By Matthew Coller
MINNEAPOLIS — It’s now been 11 games since the Minnesota Vikings lost and almost every single one of them have had the same refrain: The defense walks out of the stadium beaming with new breathtaking performances each week and the offense sheepishly apologizes for its performance and vows that improvement is around the corner.
That feeling has never been stronger in the postgame locker room than it was after Sunday’s 16-10 victory over the Indianapolis Colts.
On one side, the defense held the opposing quarterback to 108 yards passing at 4.9 yards per attempt and give up just 10 points.
On the other side, Kevin O’Connell and Kyler Murray’s offense only got into the end zone once and finished with just 275 total yards and 3-for-11 on third downs.
The question when you write a postgame article about this 6-0 team is: Which area do you start with?
Since they won, we begin with the defense. We have gotten used to the excellence of Blake Cashman but he had a game for the ages. He broke up four passes, had two sacks and 12 tackles.
“I told the team, giving him another game ball, it feels like it’s a weekly thing,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said. “Right now, he’s just flying all over the place. What he does just from a pre-snap communication standpoint as the green dot and then just as a blitzer, made some really nice instinctive plays, knocking some balls down in zone. Almost picked one off there early on in the game that would have probably been a touchdown. He’s just so impactful.”
One of the themes of this defense is that all the players have been in Flores’ defense so long that they can adapt and adjust to just about anything on the fly and that starts with Cashman.
“The way he’s playing and the way he’s kind of taking ownership, taking the next step of just kind of that elite understanding of our defense, what we’re trying to get done, adjustments in game, it’s just spectacular,” O’Connell said.
PFF’s initial grading of the game credited Cashman with six total QB pressures and seven tackles on negative Colts plays.
“He’s a factor in all phases of the game, he’s getting sacks, he’s awesome in the run game, he’s a huge factor in the pass game, plus he’s the one who gets the play call and dudes are yelling at him all game, ‘what’s the call, what’s the call,’” Safety Harrison Smith said. “He has so much going on and for him to quiet that when the ball is snapped and play with a lot of intelligence and violence at the same time, he’s playing lights out.”
In terms of defensive euphoria, Smith’s game-sealing interception gets added to the trophy case that he has filled up over his career. Smith’s pick was his 40th of his career and he emphatically set the ball down at the 40-yard line as the offense walked out for victory formation.
“I was talking to Richard Sherman this week and he has a lot and I have a lot and we both feel like they don’t come around when you chase them, you just do your job and the opportunities will present themselves and then you have to be a ballplayer,” Smith said. “That’s pretty much what happened there.
The crowd cheering, “Harry, Harry, Harry” was the cherry on top of another classic Smith moment.
“It was fun at a big moment in the game, which I’ve always prided myself on playing good when it matters most,” Smith said, acknowledging that he did indeed hear the chants.
There were plenty of other shining stars on defense as well. Kyle Van Noy made plays. Jalen Redmond had key stops. Dallas Turner was in the backfield all day. Andrew Van Ginkel came close to an interception.
Yes, Colts RB Jonathan Taylor did rush an impressive TD against them and finished with 5.1 yards per attempt but the Vikings closed down the run in key spots as well and forced Jones to pass.
You just can’t say enough good things about the No. 1 defense in the NFL. You’ll see the stats everywhere. Least amount of this through six games, fewest number of that allowed to this point of the season. Every new factoid tells the same story: The defense is a force.
Now take the opposite of all that and describe the offense.
The Vikings opened the game with a long kick return by Myles Price and then instantly squandered it away with four straight runs by Aaron Jones that resulted in a turnover on downs.
While they won the turnover battle and protected the football, Murray missed open passes downfield to Jauan Jennings and Justin Jefferson and he had a penalty negate one of his best throws of the day to Jordan Addison.
“We left a lot out there,” O’Connell said. “I think our guys are very confident that we’re not far off. And the far off changes a little bit as you go. But I’m very, very confident we’ll get it going.”
How many times can O’Connell continue to say they are close? There haven’t been answers in a very long time and there’s always a new explanation. In this particular game, O’Connell reeled off a laundry list of different plays that nearly hit, like a long pass that went off Jennings’ fingertips, a long completion to Addison that was negated by a suspect penalty and a wide open throw to Jefferson that was inaccurate from Murray.
“You can’t get down on it right now just because it’s still relatively early enough that we’re catching our stride,” O’Connell said. “But at the same time, we know what the type of people and teams that are going to be on our schedule the rest of the way and where we want to go with this team. We’ll keep progressing and all while not turning it over.”
