Friday mailbag: Respect and blitzes

Vikings fans are thinking about whether they can keep the train on the tracks as they head to Buffalo

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Friday everyone!

I wanted to mention that if you checked out Paul Hodowanic’s article from yesterday but got confused when he was talking about graphs that didn’t exist… well, they exist now. For some reason they didn’t show up on the original post but we fixed the issue, so you can click here to look at what he wrote about the Vikings’ offensive line here, now with beautiful graphs.

OK let’s get into your questions…

Jeff via email Mailbag question...Let`s assume that Akayleb Evans showing last week was not a fluke.... Could you see a legit scenario this year on next where he plays outside CB and PP moves into the slot corner position? Get your best players on the field!

I thought Evans was very good last week but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves yet. While there might be a scenario where he’s good enough that he doesn’t give the job back to Dantzler, they would be overthinking it to move their best outside corner inside. Nickel corner is a totally different job from playing outside and even if Peterson is smart enough to move inside, there’s no way he’s more valuable there than at his traditional position. Chandon Sullivan has been a slot corner for his whole career in this style of defense, so even if it’s problematic at times, I’d be surprised if they started anyone else there.

@DonLokken Should Viking fans continue to play the "No Respect" card? Should Cousins?

The days of them not getting attention ended when Cousins was on TMZ for being shirtless and appeared on the Manningcast. Everywhere I saw this week had them power ranked in the top seven. It’s also the NFL. It’s so absurdly popular that literally nothing is capable of being underrated. But the “no respect” thing doesn’t have to be objectively true. If fans want to own the non-existent haters, that’s cool. If Cousins wants to treat this season as proving to the world that he’s capable of leading a real Super Bowl contending team, I don’t see anything wrong with them embracing that narrative. It’ll be interesting to see how they play with some expectations on them now because the bar is set higher than just reaching the playoffs when you start 7-1.

@koltes_james Are we in trouble in the second half of the season with our cb depth and our O line?

Depends on your definition of “in trouble.” Certainly if Akayleb Evans has some growing pains and the offensive line doesn’t improve, they will face more bumps along the road in the second half of the year than they did in the first half but the only way they are “in trouble” is if Cousins or Jefferson gets hurt. Almost nothing else could result in them falling off the top of the NFC North mountain. I might even say that Nick Mullens could get them to the postseason from here. But if you mean “in trouble” as showing the world that they are the best team in the NFC by the time we reach the postseason, yes, particularly the O-line is a huge issue — mainly because I don’t see a fix. Bringing in Chris Reed or Oli Udoh has to be in some consideration at right guard but it’s not massively changing the reality of the line. Once again they have a kryptonite and if they match up against the wrong team in the playoffs it could be the end of them. The biggest thing I’m looking for overall since they are so far up in the division is just how strong they are when it comes playoff time and how good they get at covering weaknesses.

@A_Ditt23 It definitely seems like Dalvin is shying away from contact more this year while also being less elusive. Is it the shoulder injury or just the progression of an aging RB? Do you think Mattison should be given more of a time share?

Cook is down to -0.19 Rushing Yards Over Expected per carry, which is even with both of Washington’s running backs and 12th lowest in the league, per NFLNextGen stats. What that tells us is that he’s getting slightly less than the quality of blocks he’s getting this year, which is way different than in the past. So, to your point, the elusiveness hasn’t been quite the same. He’s still about average when it comes to yards after contact but in 2020 he was 5th best. I do think they should be mixing in Mattison more often. He’s run the ball well this year (12th in PFF rushing grade) and the more fresh Cook can be down the stretch, the better. It’s been the second halves of seasons where Cook has slowed down in years past. But saying coaches should play No. 2s in close games, even if the No. 2 is good, is always gonna be a tough ask.

@headcoach21 Would you put Darrisaw on 1st team All pro this year?? The guy is out there tossing DEs out the club.

Oh yeah. The only tackle graded higher than him is Andrew Thomas, who is also going to have a good case for first-team All-Pro (and for tackle development). They have a franchise player here…on a rookie contract for two more years.

