I think that pretty much nails it.“We want to make sure that we continue running to the football and there were some loafs in the (Seattle) ballgame, and those loafs were turning down hits or not running full speed or not getting up off the ground. We saw some of those, which were uncharacteristic of the defense,” Williams said.
With all the talk about the Vikings offense, we all knew that there was a lack of weapons on offense in the preseason. There were 2 wide receivers everyone felt comfortable about, and a bunch of other guys. There are a couple of guys on the offensive line that have been on the bubble all season. Ponder's still developing.
But the reason they won early was defense. However, no one thought that would really be the case...the Vikings defense had bad holes in it last year and during the preseason. With a strong draft, they addressed a few of those, but the interior of the defensive line is comprised of a guy on the downside of his career and a guy they took later in the draft awhile back. Who has had some nice games, but is far from proven (as we know, that's Guion...who so far is not quite Pat Williams).
The defensive line last year didn't really need to do as much work as opposing offenses were picking apart the Vikings weak defensive backfield. So we really didn't see very solid numbers in regards to how well this team stops the run. Now, the Vikes have got some good players in the backfield, so teams are finding that they can run it quite easily. That kind of kills the whole point of having two good pass rushing ends.
This defense succeeded early in the season partially on teams testing the Vikings defensive backfield, and mostly on effort. And it looks like some members of that defense started to think they were more talented than they really were. When your defense doesn't make the stops, your offense had better be thick with weapons and be ready to score quickly or you will lose games. And therein lies the real problem. The offense isn't bad, it's just that both the offense AND defense are incompletely rebuilt and they really need each other to give a lot of effort to keep up with teams that may be more completely built (or at least are playing with a higher level of effort).