In a game Zimmer needed, Vikings win Zimmer's way
Vikings pull off upset in Green Bay by steamrolling Packers on the ground
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Mike Zimmer needed that one.
Following an abysmal loss to the Atlanta Falcons two weeks ago, the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach suddenly found himself in the middle of speculation over his future and whether the Vikings should have been playing Zimmer ball all along.
But on Sunday, the Vikings pulled off an impressive victory at Lambeau Field playing exactly the way Mike Zimmer has always wanted to win.
That starts with Dalvin Cook.
In Week 2 of 2019, Cook went for a career high 154 yards. This Sunday he made that game look like an average performance.
Cook scored four touchdowns, Lambeau leaped and got most of his offensive linemen and fullback a spike in the end zone by the time the game was over.
From the Vikings’ opening drive, it was clear their strategy on a windy fall day in Wisconsin was going to be to turn back the clock to Gary Kubiak’s days with Terrell Davis and lean heavily on the superstar running back.
Cook, who was questionable heading into the game after missing Week 6’s contest against Atlanta, started off with 14 yards on his first two carries and then finished the drive by bolting through a massive hole for a 21-yard scamper for his first touchdown.
The Vikings generally built their offensive line with athletic run blockers, who handled the Packers’ defensive line as well as they have done in the last few seasons. Rookie guard Ezra Cleveland picked up a key block on Cook’s first TD.
On the defensive side, the Vikings opened the game right where they left off two weeks ago against the Falcons, getting steamrolled.
Mike Zimmer’s strategy of forcing the Packers into slow, methodical drives worked but they had no issues traveling 75 yards on 13 plays for a touchdown to open the game
But the Packers could only do so much damage with Zimmer’s team hammering them on the ground an extending long drives with key conversions. Down 14-7 after two impressive Packer drives, the Vikings ran off 6:22 behind six more Cook runs and several completions by Kirk Cousins to tie the game heading into the half.
The Vikings had a chance to “double dip,” as Zimmer calls it, coming out of halftime. They did just that with a 5:00 drive for 85 yards that was opened by a 37-yard rush by Cook and finished with another Cook touchdown.
By the time Rodgers returned to the field, it was nearly an hour after his last offensive possession in real time. The Packers’ offense appeared to be out of sorts, committing penalties and struggling to find the same room in the running game as they had early in the game. He also couldn’t find Davante Adams in the same way he had for two touchdowns in the first half.
On third and fourth down, the future Hall of Fame quarterback targeted his No. 3 receiver and Equineous St. Brown failed to come up with the ball both times.
Cook went right back to work, scoring a 50-yard touchdown on a screen pass from Cousins.
The Vikings’ defense again came up with a stop.
Missing their star pass rusher, Pro Bowl linebacker and three cornerbacks after Cameron Dantzler got hurt, the Vikings’ defense had one thing going for them in the second half: They were fresh.
In the first go-round with the Packers, they were worn down by Green Bay’s outrageous advantage in time of possession and by the fourth quarter appeared to have nothing left in the tank. Late in the third quarter, they showed up for another key stop and forced the Packers to punt after Green Bay had run nearly six minutes off the clock.
Rodgers and the Packers had a shot to get back in the game early in the fourth quarter, but a classic Zimmer cornerback blitz by Jeff Gladney disrupted the Packers’ QB, who threw a miss-timed ball incomplete in the direction of Adams. On fourth down, Anthony Harris broke up another pass and the Vikings got the ball back.
Even amidst the turmoil, the Vikings’ defense still came into the game ranked highly in the red zone and on third downs. The important stop in the fourth dropped the Packers to 4-of-10 on the day on third down.
By the time the Vikings gave the Packers the ball back, Cousins had only attempted 14 passes for 160 yards and 50 of those yards came on the Cook screen. It had a Case Keenum-y feel. That’s how the Vikings have always wanted to win under Zimmer: Where the quarterback isn’t asked to carry the load.
The Vikings committed a costly penalty with 12 men on the field and then the battered defense lost another cornerback when Kris Boyd went down late in the game and Rodgers instantly took advantage, driving for a touchdown to bring the game within one score. Head coach Matt LaFleur went with the analytics and scored a two-point conversion to bring the score within 28-22 with just over two minutes left.
Even with a chance to put the ball in Cousins’s hands to gain a first down and win the game, the Vikings elected to stick with the run. Cook was stopped on third-and-9 and the Vikings had to punt the ball away and give Rodgers one last shot.
Rookie DJ Wonnum came through in the final seconds with a strip sack to wrap up the Vikings’ second win of the year.
The game mostly went the best way Zimmer could have dreamed. It felt like a throwback to past battles with Rodgers.
Now, what the win means for the immediate future is hard to say. Does the victory change the front office’s opinion on trades with the deadline coming up on Tuesday? Do the Vikings believe they could get hot down the stretch with games against mediocre opponents coming up? Or, at 2-5, will this be a fun highlight in a miserable season and the likes of Anthony Harris, Riley Reiff etc. will be sent elsewhere?
We’ll see. It might be too little too late but for Sunday this was the way the Vikings believed they could win when the season started.
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What in the world are the Vikings going to do about their corner back situation? Also, it sounds like Fields had a punctured lung. Does that mean he also had a broken rib?
Woot! Viking are now 2-5 putting them only half a game from first place in the NFC East! Oh wait...