mansquatch wrote: ↑Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:41 pm
Jim how does Spielman stack up on the positions other than OL and QB? It is easy to bash his weak spots, but if you are going to advocate change you have to consider his positives, because you are tossing those out at as well.
Since we've gone over that a couple dozen times over the years, I'd rather not go over it all again, position by position.The short answer is: the positives don't outweigh the negatives. He's obviously had some success and he's done better at most positions than he has at QB and OL but my contention now, as it has been for years, is that he's a GM who focuses more on stats and talent than on fit. He doesn't build logically enough and he doesn't seem to learn from his mistakes. I think his negatives clearly outweigh his positives.
We've been down this road before. Everyone on this train was pretty quiet last year.
13-3 will do that... plus, I wasn't here the vast majority of that season.
As you know, I've been off the Spielman train for years. I didn't suddenly hop back on in 2017 and hop off again this season.
Now the Vikes are having a tough stretch with identifiable causes (I even went to the trouble of identifying a few of them above) and suddenly it is the same refrain: FIRE Spielman, Zimmer Sucks, etc. This whole tirade is basically:
Most of the very problems you listed stem directly from Spielman and Zimmer. Obviously, the first one is just bad luck, as you said but who do you think decided to draft Mike Hughes over an OL prospect (#2)? Who hired JDF (#3)? Who's responsible for the quality of the defense (#4)? Who decided to draft and go with a rookie kicker? Who's kept Priefer through years of kicking issues, etc. (#5)?
Who is the greener pasture?
I don't know. I'm sure I could do some digging and come up with names for Zimmer fans to shoot down but why bother since I know that will be the reward for my efforts?
There's a league full of assistants if you don't want to go to the college ranks. Find a Nagy, McVay or Lynn. There are always coaching prospects out there.
I think a lot of you have forgotten that we can just as easily get a Mike Tice, Brad Childress, or Leslie Frasier.
I think we basically have a variation on those coaches now, just better supported than Tice or Frazier and more likable than Childress. Anyway, as I've said to you before, fear of failure is no reason to keep a head coach if he's not the right guy to take the team all the way.
We forget that Zimmer took this team over and after one hard year (2014, in which the team's best player was unable to play) he had us in the playoffs.
I haven't forgotten that. Leslie Frazier did the exact same thing, and both did it with a gigantic assist from Adrian Peterson. I suspect he'd have a record pretty similar to Zimmer's if he'd been given the same number of years and the same level of support. Ditto for Tice. Childress had very similar accomplishments over his first 4 seasons. The wheels fell off spectacularly for him in 2010 and Zimmer's avoided that this year but not the championship loss hangover (and that blowout loss was a big flashing warning sign that shouldn't be ignored).
From there we had bad luck with injuries and kickers (2016), a wonderful year (2017), and now another year with bad luck on injuries and coaching staff turnover. If you ask me, this guy has a formula that works, he just needs to iron some things out. I'd rather take my chances on that vs. some unknown.
I think it's a formula for long term mediocrity peppered with an occasional double-digit win season and a lot of postseason disappointment. That's the 12 years Spielman's been with the team in a nutshell.
Also: Zimmer was basically "some unknown" before he got the Vikes gig and yet you've happily embraced him. If he was replaced, I'm sure Vikes fans could learn to love again.