Nobody really expected the Vikings to go undefeated in 2016, but the loss last week to Philadelphia was supposed to be the exception, not the blueprint for following weeks. On Monday night, the Vikings looked like a struggling 1-5 team, not a 5-1 team that was briefly the last undefeated team in the NFL. There were a few good individual performances, but overall the team looked flat and uninvolved. The offensive line was its usual hot-mess self, demonstrating an inability to pass block (allowing five sacks and a multitude of hits on Sam Bradford) or run block, but perhaps the most shocking development was the ineffectiveness of the defensive line. The defensive line has been the bedrock strength of the team this year and they just didn’t get pressure on Jay Cutler. The best run defense in the league gave up nearly their average yards per game on a single early run by rookie running back Jordan Howard.
The low rumble of discontent with the Vikings playcalling has become much louder:
The “Fire Norv” calls first came well before the 2016 season, but the Vikings fan base has grown increasingly agitated with Turner’s unimaginative play calling. It’s almost as if we were sold a bill of goods; here was this man who was spoken of as an offensive savant, someone who — while not ideally cast as a head coach — was perfectly suited to design the scheme and call the plays. There were promises of exotic sets and deep passes. Instead, what we’ve largely gotten — save for a few bright spots here and there — has been a rigid scheme that does not adapt to its personnel and an almost religious commitment to running on first down. The national media seem to still be buying the old narrative; even ESPN designed a graphic Monday night touting the “unpredictability” of a Norv Turner offense, and Jon Gruden rhapsodized the man’s offensive mind, while Vikings fans were left shaking their heads.
Mostly I’ve made excuses for the unimaginative offense; the offensive line impedes him from running the plays he wants, the quarterback’s inexperience with the system requires him to simplify it, or just the old “we don’t know everything, there has to be a reason for it.” I’m big on giving the benefit of the doubt. But the doubt keeps shrinking, and Monday night against the Bears, the evidence was finally too much for me to justify any longer. The offense is bad, and it should not be as bad as it is. There are playmakers, and there’s a quarterback, and yes, the offensive line leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s not the only bad offensive line in the NFL. There are things you can do to mask bad blocking, and Norv Turner employs them far too scarcely. Instead, for most of the first half, it was deep drops and long-developing routes instead of quick hits and dump-offs. And rather than unpredictability, it was Asiata runs up the gut, one after another. It’s not a rockstar offense, but it doesn’t have to be this bad. They keep running the same types of plays, despite a mountain of evidence they don’t work.
At the Daily Norseman, Ted Glover provides a weekly stock market report on Black-and-Blue Monday’s performance:
Buy: Running the ball effectively is critical to success in the NFL. You have to run the ball to win football games in the NFL. You don’t have to have a throwback Oklahoma or Nebraska wishbone that goes for 350 yards on the ground every week, but you have to be able to move the ball more than half a yard at a time when you run between the tackles.
Sell: The Vikings have an effective running game. The Vikings can’t get more than a yard between the tackles. That’s synonymous with failure in the NFL. They don’t need Adrian Peterson in his prime, although it would be nice. All the running game needs to be able to do is put the offense in a manageable down and distance situation — 2nd and 6, third and 4, that type of thing. Right now, defenses have zero respect for the Vikings running game, so they can tee off on the Vikings overmatched offensive line on obvious passing situations, which just compounds and exacerbates an already tenuous o-line situation.
Buy: I think the Vikings have one of the best defenses in the NFL. As bad as the Vikings have looked on offense, we can hang our hats on a defense that can keep the team in the game until the Vikings offense figures things out and gets untracked. At least for the most part.
Sell: The Vikings defense is playing well. But yeah, that’s not happening right now. The Vikings offense goes three and out more often than a Kardashian takes a selfie and posts it to social media, and that means the defense is on the field an awful lot. And that, eventually, adds up, and at some point the defense breaks. Like they did against the Bears.
Buy: The Vikings quit on Monday Night. They can say they didn’t, they can say they fought and clawed and blah blah blah…but on both sides of the ball, at some point in the second half, decided they had enough. Quit, checked out mentally, use whatever phrase you want to, but the Minnesota Vikings quit playing to win against a 1-6 Chicago Bears team that was decimated by injuries. The coaches quit coaching to win, and the players quit playing to win.
Sell: Offensive coordinator Norv Turner. I don’t even know where to begin. Early in the season, the Vikings offense was somewhat unpredictable — they ran the ball just effectively enough, and the Vikings masked the limitation of the offensive line by using mostly short and intermediate routes with quick three step drops. In the last two games, it feels like the Vikes have reverted back to the play calling of last season — five and seven step drops with routes that take time to develop, in front of a porous offensive line, and the offense has little to no chance of success. And when they do run the ball, it feels like Turner uses Matt Asiata as a battering ram between the tackles, but seems almost criminally negligent in attacking the perimeter. The few times the Vikings did run outside, it felt like they had success, and every time they ran inside, they got stonewalled. I’m no genius, but that tells me maybe…just maybe….some stuff that attacks the edge might produce some results.
Derek Wetmore and Matthew Coller discuss the debacle:
