Vikings Takeaways: The Book Is Out On Brian Flores
Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
For Minnesota Vikings fans, the team’s Week 7 loss to the Detroit Lions made sense. The Lions are legitimate Super Bowl contenders, and losses are going to happen. It’s a bit harder to swallow dropping last night’s game to the Los Angeles Rams, even if they did get Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua back on the field. Even worse than the 30-20 loss might be the loss of Christian Darrisaw, who exited the game with a knee injury. We’ll find out more later today, but it’s not good news.
Let’s look at what we learned from last night.
Brian Flores’ Defense is Getting Figured Out
In the first few weeks of the season, it looked like defensive coordinator Brian Flores had finally engineered a defense that was able to stop the Sean McVay/Kyle Shanahan-style offenses that were wreaking havoc on defenses across the NFL. With the Vikings’ defense shutting down the San Francisco 49ers and Houston Texans’ high-flying offenses, it looked like the Vikings’ defensive unit could go toe-to-toe with anyone in the NFL.
That myth has been busted the last two weeks, with the Lions and Rams offenses killing the momentum this defense had prior to their bye week. Last week, after a slow start, the Lions’ offense was dominant, winning through their ability to give their offense time with max protection sets and dagger concepts. The Rams’ offense clearly took some notes from what the Lions did last Sunday, forcing the Vikings’ defense to have to cover for longer, as Los Angeles picked up on those blitzes that were so successful earlier.
In a lot of ways, the Lions exposed how to beat the Vikings’ defense, and the Rams followed the plan perfectly. Now it’s time for Flores to adjust to these adjustments. They seem to have fully lost their identity on defense and need to look at themselves in the mirror before the next game, as they have 10 days to figure themselves out before facing the Colts on Sunday Night Football.
Pre-Snap Flags Are Killing the Vikings
This team once again suffered from shooting themselves in the foot. Prior to this game, head coach Kevin O’Connell talked about how procedural penalties were regularly costing the team the early momentum they built in games, and this week it seemed to be much of the same.
After scoring touchdowns on their opening two drives, the Vikings offense faltered on their third drive after flags drew them back and forced them to play behind the sticks. The team kept up their self-sabotage all night long with multiple illegal formation penalties which weren’t even called.
While pre-snap penalties were a problem, it wasn’t much better post-snap. The Vikings’ defense gifted the Rams five first downs via flags, three of which came on third down to extend a drive. While the main conversation around officiating will be due to the egregious facemask missed on the safety at the end of the game, the Vikings need to clean up their discipline in all three phases of the game and stop handing out free yards to their opponents.
The Offense Can’t Play Behind the Sticks
These past two weeks, it feels like the Vikings offense’s ability to extend drives relies on how they do on first and second down. The team has done well this season when they find themselves in situations where they are dealing with manageable situations on second and third-downs. While this isn’t a shock — most offenses are better when they need fewer yards to convert — it is concerning that the Vikings can’t seem to get first downs, or positive plays, when they get behind the sticks.
In the past two weeks, whenever the offense gets behind the sticks (that is, further than 10 yards from the first down) early, they aren’t able to extend the drive. The offense seems to struggle to find their way back to 3rd-and-manageable when in obvious passing situations. Combine that with their inability to get out of their own way with pre-snap penalties, and you might as well trot out the punt team every time their distance for a first-down goes into the double digits.
This is only going to get more difficult if Christian Darrisaw misses any time at all, as the Rams were able to get ample amounts of pressure on David Quessenberry and made obvious passing downs even more difficult. Minnesota might be 5-2, but there are clearly things they’ll need to work out in order to keep standing tall among the NFC’s best.
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