Vikings did the offseason Mike Zimmer's way

The Vikings put everything into rebuilding the defense, going all in on Zimmer ball

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By Matthew Coller

With a few weeks remaining before the Minnesota Vikings hit the field for training camp, we have some time to take a step back and look at the Vikings’ offseason as a whole. The roster transformation has me thinking about the connection between Mike Zimmer, last season and the strategy to quickly turn things around…

When Zimmer arrived in Minnesota, the Vikings had the worst defense in the NFL. His task, in a division with three good/great QBs, was to morph the Vikings from the 32nd ranked team in points allowed to a club that Aaron Rodgers, Matt Stafford and Jay Cutler wouldn’t look forward to facing.

At the NFL Combine in 2020, Zimmer recalled looking at his 2014 roster and only seeing a handful of players he considered to be NFL starters. The Vikings’ head coach admitted candidly that after the exits of players like Linval Joseph, Xavier Rhodes, Trae Waynes, Mackensie Alexander and Everson Griffen during the 2020 offseason, he was reminded of his first Minnesota defense.

But when 2020 training camp came around, the Vikings talked themselves into the idea that they could coach up the young players and fill in the gaps with some fresh coverages and blitzes. They talked themselves into Shamar Stephen and Jaleel Johnson being fine at defensive tackle after Michael Pierce opted out. They talked themselves into Holton Hill and Mike Hughes as the starting corners. They talked themselves into Yannick Ngakoue being the man to fix the pass rush post-Griffen.

Later Zimmer acknowledged that they “miscalculated.”

Of course, the miscalculations can’t be the only thing that gets the blame. All defenses fade eventually. It’s the nature of the beast. Even the great Seattle Seahawks defenses of the mid-2010s that finished first in points allowed four years in a row eventually fell off. There was also the salary cap, which proved to not be a myth.

Years of spending to keep the band together caught up with them. The Vikings weren’t able to sign competent replacements for players who left or got hurt — and a lot of players got hurt.

So this year the Vikings decided to calculate differently and build the defense through free agency. They signed Dalvin Tomlinson, Patrick Peterson, Sheldon Richardson, Bashaud Breeland, Xavier Woods, Mackensie Alexander, Stephen Weatherly, Nick Vigil, Parry Nickerson and Tye Smith.

In doing so they took the same approach as when Zimmer first landed, only in an expediated way. Back in 2014, Zimmer had time to put his defense together through the draft. This go ‘round, time is not on anyone’s side, so they needed to sign veterans who could help immediately.

There is pressure to not only improve on last year’s down season but on the last three seasons in which the Vikings have totaled 25 wins in 48 games and registered just three victories over opposing clubs that finished with winning records — four if you include their playoff win in New Orleans.

They’re betting on Zimmer’s way to shake the malaise of finishing around .500.

Coincidentally, what the defense-first approach has done for the Vikings is given them a baseline of performance of around .500 when things don’t go perfectly. When things went sideways in 2016 and 2018 they were still one win away from the playoffs. Of course, 2015 and 2019’s defenses weren’t enough to take them deep in the postseason.

If focusing on defense seems like one of those definition-of-insanity things — well, it might not be. It isn’t exactly doing the same thing over and over when the landscape changes every year.

The NFC is currently in flux with Drew Brees retiring and Aaron Rodgers’s future uncertain. Quarterback situations in Chicago and San Francisco are also unclear and there’s rebuilding teams scattered across the NFC East. Fans are also back at US Bank Stadium, which has a proven track record of enhancing the Vikings’ defense. And there’s the most basic fact which is: Every year is different. In 2016, the Vikings had some bad breaks and went 8-8 and then things went their way in 2017 and they ended up in the NFC Championship.

The Vikings would hardly be the first team to rely on defense to keep them afloat and strike when they get good bounces and injury luck. Pittsburgh in recent years hasn’t broken through with another trip to the Super Bowl under Mike Tomlin but they were competitive even when something called Duck Hodges started games. During the Joe Flacco era in Baltimore, John Harbaugh’s teams were often defense-driven and eventually they broke through to win a Super Bowl. Chicago has largely made the postseason in recent years because of their defense.

Taking the road already traveled does, however, put into question whether the Vikings can improve on the post-2017 results. Can the bar be raised from being good-not-great by pouring $40-plus million into the defensive side and spending very little to improve an offense that ranked 11th in points and 10th in passing EPA?

As counter intuitive as it might have seemed coming off the 29th ranked defense, there was a case for pouring assets into a better supporting cast for Cousins. The last 12 teams to reach the Super Bowl have all ranked top five in points scored and top five in passing Expected Points Added. If the gates to the Super Bowl only open for those in the top five, the key might be having a preposterous amount of talent on offense. Presumably that’s why the Bucs signed Gronk and Antonio Brown when they already had two top-notch receivers.

The strategy would have gone something like: Re-sign Riley Reiff, shell out top dollar for a guard, sign or draft (early) two quality receivers and tack on veteran offensive line depth in case of emergency.

In this hypothetical, the Vikings would have been trying to recreate the 2016 Washington Football Team — a club driven by a Shanahan-style offense, as the Vikings are now, with weapons everywhere and a strong offensive line. That team had three quality receivers (Garcon, Jackson, Crowder), two good tight ends (Davis, Reed) and a pass blocking unit that ranked eighth by PFF. The result: The fourth best passing game by EPA in the NFL.

That doesn’t mean the all-in offense approach would have been a sure bet. Washington finished 8-7-1 that year, in part because they were 23rd in passing EPA on defense.

You usually can’t be terrible on defense and win. You can be passable on defense and still win. Last year the Bucs were eighth in points allowed and 18th in QB rating allowed. Sacks helped boost their EPA to the sixth best versus the pass. They were good but far from the ‘85 Bears.

The question we may end up wondering is whether the Vikings could have gotten to solid numbers without putting every dime into the defense? Did they need to spend as much as they did on a good nose tackle and cornerback that has seen better days?

Per OverTheCap, they spent the least amount of cap space on the offensive line in the NFL last year and ranked 28th in 2019 and 21st in 2018 while ranking second in defensive spending in 2018 and 2019. This year they will spend the second least on the O-line and ninth most on defense.

They didn’t completely ignore the offense. Drafting Christian Darrisaw and Wyatt Davis could end up being a huge win in the long run. Short term, it would take outlier performances from both players in order to make an impact. The Vikings already had good tackle play from Reiff, who allowed just one sack last year per PFF. There was also only one rookie guard with an above average PFF grade in 2020 and four total in the last three years (one of which was Quenton Nelson).

So the most likely outcome for the Vikings’ offense is that they are similar to last season as long as they stay healthy. That means that unless the offense organically outperforms last year, they will need a very good showing from the defense — not just passable — to improve on their .521 winning percentage over the last three years.

That’s the bet they’re making. Whether it pays this year will be an indictment on the Vikings’ approach during the Cousins era. If 2021 doesn’t turn out the way we expect, which is that the Vikings vastly improve and make a run for the NFC North, then we have an answer as to whether it was the right choice to stay the course.

The Vikings’ ownership extended Mike Zimmer here to do what he does best and by spending big to fix the defense, they’re giving him a shot to do that without wondering if he’d been sold short.

When the franchise feels like it’s reaching a pivot point in 2021, answers are valuable. Though we may never get an answer concerning what Cousins and the offense might look like on a passing juggernaut team.

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