Minnesota Vikings Best and Worst: Week 16 vs. New Orleans Saints

More Bad Things

Week 16 saw the Minnesota Vikings playing without many of their starters from the start of the season, With that and their performance the previous two weeks, it was hard to get too optimistic about their chances against New Orleans.

Instead, the purple and gold still found some massive ways to disappoint themselves as well as the fans on Christmas Day. Here are some of the things that likely made anyone watching this game shake their head in disapproval against the Saints.

Other bad things from Week 16

• Run defense. This has been a disaster for the Vikings the past few weeks, but the Saints took Minnesota’s inability to stuff the run to a whole new level. New Orleans piled up 264 yards on the ground, scoring seven rushing touchdowns. Of course, Alvin Kamara did most of that damage, collecting 155 yards on the ground during his 22 carries. Plus, his six touchdowns is quite a showcase of his rushing dominance.
• They can’t hang. It was nice to see the Vikings offense try to keep up with the Saints, but it’s just not something this team can do. A struggling offensive line was pushed around by New Orleans, resulting in short runs and pressures on Kirk Cousins. The team did their best, but until they can get some help in the trenches, Minnesota will be limited when it comes to their offensive output.
• Time of possession. It’s hard to control the pace of the game when you’re always playing catch-up and struggle to sustain drives. Minnesota was only on offense for 23:13, meaning their patchwork defense was at work for 36:47, a difference of over 13 minutes of possession. The reason for the short offensive drives: only converting three of their nine third-down conversion attempts. Ouch.
• Being one-dimensional on offense. The Vikings scored two touchdowns in the first half of this game. both of them coming on the ground. That is interesting since Minnesota only picked up six first downs through their run game and the team as a whole only ran the ball 17 times compared to 41 pass attempts. Normally a game is out of balance, but the game wasn’t completely out of hand until the fourth quarter.

What do you think were the best and worst things about the Minnesota Vikings in Week 16? And what impression do you have of the team moving into the final week of the 2020 NFL season? Voice your opinion in the comments!