What the Heck Happened to the Vikings’ Defense?
Oct 3, 2018 9:29:19 GMT -6
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Post by Purple Pain on Oct 3, 2018 9:29:19 GMT -6
What the Heck Happened to the Vikings’ Defense? by Nick Olson
For more about the games against the Bills, Packers, and 49ers, check out the link:
vikingsterritory.com/2018/uncategorized/what-the-heck-happened-to-the-vikings-defense
Last year, the Vikings’ defense allowed only 15.75 points per game, the best figure in the NFL.
This year, the Vikings are allowing 18.75 points in the first half alone.
Last year, the Vikings allowed just 276 yards per game, again the best figure in the NFL.
This year, the Vikings are allowing 382 yards per game, which would have ranked worst in the NFL last year.
What the heck is going on?
Mike Zimmer laid most of the blame on the secondary, some on himself and some on the linebackers
After the Vikings lost 31-38 to the Rams, Mike Zimmer summarized the issue:
Mike Zimmer in his conference call on the defense's mistakes in pass coverage: "Some of it was corners, some of it was safeties, some of it was linebackers, some of it was nickels, some of it was me."
— Chad Graff (@chadgraff) September 28, 2018
That’s a fair assessment, not just of the Vikings’ poor play against the Rams, but the Vikings’ poor play over all four games: it’s mostly personnel issues, mostly the secondary, though occasionally it’s on the linebackers, and the scheme and coverage rules need some tweaks.
But rather than take Zimmer at his word, let’s go through each of the Vikings’ defense’s worst plays in each of the four games to diagnose what is going wrong:
What went wrong in the Rams game?
Everything.
Up until last week, the only game where Mike Zimmer’s Vikings allowed more than 7 yards per play was in the NFC Championship game to the Eagles, where they allowed 7.1 yards per play.
Last week the Vikings allowed 10.1 yards per play. That’s an outlier even among outliers.
But the single-biggest issue was coverage:
Xavier Rhodes, Trae Waynes and Mackensie Alexander each had their lowest-graded games of their careers against the Rams. For comparison, those three players had a game grade of 56.2, 38.1 and 56.1, respectively, in the 38-7 blowout 2017 NFC Championship Game. They graded so poorly they made the NFCCG game look like lockdown defense.
But we can get more granular in assigning blame. Who’s at fault for the Vikings’ worst defensive plays?
Cooper Kupp’s 70-Yard Touchdown
If this play gives you déjà vu, the reason is because it’s essentially the same concept as the George Kittle drop from week one against the 49ers:
Both of these plays look like Anthony Barr’s fault.
Neither of them are on Anthony Barr.
This is a really tough play for defense to defend because it’s really three plays in one: it’s a play-action zone run that gets the linebackers to play the run, it’s a flood concept on one side of the field, and it’s a “leak” to the other side of the field.
Both of these plays resulted in Barr on the TV broadcast looking like he got beat badly in coverage. But he didn’t. Barr’s job on each of these plays is to play the flat / underneath zone. Barr actually does a great job recognizing the play and trying to catch up to Cooper Kupp and George Kittle, but at the end of the day, he’s a 255-pound linebacker matched up against receivers who run a 4.5. He’s not supposed to be matched up on receivers deep.
These plays are really on the secondary. The Rams play appears to be on Sendejo, who makes the understandable error of biting on the flood action and helping the wrong side of the field. The 49ers play is probably on the safeties for the same reason, though there’s a chance Rhodes should have passed off his receiver to cover the leak. Both plays demonstrate how offensive geniuses like Shanahan and McVay can poke holes in Zimmer’s scheme to get receivers matched up on linebackers deep, but then again neither of these plays work if the secondary does their job.
Brandin Cooks’ 47-Yard Touchdown
I could go into detail here about the offensive playcall, defensive playcall, pre-snap motion, but the breakdown in this play is pretty simple—Trae Waynes gets out of his backpedal too late and isn’t able to recover against Cooks’ elite speed:
In fairness to Waynes, this is probably a pass breakup or worse if Goff’s throw isn’t perfect here—Waynes’ ball tracking, recovery and getting his hands up here are all great. But if we’re assigning blame rather than crediting the Rams here, this play is on Waynes.
Cooper Kupp’s 19-Yard Touchdown
To keep things brief, this one’s also on Waynes, though again it’s more about Goff succeeding than Waynes failing:
Waynes is supposed to be playing the deep third of the field, but instead he gets caught peeking at Brandin Cooks, who cuts behind the line of scrimmage into the flat. As a result, Waynes doesn’t get enough depth in his zone, blocks off Hughes (who is in man coverage on Kupp), and opens up a teensy-tiny window for Jared Goff to drop an outrageously good pass to Kupp on the deep crosser in the back of the endzone.
