The Vikings are surging. Should anyone care?
Plus, which version of Jameis Winston are the Saints getting and Thursday Night Football picks from an obnoxious dog and the rest of our expert panel.
Minnesota has won three in a row, which could save Mike Zimmer’s job … and ruin their 2021.
On Monday night, the Vikings won their third straight football game. Kirk Cousins proved he could guide his offense to success, marking the first time in 2020 he’s been victorious while throwing more than 22 passes. A beleaguered defense straightened up to limit their opponent to fewer than 150 yards of total offense.
There are two ways to process this information. The optimistic way would be to say they’ve now beaten the top two teams in the NFC North and are finally beginning to look like the playoff team they were back in 2019. The pessimistic way would be to point to the bombed-out trench that was formerly the Bears’ quarterback room, shrug, and turn your Northwoods rooting interest into the Golden Gophers’ hockey team.
Let’s examine those conflicting feelings. The Vikings are better than they were, but they’re in no way fixed. They’ve overcome a 1-5 start to barge their way to the fringe of the NFC’s playoff race. They also remain two games out of the final wild card spot — and three games behind the Packers in the battle for the North — with only seven games left on the schedule. The issues that stung them early in the season may be dormant, but their symptoms remain.
Monday night’s game against Chicago was an interminable slog of a football game. Despite holding the once 5-1 Bears to only 149 yards and getting a 292-yard, two-touchdown performance from Cousins, Minnesota merely won by six points. What from that game can push the Vikings into the heart of this year’s postseason conversation? And what can make us all feel stupid for ever believing in them in the first place?
Pro: Kirk Cousins operated like a legitimate quarterback against a top 10 defense
The Bears invested all their skill points in stopping Dalvin Cook. Chicago crashed Minnesota’s attempts to establish the run with a stout front seven, but also tasked its safeties with abandoning their deep coverage in order to cheat closer to the line of scrimmage in order to deplete the explosive tailback.
Here you can see Eddie Jackson (furthest right) cheating closer to the box from his safety position. He’d make the tackle on this first quarter play, holding Cook to only a two-yard gain.
This left little help downfield. While cornerbacks Kyle Fuller and Jaylon Johnson are capable in man coverage, limiting a tandem of Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson was always going to be difficult. Jackson and Tashaun Gipson traded off RB tracking duties, which made life difficult for Cook (96 yards, but on 30 carries) but created opportunities for the team’s top wideouts.
Thielen and Jefferson combined for 12 catches for 178 yards and a pair of touchdowns. They were responsible for 53 percent of Cousins’ non-RB targets — a mark way lower than the 65 percent average they’d taken up in Minnesota’s first eight games. So why were they so successful this time around despite less usage? Because Cousins identified man coverage and picked his spots downfield like a real NFL quarterback and not a Pizza Ranch spokesman cosplaying as a signal caller.
That third down touchdown worked because:
It was a perfect pass from Cousins
Adam Thielen can catch everything
Gipson was unable to catch up to the play because, on third-and-3, his first assignment was to be ready for a Cook run.
This is all promising! Cousins made some good throws, and if defenders decide to respect his arm and keep two safeties in pure coverage mode he can always hand it off to his game-breaking tailback. That’s the exact identity of this Vikings offense on a good day: give it to Dalvin first, and then let Kirk handle the mop-up work once opponents sell out to stop the run.
Con: the coaching was very, very stupid
First things first: don’t kick to the greatest kickoff returner of the millennium.
Second: don’t kick to him again after HE’S ALREADY RETURNED ONE KICK FOR A TOUCHDOWN AND IT’S THE FOURTH QUARTER WHAT ARE YOU DOING
While Zimmer and offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak built a winning gameplan by allowing Cousins to throw against single coverage, the Vikings made fixable mistakes elsewhere. Special teams was a mess beyond just the Patterson returns — a botched snap ruined an extra point in the fourth quarter, potentially giving the Bears a chance to win the game with a late touchdown. The previous week saw another missed extra point, a blocked punt, and some solid kick/punt returns. These could all be fatal flaws against better teams than the Bears/Lions (of which there are several).
Minnesota’s playcalling wasn’t exactly inspiring either. The Vikings faced six third-and-long (seven yards or more) situations and threw short of the sticks on five of them. That’s a failure on Cousins’ part, sure, but his coaching staff knows who he is at this point and still leaves several bail-out options with minimal odds for success. He has the personnel to create mismatches downfield, but his gameplan can’t maximize those opportunities when opponents know he’s going to throw and stops caring about the run. That’s why he hadn’t won a game in which he’d thrown more than 22 passes until Monday night.
