The Minnesota Vikings Defense: Back In Black

The 2018 Minnesota Vikings defense has certainly had its ups and downs. But if the second quarter of the season is any indication of the direction this unit is headed, “reports of its demise” have indeed been greatly exaggerated.

Since 2014, head coach Mike Zimmer’s first season with the Minnesota Vikings, the team’s defense has been one to count on as being one of the NFL’s best. There are basically two reasons for this; one, that with only a few notable exceptions, it has performed week in and week out with great consistency, and two, after those notable exceptions, Zimmer, its defensive coordinator, has learned from his mistakes.

In Week 13 of the 2015 season, the Seattle Seahawks came to Minnesota and TCF Bank Stadium to play the 8-3 Vikings. Led by quarterback Russell Wilson, the Vikings (who would end up 5th in the NFL in total defense) were embarrassed by the Seahawks offense to the tune of 433 yards (173 rushing) and a 38-7 loss.

The Minnesota offense had 125 total yards in the game.

Just weeks later, the Seahawks returned to Minnesota to play an NFC Wildcard playoff game. In that game, the Vikings’ defense cut the Seattle offense point total to 10 and it’s yardage to 226, losing on a missed 28-yard missed field goal by former placekicker Blair Walsh.

The Minnesota offense had 183 total yards in the game.

The point: Zimmer is the defensive coach of this team and has little to do with the offense. To date, that arrangement has worked for the Vikings, as Zimmer’s team has won the NFC North twice in his four seasons and went as far as the NFC Championship Game last year.

Which leads us to our second example of Zimmer’s reactionary acumen. In that very 2017 NFC Championship Game (another 38-7 loss), this time to the villainous Philadelphia Eagles, the Vikings’ defense was again dressed down, giving up 456 yards of total offense and traveling home with beer on their heads.

After a long off-season and a chaotic start to the 2018 schedule (which now probably feels quite common to Zimmer) the Minnesota Vikings found themselves in Week 5 at 1-2-1, and returning to Philadelphia to again face the Super Bowl Champions. The Eagles had just returned their wonderboy quarterback Carson Wentz to the field, and the Vikings’ had just lost an 89-point shootout in Los Angeles to the Rams.

After that loss in L.A., something was wrong with the Vikings’ defense, and Zimmer knew it. in the game, Linebacker Anthony Barr had been beaten three times for touchdown passes, once by Rams’ running back Todd Gurley, then by wide-receivers Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp.

Those were mistakes that Zimmer was making. You could hang a TD on Barr from the back, but not from guys that move like Woods and Kupp. The game-plan he had installed was askew to his defensive players’ muscle-memories. The pressure packages and coverage schemes were too exotic, too ambitious, too something.

After the loss, Zimmer said, simply and directly: “We’re going to have to look at everything we’re doing and get back to doing things correctly.”

What that meant was getting back to doing what both he and his squad were doing last year when they lead the league in defense. When they held the Los Angeles Rams to 7 points and 254 total yards in week 11 of 2017, instead of ten months later giving up 48 and 554 to basically the same team in week four of 2018.

So here’s the happy ending to this story. Whatever Mike Zimmer looked at and got the Minnesota Vikings back to doing correctly, it worked.

As we all know, the Vikings came in and punched Philly in the mouth in the rematch. Minnesota never trailed in the game, holding Wentz and the Eagles’ to 3 points until late in the third quarter, and gave Vikings’ fans around the world the memory of glorious defensive plays like this one.

Doing the math for 2018, the Vikings’ defense gave up an average of 381.5 yards and 27.5 points in their first four games (1-2-1), and in their last five (4-1) have surrendered 274.8 and 18.8.

Critics may point to the fact that the winning percentage of the teams they have beaten is .342, but when the Vikings’ racked up ten sacks last Sunday on a Detroit Lions’ offensive line that has given up only 13 on the year, everybody’s gotta like the smell of what’s cooking.

Minnesota Vikings

In addition, the Vikings’ defense is now showing the development of it’s younger players and the strength of its depth. Danielle Hunter is making a case for being Defensive Player of the Year, and at age 24, has certainly led by example.

In the absence of Everson Griffen, Stephen Weatherly has shined in his third season. Slot corner Mackensie Alexander has stepped up his game to defray the loss of rookie corner Mike Hughes to an ACL injury. A bad foot has hampered Xavier Rhodes, but undrafted rookie Holton Hill is holding his own as a starting corner.

Andrew Sendejo has been an afterthought with the play of Zimmer’s safety platoon. Anthony Harris, Jayron Kearse, and George Iloka have solidified the position. Linebacker Anthony Barr has been gone for two weeks with a hamstring injury, and suddenly both Eric Kendricks and second-year man Ben Gedeon are making more plays on the Vikings’ second level.

A bye week comes this year at an ideal time. A week from Sunday, the Vikings will travel to Chicago for a divisional game in prime-time against the Bears. Most likely (Chicago gets Detroit this week), it will be for first place in the NFC North.

Although this is a fairly different Chicago team from last year when the Minnesota Vikings swept them, it’s more than possible the Bears’ will be facing that ‘old’ defensive unit with only a few new tricks up its sleeve.

Mike Zimmer is no doubt an inventive guy with lots of ideas, but he may have learned this year that change isn’t always good.