David Shama's Minnesota Sports Headliners

NFL Expert Talks Potential Vikes’ Trade

Posted on October 16, 2022October 20, 2022 by David Shama

The NFL trade deadline is November 1 and the Vikings, like all teams, have needs. An NFL authority with decades of experience in the pro game thinks the Vikings are okay offensively but could use help with an edge rusher and in the defensive backfield.

However, because of salary cap limitations and the annual track record of minimal trades during the season he isn’t optimistic Minnesota will acquire an impact player during the days ahead. “…I think it’s highly unlikely they’re able to find anybody, but I am sure they’ll take a shot at it,” he told Sports Headliners while asking to speak anonymously.

The Vikings apparently demonstrated cap sensitivity before the season when they cut defensive end Armon Watts. Their estimated cap space now is $1,400,728 per Spotrac.com. “Armon is a good player,” the authority said. “He was a starter and they essentially cut him to save like a million bucks on the cap, which I am not sure was a great move for them.”

Bill Barnwell from ESPN suggested recently the Vikings might trade cornerback Kris Boyd and a sixth- round draft choice to the Chargers for a quality corner in Michael Davis who makes a base salary of $7 million. Boyd has a base salary of $965,000 and plays sparingly. Davis isn’t playing much either because of the Chargers’ depth at cornerback. To make the payroll numbers work Los Angeles would have to pay part of Davis’ money for a half season with the Vikings (who presumably would toss in a future draft choice in the trade).

Davis would be a nice upgrade as a corner slot over the Vikings’ Chandon Sullivan. “I am not big on Chandon Sullivan,” the Sports Headliners source said.

Even more prominent names than Davis draw speculation as players who could soon be traded to other teams. Edge rusher standout Robert Quinn of the Bears makes a base salary of $12.8 million, draws trade speculation and could certainly help the Vikings. “They’re not going to get one of those big name guys,” the source said. “They don’t have enough cap room to do it.”

But he doesn’t rule out a “fringe player” being acquired via trade or waivers to help a Vikings team that has been surprisingly successful. He thought before the season Minnesota looked like a 10-win club. If the Vikings win against the Dolphins today they go to 5-1 and stay in first place in the NFC North.

Then with 11 games remaining, the Vikings need to win seven times for a final record of 12-5 after being 8-9 last season. What’s the difference?

“I think basically they’re winning the close games that they lost last year,” the authority said. “They’re 3-0 in one- score games after going 6-8 in one-score games last year. That’s the turnaround, whether that’s (coming from) coaching or (QB Kirk) Cousins being more clutch, or whatever the case maybe.

“I think the defense is marginally better than it was last year just because they’ve got (Danielle) Hunter and Za’Darius Smith (pass rushers). But the defense isn’t playing lights out. I think the offense is being clutch at the right times in these games and that’s what’s making the difference so far.”

The source also said the players seem to like rookie head coach Kevin O’Connell and play with effort for him. His schemes and strategies have been successful. “So, yeah, I think…for a first year coach, he is doing really well.”

Worth Noting

If it comes down to NIL money, TCU may well be the college choice for highly sought-after Riverside, California basketball center Dennis Evans who is also considering the Gophers and is expected to announce his decision Monday. TCU NIL collectives started way ahead of Minnesota’s Dinkytown Athletes that launched in late September.

It’s an intriguing matchup Monday night at Xcel Energy Center when the Wild play the defending Stanley Cup champion Avalanche. The 0-2 Wild has budding superstar Kirill Kaprizov, and impressive team depth (except at goalie), but will Minnesota be able to overcome during the season and playoffs the star power on the 1-1 Colorado roster?

When NHL season opening rosters were announced last week the Gophers had 18 alums including defenseman Alex Goligoski with the Wild. The United States Hockey League (USHL), with commissioner Bill Robertson based in the Twin Cities, had 193 alumni on NHL rosters, including 172 active players and 21 that were listed as injured or non-rostered.

Eric Curry, the Minnesota-based veteran college basketball referee, will again work Big Ten, Pac-12 and Mountain West games in 2022-2023. Although it won’t be the majority of his assignments, Curry said he will work more Big Ten games than ever.

Major League Baseball is finally serious about reducing the length of its games and the pace of play. Starting next year pitchers will have up to 15 seconds between pitches when the bases are empty and up to 20 seconds between pitches with at least one runner on base.

Former MLB umpire and St. Paul native Tim Tschida is enthused. “I think it’s going to make a huge difference,” he told Sports Headliners. “It will kind of be subtle, but it will make the product that much better to watch.”

