Daily Norseman
I’ve never played the sport of football at a high level. I’ve never really played the sport of football at what you’d consider a medium level. Like a lot of folks, I’ve spent a lot of time watching football over the course of my life and would like to think that I’ve learned a few things along the way. So, when I see things regarding our Minnesota Vikings that I find confusing, I do what I can to try to relate them back to my own life experiences in an effort to understand them.
Yesterday, as the Vikings were thumping the Washington Commanders 31-0 just a week after being the thumpees against the Seattle Seahawks, we saw much-maligned second-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy have what was, by far, the best game of his young career. He was making good decisions, getting the football out quickly and accurately, and had the first game of his career where he didn’t turn the ball over at least once. He only had two completions of 20 yards or longer and only had 163 yards passing, but three of his completions went for touchdowns and he played a big role in engineering a 19-play, 98-yard touchdown drive that ate up twelve minutes of game time.
When the news broke earlier in the week that McCarthy had cleared concussion protocol and would get the start against the Commanders, the word was circulating that the Vikings were going to “simplify” the offense in order to get McCarthy more comfortable. Perhaps that’s why things looked the way they did on Sunday, and if that’s the case, the question that everyone should be asking is. . .why did it take so long?
Back in the late 20th Century when I was in high school, our English classes took part in something called “Accelerated Reader.” I think it still exists today, and I’m not sure if it works in the same way it did then, but the gist of it was that you would read books and take multiple choice tests on them in order to accumulate points. Longer, more complex books were worth more points, and the better you scored on the test, the more points you got. If you failed the test for whatever reason, you got no points and you couldn’t go back and redo the test for that particular book.
Our English teacher mandated that we needed to have a certain number of Accelerated Reader points by the end of the year, or else we’d fail the class. Now, my sophomore year, I slacked off a bit and had to go through a bit of a rush at the end of the year to get all of my points. I did it, but it was awful, and I didn’t want to do that again. When my junior year started, I thought I’d be super slick and try to get things done early. So, I decided I was going to read a terrible, awful book called Wuthering Heights...
