mansquatch wrote:OL is different that WR. Who was going to play RT besides Clemmings? You could move Harris out like they did in 2014, but then who would play RG? I don't find that reasoning persuasive, who is this magic back up that we didn't play last year?
OL is a different position but my point about Clemmings was made in reference to a general statement about the philosophy of this coaching staff (ie; Physical talent just isn't as important as doing your job to this staff). I said nothing about a magical backup, just used a few examples of players who didn't handle their starting jobs very well to ask a question.
You guys are very focused on CP84's explosiveness, but what about his weaknesses? Could it be that the coaching staff felt the net gain in explosiveness of going from Wallace or Diggs to CP was offset by the increase in mistakes? The team is not some static thing and the positions do not play in silos. How they interact with one another is very important.
I understand that and it's all been said before. He's barely played in a year and a half. Couldn't he have actually improved in that time? He's been working and apparently, the Vikings have an outstanding coaching staff. They've produced no results?
My guess is that the fact that this was a ball control team that survived on field position and defense played a part in CP's playing time. This was not a team that could easily overcome getting down by 2 scores. A guy who might have big play potential, but who also makes more frequent errors could likely be a net negative given the overall fragility of our 2015 passing game.
I don't see how the scenario I just outlines is any more or less likely to be the case than the coaches having a grudge.
I'm not arguing that they
have a grudge.
My sense is there is a lot of projection going on with regards to this topic. It seems like quite a stretch that a coach with Zimmer's pedigree, one who obviously knows how to get results on defense, the secondary in particular, would be a total incompetent when coaching a WR. Are the two tasks really that far apart?
Yes, they're pretty different but Zimmer doesn't coach the WRs anyway.
Coaches are human. They make mistakes in judgment. They can be stubborn or inflexible or just wrong, regardless of their pedigree. It happens to the best of them.
They can be right too, of course.
We can speculate forever. It will just lead us back to where we are now.The bottom line is Patterson's talent has been squandered. As we've said many times, he's not incompetent. It would certainly be possible to use him more than he was used last year and to get the ball to him without it supposedly resulting in a series of setbacks that would cost the team games. Way too much has been made of his supposed incompetence, of this idea that it's a liability just to put him on the field. Certainly more has been made of it than can be seen on film. One of the reasons the 2015 Vikings couldn't easily overcome getting down by 2 scores was because they struggled to score. They could have used more offensive firepower, more explosive plays.
That's Patterson's game. Just take a look at the one game in 2 seasons under this coaching staff where he was able to touch the ball more than once while Peterson was a part of the offense.
I don't mean any of this to sound dismissive. I've just been frustrated for a long time that we've had to speculate about this and I haven't seen a satisfying answer as to why Patterson can't at least play a role in the offense that makes use of what he does well.
It doesn't require a leap of faith, just inductive reasoning. I'm hardly the only one who's reached a similar conclusion and it's a logical, evidence-based conclusion that doesn't require a claim from any of the people you listed above, or the media, to be valid.
