After the terrible performance the Vikings put on in San Francisco last Monday, all the fans were hoping to see the Vikings beat the Lions in their home opener at TCF Bank Stadium. The Lions had their own bad start last week as well, allowing 30 unanswered points after building up a three-score lead. We’re one week into the season and both teams are looking at this game as a must-win.
I watched the game on Fox, but overlaid with Winnipeg commercials … normally this isn’t really worth mentioning, but thanks to that I wasn’t abused by the DraftKings or FanDuel commercials that everyone on my Vikings Twitter list was complaining endlessly about.
The Vikings got the ball to start the game and put on a really nice long drive, capped off with a Teddy Bridgewater to Kyle Rudolph touchdown pass. Bridgewater ended the game with a stat line of 14 of 18 completions for 153 yards and a 120.6 passer rating (he also scored a rushing touchdown). Adrian Peterson got more carries for more yards in the first drive than he did in the entire first game (he also developed a fumbling problem, unfortunately). He carried the ball 29 times for 132 yards and caught two passes for 58 yards.
During the second half, Minnesota’s defensive squad seemed to develop a bad case of the penalties, with cornerback Xavier Rhodes being particularly noteworthy as he shadowed Megatron for much of the game. In spite of the penalties, his coach and team-mates had little but praise for Rhodes:
Though one of Rhodes’ three penalties of the day negated safety Harrison Smith’s interception, Smith didn’t have an ill word to say about Rhodes’ play.
“He did awesome,” Smith said. “That’s what we expect out of Xavier and that’s what Xavier expects out of himself. He’s that good.”
Twice has Johnson lined up across from coach Mike Zimmer’s Vikings defense, and both times Zimmer has trusted Rhodes to cover one of the NFL’s top threats.
Both times he’s assigned Rhodes to shadow Johnson, a five-time Pro Bowler who caught an 11-yard touchdown in the second quarter to cut the Vikings’ lead to 17-10.
Though it’s often a true 1-on-1 matchup, the Vikings used a team effort to limit Johnson. He was targeted 17 times and caught 10 balls, though his longest was an 18-yard gain as the Lions needed to keep the passing game short with Matthew Stafford under duress. One of defensive end Brian Robison’s two pass deflections came on a pass intended for Johnson.
“[Rhodes] limited his catches to short ones…And there was times we were helping Xavier” Zimmer said. “And we hit the quarterback early, which I think was a factor.”
Head coach Mike Zimmer surprised the team by not being a monster after the disaster by the bay in San Francisco last week:
While Zimmer pulled no punches on Tuesday as he reviewed the Vikings’ 20-3 loss at San Francisco, it also turns out he was fully prepared to move on and do it quickly.
When players returned to Winter Park on Wednesday, Zimmer did not berate them and make them watch their horrendous performance. He surprised many of them by going over a few necessary corrections and then turning off the film.
“I was expecting to get ripped a new one,” nickel corner Captain Munnerlyn said. “But he didn’t. He came in and was calm and let us know that wasn’t the same team that prepared for the game.”
Zimmer had told his team at halftime of the 49ers game that he didn’t even know who they were and, thus, he was smart enough to know that forcing his players to watch strangers not make plays would be a waste of time.
“Sometimes I don’t know why I do things,” Zimmer said. “Everybody was mad. … I didn’t sugarcoat anything. I was up front and honest with them, but I’m smart enough to understand that was one game.”
Zimmer also was aware of the fact that veterans on both sides of the ball knew they had embarrassed themselves in front of a national television audience and had plenty of incentive to fix things.
“I don’t want to say (that loss was) not a reflection of us because whatever you put on tape is who you are,” safety Harrison Smith said. “Honestly, I think we were mostly embarrassed about it and wanted to get past it and show people that we were better than that. We still have a long way to go.”
The corrections that enabled the Vikings to jump out to a 17-3 lead in the second quarter on Sunday did not only come from the players. Zimmer and his coaching staff, especially offensive coordinator Norv Turner, also had a better day.
