Errors of Omission Surpass Errors of Commission

The Minnesota Vikings entered Lambeau Field on Monday night a 2.5-point underdog. Nearly three and one-half hours later, they left the field five point losers, having fallen to the Green Bay Packers 24-19.

The Vikings' loss left current Vikings' head coach Brad Childress 0-5 against the Packers. Among those five losses have been three at Lambeau. In those three games, the Vikings have scored two offensive touchdowns--both this year.

That the Vikings' offense showed some life should not be surprising. After all, in the last two seasons, alone, the Vikings have added Adrian Peterson, Sidney Rice, and Bernard Berrian. On Monday night, each of these additions made good on some of their paycheck. Unfortunately, mistakes on the field and on the sidelines kept them from contributing more.

The mistakes began early for the Vikings with left tackle Artis Hicks getting flagged on the Vikings' opening drive, continued through poor coverage by Charles Gordon, and Ryan Cook's abysmal night, and finished with Tavaris Jackson serving up a gift to Green Bay safety, Atari Bigby.

The Vikings nearly survived their mistakes of commission thanks, in large part, to numerous Green Bay penalties, and some strong defensive play in short-field situations. The mistakes of omission were too much to overcome, however.

The most glaring mistake of omission was one that has become a constant of Childress' tenure in Minnesota, the failure to seize an opportunity when presented one on a golden platter.

The Packers did all that they could to make clear to Childress that they had no ability to stop Adrian Peterson in the flat or out of the backfield. Despite the Packers' kind gesture, Childress was adamant. Peterson would run up the gut and into a wall or not play.

And so Peterson obliged, running into eight, nine, even ten Packer defenders right behind the reverse-impenetrable Hicks, the nearly invisible Matt Birk, and the ever obstructive Cook. It was a recipe for limited yardage. And limited yardage, at least between the tackles where Peterson was asked to spend the bulk of his night running, is what Peterson amassed.

Outside the tackles and beyond the line of scrimmage, in the rarefied air into which few Vikings' plays go, the area of the plus-three-yard-pass, Peterson shone. There, Peterson made the Packers look silly and feeble, knocking Packer corner Al Harris five yards back on a tackle attempt in the first quarter.

But when the Vikings most needed Peterson, when everything about the game said that Peterson should be the focal point of any attempt to come from behind and steal victory, Peterson was on the sidelines, with his helmet off. Ron Jaworski attempted to paper over Peterson's absence, arguing that NFL players were not ready for a full game in week one given that few played any minutes in the final week of preseason. That, fortunately, was not Peterson's issue.

Instead, what ailed Peterson in the waning moments of Monday night's loss was his coach's inexplicable determination not to incorporate him into the passing game.

The argument has long been that Peterson is too young and too inexperienced to be incorporated into a passing game that requires him to block. There are, of course, two immediate queries to such a nonsensical contention. The first is whether Peterson, a second-year player, should be entrusted with running plays that first-year players Matt Forte and Felix Jones ran in week one for their respective teams? The second is why Peterson needs to be a skilled blocker when he's the object of the pass?

Not having Peterson in the game at a critical juncture is an obvious error of omission. Not using him in the passing game is another. Equally disconcerting an error of omission was Childress' continuing design of running the ball up the gut, calling plays short of the sticks, and using the pass only as a last resort.

How bad was it on Monday night? Late in the fourth quarter, with the Vikings down by two scores, Jaworski commented that he liked the fact that "Jackson was opening up his game with the deeper pass." Jackson had just attempted a seven-yard pass. That he missed the target horrifically was secondary to the stark reality that the Vikings' offense remains what it has been the first two seasons under Childress, mostly gutless and boring beyond description.

As a result, the outcome of the game never seemed in doubt. Though the Vikings forced the Packers to punt in the final minute of the game, Jackson's interception was a most appropriate ending, highlighting the lack of emphasis that the Vikings place on the passing game, with or without Peterson.

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Yo, Adrian!

With the opening game of the 2008 NFL regular season only four days away, Minnesota Vikings' head coach, Brad Childress, undoubtedly has had the team's opening game game plan ready for the past six months. That, after all, has been Childress' modus operandi in his first two seasons in Minnesota.

In 2006, the Vikings went on the road and beat an improved Washington team, 19-16. Last year, the Vikings stayed home and crushed the hapless Atlanta Falcons, 24-3. While neither victory stood as a monumental feat, both at least suggested that, given time, Childress can fashion a solid game plan.

Monday nights' season opener at Lambeau Field offers Childress his greatest season-opening challenge yet as the Vikings face last year's Super Bowl runner-up, the Green Bay Packers. Despite replacing last year's starting quarterback, Brett Favre, essentially with a rookie in Aaron Rodgers, the Packers still return a solid team in all other respects.

As Childress likely has etched his game plan in stone, there is little reason to believe that he will or even is capable of altering the plan at this late date. Given the little that we have seen from Adrian Peterson in the preseason, Peterson's quiet finish to the 2007 season, questions along the Vikings' offensive line, and Childress' desire to showcase quarterback Tarvaris Jackson in what might be a make-or-break season for both coach and quarterback, there is reason to suspect that Peterson will be spared a heavy work load at Lambeau.

That would be a mistake.

As far lesser teams have demonstrated, the value in having a multi-talented play-maker such as Peterson is in using that player. For the Vikings, making use of Peterson means not only handing the ball off to their strongest offensive threat, but finding Peterson in the passing game, as well.

Passing is anathema enough to Childress. Passing to Peterson borders on heresy. But if the Vikings are to have success in 2008, if the team is to move beyond the mediocrity that tends to move hand-in-hand with the close-to-the-vest play-calling for which Childress has become known, the offensive playbook must begin to include heavy doses of passes out of the backfield to Peterson.

The benefits of passing to the running back are multi-fold. Not the least of these advantages is that the running back turned receiver either draws coverage away from a wide-receiver or gains coverage from a much slower linebacker or end. Drawing coverage away from a receiver allows more room for the receivers to move and provides more of a passing cushion to the quarterback. Eliciting coverage from a linebacker or end merely creates the type of mismatch that leads to points in the NFL. Either would be a good result for a Vikings' team short on offensive line skill, light on wide-receiver speed and experience, and ever in search of a release valve for Jackson.

In 2007, Peterson had nineteen receptions for the Vikings, only four in the team's last five games. The numbers reflected Childress' increasingly conservative game plans as the season drew to a close and the Vikings struggled, and failed, to clinch a playoff spot.

Peterson's limited receiving total in the final five games of the season manifested itself not only in receptions, but in rushing yards. As the choke collar tightened on the Vikings' play calling, so, too, did Peterson's rushing numbers dwindle. After rushing for 1,018 yards in the team's first 9 games, a 113.11 yards/game average, Peterson rushed for only 260 yards in the team's final five games, a 50 yards/game average.

A portion of Peterson's dwindling statistical showing undoubtedly is attributable to Peterson's mid-season injury, with another portion attributable to his having averaged six fewer carries per game than he averaged in his first nine games of the season. But a significant portion of Peterson's late-season decline also, unquestionably, is directly linked to the Vikings' shrinking-violet play calling that diminished Peterson's role in the offense and virtually eliminated from consideration using Peterson as a receiving option out of the backfield. That's the kind of mindset that would have kept Marshall Faulk a secret to his grave and the kind that could sabotage the Vikings' greatest stroke of draft-day good fortune in team history.

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