Insight via Statistics--Too Many Penalties

• Despite having a team consisting of veterans, the Vikings lead the league in penalties and penalty yards. They do, however, have the ability to get big chunks of yards, with 18 passing plays over 20+ yards (the 7th highest in the NFL) and 5 rushing plays over 20+ yards (the 6th most in the league).

• The Vikings are averaging only 5.58 yards per passing attempt, the 11th worst in the NFL. They are averaging 5.03 yards per carry. Despite having big play threat Bernard Berrian, those stats provide all the reasons you need to know about why the teams are still willing to bring 8 and 9 defenders in the box. One would think that a great offensive mind would be able to figure some way to capitalize on defense's singular focus on the running game.

• The Vikings once again gave up more big plays on Sunday than they made. That's not a good sign, considering how much correlation there was last year between a team's big play differential and it's success.

• Kyle Orton has been a good quarterback so far this year. Honestly, that's the part that I just don't understand--Kyle Orton? Good Quarterback? Huh? Anyway, he's thrown 8 touchdowns and only 4 interceptions, has completed 61.6% of his passes and is averaging 6.25 yards per passing attempt. If the Vikings can get to him, however, he'll crumble under the pressure--in each of the two games in which he was sacked more than two times, he threw 2 interceptions. His offensive line isn't anything to write home about either--they're 18th in adjusted sack rate, while the Vikings' defensive line is 10th.
  

• Historically, 3-3 teams have made the playoffs 40% of the time. 49% of 4-3 teams have made it, while only 20.2% of 3-4 teams have made it. Football Outsiders give the Vikings a 23.1% chance of making the playoffs, less than half of the chance they give the Packers and Bears, and a decrease of 2.1%. The Vikings may have won that game, but the way they performed did not say good things about their ability to win future games.

Solving Our Problems: Derek Anderson

"If anybody is interested in him, we'll just have to see how it goes," coach Romeo Crennel said. "Sometimes people can make you an offer and you can say, 'No, I think I'm going to stay with what I got.' Sometimes they make you an offer and you say, 'Oooohhh.' "

The Vikings have four major areas that quite obviously need to be improved this offseason if the Purple want to make the playoffs: quarterback, wide receiver, cornerback and defensive end. In the first of what will be a recurring series, I'm going to take a look at the Vikings various options at their positions of need, starting with quarterback. There are three obvious answers to the Vikings' quarterback needs, Tarvaris Jackson, Donovan McNabb and Derek Anderson and all have their merits. Today, we're going to start by examining a possible trade with the Cleveland Browns for Derek Anderson (you may have been able to guess this by reading the title of the post).

After replacing the ineffective (to put it politely) Charlie Frye during the Browns' first game, Anderson completed 13 of 28 passes (46%) for 184 yards, 1 touchdown and 1 interception. It was an inauspicious beginning, but it was enough to win him a start against the Bengals in Week 2, and he lead the Browns to a victory by throwing for 328 yards and 5 touchdowns, while completing 20 of 33 passes and only throwing one interception. It was not the start of a run of dominance (he followed it with 57.0 QB rating in Week 3 and a 59.0 QB Rating in Week 5), it was the start of a very good season, where he would complete 56.5% of his passes (28th overall) for 3,787 yards (9th overall), 29 touchdowns (5th overall) and finish with a quarterback rating of 82.5 (17th overall). Looking at the advanced stats, he finished with 65.3 DPAR (11th overall) and a 15.5% DVOA (15th overall), while gaining 6.80 yards per passing attempt (while I don't have individual ranking, Houston was 5th overall in team YPA with 6.81 YPA).

It was an impressive season from a quarterback in his third year, but there are still quite a few question marks about Derek Anderson's ability to be a franchise quarterback, something he would need to be if the Vikings traded for him, as the Browns would likely demand a 1st and a 3rd round pick (see the "Oooohhh" in the quote above), a very steep price. Then again, the last three players the Vikings picked in the third round were Marcus McCauley (2007), Dustin Fox (2005) and Darrion Scott (2004). They also have the Broncos third round pick from a trade last year and it's not like a franchise quarterback isn't worth the 17th overall pick.

But is Anderson a franchise quarterback? His youth, yards per attempt, DPAR, DVOA, touchdown passes and ability to avoid sacks (he was only sacked 14 times) say yes, but his inaccuracy says no. His completion percentage was lower than Tarvaris Jackson's and he threw 19 interceptions, which was only topped by Carson Palmer, Eli Manning and Jon Kitna, who all threw 20 picks. He also imploded against an awful Cincinnati defense (89.2 QB Rating against) in the Browns second to last game of the season, throwing four picks and costing them a playoff spot (so he'd fit in here). All of his good games (better than 85.0 QB Rating) came against teams that finished outside the top 20 in QB Rating against, and he only had a QB Rating of 80 or better against two teams in the top half of the league in QB Rating against (83.4 against 9th ranked Pittsburgh and 83.3 against the 16th ranked New York Jets).

Should the Vikings give the Browns a phone call about Derek Anderson? Definitely. Should they be willing to throw a 1st and a 3rd round draft pick at them to get him? Well, that depends a lot on their two other options, which I'll examine soon.