Daily Norseman

Charlie Johnson Not Worried About Moving To Guard

2012-05-27T21:26:10Z

For as much flak as Charlie Johnson has received over the course of the past year, he really seems to be taking it all in stride. Johnson was signed by the Vikings to help along the offensive line last season, but got pushed into the starting left tackle spot when the team released Bryant McKinnie for reporting to camp at approximately 700 pounds (or whatever the figure was. . .it might have been slightly less than that).

The Vikings' selection of offensive tackle Matt Kalil meant that something was going to happen with Johnson, and it appears that something is going to be a move to left guard. This didn't come as a surprise to the man from Oklahoma State that's entering his seventh NFL season. . .it's something that has been in the works for a while.

But it didn't take long for Davidson to begin recognizing that Johnson might be best suited to move inside to guard. He said he started talking with Johnson about a move back in Week 3 of last season.

"This was something that's kind of been ongoing," Davidson said. "I'm going to try and put it as nice as I can. I'm a no-nonsense guy. And essentially when I think that I see a guy and I know what he is capable of and what he would help us most at, I'm going to let him know that. Our postseason interviews that we had when I talked to Charlie, I said, 'You may be our left tackle. You may be our left guard. I don't know yet. We're going to be better at two positions if we get a left tackle in here."

This is something we've been saying for a while now. . .Charlie Johnson is a pretty good NFL offensive lineman. He just isn't a good NFL left tackle. The ability to kick him inside and fill the hole at left guard that opened up with the release of Steve Hutchinson will help the entire left side of the offensive line, and help the entire offense as a result. Johnson might not be at the level Hutchinson was in his prime. . .and, really, who is. . .but I think he can perform up to the level that Hutchinson performed at the past couple of seasons. Here's hoping that's the case for the sake of the Vikings' offense in 2012.

Anyone Still Angry The Vikings Passed On Nick Fairley?

2012-05-27T20:38:28Z

Going into the 2011 NFL Draft, Auburn's Nick Fairley had a reputation for dirty play, having picked up numerous unnecessary personal foul penalties in college. The Vikings had an opportunity to take him with the 11th overall selection, but passed on the big defensive tackle in favor of quarterback Christian Ponder.

Turns out that Fairley is having a bit of an issue keeping things clean off the field, too.

Troopers said Fairley passed an officer's car travelling 100 mph in a black Cadillac Escalade and initially failed to yield, but eventually stopped. The officer said he showed signs of impairment.

He was charged with DUI and attempting to elude police, but troopers also said Fairley was ticketed for reckless driving, no proof of insurance and having an open container.

This is the second time this off-season that Fairley has been arrested, having been arrested back in April for marijuana possession. The NFL has not said anything about it yet, obviously, but Fairley could be running afoul of the NFL's substance abuse and/or personal conduct policies, and could be looking at a possible suspension. Considering that the Vikings will meet the Lions in Week 4 of the 2012 NFL season, it's possible that they won't be seeing Nick Fairley on the other side of the football.

Me? I'm happy that we took a player with good character that has an high ceiling over a guy that has yet to show the ability to not be an idiot.

Your Random Minnesota Vikings Highlight Video Of The Day

2012-05-27T03:00:06Z

Since there really isn't a whole lot else going on at the moment, I figure it's time to throw a highlight video from happier times up here for everyone's viewing pleasure.

The Minnesota Vikings' 2010 season certainly didn't have very many highlights, but the game against the Arizona Cardinals on November 7 of that year certainly qualifies. The team had released Randy Moss in the days leading up to this game, just weeks after acquiring him from the New England Patriots for a third-round draft choice. The game was incredibly ugly for the Vikings in the early going, as they went into the locker room trailing 14-10, and when Percy Harvin fumbled the second half kickoff, the Cardinals jumped on it and took it in for a score to make it 21-10.

The Cardinals tacked on another field goal to make the score 24-10, and that was the score when Greg Camarillo was tackled on a punt at the Arizona 40-yard line with 4:39 remaining in the game.

And then the Vikings went crazy. . .on both sides of the ball.

This video shows the highlights of that game from that point on. SPOILER: It ends up being a happy ending for our favorite football team.

