vikings/nfl
Dan Wiederer began covering the Vikings in 2011, enthusiastically delivering insight on the team across the Star Tribune's print and digital products. Prior to joining the Access Vikings team, he spent seven seasons covering ACC basketball at The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer. He also covered the Chicago Bears in 2003 and 2004. Follow him on Twitter @StribDW.
Mark Craig has covered football and the NFL the past 20 years, including the Browns from 1991-95 and the Vikings and the NFL since 2003. Since 2008, Craig has served as one of the 44 Pro Football Hall of Fame selectors. He can be followed on Twitter at @markcraignfl.
Posts about Vikings players
Chris Cook eager to face Rodgers
Posted by: Chris Miller Updated: December 26, 2012 - 3:56 PM
Chris Cook is looking for redemption Sunday when the Vikings meet the Packers.
The Vikings’ third year cornerback was torched during his rookie season by Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Cook, coming off early season arthroscopic surgery on both knees, was pulled by coach Brad Childress after Rodgers lit up the visiting Vikings for 166 passing yards in the first quarter of a 28-24 victory on Oct. 24, 2010.
Things got worse six weeks later when the Packers beat the Vikings 31-3 at the Metrodome. Cook gave up receptions of 47 and 39 yards to James Jones, and was pulled by Childress after Jones caught a 3-yard touchdown in the second quarter. Cook was yelled at by teammate Ray Edwards on the sideline, and after the game both Cook and cornerback Asher Allen were criticized by teammates.
Childress was fired the next day.
Cook missed both meetings last season after an arrest for domestic assault on the eve of the first Packers game, which he spent in jail. He was inactive for the rest of the season, and missed the Vikings’ 23-14 loss to the Packers two weeks ago because of a broken arm.
“I’ve been looking forward to this game,” Cook said. “My rookie year, I was coming off both my knee surgeries, and they were picking on me – a lot. I expected that coming off two knee surgeries. But I don’t have knee problems now, so we’ll see how it goes this week.”
Cook said Rodgers is the best quarterback in the NFL.
“He’s Brett Favre-like, but I feel he makes better decisions at times,” said Cook. “He’s crazy accurate, that’s the thing that stands out. He can put balls in places the other guys can’t put it in. It’s amazing to me to me. Every time I watch him I think, man, this guy, he’s great.”
Holiday presents
Houston running back Arian Foster bought Segways for his offensive linemen, so the question about what Adrian Peterson will do for his offensive line has been bandied about at Winter Park.
“We’ll see how it all plays out, how many yards he gets, when we win the game,” said center John Sullivan. “All I’m hoping for is a good performance from him and our offense and our entire team. The playoff berth is all we reaIly care about. I don’t really care about presents. I’m not too focused on that right now.”
Robison, Winfield ready
Defensive end Brian Robison (sprained shoulder) missed the Vikings’ 23-6 victory over the Texans on Sunday, which was doubly troubling to him because he played college football at Texas. He expects to play Sunday against the Packers.
“I’m doing much better, doing a lot of stuff hard in the rehab room, just trying to get it back,” Robison said. “I feel like I got a good range of motion, it’s just getting the strength back in it.”
Cornerback Antoine Winfield, who fractured a bone in his right index finger, expects to play Sunday with his right hand padded.
Reliable rookie
The Pro Bowl rosters will be announced tonight, and Vikings rookie kicker Blair Walsh has an outside chance of making the NFC team. Walsh has an NFL record nine field goals of 50 yards or longer.
“It’s one of those things where it happens, it’s awesome, if it doesn’t happen, keep on pushing,” Walsh said. “I’m more focused on what I have to do in practice. Accolades are great and all, but this game is more important.”
After a poor senior season at Georgia, it was a bit of a surprise when the Walsh was drafted by the Vikings in the sixth round. He has made 32 of 35 field goal attempts, however, and all 32 conversion attempts.
“I knew I was capable of doing it from the start,” Walsh said. “The biggest surprise is the number of attempts we’ve gotten. Thirty-five attempts is a lot. It’s a different beast at this level, each kick is so important, it matters so much when the game is so close.”
Veteran Ryan Longwell, who was cut to make room for Walsh, tweeted his support for Walsh’s Pro Bowl candidacy on Sunday.
