7 things to know about the Vikings and Packers heading into Week 8
By Dustin Baker
Minnesota is the league’s fourth-least penalized team
A deep dive into all of the 2020 numbers implies that the coaching really is not all that bad. The aforementioned stats on defensive third-down efficiency, red zone performance, and now this nugget on penalties show that Mike Zimmer is not Satan all of a sudden. Normally, 1-5 teams are wretched in these parameters.
A team that is beset by gobs of penalties is the first tell-tale sign that a group is performing poorly. Turnovers are another indicator of this, and the Vikings are quite bad in this area (fourth-most giveaways in the NFL). But Minnesota has not been ravaged by yellow flags like teams such as the Arizona Cardinals or Chicago Bears. Those two squads are finding ways to overcome the penalties, for now.
Keep an eye on this in the next handful of games. Although the Vikings are frustratingly not winning games, the penalty numbers are not aligned with that of a bad team. It’s too bad that the team sits in a five-loss hole through seven weeks.