Everything we learned (and didn't learn) from the Vikings in 2020
Mike Zimmer said he wants the team to remember the hard times as they build for the future
An NFL season is like a blockbuster movie. It always gets hyped up like crazy and then either lives up to the buildup or not — and you know pretty quickly which way it’s going.
The 2020 Minnesota Vikings had hype. Maybe not quite the same buzz as Super Bowl expectations of years past but there was plenty of intrigue about a roster that underwent a major makeover in the offseason. Rookies getting to play right away? Players who have developed behind the previous group of starters? A new star defensive end acquired for a high draft pick? All of that sounded exciting. Maybe it would be an action/thriller.
But we knew which way it was going only a few minutes after the movie started. Getting thwacked by the Packers and Colts put the Vikings pretty deep in a hole to open the year and then close losses against Seattle and Tennessee and a blowout at the hands of Atlanta gave little hope that this would be one of those flicks that starts slow and finishes with a bang.
Even when there were flickers, they were muted. A win at Green Bay to improve to 2-5 was the peak rather than just the beginning of good things to come. Tight victories over Carolina and Jacksonville were marred with mistakes. Even Mike Zimmer said after the Jags game that his team couldn’t keep playing that poorly and make the playoffs. They did keep playing poorly and they did miss the playoffs.
So as Vikings fans exit the theatre on Sunday following worst possible ending to the season — a meaningless game against Detroit — you won’t find too many moviegoers giving two thumbs up on 2020. But that doesn’t mean that they didn’t learn a lot along the way.
Let’s have a look at everything that the Vikings (and fans) should take away from an otherwise less-than-gripping year…
Don’t let it happen again
Sometimes stuff happens in football. Profound words, I know. But seriously, sometimes it just isn’t your year.
Sometimes you don’t have fans in the stadium. Sometimes you have injuries. Sometimes your kicker melts down. Sometimes you fumble punts. And sometimes you’re not good enough.
The case of the 2020 Vikings was all of those things.
Yes they had lots of things go wrong but they didn’t get strong enough performances from players who were given opportunities to overcome those problems.
Mike Zimmer hopes that the players who will be part of the future go into the offseason inspired to overcome future problems.
“I think the biggest thing is when you get your nose rubbed in it, you’ve got to come back out and you’ve got to come back and fight,” Zimmer said. “It’s going to show the personality of these players that we have and what they have to do and understand that.”
This isn’t the first time going through something like this for Zimmer. In 2014, his club endured a brutal 2-5 start to the season that included a 42-10 beating at the hands of Green Bay. They finished that season winning three of five and won the NFC North the next year. In fact, each time the Vikings have missed the playoffs under Zimmer, they’ve returned the following season.
He talked on Monday about the drive to improve that should come along with disappointment.
“When I got to Dallas and they had been winning Super Bowls, all the old players talked about them being 1-15 and all the trials and tribulations they had to go through that year in order to get to that point and how they had to come back and fight and be ready to go the following year and the following year,” Zimmer said. “A lot of that is that you learn how to figure out a way how to make sure that doesn’t happen to you ever again.”
Having figured out protocols for keeping players as safe as possible through COVID (and with a vaccine starting to be administered), it would appear that this year will include the OTAs and minicamp that the 2020 season didn’t have.
That should give players who are entering their first legit full offseason from the 2019 and 2020 drafts to have a fair shot at growing their game based on what they saw this year.
“I think that’s the key, is that they have the ability to look at cut-ups when they come back and see where they started and where they ended,” co-defensive coordinator Andre Patterson said.
There’s also the part about knowing what they’re doing.
Early in the year, it appeared that Zimmer tried to implement his normal 2015-2019 defense that had succeeded with Pro Bowlers at every level only with newbies. The early results reflected just with numerous coverage miscues that led to explosive plays.
The defense was adapted as the year went along. In 2021, they’ll lean on the players better understanding how to take things from the white board to the field.
“More familiarity with the scheme, being more comfortable with the calls and alignments and assignments, so that when we get back here, whenever that may be, we’re hitting the ground running and not going back to square one,” co-defensive coordinator Adam Zimmer said.
Gary Kubiak’s message was even more simple: Young players especially need to learn that finding a way to win is a trait.
