The Minnesota Vikings, despite their respectable improvement in performance over last year, has had a constantly rotating corps of new starters come in and play for them despite what was once the best injury-avoidance and conditioning unit in the NFL. But instead of simply listing the list of starters, it is perhaps more striking to combine them in one easy-to-explain but annoying-t0-have-to-digest image. Or several, rather. The offense, followed by the defense:
The defense has had to worry about a lot less than the offense in terms of having to replace players. In some sense, this impresses upon us the difficulty that NFL teams go through every year, but in other ways it feels like a representation of the luck the Vikings have had overall—it certainly seems like a more extensive list than a similar list for another randomly chosen team.
On the other hand, it isn’t unique. The Browns have been rotating through running backs as they figure out their center and quarterback situation, while the New England offensive line was constantly rotating while they were waiting Rob Gronkowski’s return. The Vikings seem to be struck with unusually bad luck, head coach Mike Zimmer deserves particular leeway (which he has received), but we shouldn’t assume a team stays 100% healthy or available throughout the year.
So, that’s one picture of the season.
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Yeah but have they really had that many more injuries than any other NFL team? Like the Cardinals?
Like I said in the piece, I don't know. But it does provide a picture of the season.
The biggest difference between the Vikings & Cardinals? They have depth in their roster,we do not.
Fantastic visual representation. I have a question re: AD's appeal and I didn't want to further clutter that articles comment section. To your knowledge, can the Vikings release him before free agency commences? Because if they have to hold on to him through April 15 that just fucks with free agency and punishes the Vikings.
They can release him whenever they want, yes. They have to wait for the season to finish in order to trade him, but releasing him is easy (the dead money gets incurred this year, though, and if they don't have the space it may hurt them)
Strictly from visual perspective, this is a very bad graph that takes a lot of unnecessary work to figure out what it tries to say.
How would you improve it? I'm not an infographics guy and came up with this late last night and whipped it up quickly.
I actually liked this graph.I thought it illustrated what it was meant to,but that's just me :)