Monday (The difference is Teddy) edition: Wha' Happened?

The last three Vikings head coaches have gone into their first full seasons with quarterback questions — and QB hopes in the form of high draft picks who were rookies.

Brad Childress, in 2006, primarily used veteran Brad Johnson as the team slogged to a 6-10 finish, but at the end of the season he turned things over to rookie second-round pick Tarvaris Jackson.

Leslie Frazier, shedding the interim tag after taking over for Childress, went into 2011 with Donovan McNabb as the starter but first-round pick Christian Ponder presumed to take over at some point. Ponder ended up starting 10 games of a 3-13 season.

And now Mike Zimmer, a rookie coach in 2014, had to give the keys to rookie first-round QB Teddy Bridgewater a little earlier than expected because of an injury to veteran Matt Cassel. Bridgewater has started 11 games this season, posting a 5-6 record in a 6-9 season-to-date.

All of those seasons have flaws. The first two gave way to better times ahead — the Vikings made the playoffs by 2008 and the NFC title game in 2009, then also made the playoffs in 2012 — but one could argue those appearances were largely in spite of and not because of those first two rookie QBs.

The difference this year, quite plainly, is Bridgewater. We've been critical here of certain kinds of throws he has difficulty making, but we've also seen enough progress over a long enough stretch of time to at least say he is the most promising young Vikings quarterback since Daunte Culpepper.

In his last four games, Bridgewater has completed 73 percent of his passes for 1,021 yards, seven TDs, four INTs and a 105.7 passer rating. It hasn't been flawless, but it's been as good a stretch of quarterback play as the Vikings have had since Brett Favre's 2009 season. And he's done it exclusively without Adrian Peterson — a luxury Jackson had in 2007-08 when he started 17 combined games, and a luxury Ponder certainly had for the vast majority of his starts.