Waynes recovers well here and is just inches away from breaking this pass up, but Goff’s throw is just perfect.
Brandin Cooks’ 23-Yard Reception
That’s enough picking on Trae Waynes. Time to pick on Xavier Rhodes:
The pre-snap motion gets Rhodes in off-coverage against Brandin Cooks, which is a matchup issue for Rhodes, who can struggle in space. Rhodes turns his hips outside, so Cooks drives the stem of his route inside, crossing Rhodes’ face and forcing Rhodes to speed turn at the exact moment Cooks breaks outside. That’s great route running from Cooks, and combined with Rhodes getting hurt and losing his footing, results in Cooks being wide open for the big play.
Todd Gurley’s 56-Yard Reception
The Rams’ pre-snap motion here confirms that the Vikings are in man coverage, as Mackensie Alexander follows his receiver across the formation. Seeing that, Goff checks into this play-action screen call designed to take advantage of man coverage. The play gets one corner (Mack) on the wrong side of the field with the jet motion and gets another corner (Rhodes) on the wrong side of the field with a crossing route. So the success of the play is largely based on McVay and Goff calling the right play against the right defense.
But Kendricks also could have played this better, as he gets sucked in too far on the play action and is late to recognize the screen. Kendricks does a good job sifting through the screen blockers, but then misses the tackle on Gurley. Compounding all this, Sendejo gets blocked in the back, and the refs inexplicably pick up the flag, turning what should have been an 11-yard gain with the penalty into a 56-yard gain.
Robert Woods’ 31-Yard Touchdown
Sean McVay had a lot of brilliant play calls in this game, but this play might have been his best:
As Josh Cohen has explained, the Rams come out on this play in 13 personnel (three tight ends, one back) and line up initially in an i-formation. The Vikings respond by subbing Ben Gedeon in for the nickel corner. Goff then motions the Rams into an empty backfield, with five receivers near the line of scrimmage, which the Vikings respond (predictably, at least to Sean McVay) by checking into Cover 3, bringing Harrison Smith down to deal with the extra receivers and leaving Sendejo to play center fielder.
McVay calls four verts (four vertical routes), which is a Cover 3 killer because it splits the center field safety. Goff looks Sendejo off, leaving Anthony Barr on Robert Woods one-on-one. That’s a matchup no linebacker can be trusted with, and Goff throws a perfect pass to Woods in stride over Barr.
That’s not Anthony Barr’s fault or Sendejo’s fault or anyone’s fault; it’s just Sean McVay and Jared Goff being amazing.
So while Zimmer could tweak his coverage schemes here and there, the biggest reason the Rams had so much success had to do with how well Goff played, and how poorly the Vikings’ cornerbacks played. If you want to read more about what went wrong against the Rams, Arif Hasan has a phenomenal breakdown here, and Matt Fries has some great additional detail here.
What went wrong in the Bills game?
A lot less than you’d think, actually.
Yes, the Vikings gave up 27 points to a fairly talent-poor Bills offense. But a lot of that has to do with the Vikings’ offense and special teams giving the Bills extremely good field position. The Vikings only gave up 292 yards on the game, which in terms of yards per game last year would have ranked 4th best in the NFL.
Still, you don’t give up 27 points without some defensive errors. What needs to be fixed from the Bills game?
This year, the Vikings are allowing 18.75 points in the first half alone.
Last year, the Vikings allowed just 276 yards per game, again the best figure in the NFL.
This year, the Vikings are allowing 382 yards per game, which would have ranked worst in the NFL last year.
What the heck is going on?
Mike Zimmer laid most of the blame on the secondary, some on himself and some on the linebackers
After the Vikings lost 31-38 to the Rams, Mike Zimmer summarized the issue:
Mike Zimmer in his conference call on the defense's mistakes in pass coverage: "Some of it was corners, some of it was safeties, some of it was linebackers, some of it was nickels, some of it was me."
— Chad Graff (@chadgraff) September 28, 2018
That’s a fair assessment, not just of the Vikings’ poor play against the Rams, but the Vikings’ poor play over all four games: it’s mostly personnel issues, mostly the secondary, though occasionally it’s on the linebackers, and the scheme and coverage rules need some tweaks.
But rather than take Zimmer at his word, let’s go through each of the Vikings’ defense’s worst plays in each of the four games to diagnose what is going wrong:
What went wrong in the Rams game?
Everything.
Up until last week, the only game where Mike Zimmer’s Vikings allowed more than 7 yards per play was in the NFC Championship game to the Eagles, where they allowed 7.1 yards per play.
