Vikings Matchup Nightmares: Week 1 vs. the Falcons
By Chris Schad
Julio Jones vs. Xavier Rhodes
When looking at the Falcons, the first thing that will stand out is their top offensive weapon Julio Jones.
It seems crazy that Jones will be entering his ninth season on Sunday and Atlanta has to be ecstatic that they made the move to trade up to get him in the 2011 NFL Draft (The Cleveland Browns? Not so much).
Since joining the Falcons, Jones has been one of the most unstoppable receivers in the game racking up 698 catches, 10,731 yards, and 51 touchdowns. As Matt Ryan‘s favorite target, the number of trips to the end zone has to be disappointing. The 30-year-old receiver is coming off of two seasons in which he had just 11 total touchdowns under offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian.
With that being a major reason for the dismissal of the former USC head coach, the Falcons went back to their roots by hiring Dirk Koetter to run their offense, who was in the same role with the team from 2012 to 2014.
We’ll take a look at the full Koetter effect later in this article, but Jones was a major beneficiary with 3,371 yards and 18 touchdowns in those three seasons (one being an injury-shortened 2013 season).
As Koetter looks to jump-start the passing game, Vikings cornerback Xavier Rhodes will look to shut down the Falcons’ top weapon. Last year, Rhodes numbers in coverage weren’t terrible, but a lot of that was due to a smaller sample size due to benchings and injuries.
The good news here is that Rhodes has had success against the Alabama product in his career, squaring off with Jones three times since coming into the league in 2014. In those games, Rhodes has gotten the best of Jones, holding him to just 13 catches and 162 scoreless yards including their last meeting in 2017, where Jones only managed two catches for 24 yards.
The question is which version of Rhodes will Minnesota get on Sunday? If it’s the one that’s shut down Jones during his career, it should mean good things for the Vikings’ defense. If it’s the one who spent 2018 getting catastrophic injuries only to return the next week, it could be a long afternoon.