Rick Spielman's parting gifts...

I think it was more Covid and the injuries, although I don't absolve Spielman entirely. The timing of the pandemic was really bad for a young team that's in semi-rebuild mode, so the first 6 weeks were shot. Then the injuries were ridiculous . They might of over-achieved 

By the way, I love you

Yet here you are, writing at length about preseason performance.



Credit to them! I watched Jones' tape at Pitt and thought he looked pretty good in a 4-3, so wasn't sure it would translate to a 3-4. He's been a pleasant surprise for me.


Wonnum is 22nd out of 161 edge rushers in pass rush grade this preseason (20%+ snaps). Grades are a better predictor than stats (pressure rate) for future pressures, especially over a small sample. He's 28th of 161 in pass rush win percentage, which matches the grade not the pressure total.

Wonnum had a sack in the Raiders game flagged off for illegal contact on a DB. Pick up that flag and he has 1 sack, 1 hit and 1 hurry on 25 pass rush snaps (less than one full game's worth), which would be an 8.0 PRP, good for 47th of 161, pretty decent.

The other way you could evaluate Wonnum is watch him in the games. He's been playing well. Did you see the spin move in the Niners game?



Hinton is playing with the 2s (and 3s), so he's faced a higher level of competition than Wyatt Davis exclusively with the 3s. He looks like he can play in the league, which would be a very nice outcome for a late 7th round project, athletic but undersized from a small school.

I've previously been very skeptical that Hinton could ever hold up in the trenches, but he looks bigger and he's still moving well. Maybe he'll be a Chris Reed type who has a journeyman career as a backup and spot starter.



Nwangwu is a change-of-pace back who should be useful as a gadget player. Plus he's an excellent returner as we saw last year. I think that's a decent result for a 4th round pick in a thin draft class.

I'm not impressed with him as a runner between the tackles given his limited vision, but that top speed makes him a threat. We'll see if O'Connell can get him some touches in space and scheme up some explosives.



Yes, if Brandel can be a decent swing tackle that's a good result from a 6th round pick.



Maybe you shouldn't follow the team this closely in the preseason?

They can't win or lose any games until the season starts in September. So most of what we have to talk about is rookies and other unproven players, and we're judging them on preseason snaps. If you don't care as you keep saying, what are you doing here in the middle of the day in August?

Preseason games are pointless but there’s a lot to be learned from them.

…

First off, the preseason games reveal the team’s actual depth chart. Yes, that’s mostly or entirely set in camp practices and other evaluations outside those games, but the team’s plans and expectations for its players are shown by who plays and who doesn’t in the preseason, what roles they play and in what order.

For instance based on preseason, the actual WR depth chart is:
Jefferson, Thielen — held out completely
Osborn — started in Vegas, came out soon, held out vs SF
Bisi — started in Vegas (2 WR set on the first play) and vs SF, finished early in both games
ISM — 3rd WR in the first series vs LV, 2nd WR opposite Bisi otherwise
Jackson — 3rd WR with Bisi and ISM once Osborn went out, and vs SF
all others are below those 6

So whatever you think about the players, or their stats, grades and highlights from the preseason games, it’s very likely the top 5 WRs will stick, plus maybe Jackson as a 6th. That’s interesting, I don’t think most fans would’ve had Jackson above Albert Wilson or even last year’s preseason favorites in Proehl and Mitchell. Nailor hasn’t made it up the depth chart yet but might be kept as WR6 over Jackson just because of his draft position and some potential value as a returner. I guess they could keep both if they keep 7.

A similar exercise for the DL goes
Phillips and Tomlinson
Watts
Lynch (a nose tackle still, a position many of us didn’t expect he’d still be playing in the new scheme) and Bullard
everyone else

Again there’s a clear top 5 and then we can debate whether McGill or Twyman or Otomewo might stick if they keep 6.

…

Second, you can see how the team is lining up and get a sense for what they might try to do schematically, plus if that’s going to work.

On offense, O’Connell has used heavier personnel than the Rams did last year but still far more 3 WR sets than the Vikings under the Kubiaks. They’re using McVay’s playbook, with lots of condensed formations and presnap jet motion. They’ve had a few snaps from shotgun in empty, like Stafford used last year but overall it looks more like the pre-Stafford Rams scheme. The run game has been varied, with some power concepts mixed in to the wide and mid zone.

The scheme has been pretty good despite the lack of offensive production (which had a lot to do with the poor QB play). They’ve avoided negative run plays and had a couple of explosives. The receivers have been getting open.

On defense, Donatell is lining them up in the same umbrella coverage shell on basically every snap — 2 high safeties with the corners off. They’re routinely outgapped in the box, but have held up well against the run despite that as long as they have their 2nd string personnel in (with Dye at MLB, so the 1st half of both games, they’ve allowed 44 yards on 17 carries). They haven’t given up anything deep and most of the intermediate throws have been contested.

