Awful coaching deprives Vikings of win on Monday Night Football

LONDON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 26: Quarterback Christian Ponder in action during a Minnesota Vikings training session at the Grove Hotel on September 26, 2013 in London, England. (Photo by Harry Engels/Getty Images)

The Vikings could undoubtedly have beaten this porous Giants defence with either Cassel or Ponder under centre. But they never stood a chance with Josh Freeman. And they went with him anyway.

Perhaps Coach Frasier would argue that they needed to see what they had in their new acquisition. But it is only week 7. There are 9 games left to see what Freeman has in his locker. Even if they were desperate to see what Freeman could do against the Giants, you cannot properly evaluate an underprepared quarterback who is put in that situation. The Vikings learned nothing from Monday night.

Whichever way you cut it, it was a baffling decision by Leslie Frasier and his coaching staff.

The puzzling decisions didn’t stop there. After selecting Freeman to start the game, the head coach then stubbornly refused to remove his new quarterback during the game despite it being so obvious to everyone that he was holding his offence back.

At half time, with the game still close at 10-7, Jon Gruden of ESPN said:

“It’s not fair to the Vikings to put Josh Freeman in this situation. If I’m Leslie Frasier I’m going to put Christian Ponder in…I’m going to try and win this game and get back in the race. Freeman can throw it, we know he has size and athleticism but they can’t shift, it doesn’t look like they can audible and they don’t have enough inventory of offence. [To win the game] you’re going to need a little bit more arsenal than Freeman’s ready for right now.”

Jon Gruden is a superbowl winning head coach. He knows what he’s talking about. But you don’t need to have a superbowl ring to see that keeping Freeman in the game on Monday night made no sense whatsoever. It was obvious nothing good could come of it. But with the prime time audience, superbowl winning coaches and Vikings fans everywhere screaming for Christian Ponder to come into the game, the backup was left Ponder-ing on the sideline.

Frasier wasn’t finished there though. Seemingly intent on proving beyond any doubt that he is the worst coach in the National Football League right now, the head coach had yet more bad decisions to make. Not only did he keep Freeman in, but he and offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave continued calling passing plays.

It was obvious that Freeman had no idea what he was doing out on the field. He had no chemistry with the receivers whatsoever and he was just not equipped to win the game. However, ignoring the fact that the best player in the NFL, Adrian Peterson, was standing next to Freeman in the backfield, they just kept putting the ball in Freeman’s hands.

Peterson had a grand total of 13 rushing attempts. The reigning league MVP had only 28 rushing yards while Freeman himself became only the second quarterback in history to attempt 50 passes, pass for fewer than 200 yards and fail to throw a single touchdown. With the game in the balance, who in their right mind would put the ball in Josh Freeman’s hand and not Adrian Peterson’s?

Despite Freeman’s play and the final score, this was a close game for the most part. In fact, it was a 3 point game with 5 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. They had a chance, if they had put Christian Ponder in and given the ball to Adrian Peterson, to come out with a win and be only 2 games behind in the NFC North. Coach Frasier and Coach Musgrave, in making mistake after mistake off the field, essentially deprived their team of any chance of winning that game, and any hope of making the playoffs with it.

That is an inexcusably poor offensive game plan. As Rich Eisen aptly put it in his podcast this week, “mismanagement has been rewritten by what happened on Monday night”. It was actually so bad that you have to wonder whether losing the game was part of the plan all along.

Perhaps the Vikings already know that Josh Freeman, only on a one year contract, is a rental. Perhaps they want to lose. Perhaps they want that shamefully coveted top 5 pick in the 2014 draft so they can correct the mistake of drafting Ponder and grab their shiny new quarterback of the future.

What other reason could Leslie Frasier and his staff possibly have? The lack of foresight in shoving Freeman out there when he quite clearly wasn’t ready to play is staggering, but understandable given the money they’ve paid him.

But then to leave him in when he was playing so poorly, and calling over 50 passing plays in the process despite absolutely no success, is beyond senseless. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different outcome. By that definition, Coach Frasier is as crazy as Howard Hughes.

And after Monday night he might have the same career prospects, too.