What's The Real Problem?

[jsarno]

With all the comments thus far, it's obvious we can not just pick one problem. There were a slew!
This is how I saw it: (in no particular order)
1- Horrible play calling on both sides of the ball. Why did we not try to open up the field by throwing downfield? We have Moss, a burner, Lloyd, the guy that can jump and has the "size", and Randle El to create, yet we never even looked at Lloyd and limited Moss to screens. On the D side, we made the Vikes O line look like all pro's. Partly play calling, partly...
2- No defensive penetration. Brad had all day to throw the ball. The linebackers had no sense of urgency, and the DE's didn't create any opportunities.
3- The 700 page playbook. If Brunell was "wishing the day was over", that lack of confidence will trickle down. Brunell was not that good. If you watched downfield, often times a receiver was open and Brunell never saw him. Brunell looked confused.
4- Poor kicking game. I'm not the type to blame the loss on such a thing, but watching Hall's previous kicks, I was even nervous about him hitting an extra point. He kicks one ugly ball. When Randel El did not get to that first down marker, I knew we lost cause Hall would have missed that field goal 4 out of 5 times.
5- Most importantly, we could not stop the 3rd down conversions!!!!! We let the freakin Vikes run or pass at will on 3rd downs! We were lucky to lose by only 3 thanks to Williamson sucking. He dropped that easy TD on the most perfect pass anyone has seen in years, and, humorously, dropping a pass with the deflection of his helmet!
6- Injuries. The loss of Springs was noticably significant, and we need Portis to run the ball 20 times. I like Betts, but he's no Portis.
7- Why OH WHY don't we use Randel El for kickoffs? If he can punt return, he can kick return. Our KR game is horrendous.

There were some other issues, but those were the biggies.