“It was one of the most humbling things I’ve ever had said about me by anyone,” Walsh said. “My response was 100 percent truthful -- guys like him have set the bar for other kickers who come in the league, and they hold us to a higher standards, and we try to emulate careers like his.”
Ford added
The Vikings signed tight end Chase Ford to their practice squad. Ford, a rookie from Miami, has been on both the Philadelphia and Dallas practice squads this season. Tight end Allen Reisner, who has been on and off the Vikings’ roster the past two years, was claimed by Jacksonville after the Vikings cut him on Saturday. The Jaguars also signed guard Mark Asper, who had been waived by the Vikings.
Players consistent in applauding Frazier's consistency
Posted by: Mark Craig Updated: December 26, 2012 - 1:17 PMVikings players are consistent when it comes to applauding the consistency with which coach Leslie Frazier does his job. Never too high, never too low. Just delivering a consistent message week after week.
"I think it's a big deal," Frazier said when asked to describe the importance of a consistent message. "Just going back to my playing days and being around coaches who sometimes they could be so up and down. You didn't know when you walked in the building what you were going to get from day to day. That's hard on a team over the course of a long season. There are so many ebbs and flows during a season.
"As a player, if you're not certain what your leader's message is going to be and how he's going to react in certain situations, you can be walking around on pins and needles and be more concerned about how he's going to react to certain situations as opposed to focusing on the task at hand, which is your next opponent. So I think it's a big deal. They need to know what to expect from me in just about every situation. Then they can concentrate on what's important, which is trying to get a win."
FYI: They'll take the win over the record: Frazier said he wants Adrian Peterson to get the 208 yards necessary to break Eric Dickerson's NFL single-season record of 2,105 yards. However ...
"I think the biggest consideration has to be winning this game," he said. "Finding a way to get a win. If the record comes along with the win, that would be great. But not at the expense of winning the game. We got to approach this with whatever it takes to get a win. And Adrian wants that too. He'd love to have the record, but he's the ultimate team guy. He wants to get the win. I hope he gets the record but even moreso I want us to win this game."
Expecting better run defense from Cheeseheads: Frazier said he expects a lot of teams to look at how the Texans handled Peterson on Sunday. Peterson ran for 86 yards on 25 carries, snapping a streak of eight consecutive games with at least 100 yards.
"But like I said on Monday, a lot of it in our business is personnel," Frazier said. "[Texans defenders] Antonio Smith and J.J. Watt are very good players and they did a good job. But Green Bay, they have good personnel as well."
On Dec. 2, Peterson ran for 210 yards in a loss at Lambeau Field. The rematch -- in case you haven't heard -- is Sunday at the Metrodome.
"[The Packers] have played good defense all season long and we're going to have a tremendous challenge on our hands," Frazier said. "I'm sure they're going to put a lot of people in the box and do everything they can to not let what happened in that first game happen again. So it's going to be a challenge for our run game."
Going 4-2 without Percy Harvin has been an adjustment period: Hard to believe, but the Vikings actually are 4-2 without Percy Harvin, their second-best player.
Said Frazier: "It's been an adjustment for all of us. [Offensive coordinator] Bill [Musgrave] calling plays and for everybody involved because Percy was so integral to our success as an offense. But as a whole, we made those adjustments and we're getting better. That's what you want to see, but Percy was a big part of our success."
From an injury standpoint, Frazier offered the following updates. We'll have more updates when the injury report is released after today's practice:
- Defensive end Jared Allen is feeling ill and won't practice.
- Cornerback Antoine Winfield, who broke his hand on Sunday, "won't do very much." Winfield is expected to play on Sunday, however.
- Running back Adrian Peterson won't practice. He's being rested as a precaution, plus he's also been dealing with a nagging abdominal issue that he calls normal wear and tear.
- Defensive end Brian Robison, who missed last Sunday's game because of a Grade 3 sprain of his right shoulder, will try to practice. "We're going to see what Brian Robison can do," Frazier said. "It will give him a chance to move around a little bit and try to determine as the days go on whether he'll have a chance to play or not. We're hoping so, but we'll have to wait and see."
