The Minnesota Vikings offense came out of hibernation against the Arizona Cardinals and their top-notch defense.
Last week against the Seahawks, the Vikings’ offense looked utterly inept. Last night against the Cardinals, that same offense looked encouragingly functional.
The big change was on the offensive line. Against Seattle, the Vikings couldn’t block anyone. Against Arizona they did a better job opening running lanes and providing protection for Teddy Bridgewater.
Bridgewater wasn’t forced to run around nearly as much as usual and the result was Teddy’s strongest statistical game of the season.
Arizona mostly took away Stefon Diggs, but Bridgewater was able to get the ball to Kyle Rudolph, Mike Wallace and others. He finished with 335 yards passing, spread around to 11 different receivers.
Offensive coordinator Norv Turner did a nice job mixing in screen passes and other misdirection plays. One well-designed and -executed screen pass to Rhett Ellison resulted in a 41-yard gain.
The Vikings haven’t been known for gaining big chunks of yardage on pass plays this year but last night they had several large gainers. Ellison, Jarius Wright, Wallace, MyCole Pruitt, Matt Asiata and Zach Line each had at least one pass play of 20+ yards on the evening.
Turner’s game plan was pretty obvious: Establish the run early, then crank up the short passing game. In other words, take some pressure off the offensive line.
The Vikings executed extremely well offensively for most of the night. A few plays were broken open thanks to big individual efforts. Zach Line transformed into a truck for this huge gain:
Unfortunately, Turner seemed to forget his game plan at key moments.
Norv got cute at one point and tried to run a reverse, resulting in a disastrous fumble by Adrian Peterson.
Peterson was supposed to hand off to Mike Wallace but the defense was in the backfield so fast, the ball was knocked from Peterson’s hand before Wallace could even get there.
This is an example of not putting players in a position to succeed.
But the big mistake of course was on the game’s final play with the Vikings trying to position themselves for a potential tying field goal.
You can question Mike Zimmer’s game management but you can also specifically question Turner’s playcall. Turner called a slow-developing pass play and that gave Dwight Freeney time to beat Matt Kalil and complete the strip-sack on Bridgewater.
The game ended on an undeniably sour note for Minnesota but up to that point their offense was much more in tune than it has been in recent weeks.
That the Vikings were able to operate so efficiently against one of the NFL’s best pass defenses is an encouraging sign.
Hopefully the Vikings can continue building on last night’s success and win some games down the stretch and get themselves into the playoffs.