Monday, September 19, 2011

PA, AP, KFAN and Expectations, Part 2

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that there was a delusional aspect to the expectations of the Vikings Offense, coming from the people who should know them best.

So, let's check in the stats of those mentioned by Paul Allen of KFAN (and Voice of  the Vikings).  (Reminder--AP 2500 yds rushing, Harvin 1200 yds receiving + 10 TD, Berrian 900 yards)

Adrian Peterson, who has had a nice start to the season, is falling far off his own stated goal (and one that Allen said was attainable)--Peterson needs to average 163 yards per game the rest of the season (a total he hasn't yet in a single game) to reach that perfectly reasonable, not at all batshit insane number of 2500 yards rushing.

Since Peterson is merely a great running back, and not The Single Best Football Running Entity of All-Time, the defenses are not quite giving the rest of the offense the room the KFAN Guru expected.

To wit: Percy Harvin had a nice day against Tampa Bay, catching 7 balls for 76 yards.  However, with an admittedly small sample size, Harvin is on course to maybe reach 800 yards.  That sounds a little low to me, to be honest.  But not as obscenely low as 1200 yards and 10 TD's sounded obscenely high.

As for Bernard Berrian's 900 yards?  His average of 17 yards every two games isn't going to get that done.  And that's not Berrian's fault.  Anyone expecting Bernard Berrian be as good as he was five years has been purposefully ignoring what Bernard Berrian has looked like for the past three years.  Berrian will be 31 before the end of this season, and even in his prime, he never amassed even 1000 yards in a season.  Expecting what would be his third best season of his career in his eighth year is ridiculous.

Goofy-high expectations lead to a fan base that can't understand why their team isn't better than it is.

2 comments:

Andrew Wice said...

I haven't seen any of the Vikes this year, but my impression is that they lack an identity. Bringing in aged QB free agents will do that. But what happened to their awesome D-line? And why doesn't AP get 40 touches per game?

Big Blue Monkey 2: The Quickening said...

Fat Pat Williams is gone, and the other half of the Williams wall was suspended for that StarCaps case from 4 years ago for the first two games.

He'll be back, and the folks at KFAN seem to think he'll turn things right around.