For the second week in a row, Minnesota lost against a divisional rival in an ugly game. While the score didn’t get out of hand, thanks to a stouter defensive effort, Detroit’s front four were getting to Teddy Bridgewater far too quickly and it clearly affected his play. After the first drive for the Lions, the Vikings defence held up quite well, but the Vikings couldn’t get anything going when they had the ball. As a few sites mentioned, over the last two games, the Vikings have given up more sacks (14) than they’ve scored points (13). I don’t think it’s mathematically possible to win anything under those conditions.
The Daily Norseman‘s Ted Glover isn’t handing out any gold stars to the team in this week’s summary:
Matt Kalil And The Matadors: If last week was kind of rock bottom for the Vikings franchise as a whole in 2014, the offensive line caught up with everyone else against Detroit. Kalil was a sieve, but the entire line was absolutely mauled by the Lions. Maul … Lions … please tell me you saw what I just did there. Kalil, Charlie Johnson, John Sullivan, Vlad the Impalee Ducasse, and Phil Loadholt each got pantsed, repeatedly, by somebody on the Detroit defensive front. Ziggy Ansah was particularly terrifying today, and if Kalil and company don’t get it figured out, like right now, Teddy Bridgewater isn’t going to last three more games.
Teddy Bridgewater, QB: Teddy didn’t have a lot of time to set up and throw today, but he also held the ball and seemed a lot more tentative, at times, than he was against the Falcons. Granted, he was under pressure all day, and eight sacks is unacceptable, but I would argue two of them were on him for holding the ball. His first interception was a terrible, terrible decision and throw, but I’ll cut him some slack on the other two, as they were tipped or went through the hands of a receiver. And if there was something that kind of bothered me, other than the stuff I’ve already talked about, it seemed that Bridgewater seemed to go to his checkdown guy an inordinate amount of time today. Maybe it was because he was the only guy open or he didn’t have time to find a guy downfield (quite possible), but it was still somewhat troubling.
Cordarrelle Patterson And the Drop A Ball Trio: It’s pretty tough to climb and crawl back in to a ball game when your three primary targets — Patterson, Jarius Wright, and Greg Jennings — are 50/50 at best on whether or not they’ll catch a pass or drop it. When Bridgewater did get time and was able to make a throw, it was iffy on whether or not these three — or anyone not named Chase Ford or McKinnon, actually — would hold on to the football. As bad as the Vikings had played, they were only down 10 well through three full quarters of play. But yeah, poor blocking and an inability to catch the football killed any realistic chances the Vikings had to get back in the game.
Jeff Locke, P: Jeff Locke pretty much blows. When the Vikings need a good punt to flip field position, he can’t deliver. When you give the opponent an average starting position of the 30 or 35 yard line, you’re not doing your job. At all. Meh.
The announcers for the game were flat-out terrible, and I lost track of the number of times I’d be correcting them on players’ names and even which coaches worked for each team. I guess in some ways it matched the offensive ineptitude on display for Minnesota. 1500ESPN‘s Andrew Krammer and Derek Wetmore reported from the stadium after the game:
Standing O for the Strib on this one. RT @jkatzenstein: Perfect headline in today's Star Tribune. pic.twitter.com/cV0CvmODE6
— Eric Thompson (@eric_j_thompson) October 13, 2014
