Week One In The Books… Unfortunately

Through about 30 minutes of regular season football it looked like the Vikings couldn’t have gotten off to a better start.

The opening kickoff of their 2011 season, acting as underdogs to the home team Chargers, turned out to be an electrifying 103 yard touchdown from none other than Percy Harvin.

The defense looked stout in the first half.  Brian Robison disrupted Phillip Rivers’ release on one play, which ended up being an interception for hard hitting cornerback Antoine Winfield.  A 46 yard run from Adrian Peterson, a three yard touchdown throw from Donovan McNabb to Michael Jenkins, and a Jared Allen sack all contributed to a comfortable lead at halftime for the Vikings of 17-7.

Then, as if Bill Musgrave’s halftime adjustments included letting Darrell Bevell call the plays via Skype from Seattle, everything came to a screeching halt.

Jared Allen’s nifty interception in the third quarter was about the only play that us Vikings fans will want to remember.

Chris Cook, while he did make a few solid plays, often just looked lost and was certainly easy for a Pro Bowler like Rivers to pick on.  Eric Frampton and Cedric Griffin had a stupid penalties that both contributed greatly to scoring drives from the Chargers.  E.J. Henderson and Chad Greenway for some reason dropped out of coverage to make sure Rivers wasn’t going to run the ball (huh?) and gave up a touchdown pass to Mike Tolbert.

Perhaps most worrisome was the offense’s inability to, well… move.

Donovan McNabb finished with a ridiculous passing total of 39 yards.  95% of those yards came in the first half.  If you do that math (don’t worry, I got you covered) that means he only threw for two (TWO!) yards in the entire second half.

The offensive line certainly looked better run blocking than they did pass blocking, but overall it wasn’t a terrible day put in by a unit that everyone expected to be terrible.  Adrian Peterson was able to run for 98 yards on 16 carries.

The Vikings unveiled what is being referred to as their “Blazer Package” which is a setup that includes Joe Webb, Adrian Peterson, and Percy Harvin on the field at the same time.  The nickname stems from Webb’s time playing for the Alabama-Birmingham Blazers.  The back-to-back attempts ended up being laughable as they went absolutely nowhere, unfairly setting up McNabb with a third and long situation.  This package could be fun, but it is obvious that they need to polish it up a bit.

To make matters worse, the Vikings couldn’t even get lucky.

When Chargers kicker Nate Kaeding left the game with a season-ending injury on Harvin’s opening touchdown return, the home team was left in a bind when punter Mike Scifres had to take over field goal duties.  At the time, I thought this injury was going to be the difference in the outcome of the game, which is why it was so disheartening to see Scifres nail a 40 yarder like it was nothing.

Meanwhile, Ryan Longwell struggled to place his kickoffs anywhere near his opponent’s end zone.

In a way that was all to representative of the Vikings inability to compete for 60 minutes, the game ended when the defensive tackles couldn’t help but bite on Rivers’ hard count and jump offsides, leaving the Chargers with a 24-17 victory.