Friday mailbag: About those one-score games

Vikings fans want to know if they'll regress in one-score games and they make some hot predictions

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By Matthew Coller

Only two more weeks until we’re back in action at training camp, folks. What a time to be alive. Next week starts our camp previews, so get out your neck rolls and get ready because football is coming back soon. Until then, there’s still lots of questions to be answered so let’s get into them…

Sven… in relation to one score games and whether you expect the Vikings to move back to the mean in 2023. Clearly an expectation that the Vikings will go 11-0 in score games again is misguided, but if the number of one score games is 11 again and the Vikings go 5-6, then you could have an outcome of a losing season just by reverting back to the mean

For some reason the combination of having Kirk Cousins and a bad defense results in a bazillion one-score games. In 2020 and 2021 and went 12-14 in those games and then they won all of them last year. Wild.

I wrote a little about this last year: One-score games are not all built equally and they’re not completely random. If you have complete control of the game and have a 90% win probability the whole way and then the other team makes a desperate gasp at the end, that’s very different from a back-and-forth contest where a fumble or field goal makes the difference. The Vikings played more like six legit one-score games last year and then had some weird stuff happen in the others. Usually you’d expect to win three of those, not all six.

By the way, Tom Brady is 91-43 in games separated by 0-7 points in his career. Patrick Mahomes is 30-13. Peyton Manning 77-40. If it was 100% random, those guys wouldn’t have won many more games than they lost in those situations.

I think this team will probably have trouble blowing anybody out and they don’t have Brady, Mahomes or Manning so they will probably not go 11-0 in one-score games again. Even if they win Kirk’s career average and go 6-4 in those games, that’s a ton of regression. But 11 games is such a tiny sample size that it doesn’t have to come to an abrupt halt because there’s a new season. It’s not impossible that the tide could keep going their way into this year to some extent.

Long story short, 2022’s one-score performance by the Vikings might never be repeated so it’s fair to expect them to fall back but I don’t think the forces of nature are going to automatically make them lose a ton of one-score games this year. They still have a QB who wins a lot of those and a receiver who’s pretty darn hard to stop when they need one drive to win a game.

Thomas… As for the Vikes, I predict in 2023 that we will see the return of “Kirktober” as Kirk will be named NFC offensive player of the month for October.

Something you might not expect: Cousins actually has his highest career QB rating in November. His worst stats and record come in September and December. Funny though, “Kirktober” is listed on Pro-Football reference as one of his nicknames. This October they have five games, which are against Carolina, Kansas City, Chicago, San Francisco and Green Bay. A mixed bag of defenses there. November has Atlanta, New Orleans, Denver and Chicago. I’ll go with Kirk-vember.

@headcoach21 How much pressure is on Rodgers( scale of 1-10 with 10 being extreme and 1 being chill) in NY??

It’s a 10, though he might tell you he only feels a 1 pressure because he’s been drinking snake venom or something. If he fails there, he’s going to get demolished by the fans and media in New York. He did everything in his power to get there and they have given him everything in the world that he wanted, including hiring his old offensive coordinator. It will go down as an all-time flop if he stinks.

Avi… I predict Asamoah leads team in tackles

I’m very interested to see how this plays out in camp. I’m certain that they want Asamoah playing 1,000 snaps this year but he’s going to have to earn it in camp over Troy Reeder, who has played as many as 682 snaps in a season before. I do think Asamoah ultimately wins the job and fits well with Flores because he’s super quick and aggressive but Flores isn’t tied to any of the 2022 draft picks. Last year Hicks was only eight tackles behind Eric Kendricks for total tackles, so this one could be close if they both play every snap on defense.

Ben…. Bold prediction Akayleb Evans will emerge as a to 20 CB by the end of the season

I like it. He’s a pretty unique athlete. It’s not often you see a 6-foot-2 corner who runs sub-4.5 and has explosiveness like he does. Getting him in a lot of man-to-man situations like I expect Flores to do could really work in his favor. Top 20 isn’t easy to crack but he has a chance to be considered a key player going forward by the end of the year.

