Awful coaching deprives Vikings of win on Monday Night Football

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ – OCTOBER 21: Quarterback Josh Freeman #12 of the Minnesota Vikings passes against the New York Giants during a game at MetLife Stadium on October 21, 2013 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

Fast forward ess than two weeks, and Freeman was named the starter by head coach Leslie Frasier and thrust into the spotlight on prime time against the Giants. He had only a handful of days to practice with the team with no real introduction to the Vikings system. And it showed.

The Giants, rightly, didn’t take Freeman seriously from the very first snap. They stuffed the box with 8 and sometimes 9 guys, leaving one on one coverage on the outside and daring Freeman to beat them. And he couldn’t.

He couldn’t beat them with his arm, and he couldn’t beat them with his mind. The former Buccaneer clearly didn’t have any grasp of Minnesota’s offense. He was sailing passes, missing receivers by yards, and was incapable of adjusting his offence on the field. It left isolated and vulnerable, like a fish in a barrel for the Giants defence.

Freeman’s numbers for the game are painful to read. He completed 20 of a staggering 53 pass attempts for 190 yards, zero touchdowns and one ugly red-zone interception. That equates to completing 37.7% of his passes for an average of 3.58 yards per attempt. In case you were wondering, those are historically bad numbers. It was one of the ugliest quarterback performances ever seen on national television, and possibly the worst offensive showing of any team in a single game this season.

Despite all that, Josh Freeman shouldn’t really take the brunt of the blame for this game. He didn’t play well, granted. He was missing receivers sometimes by a matter of yards, showing not just a lack of chemistry and timing with his new receivers but a lack of accuracy that will worry Vikings fans moving forward.

But this isn’t a declaration that Freeman isn’t the future in Minnesota. Freeman is a talented young quarterback who can really throw the ball well when he gets hot. He might be the answer for the Vikings eventually, but he definitely wasn’t the answer on Monday night. It is no slight on him to say that he just wasn’t ready for this game. No one would be.

So while Freeman did not have a good game, the real criticism for this loss should be reserved for the Minnesota coaching staff. They threw their quarterback to the wolves.

Most quarterbacks start learning their offensive playbooks before training camp starts, and it takes them months of reading it and practicing it to absorb the scheme fully. There is a massive amount of information to take in. The terminology alone can take weeks to get used to in a new system, especially for a veteran quarterback who is already comfortable with a completely different system and terminology to go with it.

Freeman arrived in Minnesota less than two weeks before Monday night’s kick-off. It became abundantly clear after about two series that he didn’t know the offence properly. He just didn’t have the time. The Vikings coaching staff must have known that. They would have seen the disconnect and confusion on the practice field in the few days Freeman had spent with them. They knew that he wasn’t ready.

And they went with him anyway.

It wasn’t like the Vikings had no option. Their starting quarterback out of camp, Christian Ponder, was once again healthy and suited up as the backup on Monday night. Although he is 0-3 as a starter in 2013, his offence had put 30 points on the Bears and 27 points on the Browns in back to back weeks before he suffered an injury. In Ponder’s absence in week 4, the Vikes beat the Steelers in London with their other quarterback, Matt Cassel, under centre.