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It’s not just coming from Tarvaris Jackson, who has risen from the depths of an embarrassing benching to quarterbacking the Vikings to two straight wins.
It’s not just from his teammates, who caught four touchdown passes from him in a 35-14 dismantling of Arizona last weekend that made Jackson the most unlikely NFC Offensive Player of the Week this season.
Perhaps most importantly, it’s coming from Jackson’s coaches, whose conservative game plans in the first two games indicated they had lost all faith in their young quarterback’s ability to help them win games.
“I guess the better you play, the more they call,” said Jackson, who was 11-for-17 for 163 yards and the career-high four scores last week. “The more comfortable they are with you, the more they trust you. We just got to keep that going and make sure I’m ready.”
The 25-year-old’s first foray into the starting role this season was a mess. Despite the game plan calling for short, manageable passes to supplement Minnesota’s superb running game, Jackson completed only 51 percent of his throws for 308 yards, one touchdown and one interception in two games.
The biggest stat? The Vikings were 0-2.
Then came the quick hook, with coach Brad Childress going to the 37-year-old Gus Frerotte because he wanted to see more aggressiveness at the position.
“It’s kind of like looking in your kids’ eyes and saying one (thing) and feeling another,” the coach said at the time.
Frerotte filled in admirably, leading the Vikings to a 7-3 record going into a game at Detroit two weeks ago. The veteran went down with a lower back injury late in the first half of that game, thrusting Jackson back into a huddle he wasn’t sure he would ever see again.
All Jackson has done in just over six quarters of work since is go 19-for-27 (70 percent) for 268 yards with five touchdowns and no interceptions in two victories. That put Minnesota (9-5) on the brink of its first division title since 2000.
The performances have been enough to earn him another start today against Atlanta.
“With what I’ve been through the whole season, it shows that staying persistent and working hard pays off,” Jackson said. “It was good to go out there and get the win. All the other stuff was a bonus. Me leading my team to a win was the ultimate.”
Now, when Childress looks at the player he traded up to draft three years ago to one day be the franchise quarterback, he gets an entirely different vibe.
“I just think I see a brighter-eyed, more well-rounded guy for whatever reason,” Childress said. “Whether it’s the time; whether it’s sitting back and watching; whether it’s a set of events that he didn’t care for. But obviously, when you get a second chance you want to make the most of it and he’s done a great job with that.”
While Childress said the coaches have not opened the playbook anymore for Jackson in his second stint as the starter this season, there is evidence to suggest they have more faith in him now.
Midway through the third quarter on Sunday against the Cardinals, the Vikings faced a third-and-1 from the Arizona 40.
In Childress’s tenure as Vikings coach — and even more so in Jackson’s brief history under center for the purple — that has traditionally been a running down, with a reliance on Minnesota’s powerful ground game to keep the chains moving.
That was even the case in similar situations earlier in the game. Five times the Vikings faced a third-and-3 or shorter, and all five were called runs.
This time, however, Jackson took the snap, rolled quickly to his right and fired a perfect strike to Bobby Wade for an 8-yard gain and a first down. It extended a drive that ultimately led to a field goal.
“That’s, I think, the biggest compliment to him,” offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell said after Jackson completed 8 of 10 passes for 105 yards and a touchdown to rally the Vikings over the Lions two weeks ago. “For you to say, ‘Tarvaris, all of this stuff in here, I feel confident that you can do it.’”
When Jackson went to the bench in September, Childress said definitively that the only way Frerotte would lose his job was due to injury. Though Frerotte infused the team with some toughness and a more aggressive mind-set, he also is third in the NFL with 15 interceptions despite playing in only 10½ games.
Now that the old man’s back has improved enough for him to practice, and Jackson is displaying a grasp of the position he never has before, it may force Childress to change his mind.
“I have two good quarterbacks,” Childress said when asked if Frerotte would get his starting job back when he is healthy. “I just want to see how he comes out here. “That’s a good problem to have right now.”
And a new problem at that.