The 2020 Vikings went looking for ways to lose in many instances, whether it be game-winning drives against them by Seattle and Dallas or inconsistencies at the ends of halves or turnovers or whatever other numerous ways that went beyond sheer talent vs. talent.
“I just think, hey, you come back next year, you’re going to work the same, prepare just as hard but you’ve got to be able to pass the fine line somehow, someway and be able to get yourself in the tournament,” Kubiak said. “That’s what this league’s all about.”
Believing you’re a ‘win-now’ team doesn’t make you a ‘win-now’ team
One of the things coaches love to say about good players is: “They don’t make the same mistake twice.”
Vikings management did just that in 2020.
Convinced they were one pass rusher away from having a capable defense, they traded a second-round pick for Yannick Ngakoue. At the bye week, GM Rick Spielman said the move was an attempt to pair Ngakoue with Danielle Hunter and the team didn’t know that Hunter would ultimately miss the season. That would be fine if the team weren’t asking way too much of many other players in order to be competitive in 2020.
At that point, they were already aware of Michael Pierce’s opt out and the fact they’d need to rely on backup defensive tackles from the get-go. They were aware that Holton Hill and Mike Hughes hadn’t yet proven they could play in the league and they were aware of the ugly history of rookie cornerbacks starting right away.
Yet they went forward with a win-now move acquiring Ngakoue. Maybe at the time they thought he’d be signed to an extension in the 2021 offseason but they had to know the salary cap would be dropping and they would already face a number of problems with a quarterback making $31 million.
Which is a reminder that this could have been Kirk Cousins’s last year of his contract and instead they extended him to create cap space for the Pierce signing (which Spielman confirmed at the bye week).
Expensive quarterbacks play for win-now teams. The Vikings used up the lowest cap hit year of Cousins’s contract on a team that wasn’t there yet.
And then they elected to only trade Ngakoue at the deadline because it appeared they believed after beating Green Bay that they could get back into the playoff race. But like a NASCAR driver who’s in 39th place and makes a mad dash to 15th, they ran out of gas in the end. Did it help in the long run to keep players like Riley Reiff, Kyle Rudolph and Anthony Harris on a small percentage change of a playoff berth?
So what’s the lesson learned? As a president of the United States once said: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, won’t get fooled again.”
The 2021 season should carry expectations. With young players coming into their primes and a QB playing the best football of his career, there’s no reason to look at the Vikings as anything less than an NFC North contender next season. Does that mean they should throw around draft capital for overrated pass rushers in a Hail Mary attempt to fix the defense? Does it mean they should draft players to fit only their 2021 needs?
Not if they learn from 2020, it doesn’t.
Justin Jefferson is a franchise player and Stefon Diggs was right
Everyone loves a good “who won the trade?” debate. In the case of the 2020 Vikings, they won and lost the Stefon Diggs trade.
They won it because Justin Jefferson became an instant superstar who needs just 47 yards against Detroit to clear Randy Moss’s rookie record. He’s lower priced and lower maintenance.
They lost the trade because Diggs’s team threw the ball to him constantly and ranked sixth in the league in scoring — higher than the Vikings have rated any any point during the Mike Zimmer era.
“I mean a lot of people felt that I was coming in to replace Stefon Diggs. It kind of made it seem like we was enemies… but real recognizes real,” Jefferson said. “He’s doing a tremendous job at the Bills and I’m doing my thing here.”
Jefferson is certainly doing his thing. He graded as the second best receiver in the NFL by PFF. However, he played on an offense that finished 27th in pass attempts and saw 45 fewer targets than Diggs.
In a way, it feels like the Vikings already had a chance to learn from targeting Diggs only 91 times last season but now that he’s taken Buffalo’s offense to a championship level, that lesson may become more clear.
Jefferson is a franchise changer. Just like Diggs made Sam Bradford and Case Keenum into stars, he’s made Josh Allen an MVP candidate, Jefferson has the capability to take the Vikings’ passing game to another level in 2021.
And he said this week he’s taking away a ton of learning experiences from this year to apply them going forward.