Greenway wins Korey Stringer Good Guy Award: Linebacker Chad Greenway won this year's Korey Stringer "Good Guy Award," which is voted on by members of the Twin Cities media that cover the Vikings. The award goes to the player who best exemplifies the effort and positive attitude that Stringer had in dealing with the media. Stringer died Aug. 1, 2001, a day after suffering heat stroke on the field in Mankato during training camp.
"I just had a chance to talk to [linebackers coach] Fred Pagac, who recruited [Stringer] to Ohio State," Greenway said. "He said he was a great guy, not just a good guy. He was the type of guy that people wanted to be like and be around. So obviously to win an award in honor of his name is pretty exciting to me. It means a lot to me and my family to win this award."
Said Frazier: "Well deserved award by Chad. He's a super guy and does a terrific job with the media. Well deserved. A great honor, receiving that award in honor of Korey, who was a terrific player and terrific person as well."
Packers game a turning point; Winfield has broken hand
Posted by: Kent Youngblood Updated: December 24, 2012 - 3:07 PMVikings coach Leslie Frazier can point to the moment he felt his team coming together, the game in which he felt everybody arriving on the same page, the day he felt the Vikings were becoming a cohesive team.
Interestingly, it did not come in a victory.
With a win-and-in game with Green Bay at Mall of America Field fast approaching, Frazier pointed to the Vikings loss in Green Bay Dec. 2 as that vital moment.
Really? A game in which the Vikings lost in large part because of two Red Zone interceptions by quarterback Christian Ponder?
Yes.
“That game helped us in some ways,” Frazier said at his Monday press conference. “We found out a lot about ourselves on the road and I told our players after that game that I thought that, more than any point in our season, we had played as a team. I really felt like we were coming together at the right time. I’m sure when they heard me say that they were like, ‘What’s he talking about? We just lost to our rivals on the road.’ But I saw something in our team in that game that made me believe we had a chance to really take off.”
The Vikings have not list since that day, winning three straight, including road wins at St. Louis Dec. 16 and the big upset in Houston Sunday.
“Green Bay the first time was sort of like, ‘Wow, we’re really good, we’ve just got to figure out how to navigate those last two quarters and find a way to get a tough win,’ ‘’ linebacker Chad Greenway said. “I think these last two road games for us have been an indication that maybe we’re starting to figure out how to play together for four quarters and put it all out there. That doesn’t mean we’re going to get a win this weekend just because that happens. It just means that, hopefully, we can remain consistent, keep doing that. And realize that when we play our kind of football and don’t make mistakes, that we’re pretty good.”
That Green Bay game was also the point at which it became clear what had to happen over the final quarter of the season for the Vikings to make the playoffs. Namely, win. That was the week that both defensive end Jared Allen and owner Zygi Wilf talked with the team. Their message was simple: The team had to win the final four games.
“We kind of knew where things were and how important this final month of the season would be,” Frazier said. “But then you’ve still got to go out and play well. You have to prepare properly. And to our players’ credit and our coaches, they’ve done a great job of doing just that.”
A magnetic resonance imaging test done Monday morning showed that cornerback Antoine Winfield finished Sunday’s game with a small hand fracture. He was able to finish the game and is expected to play Sunday with a soft cast on the hand.
The Vikings hope defensive end Brian Robison, who missed Sunday’s game with a sprained right shoulder, will be available this week. “We’ll have to take it day-to-day with him,” Frazier said, “just to see what he’s able to do when he gets back to practice Wednesday.” Robison did some things in practice Friday, but was still in too much pain to play against Houston. “We weren’t sure if he’d be able to go out and protect himself,” Frazier said of the decision to sit Robison. “He needs to be able to tackle someone or, if someone is pushing up against him, he can protect himself. If he can do that, then he’ll be ready to go.”
Meanwhile, running back Adrian Peterson is still experiencing soreness with his abdominal issue and could be limited this week.
Stepping up
For the first nine games, rookie receiver Jarius Wright was inactive. In the last six games he has caught 19 passes for 220 yards and a touchdown. Sunday in Houston he had five catches. Three of those plays resulted in first downs for the Vikings. Monday Frazier talked about the strides Wright has taken.
“He’s just taken off as he’s gotten more confident with what he’s doing and what we’re asking him to do,” Frazier said. “The game he had yesterday was a big-time game. He ran good routes, got yards after the catch for us. He’s a young guy we have high hopes for.”
