I Dislike Your Favorite Team

Vikings May Regret Trading Culpepper Yet. Oh Jim, we get it, buddy. You're a columnist at a paper firing people right and left, and you've gotta come up with something interesting. But this? Really?

Point 1 That the Possibly High Souhan Makes: "He may not play again until 2008, but if he can regain most of his mobility, it will behoove teams in need of a quarterback to review the 2004 season."

That sentence alone is cause for alarm. We're talking about a quarterback who may not play until next year, and at that time, his last good season will have been 4 years ago. Oh, and the punchline? The Vikings went 8-8 in 2004. Dante averaged 8 yards per pass. Yeah, his TD, Completion %, and Interception numbers were quite good. But that team didn't win more than half their games. Souhan doesn't bother mentioning that. Why? Because it fucks with his thesis.

Point 2 That Possibly High Souhan Makes: "In 1988, Genius Joe Montana threw 18 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. In 1989, Montana, with Mike Holmgren in his first year as an offensive coordinator, threw 26 touchdowns and eight interceptions."

By cherry-picking two years, Souhan makes it clear that Montana sucked before getting an offensive genius, and then rocked the next year. He implicity compares Culpepper to Montana.
Funny that Souhan doesn't mention Montana's FIVE Pro Bowl years prior to 1988. Souhan cherrypicks the one down year in the salad days of Montana's career, and compares it to Culpepper's one Great Year. For example, Souhan forgets to mention that in 1987, Montana threw for 31 touchdowns with 13 touchdowns. Or that in 1985, Montana threw 28 TDs with 10 INTs. Jim Souhan might be high, but he's definitely lying when he compares Culpepper to Montana.


Point 3 That Possibly High Souhan Makes: "If Culpepper can land with another team that can support him the way the 2004 Vikings did, he could become a winning quarterback again."

He WASN'T a winning Quarterback that year. He was an 8-8 quarterback. And it was 4 years, one back injury and two knee injuries ago.

Point 4 That Possibly High Souhan Doesn't Make: Over the course of 8 years, and 85 games, Culpepper has fumbled 84 times. That's an average of a fumble a game, give or take a fumble. Souhan purposefully ignores the fumbling stat when he says that Rex Grossman will never have a year like Culpepper did in 2000, "when he threw 33 touchdowns and 16 interceptions." No mention of the 11 fumbles, six of which were lost? Don't get me wrong--I'm not saying Rex Grossman should be an NFL Quarterback--he shouldn't be. But look at the two QB comparisons Souhan has made--Montana's one bad year in a career that included multiple Pro Bowls on either side of the year Souhan cited, and Rex fucking Grossman.

Jimmy, don't write your column high, buddy. You don't make no goddamned sense.