@smccullough5 How many starting QBs will the Vikings face the rest of this year? O/U 5

Let’s say there isn’t a hex on the starters from here on out…Is there any chance it’s Bailey Zappe season again? Will new Colts head coach Jeff Saturday put Matt Ryan back in? Will Aaron Rodgers give up football to live in a mud hut by January? If I were actually trying to make a prediction, I’d put the O/U at 1.5 and say under. It can’t keep happening, right? Right? Riiiiight? OK maybe it can. The thing about the schedule the rest of the way is that it has lots of QBs who have shown something i.e. Mac Jones, Zach Wilson, Daniel Jones, Justin Fields but we still aren’t really sure about yet. So it might end up looking a lot tougher than the early part of the year or just as favorable, depending on how those guys play.

DarrickMoren Elite weapons, elite pass rush, improving communication on defense, and clutch Kirk. Add in the fact we will likely have at least 1 home playoff game and assuming no major changes on player health, why won't we make nfccg?

How far they go is going to really depend on three things: Health, matchups and the volatility of the QB position. In their current state this team is good. Their best players are almost completely healthy and playing at a high level right now. But there’s more than half the season left to go. If they get hit with an injury at the wrong position it’s going to be difficult to hold it all together in the playoffs. (I know you said “assuming player health” but that’s such a huge part of the equation). Matchups are a big thing for this team. I think we’ve seen that in Miami, Washington and Philly, in particular. When the O-line gets pushed around and they can’t run things start to go south with the offense and there’s really no answer for it. And the other part is the Cousins coaster. From month to month it can swing wildly. If he’s on an upswing heading into the playoffs, they have a chance. You know the other part. But the way I’m looking at the NFC, there’s two teams that are probably better (Philly, Dallas), two more teams that are equal (San Fran, Seattle) and then bleh. It’s certainly possible to end up playing on championship weekend of things hold this way.

@RalphVixCPA Any way to find out what a teams average pff grades means for overall records?

Yeah, it’s interesting because the PFF overall grades have the Vikings as the third best team in the NFL but obviously their offensive and defensive stats don’t match that. I’m not sure how mid-season grades correlate exactly to the final standings but last year the top 14 in PFF grade all had above .500 records except the Browns and the Super Bowl winning Rams were the highest graded team in the regular season (Bengals were second in the AFC). What it says to me is that they have multiple guys playing like All-Pros at the moment and if they keep that up, this team can play with anyone.

@DingoDonny1 Would you rather have peak Terry Bradshaw or current day Kirko Chainz as your starter in 2022?

It’s really funny looking at old QB stats in comparison to today’s numbers. Bradshaw won MVP averaging 182 yards passing per game and gained 14.1 yards per completion. Every offense was basically: Run, run, huck that thing long. It’s also shocking that Bradshaw only went to three Pro Bowls. That man was banged up a lot during his career and took quite a while before he came into his own as a QB. But when he was healthy, he was one of the best QBs of all time. Nobody knew how to get the ball to elite receivers like him. His Pro-Football Reference HOF Monitor score puts him between Bart Starr and Roger Staubach. Good company. I’ll take him.

@ratenepensky00 Is this Vikings margin of victory/ strength of schedule (solid teams, but backup QBs) concerning as compared to historical teams that have had playoff success? How does it compare?

That is a great question. Again our friends at Pro-Football Ref come through with an answer. Right now their Strength of Schedule 19th in franchise history. Quick math, that’s in the upper third. The 2019 schedule is nearly identical in SoS and that makes a lot of sense to me. Of course, the SoS wouldn’t factor for facing two backup QBs in Miami or Case Keenum (probably) versus Buffalo so it’s probably more comparable to some of their easiest ever. Turns out that 1987, 1998 and 2009 were also among easier schedules than this year by the PFR metric. With a team like this that always has competitive rosters, that’s all it takes to get them into the playoffs and give them a shot at a special season.

I did notice that the 2017 team actually had more of a mid-pack schedule — and they had a lot of notable good wins that season.

@spicymeatball88 Do you see a scenario/possibility where the Vikings win 12-13 games, win a playoff game (or 2) but yet still draft a QB and trade Kirk this offseason?

