WARNING: Vikings offense may be WORSE that it appears

Hi, my name is Tom and I'm a PurpleKoolAid drinker. I've been sober now for one day. That has been just long enough for this analysis of the Vikings offense...

As most of you may (or may not) realize many of the NFL stats oft used to measure the worth of a particular team's offense or defense are very misleading. For instance Denver is the 4th best defense if you use points allowed but they are in the middle of the league (14th) for yards allowed. Really both are misleading...

• Meaningless TDs are scored when the game is essentially decided, Chester Taylor's TD last week only helped fantasy owners.
• Teams with leads give up big chunks of passing yards to overinflate yds allowed.
• Points allowed do not take into account defensive TDs that opponents score. The Vikings defense is on the hook for the 2 TDs that the offense game Miami last week.

This got me thinking about the ineptitude of the Vikins offense. Statistically the Viking offense is ranked

• 16th in yards per game
• 27th in points per game

I'm here to tell you that it is MUCH worse than that. Minnesota has scored a total of 167 points on the season. But some of those points are FGs and some are defensive TDs so how much should the offense actually get credit for?

I did some league wide research.

• FGs and return TDs go to special teams
• safeties and defensive TDs go to the defense
• offensive TDs go to the offense
• extra points go whoever got the TD

The average NFL offense scores 69.5% of the teams total points.

Where does the Viking offense rank? 31st with their offense only accounting for 49.1% of their offense! Let me rephrase for dramatic effect...THE OFFENSE ACCOUNTS FOR LESS THAN HALF OF OUR TOTAL POINTS! Well maybe our defense is just that good, or we score a lot of FGs?

Baltimore leads the NFL in defensive TDs, their offense? - 62.6%
Chicago has the league leading FG kicker, their offense? - 62.1%
Tampa Bay has 4 games where the offense has contributed nothing and they are at 68.9%

Just for your reference...

1. New England - 86.4%
2. San Diego - 804.%
10. Detroit - 75.7%
21. Green Bay - 68.11
27. Chicago - 62.1%
30. Buffalo - 59.8% - one of 3 teams under 60%
31. Minnesota - 49.10%
32. Oakland - 47.5% - worse O-line and a new QB every other week

What does this mean? How do we fix this? How did this happen? I don't know but here is what I do know...

1. Please don't tell me anymore that Brad Johnson needs to be paid more money. If this is the best he can do, I see no reason that he should be paid more. He's leading this team like a back up QB and he should be paid like one.
   
2. We had 2 good weeks of offense, Week 1 and Week 7. Week 1 Childress had the month of August to prepare and the results were very good. Week 7 was following the bye week when Childress had 2 weeks to prepare for Seattle. When given enough time he seems to have an effective gameplan. When he is limited to 1 week we struggle. My solution? Give the offense to your offensive coordinator and you worry about being a head coach! To this point you have not shown you can do both.
3. Personell is not totally the issue. Chester Taylor is on pace for nearly 1400 yards and our O-line has been struggling but has talent. Recievers are certainly an issue, I'll grant you that. But this offense has enough talent to score more than half of the team's points.
4. Quite making stupid penalties. The O-line is responsible for at least 3 drives moving from inside the 5 to outside the 10 and resulting in FGs. 3 extra TDs at least gets you over the 60% mark and that's respectable.
   

The Vikings are not too far away from being a playoff team that can win in January. Everyone will tell you that if you stop the run and run the ball, you are in position to win every week. Minnesota is dominant against the run and has been effective running the ball, but this lack of offensive efficiency is astounding and is THE reason that we are sitting at 4-6 instead of 6-4 or better.

This is depressing, get me a cup of Kool Aid STAT!