That’s got to change if Cousins is going to will the Vikings to a win over an offense capable of gaining more than 150 yards in a game.
Pro: an often atrocious young secondary stepped up
Minnesota started the game in a 4-2-5 defensive formation that threw Jeff Gladney, Kris Boyd, and Chris Jones into the lineup at cornerback. Those three had started a combined three NFL games before the 2020 season.
That contributed mightily to a defense that had allowed opposing quarterbacks to post a 105.3 passer rating — roughly equivalent to 2019 Patrick Mahomes and fourth-worst in the NFL — against them through eight games. On Monday, that group held Nick Foles and Tyler Bray to a 48.3 rating. That’s good!
That group came together to shut down one of the game’s top wideouts — poor, poor Allen Robinson, who has never played with even a league-average quarterback through his seven-year career :( — thanks to decent coverage but also a pass rush that sacked Foles twice and hit him 11 more times. The team’s non-Robinson targets combined for only 10 catches on 20 targets and a meager 81 yards.
Without a running game to worry about thanks to an injured David Montgomery, the Vikings allowed their safeties to focus on the passing game first; Anthony Harris and Harrison Smith combined for three passes defensed and an interception between them. With those two roaming to effectively erase deep and intermediate throws, the only passes that made sense for Foles were either 50/50 opportunities for Robinson or low-impact checkdowns.
Con: any gains against the Bears’ passing offense are a mirage
As is tradition, the Bears have fielded a potent defense, a handful of exciting skill players, and a passing game that absolutely f***ing sucks. Foles was done zero favors by an offensive line sapped by injuries and positive Covid-19 tests, which allowed a pass rush that had only hit Aaron Rodgers twice in Week 8 to feast. That pressure up front, especially now that Yannick Ngakoue has been traded to the Ravens, is unlikely to stay at Week 10 levels against better teams (though Ifeadi Odenigbo has been quietly very good up north).
Foles had very little time to operate in the pocket. This severely limited the work Minnesota’s corners had to do in order to cover deep routes. Chicago’s inept run game (and baffling insistence to run the ball on second-and-long) meant that even when there was time to throw there would be plenty of congestion downfield from the Vikings’ safety coverage. As a result, a budding deep threat in rookie Darnell Mooney, who’d averaged more than 17 yards per catch as a senior at Tulane, had just two targets and two catches … for three yards.
Any confidence Monday’s performance built can be tempered by the Packer experience, even though it was a win. Green Bay didn’t have Aaron Jones in the backfield or Allen Lazard as its WR2 in Week 8, leaving the offense in the hands of Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams, and Jamaal Williams. That was it. Those were the three guys they needed to stop.
Adams was responsible for all three of Rodgers’ touchdown passes. Rodgers was only sacked once. Williams accounted for more than 100 total yards and more than 4.7 yards per carry. Without a superhuman effort from Cook, that game — Minnesota’s lone win against a team currently in line to make the postseason -- would have gone down as a loss.
Before Week 10, the Vikings had yet to hold an opponent to fewer than 300 total yards. They’d given up 413 yards per game — fourth-worst in the NFL. Manhandling the Bears was an obvious step in the right direction, but it by no means suggests the job is done.
So … what’s next for the Vikings?
Minnesota appeared to wave the white flag on 2020 by dealing away Ngakoue less than two months after trading for him. But instead of sinking to the bottom of the NFC North and top of the 2021 draft, the Vikings have stayed afloat while simultaneously making life tougher for their division rivals. A seven-team playoff field indicates there’s room for a rally and maybe even another upset postseason win on the road to match last year’s triumph in New Orleans. A remaining schedule that includes games against the Cowboys, Panthers, Jaguars, and Lions suggests .500 or better is entirely possible, if not probable.
But then what? Minnesota has a clear ceiling with a shaky quarterback and an even worse secondary. Bloated contracts and a shrinking salary cap — the team is already an estimated $6 million over its spending limit — mean adding impact help in free agency isn’t viable. The Vikings’ clearest path out of mediocrity was through bottoming out, but instead they’re destined to pick in the middle of next year’s draft (and possibly beyond, if the status quo remains).
