Moderatoren » Kyle Sloter should back up Kirk

Cousins Ok it’s just pre-season.But as a backup quarterback Kirk Cousins Jersey , most likely this is your season.Your chance to show what you got.Sure there’s practice, and that counts in terms of showing knowledge of the offense and ability to make throws in that setting, but it doesn’t show how you play in game situations.And the closest thing a backup quarterback has to that is preseason games.As a former starter with many games of experience in the regular season, you’d expect a guy like Trevor Siemian to show more command.More ability.He should be a little above the second stringers he’s playing against.But he didn’t.He didn’t look like a starter.He didn’t look like a guy you want starting at QB for your team either.And that’s the point.He was inaccurate.He looked poor under pressure.He did not lead second stringers, he let them down.There was a lack of energy. Quite simply, his game was not up to the task.By fairly obvious contrast, as soon as Kyle Sloter took the field in each of the first three Vikings preseason games, there was energy and leadership.There was the will to win.There was a QB looking to make plays, not just play out his time.And Sloter showed presence.Poise.Better scrambling ability.Better acccuracy.And he made plays.Every game.What plays did Siemian make?Zero.Nada.Bupkis.Sloter led drives.He came through in the clutch.He delivered when he needed to. Yes, he went down twice late on back side blitzes, but he managed to escape from several others and made plays too. Siemian never did.And, as every NFL head coach knows, if you want to win, you need a quarterback that can make plays.You can’t coach that.You can’t learn that in practice.Experience can help, but not that of Trevor Sirmian’s kind.He was not a playmaker in Denver, and he was released as a result.I’m not sure how that type of experience is a plus.It sounds good to say, “now here’s a QB that’s started a lot of games in the NFL Authentic Mike Hughes Jersey , who can come in a take over if Cousins goes down.”But you could say that about Christian Ponder too. Yes, it may be that if Cousins went down Sloter would have a learning curve playing against starting defenses not playing a more basic scheme.But he’s also a pretty smart QB that has been good at reading defenses in the past, and a good student of the game.He’s also got all the intangibles you want in a quarterback, and that are missing in Siemian. You often here coaches talk about how draft status, etc. doesn’t matter after training camp starts.It’s what you do in practice, and with the reps given to you that matters.Well, if that’s the case, Kyle Sloter should be the primary backup to Kirk Cousins.Trevor Siemian can run the scout team.Vikings coaches need to show to young guys that if you perform well, you’ll be rewarded - just like they do by extending deserving vets with big new contracts. The Minnesota Vikings certainly haven’t gotten off to the start that any of us would like this season. Because of that, as you’d expect, the confidence of the fans in the direction of the team has dropped significantly over the course of the past couple of weeks. (Sign up here to take our weekly Vikings survey)Following their loss to the Los Angeles Rams that dropped the purple to 1-2-1 on the young season, the FanPulse survey shows that confidence in the team has dropped. . .but only slightly, particularly compared to the drop from the previous week. Today, only one out of every three fans (33%) is confident in the direction of the Minnesota Vikings.Honestly, I’m not sure how much lower it can get, folks. I know that there are a group that are eternally optimistic about this team, and Mike Zimmer pointed out recently that how the team starts isn’t necessarily an indicator of how they finish. After all Youth Anthony Barr Jersey , the 2016 Vikings started out 5-0 and ended 8-8, while last year’s squad started 2-2 and finished 13-3. It’s a long season, and I have a feeling we’ll start seeing that number trend upwards before too much longer here.That 33% mark, however, puts Vikings fans at the bottom of the NFC North in terms of confidence. Even lower than the Detroit Lions, the one team behind the Vikings in the division standings, who are at 35% this week.Bit of a roller coaster there for the Lions, eh?Green Bay fans are still relatively confident in the direction of their favorite team after pitching a shutout against the same Buffalo Bills team that shellacked the Vikings in Week 3. Packer fans’ confidence in their team currently sits at 60%, which is not great, but compared to Minnesota and Detroit it’s pretty damn good.Of course, the NFC North fan base that’s the most confidence is the one with the most reason to be confident, the Chicago Bears. A full 96% of Bears fans are currently confident in the direction of their team. It’s not quite as high as Vikings’ fans confidence early in the season (which topped out at 98%), but it’s still awfully impressive for a team that I don’t think most of us expected a lot from.I really, sincerely hope that the Vikings give us some more reason for optimism here in the relatively near future. It would be nice to see the numbers go up again.