VPFL Week 3

81 Alamo City Spartans
49 Mounds View Meerkats

71 Judean Peoples Front
56 Winston Reverends

69 Masonville Marauders
69 Silver Spooners

66 Greenfield Grizzlies
57 Burns Redbeards

53 Valders Valkyries
51 Black Mouth Curs

I finally got Madden 2009 this week – Spacebunny actually went out and got it for me – and the first thing I did with the Vikings in franchise mode was to trade Jared Allen and Tarvaris Jackson to Cleveland for Derek Anderson. I would have taken Brady Quinn, but Anderson was available and despite his struggles this year, I think he’s a legitimate NFL starter, if not necessarily a reliable All-Pro. Seriously, though, what NFL coach thinks that you can expect to win on a regular basis without an above-average quarterback? Sure, the Ravens won a Super Bowl with Trent Dilfer, but they did it as a wild card and with one of the best defenses of all time. And Dilfer wasn’t even that awful; people tend to forget that he had a 77.5 rating the three years before he played for Baltimore and a 76.6 rating in the 11 games he played that year. In those four seasons, he threw 65 TD and 48 INT. That may not win you a whole lot of games, but it won’t lose you many either.

The Tarvaris Jackson Experiment’s career rating? 66.0 with 12 TD and 17 INT. Even a solid defense can’t overcome that.