The Vikings’ final two opponents for 2013 will be set following Sunday’s game.
They will play each team in the NFC East and AFC North next season.
The Vikings’ home games will be against Philadelphia, Washington, Cleveland, the NFC South team that finishes in the same position as the Vikings (currently New Orleans), Green Bay, Detroit and Chicago. The Sept. 29 game in London against Pittsburgh also counts as a home game.
Road games will be at Dallas, the N.Y Giants, Baltimore, Cincinnati, the NFC West team that finishes in the same position as the Vikings (currently Seattle), Green Bay, Detroit, Chicago.
Former Vikings kicker Ryan Longwell broke his Twitter silence Sunday afternoon to laud his replacement, Blair Walsh. Longwell, who was bothered by never making the Pro Bowl, clearly thinks Walsh should be the NFC kicker as a rookie. His series of tweets read: "I've purposely not commented on any football stuff this entire year so let me make my first one now. I've seen many great seasons go unrewarded by not getting voted to Pro Bowl. But if @BlairWalsh3 does not get voted in this year it will prove system is broke! What more can the guy do?? Accuracy, 9-9 50+ yarders, Kickoff touchbacks and a game winner in his first career game!!"
Walsh is third in the NFC with 128 points, second in field goal percentage (behind Dallas’ Dan Bailey) and set an NFL record with his ninth field goal of 50 yards or more on Sunday.
Peterson won't be the only top back on Sunday
Posted by: Kent Youngblood Updated: December 19, 2012 - 5:30 PMAdrian Peterson’s quest for the NFL rushing record has taken center stage. But there is another pretty good running back to watch in this weekend’s Vikings game: Arian Foster.
Entering this week’s games Peterson has a league-best 1,812 rushing yards, and is within Eric Dickerson’s NFL-record 2,105. But Foster, who first came to the Texans as an undrafted free agent, has put up some strong numbers, too.
Foster is fourth in the league with 1,313 yards. Now, to show just how much Peterson has lapped the field this season, those 1,313 are precisely the same number Peterson has had since Week 7.
Still, Foster’s numbers are impressive. His 1,493 yards from scrimmage is fifth in the league – Peterson’s 2,023 is No. 1 – and if Foster scores a TD this week he will become the sixth player in NFL history to score 50 TDs in his first 50 NFL games.
“The scheme they run really fits what he does well,” Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway said of Foster. "He’s really patient, good at finding cut-back lanes. They throw the ball well out of the play-action game and bootleg game, and that serves Foster well in the run game as well.”
The Vikings have seen their share of good running backs this season, going up against five of the top 10 NFL rushers this season in Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch (second), Washington’s Alfred Morris (third), Tampa Bay’s Doug Martin (fifth), Tennessee’s Chris Johnson (seventh) and Frank Gore of San Francisco (ninth). Lynch ran for 124 yards, Morris had 57, Martin 135, Johnson 24 and Gore 63.
And now they get Foster.
Houston coach Gary Kubiak said he saw some similarities between Foster and Peterson.
“The thing about Adrian is that he has the home run speed,” Kubiak said. “Arian is one of those guys where it seems, the more he carries it, the stronger he gets. These are two guys who, the more they touch it, the more difficult it is to tackle them. Just two great players.”
(Almost) no comment
Christian Ponder’s marriage was not something many Vikings players wanted to discuss in the locker room.
Some, like center John Sullivan and guard Brandon Fusco, simply changed the subject.
“My focus right now is just going and grabbing some lunch and relaxing before practice,” safety Mistral Raymond said. “That should be dealt with somewhere else.”
Fullback Raymond Felton said he heard about it in the media like everybody else. Reaction? “I congratulated him,” Felton said. “Several people have congratulated him. So, obviously, whatever makes him happy we want that for him. It was a big day for him, and we’re happy for him.”
Of course, if anyone was going to have a little fun about the situation, it was punter Chris Kluwe, who wondered openly where he might find a gift registry. As for the present he planned on buying?
“Maybe a tea cozy,” he said.
Wins, not records
After winning NFC special teams player of the week honors for the second time this season, Vikings kicker Blair Walsh talked about winning, not records.
