Minnesota Vikings QB coach Craig Johnson believes Christian Ponder light years better from last season
Without a complete offseason under his belt last year due to the National Football League (NFL) lockout Minnesota Vikings, quarterback, Christian Ponder struggled greatly to assert himself.
Starting off the season well, Ponder regressed in his production as the season wore on and struggled to read opposition defences correctly.
The Vikings offence remained poor and the team ended up with a 3-13 regular season record.
This year though things are different as Ponder is getting the opportunity to train and work on his game with Vikings quarterbacks coach, Craig Johnson.
Johnson speaking in an interview with ESPN recently said that Ponder has improved considerably in the offseason and seems “light years” ahead from where he was in 2011.
He said:
"I think there's no question, he's come light years. Obviously getting a chance to work out a lot of the kinks, a lot of the problems that you find out as a young player, that's when you get a chance to work on them is usually in the first offseason afterwards.
Having been through this with a couple of other quarterbacks, I kind of know how it goes.”
Ponder was thrust into the team before he was ready last year as the Vikings released their veteran quarterback, Donovan McNabb.
The 12-pick in last year’s drafts, Ponder ended up with 158 completions from 291 attempts as he passed for 1,853 yards and 13 touchdowns.
Ponder was intercepted 13 times in addition to fumbling the ball five times.
This year though the 24-year-old is working hard on improving his game and Johnson wants Ponder to continue to improve.
"We're going to try to lift him to another level and I think that's going to happen. It takes a couple, three years before you really find out about guys but we're definitely going to try to get him.... to bring it up a notch this year."
Ponder will be hoping to deliver better productions this year as the offence will be looking to him to make big plays and help the Vikings end up with a much better regular season record than last year.
Hopefully the young quarterback can make the step-up this year and prove that he has the talent and drive to become Minnesota’s franchise quarterback for years to come.
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