FinSaint

Still, the time of possession was, at least in my opinion, the major difference in that game. Tampa Bay had the ball for 37:45 while Minnesota had it only for 22:15.

The overall offensive performance comes to a very different light when we keep that disparity in time of possession in mind and look at some of the offensive stats from that game.

Tampa Bay had 416 total net yards in the game while Minnesota had 369. Tampa Bay had the ball relatively 40% more in the game than Minnesota, but were only able to gain about 12% more yards with that advantage of snaps.

Freeman threw for only 11 more yards than Ponder - who was terrible in that game - on as many completions (19), so it's hard for me to say that the Bucs somehow dominated the Vikes' defense in that regard at least.

And the final nail in the coffin was the fact that Minnesota's offense turned the ball over thrice while Tampa Bay's offense didn't have any turnovers. Especially that late 2nd quarter fumble by AP was a really big moment in the game, because Minnesota was finally moving the ball really well. It looked like they were going to score before the halftime and gain some serious momentum going into the second half of the game, not to mention making it a 1 point Minnesota lead. Instead, AP fumbles the ball and Tampa Bay scores a TD making it a 13 point game at that point... and in the process inflates the whole dome.

And, again, Minnesota was able fix the run defense in the second half and pretty much eliminated Martin's great running game from the first half - Martin had twice the number of carries than AP, but still he only gained a meager 12 yards more. Also Minnesota's secondary was able to blanket Vincent Jackson the whole game through allowing him to only have 2 catches in the game.

I'm not saying the defense had an excellent outing on Thursday, but they certainly weren't the reason why the Vikes lost that game, and neither would I call their performance bad when we consider all the facts.

"I'm not bashing people, I'm bashing their opinions because in my opinion their opinion is wrong" - Danno