Jeff Backus, Jared Allen, and Dirty Cheating Vikings

PaulieP (Scottsdale): Colts first time here, do you believe the allegations about pumping in crowd noise? Have you heard the "skip"?

Jeremy Green: (11:10 AM ET ) I don't doubt it. The Vikings used to do it in the 90's when they had very good foootball teams.

Jeremy Green is the son of former Vikings coach Dennis Green. In 2007, after the Colts' CD of crowd noise audibly skipped during a Pats game, the younger Green admitted in an ESPN chat that the Vikings used fake crowd noise, too. Both teams play in domed stadiums, play admittedly loud music, and are famous for unfailingly-loud crowds—but both teams staunchly deny they artificially boost the crowd noise.

CBS ultimately took the fall for the Colts incident, claiming their audio may have fed back somehow; the NFL scrubbed all recordings of the event from the Internet. Green later said it was just, like, his opinion man—one informed only by half his lifetime spent going to Vikings games during his father’s tenure as head coach. As Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk said at the time:

Please.

The initial comments from Jeremy Green sure don't read like opinion, and Green's relationship with the head coach at the time puts him in a great situation to know the facts.

The mere fact that Green would try to backpedal in such lame fashion tells us all we need to know.

Then again, Green is now doing hard time for possession of drugs and child pornography, so his character isn’t unimpeachable.

The Lions offensive line had kept Matthew Stafford clean through the first two weeks, allowing zero sacks by either the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Kansas City Chiefs. The Bucs and Chiefs have combined for nine sacks across the other four games they’ve played, yet neither bagged Stafford once. Through two weeks, the Lions had the No. 1 Pro Football Focus-graded pass-blocking line in football.

Yet, the line was in disarray against Minnesota: Jeff Backus had one of the worst games of his career, and earned the worst PFF grade (–7.6) they’ve ever assigned him. Backus was flagged for four penalties, including consecutive false starts on a critical fourth-quarter drive. He also got the blame for two sacks and three QB pressures.

Gosder Cherilus was benched after allowing a sack and a pressure in just the first six snaps. Replacement Corey Hilliard didn’t fare much better: he allowed a sack, two hits, and a pressure. Rob Sims also allowed a sack and three pressures; his –4.9 PFF grade was his second-worst-ever (besides the 2008 season opener, when he played through a torn pectoral muscle). Oddly, the two whipping boys of the Lions line—Dom Raiola and Stephen Peterman—had the days’ best grades at –1.1 and +1.1, respectively. Raiola’s pass blocking grade by itself was positive (+0.3)

What happened here? Is Jared Allen that much better than Tamba Hali? Is Kevin Williams that much better than Gerald McCoy? Or might it have something to do with the “crowd” being so loud that Matthew Stafford had both hands pressed over both earholes in the second quarter, trying desperately to hear the radio embedded in his helmet?

Make no mistake: crowd noise is, will, should be a factor in NFL games. During the Kansas City game, when we Lions fans cheered loud enough to draw a timeout or a false start, it was a great feeling knowing we had given our team an advantage. Seahawks fans strongly believe they are “The 12th Man.”

That’s why the Lions veteran line, coached by an experienced coordinator like Scott Linehan, should have been better prepared to deal with the notorious Mall of America noise. The Lions didn’t use max protect against Minnesota’s pass rush, preferring to throw it over the Vikings heads.

Unfortunately, Lions receivers didn’t get open consistently enough to make that approach effective. Nate Burleson, who usually thrives in space underneath, was nearly invisible. It wasn't until Matthew Stafford leaned on Brandon Pettigrew and Titus Young in the second half that the Lions started moving the chains.

Trusting the offensive line to slow Jared Allen and company long enough for Stafford to make the Vikings pay was a gamble. Noise or no, the line clearly didn’t respond the way Lions coaches had hoped. After the game, head coach Jim Schwartz said, “We need to be more effective at [right tackle]. I will just leave it at that.” On Backus, Schwartz’s opinion was similar: “He gets a lot of attention because he's a left tackle. Just in general terms, Jeff can play better and he will play better.”

Ultimately, pointing fingers at Minnesota’s illegal advantage—real or perceived—is folly. Good teams overcome disadvantages like that; they persevere and perforam. No matter what you think of the Vikings’ tactics, Jeff Backus and the offensive line was good enough to pass what might be their toughest test all year: Jared Allen and the Vikings line in one of the toughest road environments in football.