Last week the Vikings allowed 10.1 yards per play. That’s an outlier even among outliers.
But the single-biggest issue was coverage:
Xavier Rhodes, Trae Waynes and Mackensie Alexander each had their lowest-graded games of their careers against the Rams. For comparison, those three players had a game grade of 56.2, 38.1 and 56.1, respectively, in the 38-7 blowout 2017 NFC Championship Game. They graded so poorly they made the NFCCG game look like lockdown defense.
But we can get more granular in assigning blame. Who’s at fault for the Vikings’ worst defensive plays?
Cooper Kupp’s 70-Yard Touchdown
If this play gives you déjà vu, the reason is because it’s essentially the same concept as the George Kittle drop from week one against the 49ers:
Both of these plays look like Anthony Barr’s fault.
Neither of them are on Anthony Barr.
This is a really tough play for defense to defend because it’s really three plays in one: it’s a play-action zone run that gets the linebackers to play the run, it’s a flood concept on one side of the field, and it’s a “leak” to the other side of the field.
Both of these plays resulted in Barr on the TV broadcast looking like he got beat badly in coverage. But he didn’t. Barr’s job on each of these plays is to play the flat / underneath zone. Barr actually does a great job recognizing the play and trying to catch up to Cooper Kupp and George Kittle, but at the end of the day, he’s a 255-pound linebacker matched up against receivers who run a 4.5. He’s not supposed to be matched up on receivers deep.
These plays are really on the secondary. The Rams play appears to be on Sendejo, who makes the understandable error of biting on the flood action and helping the wrong side of the field. The 49ers play is probably on the safeties for the same reason, though there’s a chance Rhodes should have passed off his receiver to cover the leak. Both plays demonstrate how offensive geniuses like Shanahan and McVay can poke holes in Zimmer’s scheme to get receivers matched up on linebackers deep, but then again neither of these plays work if the secondary does their job.
Brandin Cooks’ 47-Yard Touchdown
I could go into detail here about the offensive playcall, defensive playcall, pre-snap motion, but the breakdown in this play is pretty simple—Trae Waynes gets out of his backpedal too late and isn’t able to recover against Cooks’ elite speed:
In fairness to Waynes, this is probably a pass breakup or worse if Goff’s throw isn’t perfect here—Waynes’ ball tracking, recovery and getting his hands up here are all great. But if we’re assigning blame rather than crediting the Rams here, this play is on Waynes.
Cooper Kupp’s 19-Yard Touchdown
To keep things brief, this one’s also on Waynes, though again it’s more about Goff succeeding than Waynes failing:
Waynes is supposed to be playing the deep third of the field, but instead he gets caught peeking at Brandin Cooks, who cuts behind the line of scrimmage into the flat. As a result, Waynes doesn’t get enough depth in his zone, blocks off Hughes (who is in man coverage on Kupp), and opens up a teensy-tiny window for Jared Goff to drop an outrageously good pass to Kupp on the deep crosser in the back of the endzone.
Waynes recovers well here and is just inches away from breaking this pass up, but Goff’s throw is just perfect.
Brandin Cooks’ 23-Yard Reception
That’s enough picking on Trae Waynes. Time to pick on Xavier Rhodes:
The pre-snap motion gets Rhodes in off-coverage against Brandin Cooks, which is a matchup issue for Rhodes, who can struggle in space. Rhodes turns his hips outside, so Cooks drives the stem of his route inside, crossing Rhodes’ face and forcing Rhodes to speed turn at the exact moment Cooks breaks outside. That’s great route running from Cooks, and combined with Rhodes getting hurt and losing his footing, results in Cooks being wide open for the big play.
Todd Gurley’s 56-Yard Reception
The Rams’ pre-snap motion here confirms that the Vikings are in man coverage, as Mackensie Alexander follows his receiver across the formation. Seeing that, Goff checks into this play-action screen call designed to take advantage of man coverage. The play gets one corner (Mack) on the wrong side of the field with the jet motion and gets another corner (Rhodes) on the wrong side of the field with a crossing route. So the success of the play is largely based on McVay and Goff calling the right play against the right defense.
But Kendricks also could have played this better, as he gets sucked in too far on the play action and is late to recognize the screen. Kendricks does a good job sifting through the screen blockers, but then misses the tackle on Gurley. Compounding all this, Sendejo gets blocked in the back, and the refs inexplicably pick up the flag, turning what should have been an 11-yard gain with the penalty into a 56-yard gain.