In the minor leagues last year a pitch clock was used with success, shortening games by 26 minutes and giving promise big league games will last less than three hours. Tschida, who retired 10 years ago at age 52, could tell this year how pitchers called up from the minors worked at a quicker pace. He said in the past pace of play and a game’s lack of competitiveness could discourage fans from watching beyond the fifth inning.

Tschida is also upbeat about the change for next year mandating two fielders must be on each side of second base. Also part of the restriction on shifts and positioning is all four infielders must have both feet within the outer boundary of the infield when the pitcher is on the rubber.

The move will put more offense into games and create additional action for fans. “They (MLB) need more base hits,” Tschida said. “They need more advancing the runner, hitting behind the runner. A little bit more ‘small ball’ than what we see (with) guys going up there and swinging for the fence and trying to end the game all the time.”

The new positioning mandate will help pull hitters like the Twins’ Max Kepler to find more openings on the field. Frustrations of hitting the ball sharply into a shifted defense are sure to dissipate for hitters like Kepler.

What did Tschida think of the Twins’ September collapse in the Central Division race? He said injuries left the Twins’ batting lineup with multiple players who aren’t big league hitters. “You’re scoring three runs a game, that’s pretty tough.”

State icon Lindsay Whalen, whose Gophers open their season at home November 7 against Western Illinois, is coaching for job security. After four seasons as Minnesota’s head women’s coach her Big Ten record is 28-44 and she has a contract that only goes through the 2024-2025 season.

Recognition overdue: It was 20 years ago last spring the University of Minnesota men’s golf team won it’s first-ever NCAA championship. No northern school has won since and before the Gophers’ remarkable run, Ohio State in 1979 was the last Big Ten team to win the national title.

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Bret Bielema Bedevils Golden Gophers

Posted on October 11, 2022October 11, 2022 by David Shama

Bret Bielema has a history with University of Minnesota football and it’s an unhappy one for Golden Gophers fans. Let’s put it this way: Bielema doesn’t receive many greeting cards with Minnesota postmarks on the envelopes.

As a head coach Bielema is 8-0 against the Gophers and he hopes to make it 9-0 Saturday in Champaign where his Big Ten West Division leading Fighting Illini are a 3.5 point underdog. While leading Wisconsin from 2006-2012, the Badgers were 7-0 against Minnesota. Then last season, Bielema’s first as Illinois head coach, he surprised a heavily favored Gopher team with a 14-6 upset in Minneapolis.

Gopher fans who harbor hard feelings can tell you the circumstances and score of the 2010 game in Madison. Deep in the fourth quarter the Badgers scored a touchdown to go ahead 41-16. With a 25-point lead, Bielema opted for an unsuccessful two-point conversion try that raised the eyebrows of the college football world. Gophers head coach Tim Brewster was angered by the strategy not to kick the extra point, and Minnesota fans found another reason to resent the Badgers, piling on the hurt of losing every year to their border rival to the east.

Bielema left the Badgers after the 2012 season to take the head coaching job at Arkansas. For whatever reasons, things didn’t work out in Fayetteville and Bielema was fired with a 29-34 record in five seasons. After a stint in the NFL, Illinois jumped on the opportunity to hire him after firing Lovie Smith who recruited successfully but didn’t see his teams live up to expectations.

Last year the Illini finished 5-7 but now are 5-1 and ranked No. 24 in the Associated Press poll of top 25 teams. The success doesn’t surprise Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck.

“Obviously, he’s one of the best college coaches—maybe of all time. You can start to see that blueprint starting to take shape over there at Illinois. I’ve got a lot of respect for what they do and who they are, especially him as a person and as a coach.”

Fleck, speaking at his weekly news conference Monday, said the Illini are “incredibly physical” and there is a lot of athleticism on the roster. “They want to just beat you up and they’ve done that to a lot of people this year. They’re a really good football team.”

The Illini hold Big Ten wins over Iowa and Wisconsin, with a three-point loss at Indiana. Bielema’s team has scored 24 points or more in four games. No longer is Bielema just relying on a power-run game that had much to do with his success at Wisconsin including three Big Ten titles. Now his teams may show formations with five wide outs or three tight ends.

Defense is really where the Illini show their prowess. Illinois has given up only three touchdowns and ranks third in the country in yards yielded per game, 227.8. Minnesota is No. 1 giving up 222 yards per game. The Gophers have allowed five touchdowns.