Scott Kooistra Is Attempting To Move On

2012-05-27T02:20:16Z

There's an article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press today by Jeremy Fowler about former Vikings' offensive lineman Scott Kooistra. Kooistra was in contention to start last season before suffering an injury in a pre-season game against the Seattle Seahawks.

The account of the injury is a pretty scary one, and it turns out that Kooistra is lucky that things didn't end up being a whole lot worse. Not that they're necessarily rosy or anything now, but here's what happened.

A helmet-to-helmet collision with linebacker Aaron Curry on a running play had changed everything. Carla didn't even know he was hurt. Neither did the Vikings at first; Scott said he "stumbled" through three subsequent plays that ended the series before coming to the sideline in pain, unable to move his neck from side to side. Scott thought a trainer would just crack his back and he would return to the game. Instead, he was taken to a hospital.

Now, I understand that three plays is not a lot in the National Football League, but when you've got a neck injury the likes of which Kooistra has obviously suffered, even one play more would be too many.

You really do have to read the entire story. . .it details some of Kooistra's rehab process, and how he's trying to move on from the significantly life-altering events of last August.

ESPN Tabs Christian Ponder As Candidate For Marked Improvement

2012-05-26T19:09:04Z

One of the things that we're banking on as fans of the Minnesota Vikings is that quarterback Christian Ponder is going to be markedly better in 2012 than he was in 2011, and it really does make sense to think that he will be. He'll have a better protector on his blindside, he will still have the benefit of a pretty good rushing game (with or without Adrian Peterson, though obviously the former is better), and the team has upgraded the weapons around him.

But we've been saying that forever. . .now, somebody else is saying it, too. That somebody is K.C. Joyner, ESPN.com's Football Scientist. In his latest column, Joyner identifies some quarterbacks from what he deems to be "low-tier teams" that could be in line for a big leap in 2011, and #7 tops his list.

Joyner puts the blame for Ponder's lack of success in 2011 on the lack of a real downfield passing attack, which is something I'm pretty sure we all had figured out already. He points to players like wide receiver Devin Aromashodu, who was targeted on 56 "vertical" passes last season (passes that travel at least 11 yards in the air), and rewarded the team by posting the second-worst yards/attempt among receivers that were targeted on at least 50 such passes.

The two members of Ponder's new supporting cast that he identifies as being of the most help are wide receivers Jerome Simpson and Jarius Wright, both of whom should be able to help stretch the field for Minnesota. Simpson ranked quite highly last season in yards/attempt on passes that traveled between 11 and 19 yards in the air, according to Joyner, which will help Ponder a lot, but the surprise comes from Wright.

Prior to the draft, Joyner put together a list of who he thought the top 10 wide receivers in the 2012 NFL Draft were, based on their college metrics. He looked at age, height, speed (40-yard dash time), overall yards/attempt, and yards/attempt on passes of various lengths, broken into short, medium, and long passes. Jarius Wright wound up being third on that list. Yes, that's out of all the receivers that were available this past April. Wright led the group in "vertical" yards/attempt (which, again, are passes that travel 11 to 19 yards in the air) and third in "stretch vertical" yards/attempt (passes that travel 20 or more yards in the air).

On that top ten list that Joyner put together, the only two players listed ahead of Wright were two players that went in the second round. . .Georgia Tech's Stephen Hill (to the Jets) and LSU's Rueben Randle (to the Giants). The four receivers that went in the first round ranked fourth (A.J. Jenkins), fourth (Kendall Wright, who tied with Jenkins), sixth (Justin Blackmon), and sixth (Michael Floyd, who was in a three-way tie with Blackmon and Marvin McNutt). Alshon Jeffery, who the Bears took in the second round, was ninth on Joyner's list.

Joyner concludes his look at Ponder with this:

An upgraded supporting cast should also go a long way toward helping Ponder reduce his 4.3 percent bad decision rate (BDR) last year (BDR being a gauge of how often a quarterback makes a mental error that leads to a turnover or a near-turnover). That total was the third-highest in the league, but is not atypical of the BDR numbers posted by many of today's top quarterbacks early in their career and thus isn't an unsolvable problem.