Robert Woods’ 31-Yard Touchdown
Sean McVay had a lot of brilliant play calls in this game, but this play might have been his best:
As Josh Cohen has explained, the Rams come out on this play in 13 personnel (three tight ends, one back) and line up initially in an i-formation. The Vikings respond by subbing Ben Gedeon in for the nickel corner. Goff then motions the Rams into an empty backfield, with five receivers near the line of scrimmage, which the Vikings respond (predictably, at least to Sean McVay) by checking into Cover 3, bringing Harrison Smith down to deal with the extra receivers and leaving Sendejo to play center fielder.
McVay calls four verts (four vertical routes), which is a Cover 3 killer because it splits the center field safety. Goff looks Sendejo off, leaving Anthony Barr on Robert Woods one-on-one. That’s a matchup no linebacker can be trusted with, and Goff throws a perfect pass to Woods in stride over Barr.
That’s not Anthony Barr’s fault or Sendejo’s fault or anyone’s fault; it’s just Sean McVay and Jared Goff being amazing.
So while Zimmer could tweak his coverage schemes here and there, the biggest reason the Rams had so much success had to do with how well Goff played, and how poorly the Vikings’ cornerbacks played. If you want to read more about what went wrong against the Rams, Arif Hasan has a phenomenal breakdown here, and Matt Fries has some great additional detail here.
What went wrong in the Bills game?
A lot less than you’d think, actually.
Yes, the Vikings gave up 27 points to a fairly talent-poor Bills offense. But a lot of that has to do with the Vikings’ offense and special teams giving the Bills extremely good field position. The Vikings only gave up 292 yards on the game, which in terms of yards per game last year would have ranked 4th best in the NFL.
Still, you don’t give up 27 points without some defensive errors. What needs to be fixed from the Bills game?
For more about the games against the Bills, Packers, and 49ers, check out the link:
vikingsterritory.com/2018/uncategorized/what-the-heck-happened-to-the-vikings-defense
Can the Vikings Return to Form, or Is the 2018 Vikings Defense the “New Normal”?
We have four years of evidence—67 games under Mike Zimmer—weighing against these last four games, and evidencing that the Vikings’ recent defensive struggles are more of an outlier than anything else. The 2017 Vikings ranked first in yards allowed, first in points allowed, and best ever in third down stop percentage, and ranked second only to the Jaguars in overall defensive grade and in defensive DVOA. The Vikings returned all the same starters, except that Tom Johnson was replaced by Sheldon Richardson, who so far has been having a career year.
The Vikings players probably didn’t become awful overnight; they’ve just had a few bad games. All-pro players like Harrison Smith or Xavier Rhodes occasionally have a bad game or two, but that doesn’t make them bad players—those bad games are the rare exceptions that prove the rule of how good they are.
The scheme works. That NFL defenses steal more from Zimmer’s playbook than maybe any other defense is a testament to that, and the fact that top offensive minds like Shanahan or McVay were able to poke holes in it in differing ways is a credit to their talent, not an indictment on the scheme.
Some regression from the heights of 2017 would be unsurprising—football is random. The R2 value of defensive DVOA year-over-year is less than 0.1—in plain English, it’s completely unpredictable. But the Vikings didn’t retain everyone then sign Sheldon Richardson only to become the worst defense in football; they’ve just strung together a couple bad games. They’ll bounce back. Hopefully.
We have four years of evidence—67 games under Mike Zimmer—weighing against these last four games, and evidencing that the Vikings’ recent defensive struggles are more of an outlier than anything else. The 2017 Vikings ranked first in yards allowed, first in points allowed, and best ever in third down stop percentage, and ranked second only to the Jaguars in overall defensive grade and in defensive DVOA. The Vikings returned all the same starters, except that Tom Johnson was replaced by Sheldon Richardson, who so far has been having a career year.
The Vikings players probably didn’t become awful overnight; they’ve just had a few bad games. All-pro players like Harrison Smith or Xavier Rhodes occasionally have a bad game or two, but that doesn’t make them bad players—those bad games are the rare exceptions that prove the rule of how good they are.
The scheme works. That NFL defenses steal more from Zimmer’s playbook than maybe any other defense is a testament to that, and the fact that top offensive minds like Shanahan or McVay were able to poke holes in it in differing ways is a credit to their talent, not an indictment on the scheme.
Some regression from the heights of 2017 would be unsurprising—football is random. The R2 value of defensive DVOA year-over-year is less than 0.1—in plain English, it’s completely unpredictable. But the Vikings didn’t retain everyone then sign Sheldon Richardson only to become the worst defense in football; they’ve just strung together a couple bad games. They’ll bounce back. Hopefully.
... and neither is this Chris guy.