“Really, just the different experiences that I had with different cornerbacks, learning different techniques I can use later on in my career,” Jefferson said. “Just as a NFL whole, learning how to maintain my body, making sure I’m healthy, making sure I’m taking care of my body.”
Will they let him fully apply his skills next year? We’ll see.
Irv Smith is the future
Things may not have gone their way in 2020 but the Vikings have likely seen enough of Irv Smith Jr. to believe in him as a major part of the future — and in turn possibly move on from long-time tight end Kyle Rudolph.
While Smith Jr. got off to a slow start this year, he ranked as PFF’s fifth best tight end since Week 5. He has 26 receptions on 32 targets and Kirk Cousins had a 148.0 rating throwing his way during that timespan.
Smith learned he can be a true mismatch option.
“A lot of teams, they’ll try to put like a nickel guy in there to cover me or something like that and I feel like as a tight end, we’re a big mismatch on the field,” Smith Jr. said. Or if they put a linebacker, I’ll usually be bigger or faster than one of those guys, or a safety or nickel guy, they’re smaller guys… I just try to win my one on ones, win the battle. Each week for sure I feel like I got more comfortable.”
When Rudolph was lost to injury late in the year, Tyler Conklin stepped in with 12 receptions over the last there weeks, opening the door for him to remain as TE2 next year if the Vikings do move along from their veteran tight end.
Ezra Cleveland can play, but where?
When the Vikings drafted Ezra Cleveland, it was assumed that he would be the left tackle in waiting.
With Riley Reiff as a costly veteran, it made sense on draft night that they picked his replacement to hang out behind him in 2020 and learn.
But when camp began, he was playing guard. When there were multiple injuries at right guard, he played guard. On the opposite side of what he’d ever done before.
“It’s very hard,” Brian O’Neill said of Cleveland’s move. “I know there’s been a couple of linemen who have done it throughout the year in playing different multiple positions across the league and I have a lot of respect for anybody who can do that because it’s a lot harder than people think.”
Even with Reiff out for Week 17, the Vikings are staying with Cleveland at guard. Kubiak was noncommittal when asked about the 2020 second-round pick’s future.
Cleveland, however, said that he hopes to gain valuable lessons from his successes and struggles as a guard.
“Each week I think it helps going against different people. The bigger guys, like you said, learning to anchor and hand placement and everything happens quicker so your reaction time has to be faster. It’s just nice to get that stuff in the tool belt and use it in the future.
Overall Cleveland has the second best PFF grade of any rookie guard. He’s part of the 2021 starting five. Where? They might not even know until the offseason is through.
Help is still needed at cornerback
One of the things the Vikings would have hoped going into 2020 is that they would learn which cornerbacks would stick and which wouldn’t be around much longer. Well, they found out Holton Hill wasn’t capable of being a starter but the rest still have question marks.
Mike Hughes got injured early in the year and never returned, marking the third straight year he’s been hurt.
Jeff Gladney showed signs of improvement but gave up a 126.5 rating into his coverage. Cam Dantzler is the second highest PFF graded cover corner but he missed significant time due to three different injuries.
“I think if you look back to Week 1 or the beginning of training camp, those guys have grown a lot,” Adam Zimmer said. “They’ve gotten a lot of opportunities. I think I heard the other day Gladney has played as much as any rookie DB in the league or close to it. You see the growth of him and the more confidence in the scheme and the communication and just the better feel for playing the nickel position. The same thing with Cam. He’s come in and played with more confidence over the last few weeks and I think those guys can hopefully continue to get better and continue to improve in all areas.”
As a defense overall, the Vikings allowed a 96.0 quarterback rating by opposing QBs, 22nd in the NFL.
“They’re not anywhere where they need to be yet, and they shouldn’t be – they’re still rookies,” Adam Zimmer said. “But I like their progress, I like the direction they’re heading and hopefully we can continue to develop that as we move forward.”
That direction may very well include a veteran corner or two off the free agent market, if the Vikings learned this year they can’t rely on rookies and players with injury histories.
The D-line is short on players to go forward with
Maybe you’re tired of hearing this stat but it’s worth repeating: Unless DJ Wonnum picks up 2.5 sacks against the Lions, Yannick Ngakoue will lead the Vikings in sacks. Overall they have the seventh fewest sacks in the league.
