Za’Darius Smith and the Vikings pass rush have gone missing

After getting off to an impressive start this season, Za’Darius Smith and the rest of the Minnesota Vikings pass rushers have struggled recently.

A few days after his team’s 34-26 win over the Arizona Cardinals back in Week 8, Minnesota Vikings linebacker Za’Darius Smith was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Month following his excellent performance during October.

In four games during the month of October, Smith generated 22 pressures while racking up a total of seven sacks, according to PFF. The former Green Bay Packers linebacker was being viewed as one of Minnesota’s best free-agent additions in the history of the franchise after his first two months on the field with the team.

Since then, however, Smith‘s performance has declined, as he has just one sack in his last six games. His drop in play, in addition to others not performing as well as they did during the early part of the season, has played a large role in the enormous struggles that the Vikings have dealt with on defense in their last few games.

Why have Za’Darius Smith and the Minnesota Vikings pass rush struggled recently?

Smith and Danielle Hunter were supposed to be one of the most dominant pass-rushing duos in the NFL this season. And for the first two months of the 2022 campaign, they were.

During Minnesota’s first nine games of the season, Smith and Hunter combined to accumulate a total of 15 sacks while averaging 10.3 pressures per contest.

In the Vikings’ last four matchups, this duo has averaged just 6.5 pressures per game while generating only two sacks.

It’s difficult to determine the exact reason why Minnesota’s top-two pass rushers have struggled in their last few games, especially since multiple factors are likely to blame.

Smith dealing with a knee injury for a portion of the season has certainly played a role in the lack of pass rush. But one can also point to the absence of defensive lineman Dalvin Tomlinson during the last few weeks since he drew a bunch of attention from opposing offensive lines earlier this season.

However, the biggest reason for the Vikings’ decline in pass-rush productivity likely has to do with opposing quarterbacks getting the ball out much quicker during the last few games.

In Minnesota’s first nine matchups of the season, opposing signal-callers had an average time to throw of 2.84 seconds, according to PFF. During the Vikings’ last four games, opposing quarterbacks had an average time to throw of 2.63 seconds.

Average time to throw “measures the average amount of time elapsed from the time of snap to throw on every pass attempt for a passer,” according to NFL Next Gen Stats.

So basically, opposing quarterbacks are getting the ball out of their hands much quicker during the last few weeks to slow down Minnesota’s pass rush. Combine this with the fact that the Vikings play very little press coverage this season, and opposing receivers aren’t having a hard time getting open quickly.

How can Minnesota fix this? Well, when just looking at ways to improve the pass rush, blitzing more is certainly worth a try. The Vikings currently have the sixth-lowest blitz rate in the NFL, and since they’re already giving up tons of yards each week, there is literally no risk to blitzing more during each matchup.

Whatever Minnesota decides to do, changes definitely need to be made because what they’re doing now is going to result in a very early exit from this season’s playoffs.