TiVo Time: Minnesota Vikings
With the bye week behind us, it’s time to take one last long look at the Green Bay Packers’ win over the Minnesota Vikings before bringing on the San Diego Chargers this Sunday.
15:00, 1st quarter – I’m disappointed already. Mason Crosby only kicks it one yard deep into the end zone. Predictably, Percy Harvin gets a pretty decent return out to the 28.
I’ll continue to give opposing teams and coaches credit for their plans to open the game. In two other road games, we saw Atlanta and Carolina pull out all the stops on their first drive and both got touchdowns. Here, Leslie Frazier and the Vikings come up with a brilliant play to start the game.
First of all, it’s a shocker because the Packers started the game in their nickel — surprise, surprise. They still bit hard on the play fake to Adrian Peterson, giving Christian Ponder plenty of time to gather himself as he rolled to his left.
Tramon Williams sees visions of Matt Ryan bootlegging to his left and jumps the out by Michael Jenkins. Oops. It’s the out-and-up and Jenkins runs right past Williams.
Eagles finish strong to whip UTEP
The contest had all the traits of a trap game for the Golden Eagles with the 1,200-mile trip to El Paso coming a week after they climbed into the USA Today Coaches Poll for the first time since 2004.But the No. 25 Golden Eagles took care of business in the final 30 minutes, out-scoring UTEP 21-3 in the second half.
It was absolutely a trap game and we knew that, USM quarterback Austin Davis said. Thats the difference between this team and a couple of teams in the past. We won and we won 31-13 and we didnt play well.
Quentin Pierce provided the spark when he turned a short pass over the middle from Davis into a 47-yard touchdown to make it 17-10 at the 11:55 mark in the third quarter.
It was just a basic play we run all the time, Davis said. We had a shallow route and the safety rolled down and took away the shallow and I worked the second progress.
Quentin did the rest and made a couple of guys miss. I told him on the sideline that we needed that. We needed someone to make a big play. That could have been a minimal play, but it ended up a big play. That got everybody going.