We've had a full weekend to absorb what transpired at Lambeau Field on Thursday, and what we keep coming back to is this: when and how did things become THIS bad for Christian Ponder?

This was a guy who, as a first-round pick in 2011, showed some promise as a rookie. This is a guy who in his second year — with ample help from Adrian Peterson and others — started all 16 games for a team that made the playoffs.

(As an aside: Leslie Frazier and Bill Musgrave probably should have been given lifetime contracts, in retrospect, for that miracle).

This was a guy who started to fall apart last year, but even throughout the comical QB carousel there remained a notion that the team's defensive woes were a bigger problem and that a few stops at critical times might have made his season look better.

How did that guy become what we saw Thursday? Or the larger question: Was Ponder always the same QB from the first snap he took through Thursday's debacle, and we've just been viewing him through different lenses — first optimism, then true evaluation, and now pessimism?

From here, it looks like this: Ponder's skill set, however you might define it, never evolved. He was skittish and prone to run as a rookie, and he still is today. He never had the vision required to be an elite quarterback.

What he did have, at a certain point, was the ability to play within himself and a confidence that came from winning (2012). In the must-have final game of that regular season, Ponder was very good against the Packers and led the Vikings on the game-winning field goal drive that clinched their playoff berth.

Last season stripped him of some of that confidence, but it's hard to say what the trigger was — his poor play, the diminished play of the offensive line around him, the constant shuffling in and out of different quarterbacks, or some combination of all those things?

What we do know is this: In 2014, any confidence he once had, on the field, appears to be gone. Relegated to a third-string role on a team that now has a new QB of the future and at least started the season with a clear quarterback pecking order, Ponder knew exactly where he stood and he played like it on Thursday.

You can blame the Vikings for not realizing that a once-mediocre QB stripped of his confidence would turn in that kind of Thursday performance if his number was ever called. And you can blame Ponder for failing to rise to the occasion of at least being average.