Has the Vikings defense improved at all during the 2021 season?

Even though the Minnesota Vikings worked hard this past offseason to improve their porous defense, it is still leaking yards this year.

The Minnesota Vikings have done a brilliant job keeping teams out of the end zone in the last two weeks. The Vikings have conceded just two touchdowns in the last seven quarters of football.

Upon first glance, you would assume that this is brilliant and head coach Mike Zimmer has it all under control. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case in this situation.

Minnesota spent a lot of resources this offseason trying to fix the defensive line with the objective of trying to stop the run. Clearly, that hasn’t worked out for them as teams have rushed for a total of 542 yards against the Vikings so far this season (135.5 a game). This is almost identical to the yards conceded at this stage last season (539 total rushing yards).

No matter what the Vikings do, they can’t seem to stop the run. Despite investing heavily in new defensive tackles Michael Pierce, Dalvin Tomlinson, and Sheldon Richardson, the Vikings simply cannot stop the run. In Week 4, the Cleveland Browns rushed for almost 200 yards between their two start running backs, averaging 4.8 yards a carry.

Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer still has work to do

The issue is not personnel, players like Tomlinson don’t just forget how to take up blockers and stop the run. Mike Zimmer’s strategy must be better, and he needs to put his team in a better position to succeed on defense.

The return of Anthony Barr will be a huge plus for the Vikings and he could be crucial for their defense going forward.

Minnesota has aspirations of going deep in the playoffs this season. If they don’t figure out how to stop the run, that won’t even be a remote possibility.