Specifically when he was asked whether he thought about making the Pro Bowl in this, his rookie season. “Yeah, it would be awesome, but that’s not my main goal right now.”
Walsh hit all five of his field goals last week, three in the 50-yards-plus range. He is now 8-for-8 from that distance, which ties him with Morten Andersen and Jason Hanson for most field goals of 50 or more yards in a season. He is one away from holding that record alone.
“I’m just wishing we win,” Walsh said. “I don’t’ care about the records. My whole deal with the records is that they’re meant to be broken. It would be nice to have, but I’d rather win.”
Walsh is 29-for-32 on field goals this season and is fourth in the NFC in scoring among kickers. He said the snap and hold has been perfect for every attempt this season, and that his three misses were entirely his fault.
So the question is, in a dome, in ideal circumstances, what does he think his limit is? “I think 65 (yards) and in I can at least give it a realistic shot,” he said.
Doing his part
Felton said he, along with the linemen and the rest of the team, are pulling for Peterson to break Dickerson’s record. But will he feel he earned a part of that record should it happen?
“A little bit,” he said. “I’ll be able to tell my grandkids about it. So, obviously, I think it’s important for our whole team. And the most important thing is getting wins. But when Adrian is successful that helps our team. That’s what we’re focused on.”
Meanwhile, it appears the work Felton has done has probably put to rest the question of whether Peterson prefers a fullback or running out of one-back sets. Felton said he’d seen a stat that indicated the Vikings gain better than 7 yards per rush with a fullback and 3-plus yards out of one-back sets.
Kluwe: It was worth it
Posted by: Kent Youngblood Updated: December 12, 2012 - 1:44 PMKluwe: It was worth it
The final price tag for Vikings punter Chris Kluwe having voiced his opinion: $5,250.
And it was worth every penny.
Last Sunday NFL uniforms sported a patch celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Kluwe taped to cover the patch, then wrote, “Vote Ray Guy” on it. His point was that no punters were in the Hall of Fame, and that Guy certainly deserves to be the first.
Kluwe, who became a rather famous advocate for same sex marriage this fall, has now gone from Gay rights to Guy rights. And it cost him an NFL fine, standard issue for first-time uniform infractions.
Kluwe knew the fine would be coming, and it was worth it, he said, though he did have to get his wife to sign off on the protest beforehand. “It got people talking about it,” Kluwe said. “I heard the broadcast team talked about it for a bit. And hopefully people will realize, ‘Hey, punters aren’t in the Hall of Fame, maybe we should do something about that.’ ‘’
As usual, Kluwe took to Twitter to announce his fine, tweeting, “The good news is all the money goes to support former players through the NFL charity programs. Maybe they’ll vote for Ray Guy.”
So has Kluwe talked with Guy, whose cause he has taken up? “I haven’t talked with him,” Kluwe said. “Hopefully I’ll get to talk to him when he gets inducted into the Hall of Fame.”
Enough talking
It’s not that there has been a shift in emphasis in the locker room. The goals the Vikings defense enter each game with haven’t changed. But, with a playoff push in progress, defensive end Brian Robison said there were some discussions last week on what the defense needed to do down the stretch.
“To us, it doesn’t matter what the offense does,” he said. “In our minds, we have to out-play the other team’s defense. That’s what it comes down to, the team that makes the most stops wins the games. .. We’ve always depended on ourselves to do that, to be the best defense on the field that day. But we haven’t always played like that. We came out last week and we said, ‘You know what? Enough talking about it, we gotta be about it.’ That’s what we did last week, we out-played them on defense, we scored on defense, we created turnovers, and we want to do the things that put our offense in the best position to be successful. Now we have to do that again.”
One area in which the defense has definitely improved is against the run. After a stretch in which the Vikings were gashed on the ground, the run defense has been good in three of the last four games.
During that four-game stretch Minnesota has allowed 133.3 yards per game, but just 2.6 yards per rush. This week the Vikings will see Steven Jackson, the Rams running back who is 71 yards from reaching 10,000 for his career.
“He looks awesome on film,” safety Harrison Smith said. “He’s a beast – tough to tackle, big, good runner. He’s patient. He gets his blocks and runs off them.”
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