Vikings mastering the art of the unconvincing victory
Vikings beat the Jags but yeeesh was it ugly
Football players will always tell you that it doesn’t matter how you win, as long as you come away with the victory at the end of the day. The Minnesota Vikings are pushing that concept to the extreme.
On Sunday against Jacksonville the Vikings won to get back to .500 and keep themselves right in the playoff mix. But for the third straight time that they’ve walked away with a win, the Vikings walked a tightrope with big mistakes and long stretches of ineptitude against inferior opposition.
The Jaguars opened the game with a touchdown drive that was capped by a play that you could either call a bad bounce or a lack of general awareness by cornerback Kris Boyd. Jacksonville’s third QB of the year Mike Glennon rolled to his left and overthrew a wide open intended receiver, hitting Boyd right in the chest. The ball bounced off him and into the hands of rookie Laviska Shenault for a touchdown.
Naturally, the Jags missed the extra point. They would go on to prove in many different ways that they are indeed worthy of being a 1-10 team.
But not before the Vikings made them look decent for awhile.
Following a three-and-out, Glennon found receiver Collin Johnson down the sideline for a 34-yard catch over Boyd, who mistimed his jump. The Jags settled for a field goal to go up 9-0 early in the first quarter.
The Vikings eventually remembered they are the better team. Rookie Cam Dantzler picked off Glennon in the red zone — which seems to be a weekly feature of the bad teams they’ve played of late. Kirk Cousins took advantage, hitting on several passes to start the drive and then “passing” the ball on a sweep to Dalvin Cook for 20 yards to set up an Adam Thielen touchdown.
As bad as it looked, there was no reason to think the Vikings could botch a gimme game in which they entered favored by 9.5 points. However, they tried.
With plenty of time to produce a score at the end of the half, Cousins got sacked and the Vikings went into halftime down by three.
They came out of half begging to lose. Cousins and Cook weren’t on the same page on a checkdown and linebacker Joe Schobert picked the pass off and ran it for a touchdown to put Jacksonville up 16-6 early in the third quarter.
It was a near instant replay of the previous week, when the Vikings opened the half by giving Carolina back-to-back defensive scores.
Just like last week, they bounced back and finally decided to target Justin Jefferson, who was matched up with a backup cornerback. Jefferson roasted his man on a 40-yard catch and fullback CJ Ham finished it off with his first touchdown of the year to bring the Vikings within three.
They quickly got the ball back and did it again, finding Jefferson for a 20-yard touchdown to take the lead.
But just when the Vikings had a chance to put the dagger in Jacksonville and forget this ever happened, Cook and Cousins had some type of miscommunication at the goal line and the Vikings fumbled.
Again, Jags gonna Jags. Glennon was sacked for a safety.
Jacksonville’s collapse of sorts again had a similar shade to Chicago overthrowing an open receiver to win the game or Carolina missing an opportunity to score on first-and-goal at the end of the game. The Vikings have left the front door, side door and all the windows open for their opponents in recent weeks and only the Cowboys made them pay for it.
They couldn’t even put an end to the Jags after the safety. The Vikings punted on fourth-and-5 from the Jacksonville 40 — a move that even coaches from 1993 might have questioned — and then they went three-and-out with a sack and third down handoff.
With seven minutes remaining, the Jags were still only down by five points but they certainly put in a full effort to change that, fumbling on the next drive. Hey, they’re going to draft No. 1 or 2 overall for a reason. Not sure about the Vikings’ excuse for playing down to their level.
After the fumble, the Vikings went up by eight on a Dan Bailey field goal but not before they stopped the clock on themselves in Panthers-like fashion with two incomplete passes that opened the door for a Glennon comeback.
Glennon briefly turned into John Elway, calmly — with zero pressure — moving the ball downfield, hitting on big gains to DJ Chark and Johnson to set up a 1-yard James Robinson touchdown. Glennon found a wide open receiver for the two-point conversion to tie the game at 24 and the Vikings officially allowed a fourth-quarter comeback to Mike Glennon.
So Comeback Kirk got a shot for the third straight week to lead a game-winning drive. He tossed a short pass over the middle to Ameer Abdullah and the Jags failed to tackle him, setting up the Vikings in field goal range. But the Vikings were desperate to give the game away. Dan Bailey missed short and left on a 51-yard field goal attempt.
Jacksonville missed a desperate 62-yard boot at the buzzer and the Vikings won the toss with a chance to end all of their fans’ Sunday afternoon misery. However, they would delay that briefly by taking a sack on the opening drive and punting the ball away.
As Glennon is known to do, he followed up that act by overthrowing a pass right into the hands of Harrison Smith. This time the Vikings finally finished the job, plowing forward again and again with Cook. The exhausted (and bad) Jaguars defense couldn’t slow him down, setting up a chip shot that even the Vikings’ special teams couldn’t botch.
So the Vikings walked out of US Bank Stadium with a 27-24 win. They should be shaking their heads rather than holding them high after that. They should leave the building knowing that the weekly mistake festival act will eventually bite them if they play like that against Tampa Bay, Chicago and New Orleans. The question is whether there’s an actual solution to stopping the miscues or if it’s inevitable that fate will eventually catch up with them.
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Who among us would take an artistic loss over an ugly win? I didn’t think so. Minnesota has won five out of the last six and dare I say, may be one of the hottest teams in the NFL.
Comeback Kirk does it again.
That was just another pathetic showing... So many issues to pick on, but my biggest pet peeve is Zimmer's defense. Earth to Zimmer:
1. If you get zero pass rush on ANY NFL QB (even those as horribly bad as Mike Glennon), they are going to make some plays.
2. By flooding coverage like you always do agains crappy QBs, you simply allow them to elevate their game to what they might look like in a practice -- you know, with zero pass rush
3. Glennon, in particular, is not mobile and not good when he does run -- so why not pressure him to make him play off script? You know, like every team tries to do to KFC
The refusal of our coaching staff to vary game plans for opposing teams is unreal. When you play Mike freakin' Glennon, I think you don't need to worry about blitzing him.
And the punt inside your opponents' 40 was inexcusable. We had 3 yards to go against a horrible defense. And our upside ended up being 20 yards because we kicked it in the endzone--again. The decision was very poor, the execution even worse. Why shoot for the 1 yard line when a pooch punt to the 10 would have been better. I just don't get it at all.
This game proved we have no business being in the playoffs. If we make it, we have a 1-game limit and then we are out.
Having said all that, I like the progress our rookies are making by getting to play. Jefferson, Gladney, Cleveland, Dantzler, Dye all getting a lot of playing experience this year. That is great news for advancing in 2021.