Ifeadi Odenigbo earned his first chance to start and former fourth-rounders Jaleel Johnson and Jalyn Holmes saw significant playing time for the first year of their careers. None proved to be future starters. Armon Watts, Hercules Mata’afa, Jordan Brailford and Eddie Yarbrough also saw time on the D-line and failed to make a strong case that they should be considered future pillars.
Even with Hunter and Pierce returning, the Vikings should be investigating all avenues to improve the D-line. Draft picks. Free agents. Trades. Whatever it takes,
Turnovers are a big problem
The Vikings committed turnovers on 13% of their drives this season, which played a role in the team ranking 32nd in the average starting field position of their opponents.
“If you had not had those turnovers earlier in the year, maybe you don’t start 1-5,” Kirk Cousins said. “So you look at, ‘Hey, if I can cut down those turnovers as we move forward, for the part of the season that we turned it over, maybe we aren’t .500 or hovering around .500. So those are all hypotheticals, but you can certainly make those connections and start to say, ‘Hey, we’re close. I know we can do it.’ But you’ve got to do it for a whole 16-game season and not for a majority of it or for a stretch, but for the whole thing.”
By many other metrics, the offense was between solid and good, ranking eighth in net yards per pass attempt and fourth in yards per rush. But the Vikings were 18th in percentage of drives ending in points.
Is there a lesson to be learned? Turnovers can be pretty random. Maybe it’s that turnovers either happen or not, even if you try to play conservatively to avoid them. Or maybe turnovers are the under-the-radar stat within the numbers that point to Cousins playing very well this season.
Kicking is weird
The Vikings thought they were all set at kicker for a long time. We learned this year that might not be the case. Dan Bailey only made 70% of his kicks, a career low, and had back-to-back games against Jacksonville and Tampa Bay in which he seemed to lose all ability to plant the ball between the uprights.
The worst part is that we don’t have an answer for what happened when things went sideways. He had a back injury last week but said that wasn’t part of his earlier struggles.
“That’s where the frustration is: it’s just kind of a bad timing thing, coming off the tail end of all that,” Bailey said. “I feel like I was hitting the ball well, and having a pretty OK season. It’s just been a battle this past month or so. It’s definitely not a confidence thing or a health thing, up until this past week. I think it’s just one of those things where I’m battling through, and obviously, it’s happening. It’s not for lack of effort, and I’m obviously trying to remedy it as soon as I can. But it’s disappointing.”
We learned in 2020 that there will definitely be a kicking competition in camp next year.
Fans matter
ESPN’s Kevin Seifert broke down the numbers and it appears clear that playing in without crowds had an impact. Road teams won 49.3% of games heading into Week 17, their highest rate since at least 2001. The highest road winning percentage for an entire season was 48.4% in 1972. From 2001 to 2018, the average winning percentage for a road team was 42.9%.
It’s hard to say how much fans back inside US Bank Stadium will change the defense’s success in 2021 but the Vikings lost five of their eight games at home and gave up more than 30 points in each loss. Three of those losses were by one score.
There’s a lot to be done
Much like blockbuster movies, there’s always a sequel to the Vikings’ season next year. There’s a lot of changes coming in free agency and the draft. There’s a lot to fix. There’s a lot of different ways the Vikings can return to relevance.
Of course, that’s only if they learn the right lessons from 2020.
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Two thoughts:
1. Do you mean paying a veteran qb was the problem, or that not (a la 49ers) putting the big cap hit in the first year, when the D was being turned-over, was the problem?
2. What would a training camp battle show? We know D. Bailey is an accomplished nfl kicker. Seeing someone else who is very likely not an accomplished nfl kicker make kicks during the preseason doesn't provide any evidence that such person will become an accomplished nfl kicker.
The tiny sample size and high stakes make it maddening when Ks slump, but that doesn't mean there are actually better options.
What would it take to focus on the offensive line and have a high powered offense like the Vikings did in the late 90s? Does Zimmer need to go in order for that to happen? Are there any coaches you would be high on who could do this?
It’s so frustrating watching this team win with defense 16-6, or 21-10. The dominate teams in the 90s won with offense and were consistently good every year.