Put it all together and it means Ponder has a clear path to vastly improving his ranking, and helping the Vikings get back into the playoff picture, in the next three years.

It says the "next three years" because the teams determined to be "bottom tier" came from an article that ESPN did where they projected their 2015 NFL Power Rankings. . .an article that I didn't bother linking or commenting on because it is, quite frankly, one of the most ridiculous damn things I've ever seen. It's hard enough to project the 2012 Power Rankings at this point. . .trying to do 2015 is just dumb.

But I expect to see the improvement from Christian Ponder starting this season, as the Vikings plug in Matt Kalil and a host of new, talented, athletic targets during their off-season and extended training camp. Anyone that's writing the guy off already. . .Vikings fan or otherwise. . .is in for a surprise in 2012, I think.

Where I Solicit Questions For A "Video Mailbag"

2012-05-26T18:45:21Z

As you may or may not have noticed, our video stream has sort of dried up since the NFL Draft finished, largely because. . .well, I don't have any good ideas for stuff to talk about in the video format at this point in time. However, I'm going to enlist you fine folks for assistance in changing that.

In the comments here, I would like you all to submit questions for a "video mailbag" that I'm going to effort to do for the next few weeks here. I'll put a post like this up for the next couple of weeks, and from the comments grab a couple of questions that I'll attempt to give my best answer to. It won't be a ton of questions or anything, just a few at a time. . .after all, anyone that's ever uploaded a video to YouTube knows how long that sort of thing takes (I believe it took our most recent video, which clocked in at just under three minutes, about an hour to go from my laptop to the YouTube servers).

So, if you have any Vikings-related questions you'd like me to take a stab at, go ahead and leave them in the comments here and I'll try to have our first video mailbag done by Tuesday or so. They can be about the current roster, historical questions, opinion questions, whatever you'd like to hear yours truly opine about for a few minutes relating to the Minnesota Vikings.

Thanks to all of you for helping out with this! Again, I'll attempt to do this every week until at least mid-July, when I'll be away from the camera for a couple of weeks as my wife and I journey back to the homeland.

Sporting News Coach Rankings Not Kind To Leslie Frazier

2012-05-26T01:04:21Z

So, the Sporting News. . .which I guess is still a thing. . .has put together their rankings of the NFL head coaches from top to bottom. To say that they're unkind to Minnesota Vikings' head coach Leslie Frazier is a bit of an understatement.

Of the NFL's 32 head coaches, Frazier is ranked at #27. Coaches 28, 29, 30, 31, and 32 are all making their NFL debuts, which means that Sporting News has Frazier ranked as the worst returning head coach in the league this season.

The site put together some incredibly insightful commentary on Coach Frazier as well.

If his second year doesn't go better than his first year, there probably won't be a third year.

With that being the case, I guess it's a good thing for Leslie Frazier that the Vikings will be better in 2012 than they were in 2011. The concern is whether or not they'll be better enough for Frazier to keep his job.

Robert Griffin III Inteviews Jarius Wright And Alshon Jeffery

2012-05-25T20:16:46Z

You saw a small portion of this in a FanShot that was posted here the other day, but now we have a little bit of an Extended Director's Cut, if you will.

At the NFLPA Rookie Premiere in Los Angeles, a lot of this year's rookies were in town to meet with the media and go through photo shoots, lots of public relations types of things. In this video, three rookies get together for a bit of a talk. The one we're interested in is, obviously, receiver Jarius Wright, and he's joined by Chicago Bears' rookie receiver Alshon Jeffery and, the man with the microphone, Redskins' quarterback Robert Griffin III.

I know some people have asked about it, so I want to clarify our post from last week about having the opportunity to interview Jarius Wright. The contest was not just DN readers competing against other DN readers for the right to do the interview, but it was among all of the SB Nation blogs that had representation at the Rookie Premiere for the right to interview their team's representative at the event. Jarius Wright just happened to be our team's representative, so I put it out there as an opportunity to interview him should you win the contest.

Hopefully that clarifies things a bit, and I apologize if they were a little foggy the first time.

I hope you enjoy the interview. . .I think it's pretty cool that we have the #2 overall pick in the NFL draft name-dropping SB Nation in interviews. Long way from where the company was when we hit the scene almost six years ago.