Vikings Week 7: Sound The Special Teams Alarm Again!

With the birth of a new daughter it seems completely ridiculous for me to devote to much time for this Vikings review write up this week so I will just give you my thoughts on the 48-41 track meet/loss to the Chicago Bears on Sunday. I found Phil Mackey's opening words of his review as quite funny: "You’ve got to give the Vikings credit. They continue to find new ways to lose football games each and every week."

• Special Teams continue to cost the Vikings this season. The two that cost the Vikings 14 points on Sunday didn't come from collective failures (coverage as in the case w/the Reggie Bush debachal), but came from mental miscues from two individuals. Chris Kluwe - no excuse for dropping a perfectly good snap.....and then playing world cup soccer trying to kick the ball again after it was blocked - that looked completely ridiculous. Charles Gordon was trying to prevent getting pinned deep by blocking a Bear player when the ball took a funny hop and hit him in the arm. Gordon was trying to allow the ball to get into the end zone. Conversly, many times you see a punt returner high tail it out of the way of the ball. Gordon was too close and we got burned. Another issue was the good field position that the Bears got in the first half. We had to give up some field position to keep the ball from Devin Hester. I agreed with this decision because Hester could've done to us what Reggie Bush did a couple of weeks ago.
  
• The Vikings scored 41 points and lost. Who would've thunk that this could've happened. Dennis Green is sitting in a rocking chair somewhere saying I've seen that happen before.
• Where is Sidney Rice? I was hoping that he would've emerged as our solid #2 receiver this season. Berrian clearly has established himself as a clear #1 and is starting to deserve and justify all the cash we are paying him. Rice is absent and has been fighting injuries so Bobby Wade and Aundrae Allison continue to be our secondary options and aren't doing too bad of a job.
• Kyle Orton beat us - that does not sound good....and hurts to think about and stomach
• The Vikings leading tackler through week 7 is Cedric Griffin. You may say Wow! Griffin must be playing well. Griffin has been good against the run, but has been picked on all year as the receivers he is covering continually get thrown too. Teams are avoiding Antoine Winfield and throwing at Griffin - which has led to him making tackles many times after 10+ yard gains.

A bye week is needed and this should give the Vikings some time to heal up, refocus mentally, and maybe try out some new punters.