TwoToedSloth… My bold take - TJ Hockenson leads all NFL TE's in first downs. Andrews' target share will go down with the improvement to the Ravens' WR room, Kittle might have Sam Darnold throwing to him. It will be tough to pass Kelce, but if age starts to catch up with him Hock could be the one to grab the throne

It’s bold but I don’t think it’s going to happen. He had 44 first downs last year and Kelce had 78 and in 2021 Mark Andrews had 75. I will be interested to see if Hockenson is used to go downfield a little bit more than he was as a Viking. Only 29% of his targets went past 10 yards in the air (per PFF) and his YPC wasn’t very high. At least if he’s used the same this year he’s more of a security blanket (and a very good one) than a consistent stick-mover. Though I’d bet he has a few more big YAC plays than he did before.

EricVikesfan28… If Rick Spielman was given the leash to fully rebuild this roster & pick one more coach of his liking with a long term view of things. Do you think he could’ve done as good or better of a job than Kwesi has done? I think there’s a strong argument.

I don’t think we have a big enough sample size on Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as a GM to really compare the two yet but I’m having trouble agreeing with your statement. Kwesi picked a really good coach and did a good job this year of not overreacting to a 13-win season or locking the team into the QB position long term. He set them up with a great offense for the future QB, assuming Hockenson stays and Addison becomes a good receiver. I suppose if you say that Rick was told to tear it down and not keep the same list of guys and not make any silly win-now moves that it would look similar but never having a long-term view was a pretty significant part of why Spielman failed (see: Ngakoue, Yannick). We can’t just blame ownership on all that. In this tiny sample maybe we haven’t seen the difference yet but I think in the long run we probably will.

@PhilAntinarella— From Rochester (NY). Wife is from Cincy. We know live in Jacksonville. Is there any hope that the Vikings find their QB future?

Do you guys argue about whether Boomer Esiason or Jim Kelly was the better quarterback? Or maybe the bigger bust Akili Smith vs. JP Losman?

Of course there is hope. Look at the cities you just mentioned. The Bengals were about as bad-luck riddled as any NFL franchise after Carson Palmer got hurt but then things fell their way and Burrow is going to have them in the mix for a long, long time. Same goes for Buffalo. Look at the QBs who played there from post-Kelly to pre-Allen. My goodness. Losman, Kelly Holcomb, Trent Edwards, EJ Manuel. Yeesh. Pick the perfect guy and you’re golden. Pick a good enough guy and you’ve got a shot. Pick the wrong guy and lose a bunch and pick another guy.

Also it’s not like the Vikings never drafted a good quarterback. Both of them in the last 25 years just happened to have awful knee injuries.

Jon… Hot take for 2023- the Jets will finish dead last in the AFC East and 12 ends his career injured on the sidelines in a Jets baseball cap

My rule is to never doubt the legends so I’m not going to join you on this blazing take but I will say that Rodgers hasn’t had the level of competition like this in quite a while. The AFC East is incredibly difficult. How about this opening schedule for the Jets: Buffalo, at Dallas, New England, Kansas City, at Denver, Philly. It could be over after six weeks.

Abi… Harrison Smith not making it in the top 10 safety list by NFL exec and coaches list. He didn’t even get a vote. How do we feel about that? Follow up question:- Does teams over value their own player than what NFL as a whole thinks of them?

Those lists are weird, man. I never know what to make of them. Last year was the least impact Harry has made on the defense since I’ve covered him. Was that his fault? I don’t think so. But you could see where someone would look at how bad the defense was and his age and figure he’s not elite anymore.

@rk2022 I'm wondering if there's gonna be a kicking competition between the rookie and Joseph. They've gotten rid of other rookie kickers early in cap.

If Joseph kicks anything like he did in camp last year he will win the competition. They did make a change at punter last year when Wright was better than Berry but I’d be surprised if anything changes here. Joseph has not been an above average kicker in his career so they should be looking at options all the time but I also don’t think it’s a bad idea to roll with the guy you like and hope. Kicking is so weird that’s all you can really do.