The Gophers, 4-1 overall and 1-1 in the Big Ten, likely need to win Saturday to have some control in contending for the program’s first-ever West Division championship. Going to No. 10 ranked Penn State with a 1-2 conference record a week from Saturday wouldn’t be a good position for the boys from Dinkytown. Two of those losses would be to division foes, while the Illini’s only conference loss came out of the division against Indiana.

Nebraska and Purdue are tied with Illinois for the division lead with 2-1 records. Purdue holds a win over the Gophers and its only league loss was to Penn State from the East Division. Nebraska’s loss came to West Division rival Northwestern.

Minnesota still has seven conference games to play, but Saturday has a must-win feel to it. Success could well be determined by players who have been injured and whether they will play Saturday. lllinois starting quarterback Tommy DeVito and playmaking wide receiver Isaiah Williams were injured in Saturday’s 9-6 win over Iowa. Key defensive players are dealing with injuries, too.

Who all will play for the Illini probably won’t be known until Saturday morning. The Gophers will have All-American tailback Mo Ibrahim returning from his ankle injury sustained September 24 at Michigan State. He didn’t play in Minnesota’s offensive malaise against Purdue, when the Gophers lost 20-10. “He is the straw that stirs the drink here,” said Ryan Burns, the Gopher authority from GopherIllustrated.

Ibrahim’s replacements against Purdue, Trey Potts and Bryce Williams, were ineffective in a game where the offense was sluggish, the defense unable to make enough big stops and good fortune didn’t seem to favor maroon and gold.

Burns said Potts and Williams didn’t break a tackle in 20 combined carries. “Trey and Bryce don’t play well. Do I expect that to happen again? No, I expect them to be able to break a tackle. It was just a strange, strange week against Purdue.”

Burns has a prediction about Saturday’s game while making the assumption key injured players will play. “Illinois’ defense is tremendous, and their offense is a work in progress, but they have a really talented running back too in Chase Brown who…leads all of college football in rushing. So it’s going to be who can get to 17 points first because whichever one does, I think they’re going to win.”

When Bielema coached at Wisconsin he said on a Big Ten basketball telecast he considered Minneapolis part of the Badgers’ recruiting territory. Over the years it’s been a sore point with Gophers fans to see the parade of Minnesota preps in football and basketball play for the Badgers. When Bielema was at Arkansas he reached into Chanhassen and made center Frank Ragnow a Razorback. Ragnow became an All-American and was a 2018 first round pick of the NFL Lions.

Illini offensive line coach Bart Miller, who held the same title in 2016 under then Minnesota head coach Tracy Claeys, is recruiting the Gopher state for Bielema. The Illini have made offers to Minnesotans including Osseo offensive lineman Jerome Williams who has verbally committed to the Gophers.

If the Gophers can keep the Illini shut out in recruiting here and deliver a win Saturday, Minnesota fans may mellow a bit about Bielema who not only was a kingpin at Wisconsin but played and coached at Iowa, that other heated border rival.

Maybe mellow (a bit).

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Vikings Great, Until They Are not

Posted on October 9, 2022October 9, 2022 by David Shama

Who are these Minnesota Vikings?

They looked like the 2009 version of the Purple in the first half today, making almost all the right moves while taking a 21-3 lead over the then hapless Bears from Chicago. But the now 2-3 Bears made adjustments after trailing 21-10 at halftime and forced a close game before the Vikings won 29-22 at U.S. Bank Stadium.

These Bears aren’t the legendary “Monsters of the Midway.” In fact they probably are the worst team Minnesota has played this season while rolling to a 4-1 record and sole possession of first place tonight in the NFC North.

Living up to their reputation, the Bears started their initial possession in the first quarter with a delay of game. Hard to duplicate that even in Pop Warner ball. But give them credit for rallying in the second half before screwing up again. Trailing 29-22, Bears receiver Ihmir Smith-Marsette declined to duck out of bounds in the closing moments of the fourth quarter and stop the clock. Much criticized Minnesota cornerback Cam Dantzler made the play of his young career by stripping Marsette of the football and ending Chicago’s hopes.

This was supposed to be a verdict day on how good the Vikings are. They started by scoring a knockout. Quarterback Kirk Cousins set a franchise record by completing 17 consecutive passes in the first half. Wide Receiver Justin Jefferson had 10 catches for 138 yards. Dalvin Cook ran for two scores.

