Daily Norseman
This is it. It’s time for the future of the Minnesota Vikings to take the stage. A very confusing and injury riddled series of events culminated through the first eight weeks of the Minnesota Vikings’ season. An odds defying 4th quarter comeback started the season against Chicago and was followed up by a massacre against the Atlanta Falcons.
Those games preceded a stretch of inconsistent defense, middling quarterback play, losing the turnover battle, a 38-point win, atrocious blocking, and Carson Wentz going out and sacrificing himself to give our young quarterbacks just one more week to get ready.
After nursing a high ankle sprain for six weeks, McCarthy should be at 100%. Looking at him jump out of the way of the sideline during last Thursday’s game, he should be ready to go. He has come a long way, physically, from the Anakin Skywalker version we saw of him while he was recovering from his torn meniscus last season. He seems to be in great shape and maybe used that time off the field to get his body more ready to be an NFL player.
Conspiracy theorists will say that McCarthy was actually benched, and the high ankle sprain was just an excuse to keep him out of the lineup. It is not out of the realm of possibility that he was truly injured, since a high ankle sprain can linger for multiple weeks.
However, it’s not impossible, heck it’s not even improbable that the Vikings were using this injury to give McCarthy some more time to develop. He hasn’t had a full week of practice since the injury, this is true, but that only pertains to team led activities. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t hitting the weight room, practicing separate of the team, or doing things that will make him better.
We have seen throughout history that sometimes conspiracy theories and the truth are not mutually exclusive. O’Connell’s reasoning for caution was about mechanics and making sure McCarthy had full mobility because, frankly, he’s going to need it. It is no surprise, because of the constant shuffling of personnel, that our offensive line has looked atrocious, which in turn made the Carson Wentz experience one to watch only while peeking through two fingers with your hands over your eyes.
Every play was like opening a Wonder Ball, except sometimes instead of a prize, you go a ball of chocolate filled with sand. Wentz definitely left some plays out there, but on many occasions, he had a snowball’s chance in hell at completing a pass. I have taken upon myself the grueling task of analyzing every sack so far this season. I am currently looking at weeks 5 and 7, while absolutely dreading rewatching every sack from Carson Wentz’ likely last game of his NFL career.
The bottom line is this: the Vikings MUST beat the Detroit Lions on...
