If you missed my live Vikings chat on Tuesday afternoon, you can check in here and read the back and forth in full. In addition, each week I will attempt to go overtime, bringing good questions I didn't get around to answering on the chat here to the Access Vikings blog for discussion. Here are Tuesday's leftovers. And surprise, surprise, there's a lot of Christian Ponder talk still percolating …
Question 1: Ponder needs to sit. At 5-4, why risk wasting a whole season? Bench him and let Webb take over. How long will Frazier wait? Is he really prepared to go 5-11 with Ponder at QB? Ponder can compete for the job again next year.
Question 2: Why not play Webb? I get that we need to see how Ponder handles things but we still have a shot at the playoffs. Anything can happen in the playoffs. So why not play Webb?
We need a nickname for these people, don't we? Webbies? Webb-sters? Something.
Anyway, let's get to the flaws in the premise that "anything can happen in the playoffs." The greatest thing that's happened to the NFL in recent years has been the surge of teams that are mediocre for a while, get hot in January and then win the Super Bowl. Shoot, the 2010 Packers were 8-6 on Christmas day, almost missed the playoffs and then won it all. Last year's Giants? They lost five times between Nov. 13 and Dec. 18, then rallied from a 7-7 record to win the Super Bowl.
Overall, wild card teams have won the Super Bowl five times in the 21st century. So that's created the idea that any team can win the Super Bowl every year.
Great for fan interest. Dangerous for realistic expectations.
And so if, at any point this season, you truly believed the Vikings had everything it took to win a Super Bowl this year, let me just tell you that you were nuts. Plain and simple.