Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Frerotte Ends the Tarvaris Revolution

It's official--the Tarvaris Revolution is over. Gus Frerotte will be starting on Sunday for the Vikings and will, most likely, be the starter for the rest of the year. It's not a surprise, what with Tarvaris completing only 50.8% of his passes and averaging only 4.4 yards per pass attempt. I'm not sure this is the right decision (I really do think that 75% of the blame for the pathetic passing game lies on Childress and the receivers' shoulders), but in the end, if the Vikings don't beat the Panthers, they aren't going to the playoffs, and no matter what Zygi's said about Childress' job security, he's gone if the Vikings don't make the playoffs (and he should be). And to be fair, it's not like Tarvaris did anything to keep the job in the first two games.

Things I like about this decision:
  • Frerotte's has averaged 6.02 yards per pass attempt for his career
  • Frerotte's has a really low sack rate, which, at 6.0%, is lower than Tarvaris' 6.7% sack rate. That means he's not going to force the Vikings into a lot of 2nd/3rd and long situations like Brooks Bollinger (11.8% career sack rate) and Kelly Holcomb (7.4% career sack rate, 13.1% sack rate last year) did.
Reasons why the Vikings should have traded for Sage Rosenfels to be the backup:
  • Frerotte averaged only 5.37 yards per attempt last year, which is worse than Tarvaris' 5.88 yards per attempt average last year.
  • Frerotte cannot scramble--he has 308 rushing yards in 136 games.
  • Frerotte's career completion percentage is 54.2%, which is lower than Tarvaris' 57.1%, and he completed only 56.3% of his passes last year.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Vikings have dug quite a hole for themselves at QB.

There aren't that many prospects out there that might be had to come in and take over or seriously compete for the starting job (Rosenfels and Brady Quinn come to mind...)

In any case, this strikes me as an indication that Childress won't be the coach in 2009 and so the new coaching staff should be given the opportunity to weigh in on who they want to acquire to work within their system...