The Minnesota Vikings waited until the day of their NFC wild-card playoff game against the Green Bay Packers to decide that quarterback Christian Ponder would not play in the game. Vikings' head coach Leslie Frazier stated that "we watched Christian in warmups and, after seeing him struggle to get the ball more than fifteen yards downfield, we decided to go with Joe."
Fifteen yards downfield? That's fourteen more than the Vikings asked of him during the regular season.
For the season, Ponder averaged 6.1 yards per passing attempt and 9.8 yards per completion. He averaged 6.2 yards in depth of target (how far, on average, his receivers were from him when he attempted to pass to them). All figures were league lows for a starting quarterback with six or more games started. By that standard, fifteen yards sounds heroic.
Up Next: Changes the Vikings Can Make in 2013 to Challenge for the Division Crown.
Fifteen yards downfield? That's fourteen more than the Vikings asked of him during the regular season.
For the season, Ponder averaged 6.1 yards per passing attempt and 9.8 yards per completion. He averaged 6.2 yards in depth of target (how far, on average, his receivers were from him when he attempted to pass to them). All figures were league lows for a starting quarterback with six or more games started. By that standard, fifteen yards sounds heroic.
Up Next: Changes the Vikings Can Make in 2013 to Challenge for the Division Crown.
2 comments:
Heh...
For those interested...
http://smartfootball.com/football-history/t-j-yates-and-inexperienced-quarterbacks-in-the-playoffs
will give you plenty of perspective.
So when you see all those supposedly Vikings fans relieved that Joe Webb played himself out of future threats to Ponder's job, just grin inside.
For extra fun, count the number of deep attempts in one game for Webb, compared with Ponder all year.
Lastly, the ghastlyness of Webb's passing attempts in the first half has hidden what the real issue was, bad sacks, either on Webb or the OL's.
Not that the Vikings had any prayer whatsoever in this game, Ponder or Webb.
Shah8,
Good points. More on Webb in the next post.
VG
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