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Maybe it’s not time to panic yet, because after all we still have another exhibition game to go before the National Football League begins its long run into winter. Exhibition games are, mostly, a joke. Each team works out its own schedule for developing all the elements necessary for a strong regular season, and mainly they don’t play the regulars so that they can take a long look at the potential of new players who might represent the future.

But if you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan, a serious cloud of concern hangs heavily over the club. Not panic, maybe, but definitely concern.

With one exhibition game left, Vikings fans have no idea if the third year of the Christian Ponder Experiment has a chance to be different from Years One and Two, or if the Vikings will try to masquerade as a contender by handing the ball to Adrian Peterson and playing good defense.

Frankly, I refuse to get too excited about any exhibition game. That means I kiss off the apparent ineptitude displayed by the Vikings in three exhibitions and trust their explanation that they aren’t playing Ponder much, and they didn’t play Peterson at all, because they didn’t want to risk any injuries to two such stalwarts.

Then I watch parts of a couple other exhibition games. I notice that nobody gets worked up when Aaron Rodgers doesn’t do much with the Green Bay Packers, but newcomer Vince Young steps in and wins the backup quarterback job with an impressive performance. And Detroit buries the vaunted New England Patriots 40-9, with ace quarterback Drew Stafford looking pretty good, and backup Kellen Moore looking sensational. Chicago looked pretty impressive, too, with Jay Cutler looking very good, armed with a newly replenished arsenal of varied receivers and running backs.

It was not just sarcasm when I projected a few weeks ago that the pressure on Christian Ponder to rise to the role of prominence is emphasized more because of the Vikings division. If Ponder plays his absolute best this season, he might still be only the fourth-best quarterback in the division, behind Rodgers, Stafford, and Cutler.

With Ponder looking comparatively shaky, if not entirely lost, in sparse duty through three exhibitions, I now must amend that bleak prospect: If Ponder plays his absolute best this year, he might not be any better than sixth-best in the division—behind Rodgers, Stafford, Cutler, Moore, and Young.

I really liked Vince Young when he played at Texas, showing immense skill and capability, and then stepping in with glowing prospects for more than adequate chances in the NFL. He didn’t really make it. In fact, he failed in two starting opportunities with different teams, then he sat out all last season with an injury, and lost his chance to run a team. Personally, I think he came into the NFL at the wrong time, at a time when teams had established offenses, and made any new prospect fit into that system, while Young didn’t. Nobody was about to turn an entire offense over to a guy who would just as soon run as pass, as if an exciting college style might work in the NFL.

Since then, of course, we’ve seen a startling transformation in the NFL. Robert Griffin III took over at Washington, Cam Newton got free reign at Caroline, Russell Wilson burst into the clear in Seattle, and Colin Kaepernick turned San Francisco upside down. All of them are spectacular quarterbacks, capable of game-breaking plays while running or passing with equal explosiveness, and pro football showed that with the right degree of open-mindedness, a new quarterback with a new outlook and a combination of flash and confidence can lift a franchise up from mediocrity to contention.

Perhaps the most intriguing of this fall’s prospects is at Green Bay. Aaron Rodgers is just fully emerging as a true superstar. No, he won’t make us forget Brett Favre, but he is the triggerman for a Packers team that should again be a division, conference, and Super Bowl contender. But it seems to be a brilliant bit of strategy for the Packers to displace a fully adequate backup quarterbacking system with the potential of a mercurial alternative in Vince Young. We don’t anticipate Rodgers getting bogged down in any game, but his effectiveness might even be enhanced if the Packers can look at an occasional situation where Vince Young can jog onto the field for a play or two, passing or pitching or scrambling to break loose running in a way nobody wants to see Rodgers run. Then, with a well-qualified intern making the incision for a first down, the master surgeon comes back in and finishes the operation in the end zone.

Personally, though, I will be watching the Detroit Lions as often as possible, because I’ve been a Kellen Moore fan since he was back at Boise State, running the Broncos’ spectacular offense on that strange blue turf in Idaho. In those days, Boise State was one of the most entertaining college teams to watch. The game plan was always brilliant, and Boise State would come up with trick plays almost every time they got the ball—brilliantly conceived and executed trick plays that worked with astounding effectiveness. And Kellen Moore was that tall, lanky left-handed quarterback who ran the show.

