be extra wary when going for those yards after contact.

Completely agree on the yards left on the field. He seemed to run towards the defenders instead of open space.

He’s a punishing runner though. He’s big and he packs a punch.

In watching Taylor run, I believe that Rathman has already fixed the fumbling problems. You can see that Taylor wraps up the ball with 2 hands when he senses contact.

I’d also like to point out that Blackmon looks to be the starting safety going forward. That leaves us with a rookie coming off an ACL tear and a second year guy on the back end. That, combined with our mediocre cornerback depth, leaves me a bit concerned.

I don’t agree that losing Hooker is a plus. It most certainly is not. That’s dumb. He may not be what we thought he was gonna be, but he’s an experienced starter. Losing him hurts.

Blackmon had better be ready. He’s gonna get tested. A lot.

Wtf would the pass defense need to do to get an A or A+ from you? The opposing QB completed less than 50% of his passes, had less than 5 YPA, barely over 100 yards, threw 3 picks, and was sacked 3 times including a safety. If the Colts do that to every opposing QB the rest of the year, they will go 15-1 and win the Super Bowl. I doubt they will, but it shows how good the defensive performance was.

Hooker wasn’t a good football player. Losing him doesn’t matter

But Hooker certainly isn't a bad player either!

Feel sorry for the guy, he is screwed in terms of his options come next season and getting a decent contract. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if Ballard resigned him to a mid level contract for 3 years, but also if we just let him walk and let him see what he might get in free agency.

By all accounts he was having a great training camp, so maybe Ballard was impressed by his attitude towards not getting the 5th year on his rookie contract and gives him a reasonable contract offer.

Whilst discussing the safety position, when looking at the snap numbers, i was a little surprised to see how few snaps Wilson took. Once Hooker went down i thought he would have got more snaps than Blackmon as it was Blackmon's first game.

We actually had a nice set of safeties with Hooker, Willis, Blackmon, Odom and Wilson. Still don't mind the remaining 4, Willis looks to be a stud, Blackmon had a great first game, Wilson has a lot of quality starting experience and Odom has performed admirably when called upon.

We would be a better team with Hooker starting than we will be with Blackmon, if for no other reason than experience alone.

What you’re saying here is dumb. Losing Hooker is in no way a good thing for the colts.

Hooker was never Ed Reed and he never will be he’s more like idrees bashir so yea no big loss

How available has he been in the last three years? I wont argue talent, but he hasnt been available.

That is clearly something you don’t know. You think it is unfathomable that Blackmon or Odum can’t upgrade what hooker gave us? You have a much higher opinion of hooker than he deserves

You said the same thing about Hoyer when JB went down

Nah, I deal in reality. And the reality is the Colts lost an experienced player and are replacing him with a rookie. It may work out, it may not. But that’s the reality.

If the Colts thought Blackmon was already better, he would have been starting.

You’re letting your dislike of Hooker affect your reasoning.

Hooker was always going to start over Blackmon, just because Blackmon is recovering from his injury and was on a pitch count.

Nonsense. The Colts were never gonna start Blackmon as long as Hooker was healthy.

I get that you guys hate Hooker. But losing him hurts the team. It sure as hell isn't a positive.

Yeah, as bad as they were last week. They were as good if not better. Turnovers, pressure, and Buckner being the player we paid him to be. Now if they could just be consistent, we will start putting wins together.

There were conversations 2 years ago about, "having a serious conversation about Mailk Hooker" He wont play another snap for us.

Yes, it sucks. Yes there are aspects of it that are not fair at all. Jim Irsay has paid Malik Hooker $14.6 million to see if he would work out. It just didn't.