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Karmelowiczed onions . . . er, Jareds

EDIT: folks, I'm sorry, but blogger keeps mysteriously eating the links.  They are:

killer article: http://www.mlive.com/lions/index.ssf/2009/02/jared_allen_raves_about_lions.html

Star-Tribune article: http://blogs.startribune.com/vikingsblog/?p=2474

Killer Kowalski at mlive.com pointed out a little tidbit in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. It's a quick little interview/article with Jared Allen, talking about his relationship with the Lions' new defensive line coach, Bob Karmelowicz. Go ahead and check it out; I'll be right here.

Now, I should not have to remind anyone reading this that Jared Allen had an unbelievable 2008: he racked up 14.5 sacks and 54 tackles, and was the lightning rod atop a mountainous Vikings defense. It used to be that you could simply pass over the Williams Wall, but suddenly that wasn't the case. Allen singlehandedly shrunk the field for opposing offenses with his speed, strength, and tenacity.

Yet, 2008 was a tipping point for Jared Allen. His early career had been an almost unbroken string of success; as an up-and-comer for Kansas City, Allen flashed incredible potential and production.  In 2004, his rookie year, he garnered nine sacks in just 10 starts.  His second season, that sack count literally and figuratively "went up to 11" (apologies to Spinal Tap).  This trend culminated with a Pro Bowl season in 2007, where he had 15.5 sacks in just 14 games.  Allen had established himself as one of the premier pass rushers in the game, just as his rookie contract was expiring.  Still, a cloud hung over him: three DUI arrests (one in 2002 and two in 2006) had placed him in deep trouble.  Remember the "14 games" part of that "Pro Bowl season"?  Allen was under the NFL's equivalent of double-secret probation: the third stage of the Substance Abuse Program.  He'd appealed his standard four-game suspension down to two games in 2007.  However, one more incident within two years of his last arrest (September 2006), and he could be suspended for a whole season, and be one more false move away from lifetime banishment.  However, if he managed keep his nose clean until that two-year period was up, his slate would be wiped clean.  The Chiefs decided they couldn't roll the dice on that much guaranteed money for that much risk.  They franchise-tagged Allen, and traded him to the Vikes for a first, two thirds, and a swap of sixth-round picks.  Moreover, Allen got an enormous contract extension at the consummation of the trade: six years and seventy-two million dollars.  The Vikings were paying him an awful lot of money to ensure that people would continue to call them "Super Bowl favorites", no matter how many years in a row they play .500 ball.

Yet, despite (or perhaps because of) all the pressure, Allen had a tough time getting going. After five games, Allen had just two sacks--and for a guy used to more than a sack per game, that wasn't cutting it.  He called up his former position coach, Bob Karmelowicz.  It's tough to tell exactly what happened here--Karmelowicz was hired by then-new Texans head coach, Gary Kubiak, to enthusiastic response.  After one season as the defensive line coach, Karmelowicz was reassigned to "Special Assistant to the Head Coach".  Whether this was a promotion, or a demotion, I can't divine.  Either way, Allen paid out-of-pocket to fly Karmelowicz up to Minnesota every Tuesday for one-on-one coaching. I have amusing mental pictures of Allen's mom trucking him around in a minivan, his head bent up against the ceiling. "Goodbye dear; have fun at pass rushing today! Make sure you work hard and listen to your teacher!" It's eyebrow-raising, to be sure: a professional football player paying to be coached, when the team is both paying him millions to play, and paying other coaches millions to coach him. Yet, Karmelowicz made an instant improvement in Allen's game: Allen recorded 12.5 sacks in the last eleven games, terrorizing other teams on his way to his second straight Pro Bowl and the NFC North crown.  The whole story is really unusual; nfl.com's Adam Schefter wrote about it in a disturbingly-similar-to-the-Star-Ledger-piece blog entry back in December.

Karmelowicz, at first, seemed like one of the several "buddy hires" on the Lions' roster: Gunther's old DL coach from the "glory days" in Kansas City, who happened to not have anything better to do.  Interestingly, however, Karmelowicz has also coached at LSU and Arizona State, which links him to multiple members of the offensive staff as well.  It seems as though he'll be a really natural fit in terms of the culture Schwartz & Co. are trying to build.  Moreover, the Jared Allen story speaks volumes about what Karmelowicz can do as a teacher, motivator, and  defensive line coach.  I cannot wait to see what this guy does with White and Avril, let alone any linemen we choose to draft.

This is one of the things that's hard to see from our perspective, a reporter and an Internet away from anyone who really knows anything about these guys.  We see two or three sentences about an assistant coach guy and go, "Oh, right, he worked with so-and-so back in the day.  *sigh*  I wanted someone good."  The reality is, we know effectively nothing about these guys except what we see on the field on Sundays.  And what this guy puts on the field on Sundays is usually great.

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