Vikings at Colts Depth Chart Preview 2020

He’s close to the ideal quarterback for saving a lost cause — whether it’s a bobbled snap that he turns into a touchdown or finding himself down, yet again, by one score with five minutes left to go. He’s 13th in total career fourth-quarter comebacks — but, because of his aggressive tendencies, also the quarterback with the most one-score losses in the Super Bowl era.

Last year, he found himself on the losing end of seven one-score games. Rivers had costly mistakes that hurt him in a few games, but in many of those games, he generated the game-winning play only to have it taken away — by drops in the end zone, pass interference calls on his defense in the final seconds of the game, booth reviews overturning multiple game-winning touchdowns (on the same drive), receivers falling in route and missed field goals.

As a result of his shocking penchant for game-breaking mistakes as well as his complete faith in his ability to win a lost game, Rivers often has a commanding presence in games — and that’s not always a good thing. More often than not, he’ll be the reason his team wins or loses.

After all, Rivers was largely good from a play-to-play perspective last Sunday. He was making aggressive, tight-window and accurate throws under pressure on a consistent basis. There’s good statistical evidence that points to a consistently accurate and efficient performance from the offense. But saying that Rivers had a good game without the interceptions he threw, including a third interception that was called back on fourth down, is like saying the Vikings had a great offseason if you ignore the players they lost.

He’s a quarterback that creates opportunities. Those opportunities can come for the offense in the form of big plays and deep balls slated for the end zone as well as interceptions that can derail the offense. He doesn’t throw many more interceptions than average — his three-year rate of 2.51 percent is not far removed from the league average of 2.19 percent over that time — but he sure finds a way to make those picks count.

The challenge for the Vikings, then, is to take advantage of the opportunities. They don’t necessarily need to go out of their way to create them, though they can maximize those odds too. For that, they’ll need to generate pressure from their front four without relying on blitzes. Some of that will come through design while much of it needs to come through the individual talent of their front four.

That’s an issue. The Colts boast one of the most talented offensive lines in the NFL and are coming off an excellent performance. In fact, offensive coordinator Nick Sirianni thought it was a career highlight, telling Colts reporters on Tuesday that “(the offensive line) just played a great game. I mean, the pass protection on Sunday was outstanding — one of the best I’ve ever been a part of in the NFL. They just did an outstanding job.” With only six pressures on 47 dropbacks, he has reason to be proud.

Luckily, the Vikings do have a player who has a history of production against the Colts offensive line — Yannick Ngakoue. The Vikings will want more snaps out of him this week, and he’s been particularly successful when lined up against tackles Anthony Castonzo and Braden Smith.

In fact, if his six most recent games were extrapolated out to a 16-game season, he would have 83 pressures — good for third among edge rushers in 2019.

While they’re generating pressure up front — and they’ll need help from Ifeadi Odenigbo and the interior defensive linemen — the Vikings will want to keep safeties capped up top. That might mean a little less of the Cover-3 and Cover-4 principles we’ve seen, where one or two safeties takes a deep zone alongside corners also taking deep zones, and more Cover-2 looks, where one safety takes half the field and provides insurance on top of the corners.

Against the Jaguars last week and Vikings last year, every interception Rivers threw — aside from the one called back — occurred in some form of double coverage, whether that was Jaguars cornerback C.J. Henderson peeling off his route in a mock Cover-2 look or Harrison Smith cutting underneath a covered player to take advantage of an off-target throw.


The Colts have a host of interesting defenders, whether that’s in a familiar face like Xavier Rhodes, a high-cost defensive lineman like DeForest Buckner, young talents like Darius Leonard and Malik Hooker or wily vets like Justin Houston. But their somewhat vanilla Cover-2 style is meant to let quarterbacks take what they can see until they make a critical mistake. Cousins isn’t immune to those but has done a good job avoiding critical failures against easily identifiable zone coverages.

Instead, the fireworks on the other side of the ball might decide the game.