Old NFL quarterbacks never fade away, apparently – they just stick around to critique today’s quarterbacks.
In that spirit, we offer Fran Tarkenton’s take on the Vikings QB situation in his weekly Pioneer Press column:
“Now it’s at the point that Vikings fans have to look to Freeman to be the savior. But after watching him start for four years in Tampa, I think that if we need Freeman to be the savior, then we’re all going to hell.”
Wow! Hey, Sir Francis, don’t hold back! tell us how you really feel!
He also has this to say about the current state of the team: “Sunday had to be one of the lowest points I can think of for the Vikings, and I was there from Game No. 1 in 1961.”
This might be hard for current-day Viking fans to fathom, but there was a time when the quarterback was the most stable position on the team, with Tarkenton’s two long tenures at the helm of the team bookending a stint from Joe Kapp.
As Tarkenton sees it, the team hasn’t had a quarterback of the future on the field in quite some time. “Too many Band-Aids over the years,” writes The Scrambler.
Speaking of Kapp, he has his own questions about what the heck is going on in VikingLand.
“Are they focused?” he wonders outloud to Charley Walters of the Pioneer Press. “Can the effort be questioned?”
Kapp, unlike his counterpart Tarkenton, doesn’t seem to be bothered by the revolving carousel of quarterbacks.
“It’s a coaching challenge,” says Kapp, who also coached the Cal Bears. “You keep looking until you find the right guy. But hell, if nobody’s proving it, then alternate them.”
Final assessment from Tarkenton about the Viking hopes for Freeman: “[H]ope is not a strategy, and the odds are against him. We have seen enough these past years to know he is probably not the long-term answer, either.”
