It’s Tarvaris Jackson that guarantees Vikings’ win in 2010

While most Minnesota Vikings fans are expecting Brett Favre to take back his starting job for the 2010 season, they may ignore that who offers them the assurance in their patient waiting. Backup quarterback Tarvaris Jackson is less stellar than Favre, but his very existence assures that the team needs not worry about their starting quarterback whether Favre returns or retires.

Putting on the Minnesota Vikings jersey in 2006 as a second-round draft pick, Jackson showed a lot of talents in his rookie season. However, he was never given an important role to play until 2009 offseason. After a long-time competition with Sage Rosenfels, Jackson finally won the starting job for the first time and was ready to prove his ability. Unfortunately, Favre changed his mind and signed a two-year contract with the Vikings late offseason and took the starting job away easily from Jackson. After initial frustration and disappointment, Jackson chose to stay with the Vikings for new chance.

During 2010 off season, Jackson has a better preparation for what role he may be going to play in the regular season. As Favre is still undecided, Jackson is insurance for the team. There is no need to doubt whether Jackson could deal with a starting role, after years of preparation for the day, Jackson will surely prove he can do even better than the 41-year-old star.

Brett Favre aims at coaching job

The Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre has not made his decision on whether to return to play football for 2010 season, and he is even still uncertain whether he will undergo the surgery to repair his injured ankle. However, someone familiar with the quarterback said that Favre actually wants to work with an NFL team as a coaching member instead of a player.

As a nineteen-year veteran quarterback, Favre does have the qualification to work somewhere as a quarterback coach. Just as Vikings wide receiver Percy Harvin said the other day, Favre was always a great playmaker and signal callers while playing in a real-time game and his influence on other players was sometimes even bigger than the offensive coordinator’s. With nineteen years of experience in playing and learning of football, Favre is surely a very competitive candidate if any team is in want of a quarterback coach or offensive coordinator and receives Favre’s application form.

So if Favre’s real intention is to work as a coach, his hesitation to wear back his Favre jersey now seems much more reasonable. At age 40, recovering from an ankle surgery may take too long for him to appear in time for the regular season, and even if he is anyway fully recovered, his old body could hardly bear more heavy attacks from younger players of opponent teams. By comparison, staying with his beloved ball but in a safer place would be a wise choice for Favre.

There is still possibility of Haynesworth joining Vikings

As the Minnesota Vikings tackles Pat Williams and Kevin Williams lost the lawsuit against NFL suspension, the Vikings may start their 2010 season game without the Williams Wall. As a result, there are again discussions of Vikings’ possibility to get Washington Redskins tackle Albert Haynesworth for replacement.

However, there have been several concerns over Haynesworth, who finished last season with 37 tackles and 4 sacks. One of the concerns is his questionable behavior and attitude to his job. He has recently disappointed the Redskins with uncooperative attitude toward new head coach Mike Shanahan’s new scheme. Another concern is that Haynesworth is a high-paid tackle and still five years left on his current contract that runs through the 2015 with a base salary for 2010 season of $3.6 million. It would be hard to the Redskins to let Haynesworth go after paying him a $21 million roster bonus in April. Even if they finally decide to trade him away, the price they are going to ask wound be high.

The Williamses are facing potential four-game suspensions in 2010 regular season, which means the Vikings will have to find two replacing tackles to fill the void in the first four games. And one of the replacing players would be able to stay at starting line as Pat Williams is 38 years old and will not play for long. On this point, 29-year-old Haynesworth is a top choice if he is available. At the moment, it really depends on whether the Vikings are willing to pay the price for having Haynesworth put on Vikings jersey as it is really impossible for the Redskins to release the talented young tackle for no pay back of their huge investments.

Vikings have not decided on Gerhart’s potential role

Although most people expect the Minnesota Vikings to use newly drafted rookie running back Toby Gerhart as backup to starter Adrian Peterson, simply the role LaDainian Tomlinson would have played if he signed with the Vikings. However, as the team still has other choices on roster, it’s just still too early to confirm Gerhart’s possible role.

Since former backup Chester Taylor signed with the Chicago Bears during free agency, the Vikings head coach Brad Childress has shown his confidence in Albert Young and Darius Reynaud. The addition of Toby Gerhart simply added one more choice for the team to pick a better backup. Gerhart’s advantages are his hands. He used to win a Heisman Trophy last season with a nation-best performance of 1,871 rushing yards and 28 touchdowns. His disadvantage is that he did not catch large number of passes but that was majorly because he was not used that much to catch passes. If he is to given the playing time, Gerhart is expected to have more catches.

As the Vikings traded third-round picks in order to have the right of picking Gerhart from the second-round, it seems that Vikings do hold high expectation on the rookie. So even if he is not going to play at secondary position, he could still expect a brilliant career in purple and gold Vikings jersey.

Newly drafted players won’t play key roles with Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings just kept things even more intriguing by trading down picks, drafting unexpected players and skipping over quarterbacks with great potentials. People could not stop asking “Why?” Well, we cannot expect the team to give answers but there are analysts who are trying to give some explanations.

There is no doubt that the Vikings’ first choice in the draft, second-round pick Chris Cook was not beyond much expectation. Although the Vikings had previously signed a veteran cornerback Lito Sheppard already, with both starting cornerback still recovering from injuries, the team was still in need of more cornerbacks in case starters would not be able to wear back their Vikings jerseys in time for new season. So even if the Vikings did not trade their first-round pick down, they could still pick Cook instead of a quarterback like Jimmy Clausen.

What caused most confusion was the addition of running back Toby Gerhart. First of all, the team already has one of the best running backs in the league with Adrian Peterson; and secondly, Gerhart was not the best backs on the board at all when the Vikings were making the choice.

Other choices like the fourth-round pick with defensive end Everson Griffin was simply considered to offer the team some necessary help, but that is all and none of these newly drafted rookies seem likely to have the chance of standing on the starting line. That’s the point- the Vikings did not change much after the draft and most starters would remain at their position and rookies are not expected to replace any of them at least during their rookie season.