What Should We Make Of the Vikings 2nd Half Defensive Cracks?
Credit: Dan Powers via Imagn Images
It’s safe to say there have been better Minnesota Vikings teams than this 2024 version. There have been bigger wins than Sunday’s Week 4 tilt against the Green Bay Packers. We have seen performances much more unbelievable than anything someone put forward on Sunday.
But damn, there might not have ever been a more fun moment to be a Vikings fan than at halftime.
There was nothing anyone could take away from Minnesota as they entered the locker room with a 28-7 lead over their most hated rival while in their house, the most storied field in the sport. The Vikings didn’t just smoke the Packers at the half, they left the crowd at Lambeau Field speechless. What could you say? “You only did this because Jordan Love is out?” Nope, he was a surprise return for the game. “You got lucky?” Hardly, it’s not like the Vikings weren’t beating up on teams before this.
Nope, it was a straight-up pantsing of a team many thought would challenge for the NFC North crown by a team many thought could challenge for the NFC basement.
Until the fourth quarter, when the Packers almost took away that good feeling and turned it into a familiar Vikingsesque despair.
Green Bay out-scored Minnesota 22-3 in the second half, coming this close to wrenching the victory from the Vikings. At the end of the day, the Vikings held on 31-29, but that high was gone. But what was it replaced with?
Was it relief, knowing the 2024 Vikes got a rare taste of adversity and overcame the avalanche of scoring from the Packers? Or was it dread, the feeling that Minnesota got exposed, and they should feel lucky that the damage was merely limited to that?
All season long, we’ve seen the Vikings’ defense use Brian Flores’ system to create confusion. His disguised blitzes and coverages have left opposing quarterbacks guessing all season long, and with Love’s two interceptions in the first quarter, it was striking again.
But it was only a matter of time before we saw what the counterpunch would be, and it arrived in the second half. Love and the Packers adopted a hurry-up offense in the second half and cranked up the pace, as well as their yardage. Their final six drives gained 294 yards, averaging 9.2 yards per play.
It wasn’t perfect: An interception and lost fumble helped stop the bleeding for the Vikings, as did a turnover on downs. But the increased speed of the game limited Flores’ ability to disguise his Cover-2 defense’s intentions, making Love’s job of finding the weak points much easier.
The NFL isn’t a copycat league. It’s the end of “Independence Day.” When one team figures out how to defeat the next big thing, the blueprint gets spread to everyone else. Did the Vikings’ next three opposing quarterbacks — Aaron Rodgers, Jared Goff, and Matthew Stafford, respectively — just figure out how to destroy Flores’ QB annihiliating defense?
Former linebacker Ben Leber knows the Vikings better than almost everyone, and defense better than most. Yesterday on Dan Barriero’s KFAN show, he got posed a similar question: Can Aaron Rodgers just run a hurry-up offense all game to stymie Flores?
“I think [the hurry-up offense] did work,” he said of the Packers’ second-half offense. “They found [the Vikings] in a personnel they thought they could take advantage of, and they kept that personnel on the field. They didn’t sub anyone out, they used tempo, got up to the line and the perception that there’s going to be a quick snap [means Flores] can’t do all his deception moves…. You do that for a couple of plays, all of a sudden, you get a little tired, you start making mental mistakes…”
Oh, no. The word is out. Teams can leave the Vikings defense on the field, unable to make substitutions and ill-equipped to rapidly change their positioning like they do when teams take their full allotment of pre-snap time. Is this the beginning of the end for Flores’ monster defense?
Sure, if being able to play with that tempo and pace is sustainable. The Packers were able to keep it up for 30 minutes of the game, but can teams play that style for all 60? Leber is skeptical.
“For anybody thinking the [New York] Jets are going to come out and do this and do it for the full game — it’s just as stressful for the offense,” he stated plainly. “You can do this tempo thing as a switch-up every once in a while, a couple of series here and there, but to come out for four quarters and 60 minutes as an offense? The same logic is true, guys are gonna make mistakes, guys get tired. They start holding a little bit more, they start missing blocking assignments.”
We might even have seen that in the cracks that showed in the Packers’ fourth-quarter offense. Harrison Smith ran untouched toward Love on Byron Murphy’s interception in the end zone. Is Smith picked up if the Packers offensive line has more time to think? As crucial as Tucker Kraft was in the second half (four catches on five targets, 33 yards, TD), he got called for a holding penalty and lost the fumble in the second half. Leber may as well have been talking about him when speaking of tired players making mistakes.
Teams will be able to find a way to use this information to exploit Minnesota’s defense… at times. The Packers did and turned a laugher into a close game, but teams can’t crank the offense dial to maximum speed for the entire game. Besides, now that there is a weakness exposed on Flores’ side, it’s his turn to adjust back. The defensive coordinator has given us no indication that one neat trick will slow him down for long, and we can expect him to serve up a counter counter-punch of his own going forward.
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