The defense this preseason is a stark contrast to last year. Zimmer was trying to incorporate some of the same gap-and-a-half light box run defense principles, but he didn’t know what he was doing (miscast Wonnum as a 4i/5T DE for one thing). They got repeatedly gashed in the run game, especially by the Broncos, and their downfield pass defense was porous too.

…

Third, you can evaluate individual players, especially the rookies and younger guys who are still developing. Preseason last year is when it was first evident that KJ Osborn was going to take a major leap forward and become a contributor, and he carried that into the regular season. The depth edge rushers were terrible last preseason and they continued to struggle in the real games. Et cetera.

This year, the depth DL are playing much better than I think most expected, especially James Lynch who looks like he could be a starting quality nose tackle. Wonnum and Jones have markedly improved from last year — they look stronger and are playing faster. Of the rookies, Asamoah has been fantastic though he’s made some mistakes in awareness that will be a bigger issue against better competition. Ingram looks like a plug and play starter at RG. The DBs have been pretty good though with a couple of mistakes.

Those kind of traits show up on film and are something we can reasonably expect to see in the regular season. So it might be worth watching to see how good or bad the depth should be this year, and what we can project for future development.

tldr

Pretty much it. You have fans who want to pretend preseason matters and sports media who over cover the meaningless games so they have something to talk about.

It could be, if we could watch training camp practices, which we can't, or if we had detailed reporting about player usage, alignment and scheme/play calling, which we don't (because teams don't let reporters give that kind of detail).

Obviously the team itself doesn't need the preseason games to decide its own depth chart, playbook, etc. But for fans wanting to know what the team is trying to do, there's no better way. We do get a few reports of position changes (like Udoh moving to guard last year and back to tackle this year) from training camp but the rest of the details are lacking.

In particular for the Vikings this year, the main point of interest for me was how would they adapt the McVay and Fangio schemes under O'Connell and Donatell. Preseason answered a bunch of those questions, if you know what you're looking for.

If you're interested, here's a scheme analysis twitter account that's broken down a bunch of the Vikings playbook from preseason. Here's a thread they did on the defense from the Niners game:


There's a perception that preseason is "all vanilla", and it's true there are fewer wrinkles and curveballs than in the real games -- but teams are running their core concepts on both sides of the ball. Again, it does depend on watching the game with that interest in mind, but there's a lot to learn by watching.




Sure -- I mean, "it could happen or it could not" does cover a lot of ground.

I think there is some value in seeing what players play well in preseason games, especially early in the games against the other teams starters or 2nd string.

I wouldn't put any value in preseason stats especially in total like which WR had the most receiving yards. They reflect in large part how many snaps the player played, and playing a lot of snaps in preseason is generally a bad thing except for rookies. I watch the early part of the preseason games more than the later parts when it's all practice squad guys, and I'm watching more to see how players are used and how well they perform in those roles than their stats, or even their grades.

KJ Osborn last year was playing at the top of the depth chart (with Jefferson and mostly Thielen held out). He played well, he was open a lot. Browning and Mond were terrible so he didn't put up the stats but if you watch the film, he was winning on his routes. I'd been skeptical he could be more than a gadget receiver in the NFL, and then after he couldn't get on the field in his rookie year behind such mediocre players as Chad Beebe, I didn't expect anything in year 2. But the training camp reports were positive, and then he backed it up in the preseason games (unlike others who couldn't sustain their camp performance under more pressure, like Zach Davidson). So that turned out to be a pretty meaningful indicator of the direction his career was going to take.




Wonnum was facing Jerome Eleumenor in the Raiders game. He's a high-level NFL backup, started several games at tackle for the Patriots in 2020 and played well. I would've been very happy to sign him this year. In the Niners game (smaller sample), he faced Justin Skule who's a low-end backup. They're both NFL players though, and he'll have reps against similar quality opponents at various times during the regular season this year.

In neither case was Wonnum mediocre -- he graded well, and much better than he did in preseason last year against similar calibre opposition. That suggests he's improved from this time last year. I don't think that means he'll be a starter quality player necessarily, but he might be. There's certainly a better chance than if he'd played poorly in preseason.

The grade shows how good he is at doing that job, more than the stats (which are affected by factors he can’t control, like how quick the ball was out). The grade also matches the eye test, which shows Wonnum’s been playing well.



The holding call he draws there shows up in his grade, but not in his pressure stats.

Wonnum’s grade is a better predictor than his pressure stats as to whether he’ll put up better pressure stats in the future. If you want pressures not grades, you should be looking at current grades not current pressure stats.