Vikings Message Board.Com

Purple bruise wrote: Your little "dream" is going up in smoke in Denver

Jordysghost wrote:Lmao, you think so? I think we can handle them. And will handle them.

dkoby wrote:The offense looks better with Adrian OFF the field and he is a shadow of himself and he is the highest guaranteed money running back in the league.
that was a mistake by the organization.

This is why the Minnesota Vikings worked so hard to bring Adrian Peterson back, when it might have been more convenient just to deal the running back during the draft when the relationship between the two sides was still frosty.

This is what they envisioned their offense becoming with Peterson and Teddy Bridgewater in the same backfield, and this is why they might have the makings of a playoff team if they can keep it all together.

But as the Lions sold out to stop the run, firing many of the same run blitzes the Vikings saw last week against Kansas City, and expected to see again, the Vikings took advantage. Over and over again, Bridgewater faked a handoff to Peterson, who dutifully pantomimed he had the ball in his hands and crashed into the line. And over and over again, he found room to throw downfield.

According to ESPN Stats and Information, Bridgewater threw for a career high 142 yards on play-action passes, hitting eight of his nine attempts with a QB Rating of 99.8 on such throws (also a career high). Seven of those nine throws were at least 10 yards downfield, and three of the nine were at least 15 yards downfield. On the final play of the third quarter, Peterson crashed so hard into the line of scrimmage that nine defenders converged on him, leaving Bridgewater an open throw to Adam Thielen for 21 yards.

Mothman wrote:
Peterson is creating opportunities in the passing game by forcing defenses to commit extra resources to stopping him. He remains a huge asset to the Vikings.

fiestavike wrote: No doubt about it. The two questions for me are, how good can they be if they fix this offensive line? And more importantly, how can they fix this offensive line?

Mothman wrote:
It's clearly the biggest hurdle they face right now. Hopefully, we'll see an answer to your first question this season.

Every once in a while in the NFL, a coach will come up with a signature scheme that changes the way the game is played. Don Coryell had the Air Coryell offense, Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy had the Tampa 2 defense, and Mike Zimmer has his signature double-A-gap blitz packages. These creative and unpredictable defensive schemes can be a nightmare for offensive coordinators—as they were last week for (now former) Lions’ offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi, who lost his job over the matchup. Last week against the Vikings, Matt Stafford dropped back to pass 33 times. He was sacked on seven of those dropbacks and hit on 13 other pass attempts—or, in other words, Stafford was hit on 61% of his dropbacks. This write-up breaks down the terror and confusion that the Vikings’ pass rush brings.

Funkytown wrote:Mike Zimmer and the Vikings’ Blitz Packages versus Lions – 7 Sacks, 13 Hits by Nick Olson
Link: http://nflbreakdowns.com/zimmer-vikings ... ons-sacks/

Things did not go well for the Detroit Lions offense against Mike Zimmer’s Minnesota Vikings defense on Sunday. They went so poorly, in fact, that three people lost their jobs at the end of the game when the autopsy of the performance was complete.
 
The Vikings sacked Matthew Stafford seven times in the matchup, which is bad in itself as a statistic; what is even more shocking is the fact that only one of those sacks is currently charged to anybody, and the guy who should have picked it up is a running back.
 
What we saw was an institutional breakdown at almost every level. The Lions were outcoached and outsmarted by Mike Zimmer’s defense throughout the entire game. All seven sacks featured a blitz of some kind, and we saw the Lions consistently unable to get into the right protection, or unwilling and unable to change their protections at all.
 
The first sack didn’t come until early in the second quarter, but the warning signs had been there earlier in the game. Stafford had been knocked down on the first play the Lions ran as Tom Johnson came through the middle of the line, and had been pressured later in the first period before the flood gates opened with the first sack.
 
Let’s take a look at each sack, one by one, and examine what went wrong—and where the blame lies. Believe me, there is plenty to go around.

What initially looked like Detroit trying to second-guess Minnesota’s blitzes wasn’t actually the Lions trying to outthink themselves when it came to their protection, but rather, them just not thinking at all. They changed nothing to adjust to what the Vikings were showing them, again suggesting that Stafford simply doesn’t have the permission to do so—or didn’t under Joe Lombardi’s rule.

NFL quarterbacks have to be able to run the show once they are out on the field. If they are dealing with somebody else’s play calls, they need to have the ability to change protections, adjust calls and audible out of them when necessary. If they don’t, a good defensive coach will simply find what they can’t do and exploit it with something they cannot counter. The Vikings did that in this game, and pummeled until the Lions were out.
 
Stafford has now been pressured on 38.8 percent of his dropbacks this season, or 112 passing snaps across seven games, and while it’s easy to point to the offensive line as a problem—and it has certainly been far from good—looking only at the sacks from the Minnesota game shows a far deeper institutional failing that ultimately cost three coaches their jobs.

All the Lions can hope for now is that a new set of coaches brings a new set of responsibilities, and the ability for Matthew Stafford to actually aid in his own protection.