Moore’s greatest skill seemed to be an ability to loft passes that were more perfect than high-velocity. He’d lob the ball over safeties who were scrambling to get into position. There were those who wrote him off as a pro because he didn’t have Rodgers-style bullet capabilities. I always thought that his keen ability to find a target and put his passes where only those receivers could get them would make him one of those quarterbacks who only needed a chance to play in order to excel.

For his whole college career, Moore had to play out there in Boise while other teams refused to play Boise State. College football has long had its ridiculous pecking order, where the powers-that-be make sure that no odd newcomers penetrate their realm. It still holds for the Southeast Conference, which has a lot of good teams and might be the best conference in the country, but which also protects its turf by buying off the decision-makers at ESPN with a sinister partnership that assures ESPN of top games to broadcast and perpetrates the illusion that no team from anywhere else should be elevated to the Bowl Championship game. So the routine came about that nobody wanted to play Boise State, so then they could look at Boise’s 11-0 record and say, “They don’t play anybody,” while making sure they couldn’t play a tougher schedule. When they did get a chance, Boise State blitzed even strong teams, which made the other powers more reluctant to play the Broncos.

When Moore’s senior year ended, I thought he would become a great pro quarterback, but he was not a super-high draft pick. Detroit got him to sign a contract, and he quietly played in the shadows. I think he was No. 3 with the Lions while learning the system, but time passes, and now he’s not only No. 2, but he’s capable of stepping in to help Stafford and the long-suffering Lions be a true contender.

Coming back to the Vikings, I’ve believed in Ponder’s future because he, too, is a smart player who knows what must be done, where his pass must go, and how to run an offense. Still, he has showed very little except occasional bursts so far. Of the division’s quarterbacks, none has the built-in advantage Ponder has, which is the opportunity to hand the ball to No. 28, Adrian Peterson, for at least half the team’s offensive plays. That should make Ponder’s job easier, because opposing defenses have to psyche themselves up to try to form a posse to head off Peterson before he gets free. That means that Ponder can throw a play-fake at Peterson and should find multiple receivers open for a few pinpoint passes, which, in turn, should open up Peterson even more.

The problem, going into this summer’s exhibition season, is that Ponder rarely if ever showed the capability to get the ball to his receivers with the needed zip and mostly with accuracy. Some spectacular lunging, leaping, one-handed catches are impressive, but the top quarterbacks on other teams are putting precision passes right on the chest, or into the hands, of top receivers. Sure, Percy Harvin went out with an injury last season, and I, like most Vikings followers, cut Ponder new dimensions of slack. This summer, the Vikings rounded up a new herd of receivers, and even took Joe Webb, the potentially great back-up quarterback, and converted him to wide receiver.

With all that playing out, I found it alarmingly strange that the Vikings gave Ponder only two snaps in the first exhibition, and only two series in the second. Yes, you worry about any starting quarterback getting injured in an exhibition game, but Ponder is not a superstar being held out because we know he’s going to come in with Rodgers-style polish when the gun sounds. In the third exhibition, Ponder looked like an untested rookie trying to impress with a scattershot array of passes—that is, after dropping the football on his third play to give the San Francisco 49ers the ball on the Vikings 11. It was a tribute to the Vikings defense that they held the 49ers to a field goal on that sequence.

Matt Cassel didn’t look much better as backup, making it two poor performances after an impressive first game. Joe Webb is still there, and we were reminded of that when he outbattled a D-back to make a spectacular leaping catch for a touchdown. Oh yeah, we thought. There’s Joe Webb! Hmmm... He could be coming in as the ideal back-up QB, couldn’t he? Remember, he looked great in that role—sort of Minnesota’s Vince Young to Aaron Rodgers, stylewise—until last season. When things broke down, the Vikings gave Joe Webb his long-overdue chance, and he flubbed it. Played poorly. But failing in one big, pressure-filled chance isn’t much chance, compared to three years of anointed starting stardom for Christian Ponder. My thought is that using Webb as a ready back-up for Ponder might help make Ponder a better quarterback than he’s become.

Anyway, Vikings fans, three exhibition games don’t mean we should panic. We have a fourth exhibition this week... then we can panic.