PFW Speculation: McDermott to MN?

[Rastak]

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/teamdef

4 and 5

I love Football Outsiders and think they have the most relevant stats for determining which teams are playing the best and/or who is likely to have the advantage on a week-to-week basis, but that is what they are most relevant for.

FO's DVOA stats weigh the most recent games much more heavily than the earlier games in a season. That gives good information about how a team is playing week to week, but doesn't give completely accurate information if you want to determine effectiveness over an entire season.

How many games did you catch this year? You seem to have a pretty solid opinion that you've formed. You can say alot of negatives about the Vikings but after losing their leader on defense for the year, they didn't miss a beat. Teams did not march up and down the field like 2007. In the red zone, they shut teams down. They actually made stops on third down. Status quo would be 100% ok with me.

[sheepshead]

That was kind of my point. The times I saw them, they were very good.

[vince]

How many games did you catch this year? You seem to have a pretty solid opinion that you've formed. You can say alot of negatives about the Vikings but after losing their leader on defense for the year, they didn't miss a beat. Teams did not march up and down the field like 2007. In the red zone, they shut teams down. They actually made stops on third down. Status quo would be 100% ok with me.

I haven't seen all the Vikings games, nor have I seen all the other games in the league this year, which would be necessary to have done in order to accurately compare them to the rest of the league based on my personal observation. And basing my conclusion on that would introduce a ton of personal bias into the equation. That's why I used the league statistics rather than personal opinion.

I don't doubt that the Vikings have been better this year than last year, although I haven't researched the statistics on that, and I would guess they got better as the season progressed too. The objective facts are that, while they have done a good job keeping teams out of the endzone through the air, they haven't been very good - relative to the rest of the league - in stopping teams from completing passes in general, and particularly long passes.

Now here's my bias. As a Packer fan, I don't want to see that improve, and because Sean McDermott has overseen a group of players that have consistently been among the best in the league at doing just that, I would fear it could improve if he were to be hired.