The third touchdown of the first half came on a flip pass from Cousins of one-yard to reserve receiver Jalen Reagor. The score was set up on a drive that included Jefferson throwing across the field to Dalvin Cook on a 23-yard reception.

The creativity of the first half had a Vikings historian wondering how soon it will be before head coach and play caller Kevin O’Connell will be anointed the franchise’s greatest offensive mastermind ever. It was O’Connell, a week after his punter completed a pass for a first down, that devised schemes allowing Jefferson room to catch passes despite being one of the NFL’s most targeted playmakers.

The unflappable new Vikings coach is Mr. Popular in Purple Nation. He stands in contrast to his predecessor, Mike Zimmer, who often looked dour and had a disconnect with Cousins. Now Cousins seems reborn under the new administration. He even used his legs to run for the winning touchdown today before throwing to Jefferson for a two-point conversion making the score 29-22. Often targeted by critics for not delivering enough results, he has quarterbacked Minnesota to three consecutive wins and fourth quarter comebacks in two of the last three games.

The Vikings are following the NFL trend of playing games not decided until the closing minutes. Their success has been a surprise, partially because the schedule hasn’t been overly imposing. They caught Aaron Rodgers with a new band of receivers in their opening game and won. Across the pond in London last week, the Saints were playing without their top quarterback and running back, factors helping Minnesota to another win.

More good fortune may await. Next Sunday the Vikings play the Dolphins who because of injuries were down to their third string quarterback today. Yes, the Vikings may not emerge as a great team this fall, but so far they seem to be in the right place at the right time. Just ask Marsette, the former Viking, who turned his first reception with the Bears into a costly boo-boo.

Worth Noting

St. Paul native and Cretin-Derham Hall alum Patrick Markley takes over as North Oaks Golf Club general manager October 17. He has worked at various private golf clubs accros the country and most recently was head professional at Barton Hills Country Club in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Luis Arraez had a $2,125,000 one-year deal to play for the Twins this season. The 2022 American League batting champ was paid less in base salary than 15 other rostered players including Miguel Sano at $9,250,000 and Emilio Pagan, $2,300,000, per Spotrac.com.

With promising young outfield talent like Forest Lake’s Matt Wallner, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Twins move on in the offseason from veteran right fielder Max Kepler who made $6,750,000, according to Spotrac. Wallner, 24, is the Twins Minor League Player of the Year, after hitting 277 with 27 home runs and an OPS of .953.

Other developments in the offseason could be a new pitching coach (with interim Pete Maki staying with the organization) and changes in strength and conditioning personnel after an injury-riddled season.

The Twins finished the season with a 78-84 record. The prediction here last summer was 76-86.

Home attendance was under 2 million for the third time in the last four seasons (dating back to 2018 and not including the pandemic year of 2020). Minnesota finished No. 9 among AL franchises with Target Field attendance of 1,801,128.

Forbes reported MLB attendance was down almost 6 percent from the 2019 season prior to the pandemic. With an exciting team that won the Central Division title the Twins drew 2,294,152 fans at home.

University of Minnesota alum and Redwood Falls native Craig Thompson, who has been head of the Mountain West Conference for nearly 24 years, will resign as commissioner effective December 31.

Word is out Colorado State, one of that league’s more competitive teams, will come to Minneapolis October 22 for a private scrimmage against Ben Johnson’s Gophers in Williams Arena. Minnesota native Niko Medved, a former Gopher student-manager under Clem Haskins, has won 20 games or more the last three seasons at Colorado State.

Former Gophers guard Jamal Mashburn Jr., playing for ex-Minnesota coach Richard Pitino at New Mexico, will be a favorite to be first team all-Mountain West next winter. He was a third teamer last season.

Lindy’s college basketball magazine predicts New Mexico will have a so-so season but picks Long Beach State, led by former Gopher coach Dan Monson, will win the Big West Conference. Monson has been coaching at Long Beach since he was fired by the Gophers during the 2006-2007 season. His record with the Beach is 237-242.

When UCLA joins the Big Ten in 2024, the Bruins will bring with them 11 national championships in men’s basketball. Big Ten teams collectively have won 10.

St. Thomas, in its second season of Division I football, is tied with Valparaiso for first place at 2-0 in the Pioneer League. The Tommies defeated Davidson 27-16 yesterday.

Mark Haugejorde, the project manager of Tepetonka, is the latest guest on “Behind the Game.” He talks with co-hosts Patrick Klinger and Bill Robertson about the new high-end golf club being built near New London- Spicer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU9dA9T1rxI

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