By Eric Edholm
Sept. 15, 2008

The Vikings ran the ball very well against the Colts Sunday and led 15-0 in the second half, but the lack of a passing offense hurt them in the crushing, 18-15 loss. QB Tarvaris Jackson will take a lot of the blame following his 14-for-24 passing performance for just 130 yards and no touchdowns. Despite Adrian Peterson’s 160 rushing yards on 29 carries, the Vikings were unable to salt away the win, but head coach Brad Childress gave Jackson a vote of confidence following the game.

The PFW spin

WR Bernard Berrian has been a major disappointment since signing a six-year, $42 million deal. He started Sunday but dropped more passes (one) than he caught (zero). Scouts warned this offseason that as good as Berrian’s deep speed is, he’s a bit of a one-trick pony as a home-run hitter and would need Jackson to improve his deep accuracy to make Berrian be an effective weapon. So far, Jackson has misfired on a number of long balls, and Berrian hasn’t had much impact.

Another disappointment is the fact that the offensive coaching staff has treated Jackson with kid gloves. They are not opening things up, reverting to a few bread-and-butter rollout passes and not giving their young QB — whom they don’t appear to trust much right now — a chance to make plays. Jackson and the coaches took the politically correct but analytically flawed stance after the game that because Peterson was running so well, there was no reason to open up the playbook with a five-FG lead.

But the fact remains that future opponents are not as small and as prone to the power run game as the Colts were, and future opponents will make sure that Peterson won’t have that kind of game every week. The Vikings need to develop more of a play-action passing game and get their young QB in a rhythm early in games to get the offense even close to balanced. The defense is good enough to keep them in most games, so it might be more wise to throw first to set up the run. That’s how Childress and Andy Reid ran things with Donovan McNabb at a similar stage of his career.

Jackson can’t be scared to throw interceptions, and the staff can’t be afraid for him. Right now, they are calling too many high-percentage, low-yield passes that won’t move the chains consistently.

Of course, it’s not all Jackson's fault, and the coaches can’t go out there and catch passes for him. Berrian had a zero-catch day Sunday, and fellow starter Sidney Rice injured his knee before he caught a pass. TE Visanthe Shiancoe, who was praised for showing improved receiving skills this offseason, dropped another touchdown pass (he dropped three of those last season), leading to a second-quarter field goal that made it 6-0 instead of 10-0. The Vikings, of course, lost by three. It was a tough catch, but one most starting tight ends make if they want to keep their jobs. H-back Garrett Mills (three receptions, 49 yards in the opener) was nowhere to be found.

There also is the matter of pass protection, which was passable but not good. Two of the Colts' three sacks came on blitzes by defensive backs that were not picked up properly; the third was Dwight Freeney going right around replacement OLT Artis Hicks for a strip-sack of Jackson.

And it should be noted that Jackson did lead his team into scoring position six times on Sunday, which ended up with five field goals and one missed 48-yard attempt. But the 2-for-13 third-down conversion rate is unacceptable. On those third downs, the average distance to go was 6.1 yards. The team called 12 passes and one run in those situations. The run play came up short on 3rd-and-5 after the Vikings has failed on 9-of-11 third downs to that point. Jackson was 5-for-11 passing on third downs for the afternoon, for 36 yards and a sack and two first downs. Two of his completions went for negative yards on those plays. Part of that is a flaw in design, not having enough receivers beyond or close to the first-down line; part of it is receivers not being open.

The only way the Vikings will find out if they have their QB of the future is if they start opening things up and letting him use his strong arm. They have the defense and the run game to win a title, but they are also-rans right now because Jackson is not being put in a position to succeed.