The Vikings are the team embodiment of their quarterback; too good to give up on, but not good enough to ever be threatened by. Minnesota is pot committed to this team through 2021, which means anywhere from 6-10 to 10-6 is on the table (depending on drafting luck), but nothing much worse or better than that. The Vikings can’t contend like this. But maybe they can in 2022 after they hit “reset” on their roster. — CD
Which Jameis Winston are the Saints getting?
Week 10 wasn’t particularly kind to quarterbacks around the league. Five different starting quarterbacks suffered injuries of various severity, though only Drew Brees is expected to miss much time. Drew Lock is week to week. Teddy Bridgewater and Matthew Stafford will likely be on the field Sunday. Nick Foles’ injury wasn’t as bad as it looked, not that it really matters at this point who is under center for the Bears.
Brees will be out at least a couple weeks, but it’ll probably be more because c’mon, he’s almost 42 years old and has fractured ribs and a collapsed lung. Last year, the Saints survived Brees’ five-game absence thanks to Teddy Bridgewater’s steady, albeit conservative performance. Now, they turn to the quarterback equivalent of a hockey overtime game: the chaotic, exhilarating play of Jameis Winston. (There’s also Taysom Hill, who Sean Payton is incapable of forgetting about, but I refuse to believe he’ll attempt many passes.)
This season, Brees has mostly been his efficient self. He leads the league in on-target throws and completion percentage, he has a high passer rating (110.0), and he doesn’t turn the ball over often. But he doesn’t air it out much anymore. His average intended air yards per pass is just 5.4, lower than every qualified quarterback (though Alex Smith, once he has enough attempts, is threatening to take over last place).
For comparison, let’s look at Winston’s numbers last season, his final with the Bucs. His completion percentage and passer rating ranked in the bottom third of the league, and more famously, he turned the ball over A LOT, often in hilarious fashion:
With that pick, Winston became the NFL’s first 30-30 quarterback, throwing for 33 touchdowns and 30 interceptions. He lost five fumbles as well.
However, Winston’s deep-ball prowess was also on full display in 2019. He threw for more yards than any other QB (5,109) and his IAY was 10.4 per pass, second among starters after Matthew Stafford.
We haven’t seen much of Winston in a Saints uniform. The 26-year-old came in at the end of New Orleans’ blowout win over his old team, and he wasn’t asked to do much when he replaced Brees in the second half Sunday against the 49ers. He led two scoring drives and completed 6 of 10 passes for 63 yards, no touchdowns, and most importantly, no turnovers.
Winston, like Bridgewater last year, did what the Saints needed him to do: play it safe, protect a lead, get a win. It was kind of boring, to be honest, and that’s not a word I would have ever used to describe Jameis Winston before. Heck, even his warmups were more exciting than anything he did in the game:
So the real question I have is this: Will the Saints keep Winston in game manager mode until Brees returns, or will they unleash him and give us the full Jameis experience, with all the risk and all the reward that come with it?
Or there could be another answer. Now that Winston can finally see, maybe his days as a turnover artist are in the past and he can show off his big arm without the ball constantly landing in the arms of an opposing player. — SH
Thursday Night Football picks
This Thursday’s game looks to be a real treat. It feels like every time the Seahawks play in primetime, weird stuff happens. So now you’ve got another chaos agent introduced into the mix with the Cardinals, riding high after that amazing Hail Mary touchdown for the comeback win last week.
There’s a three-way tie in the NFC West, with the Cardinals on top thanks to their 2-0 record in the division. And that is as weird to type as it is to think about. There’s still plenty of season left to play, but this game could go a long way toward shaping the outcome in the final playoff picture. So who’s going to win?
First let’s meet our guest picker, my dog Ewok. She’s mutt with probably some weiner and chow mixed into her genetic stew. She’s about a year-and-a-half old, and is filled with wild puppy energy. She likes hikes and loves the snow. Here is a recent picture of her being passive-aggressive about a bone that my older dog was chewing on.
Ewok is a chaos agent, at least when it comes to bones. We give both dogs a bit of dead animal to chew on, to keep them entertained for a bit, and within an hour or so, she somehow has both of them. Oh, she is the smaller of the two dogs by at least 20 pounds. I thought it was fitting to bring in another chaos agent to make the picks this week since it all starts with a Cardinals-Seahawks game.
Briefly, I used the old left hand-right hand (right was the home team) with a hidden treat in one of my paws to get her picks. Anyway, here’s what our panel came up with for Thursday night’s game:
The Seahawks feel like the right pick here, but knowing these two teams, we probably won’t get any resolution until the last play of the game, one that will inevitably be controversial. — RVB
Great work as usual team!