finintheburgh said:
now my question is why do you think that he can become the long term answer.it seems that you didnt think to highly of him before.you pointed out many probs with him,so why change your mind?
My mind has not changed...at all. I've appreciated how good of a player Daunte Culpepper is probably since about 2003. He had some challenging years in 2001 and 2002 as the wheels began to really fall off the Vikings organization. 2001 was the worst year really.
What I was pointing out in that thread is the bifurcation that happens between perception and reality when a certain set of conditions present themselves. That's why I made the statement "even if it isn't true, that's the way it is going to look"
I was pointing out everything that really was the truth. There was and indeed still is the possibility that Daunte cannot achieve the success he enjoyed in 2003 & 2004 without having a good coordinator with a style that suits him, and a good receiver.
He doesn't have that coordinator here in Miami right now...or at least not yet. Scott Linehan really did a bit of a 180 in the second half of 2005 and I'm not going to discount the possibility that Mularkey does the same.
Anyway what I was predicting would happen in Minnesota is exactly what ended up happening. The perception became reality for them, to the point where Daunte's trade value went from sky high in 2004, to a 2nd rounder in 2005. The perception would be based on the coincidental correlations between the Minnesota offense and Randy Moss.
Well one thing I totally forgot before that was that Minnesota was already a good offense when Randy Moss got there. Denny Green usually led a good offense while there. They were #4 in offense in 1995, #11 in 1997, #7 in 1994, and #4 in 1992...all under Denny Green.
But if I could forget that, so too could many other people and that showed when everyone conveniently attributed all of Minnesota's offensive success to Randy Moss and then conveniently overlooked how Randy has hardly helped turn Oakland into an offensive juggernaut.
Also a thing I was inaccurate on was Daunte's contract. He didn't get new money added to it at all. They converted some of the roster and salary into guaranteed then promised that they'd review it again after the 2005 season. I was unaware of that..
That's what I was getting at...perception vs. reality. Daunte was NOT playing well in 2005...and was certainly not playing up to his salary. There were a myriad of reasons and I even said what it was...it was the offense. Probably a lot more about Scott being gone and about the horrible OL, ground game and WRs than about Randy Moss in particular not being there.
I think what we had here in Miami is a lot of perception vs. reality too. When did Daunte lose games? Right at the beginning of the season, when everyone was STILL under the impression that we were going to be a good team this year.
That made those losses from Daunte all the more unforgivable.
Once it became clear that we're not a good team from head to toe, Joey's performances have been much more forgivable, and indeed many people out there keep trying to pretend he's looked better than Daunte when the stark reality is that he has not.
The misnomer is that I'm excusing everything Daunte did while failing to excuse everything Joey did. This is just not the truth. I don't excuse anything either of them has done. However, the simple fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people out there that are giving Daunte less credit than he deserves, and giving Joey more credit than he deserves.
I made it clear that before this game I gave Joey a C grade for the year and Daunte also got a C. I think my expectation was that Daunte would have given me about a B grade in his four games, while I've never expected Joey to give me better than a C on anything, so if anything I'm much more disappointed in Daunte per se than Joey...because Joey has turned out to be just what I thought while Daunte turned out to be a little ways away from achieving what I thought he'd achieve.