Not if they win in the playoffs. He’s getting extended if that happens, no question. The only scenario where this happens now is if they end up with 11-12 wins and there’s a lot of uninspiring moments down the stretch and they lose in the first round of the playoffs with an offensive no-show. At that point they would have to consider looking at the draft options considering how much Cousins will cost to extend. And just based on his age alone they’d have to be thinking about it. After his contract runs out in 2023 he’ll be almost as old as Matt Ryan is right now. A playoff win, as we saw in 2019, would make it almost inevitable that Cousins remains a Viking for the foreseeable future.

@JoshuaR_Smith How in the heck was Hockenson able to do what he did last week?

It sure says something about the guy, doesn’t it? The thing about today’s NFL is that there are only so many concepts that work and everyone uses them, if that makes sense. It’s really about how you dress it up. So when a player arrives at a new team he has a pretty good idea of the types of things he’s going to be asked to do, he just has to learn the different terminology and how some of the details work. JT O’Sullivan on the QB School YouTube has shown examples of different playbooks with the same exact concept but it’s called two different things and some coaches like the QB to read his progression this or that way. A tight end would have to understand his assignments within the play calls and then go out and do it. It sounds like Hockenson worked tirelessly last week to memorize everything he needed to play. Impressive stuff. When we talk about where this team can stand down the stretch and into the playoffs vs. the beginning of the year, his presence is a factor in thinking they could be stronger than the first and second quarters of the season.

@Becomesdahunted since it sincerely feels like twitter could crash and burn, where should I migrate to for more vikings football? Discord? Reddit?

I have seen Substack talk about creating a chat function for subscribers to have discussion. I’ve always used Twitter for to talk with Vikings fans but I guess I’ll have to look into that. There’s always going to be new social media sites popping up. In college the MySpace message at the top was the original subtweet. What did people do before that, write stuff on the outside of their houses?

@marcmillah I don't deep-dive film, but it seems like Cousins is below-average against the blitz—is this true, and if so, is he getting better/what can he and KOC do to fix it?

Throughout his career he’s been one of the best QBs in the NFL against the blitz but this year his numbers have cratered. He has a 76.0 rating when blitzed this year and a 51.3 PFF grade. Compare that to even last year where Cousins had a 112.0 rating and 90.9 rating in 2021. There’s a few possible theories about why this is happening…the first would be that he doesn’t have the right answers within the scheme or that O’Connell seems very committed to using five-man protections and those are breaking down when opponents blitz, whereas the Kubiak family loved to keep an extra tight end or fullback around to block. The other could be Cousins trying to play a little more safely and as a result he’s averaging 4.8 YPA. It could also be a small sample thing. He’s had 92 drop-backs versus the blitz and several versus Philly were really bad. It could come around eventually.

@kyleshaner Terry McLaurin had five catches against the Vikings. He was tackled by Eric Kendricks four times. What does that stat mean?

It means that the Vikings’ goal of keeping everything in front of them worked except when the referee tackled Cam Bynum. They knew that Taylor Heinicke was not going to throw lasers into tight windows 20 yards down the field, so they dared him to make a bunch of short completions and he couldn’t pull it off. Case Keenum might have a little more luck with that, though you know he liked to push the ball downfield wildly from time to time as well. Kendricks’ PFF coverage grades have been taking it on the nose with the scheme this year but he’s still a terrific linebacker.

@connor_strunc Since the offense has struggled to run the ball at times, do you think KOC will try to use more jet sweeps with Jefferson or Reagor? On Sunday the Commanders pinched their line to stop Dalvin and Jefferson took the jet sweep and it seemed like it worked well.

Getting Reagor involved every once in a while with a jet sweep is probably a good idea but it hasn’t really worked with Jefferson. He’s run nine times for 29 yards in his career. It feels strange to say but he isn’t all that good at dodging tackles. Plus you put a target on him for the opposing defense and you can bet everyone wants to get their best shot in. But you won’t get any debate from me about the merits of the jet sweep. It catches teams off guard all the time and if you add in 2-4 per game the opponent has to think about it every time you put a guy in motion.