There were good things that happened. O’Connell counted nine “explosives,” including a 20-yard throw to Jennings that helped them go up by six points late and a 35-yard rush by Murray that resulted in a touchdown on the next play.
But it’s nowhere near consistent enough.
The frustration comes partly because over the last two games it looked like Murray had gotten into a groove. He went 40-for-48 from the third quarter against Miami to the end of the game against New Orleans and kept the offense largely on track with shorter passes.
The offense seemed to go back to a lot of downfield shot plays, like one that got Murray sacked and nearly taken out of field-goal range when the Vikings were up 13-10 in the fourth quarter. Murray ended up just 4-for-10 on throws over 10 yards, yet he was efficient from 0-9 yards, going 7-for-9 with 52 yards and a touchdown.
Even with underwhelming stats, it’s remarkable how often they were on Indy’s side of the field and couldn’t put the ball in the end zone.
They had drives end at Indy’s 38 (turnover on downs), 44 (punt), 10 (field goal), 29 (field goal), 41 (missed FG), and 34 (field goal).
“I think that we just have to put the ball in the end zone,” Murray said. “I know it comes down to execution.”
At some point, we just could design an A.I. program to write the postgame press conferences and have it give the same answers we’ve heard for a year-and-a-half.
In the bigger picture, there’s a pretty darn promising history when it comes to starting 6-0. Four of the last seven teams to do it landed in the Super Bowl (2024 Chiefs, 2022 Eagles, 2019 49ers and 2018 Rams).
But there’s a couple cautionary tale teams. After the game, Van Noy reminded us of the 2019 Patriots, who were 6-0 and lost in the first round of the playoffs.
You could make an argument that it became en vogue to call out good teams for being “frauds” when the 2020 Pittsburgh Steelers started off undefeated but had a poor offense and then collapsed at the end of the season.
Murray’s 2021 Cardinals were 6-0 and only finished 11-6 and lost in the first round.
We can all agree that the Vikings’ defense can keep doing this. They have now put together an incredible 11-game streak in which they have allowed 13 points or less in seven of the games and over 20 only twice. Since Week 2, the defense has given up 42 points. That’s less than the Bucs scored on Sunday.
The reality is, we don’t really know the answer to where this is going and we’re about to find out.
It stands to reason that the Vikings’ offense can’t be this bad with this much talent. Murray played far better than this in 2024 when he was with a less gifted Cardinals team and the Jefferson/Addison/Jennings/Hockenson/Mason combo is all players with long histories of success. The offensive line has four out of five starters.
But if it’s something deeper about the offense or the play calling that has been solved by the rest of the NFL for whatever reason, then it might not turn around. The sample size is becoming disturbingly large and it’s hard to ignore JJ McCarthy playing well in New York on Sunday.
The answer will come in the next section of games. The Vikings face the Lions, Bills, Packers and 49ers — simply four of the best teams in the NFL with four superstar quarterbacks that won’t be throwing for 100 yards and scoring 10 points, no matter how great the defense is. They will need to produce points against those clubs to win.
If they go 2-2 or 3-1, then their argument would be pretty darn strong for remaining as a top contending team. If the offense continues to look like it’s stuck in the mud and the excuses keep coming, then it will be very hard to keep the “fraud” word out of people’s mouths.
I understand the fact that the offense is so close to working is what's frustrating people. But we're also overemphasizing a few missed passes because it pads out the stats and makes you feel better when you look at the box score. This is life when you're playing most of the year with a lead in a decidedly run-first, possession control offense. But at the end of the day the Vikings won and Kyler's playmaking was the difference on offense despite some early accuracy issues. Time for the real test, the November gauntlet begins!
I really hate to argue for a big RB trade, especially if we’re talking about an older guy with a ton of wear like Saquon, but I don’t know what else you do at this point. KOC should definitely adjust his play calling a bit: more rollouts and designed runs for Kyler, stop doing vanilla runs on 2nd and 10, etc. But I don’t think that’s just going to magically fix it, and they already have tons of talent in the passing game. If the running game takes a big step forward, I can see that opening things up and helping Kyler quite a bit with the down and distance. Feels like they’ll just go with a Pollard, or somebody else who won’t instantly put Jones on the bench, but I don’t think that will get it done. Even looking at the colts backup yesterday, that guy just had way more juice than anybody on the Vikings roster. I’ve wanted them to draft a RB in the first 2-3 rounds for years, and this is exactly why.