Positively Purple - Why we win week 3

@aoki5chuck Plausible or reaching statement: Cousins throwing picks is a *good* sign for him overcoming his checkdown ways. Also, who wins between the fighting dan Campbells and the Kirk Cousins's?

I’m picking the Vikings to win the football game, though in an actual fight between Dan Campbell and Kirk Cousins, uh, I’ll take the former tight end. If you mean who wins this football game, I’m going to go with the Vikings because I don’t think Detroit has enough on the defensive side to win at US Bank Stadium. I’ll go with something like 28-24 Vikings.

Unfortunately you’re definitely reaching with that statement. Those interceptions weren’t a sign of increased aggressiveness. In fact, he’s been one of the least aggressive QBs in the NFL through two games. Kirk is averaging 5.7 air yards per throw, 28th of 29 QBs with at least 50 dropbacks. He hasn’t thrown into tight coverage all that much either, despite three picks. He’s 12th in NFLNextGEN’s “Aggressive percentage,” which looks at how often a throw went to a receiver with the defense close. I’d expect his average depth of target to go up but this tiger has not changed his stripes.

@robdn1 The defense looks lost (at best) While it’s never too early to hit the panic button as a fan, how are the Vikings going to fix the defense on the fly?

Well, it looked good one week and lost the next, which is about what I’d expect from a defense that projects to be about average when completely healthy. There is no button to push with this group. There’s no player to bring off the bench or scheme switch. They are simply going to be a flawed unit that relies on Smith/Hunter a ton to create any pressure and can’t be trusted to consistently stop good passing teams. The best cure for a middling defense is a great offense. The Vikings have the fifth most punts in the league through two weeks (10). If that keeps happening, the defense is going to be reeling a lot of the time.

@mivikesfan with what we've seen in the first 2 games, how the heck are we going to slow down Detroit's rushing attack?


Detroit is definitely a good running team but they got 108 yards on two plays last week. They didn’t consistently get big chunks of yardage versus Washington. That would indicate that it’s possible to limit them from taking over the entire game. The interior of Detroit’s line still being banged up gives Phillips/Tomlinson a chance to stuff the middle and give Kendricks/Hicks a chance to makes some plays. I think the biggest concern is that the passing game has some juice now. And — forgive the arbitrary endpoints — but in Jared Goff’s last seven starts, essentially since Amon-Ra St. Brown emerged as a good receiver — he has a 104.9 QB rating.

@bulldogs13tv The defense looked a step slow in Philly. On a sliding scale 1 being learning new scheme and 10 being age… Where do you put it? Or is it just one of those games to forget?


I’m not sure it’s the new scheme or age. It’s just that they aren’t that special talent wise and this is 2022 football — the Eagles have a ton of good players and any team with a ton of good players is going to score points. I have trouble seeing any time in the NFL’s near future where we have a 2000 Ravens or even 2015 Broncos situation where the defense just takes over. Offensive innovations and an influx of freak talent at receivers have made that very, very difficult. If we go through the defense position by position, it’s hard to find what would make them special. They have two really good pass rushers on the edge, but there’s a lot of teams that have that. The interior is OK and lacking pass rush. The linebackers are aged. One outside corner is older, the other has trouble consistently mastering the techniques, one safety is aged the other is new. If we expected them to hit the rewind button and go back to 2015-2019, that expectation was probably too high. That said, they won’t face the Eagles every week. They can do enough to give the offense a chance to win if they stay healthy.

@kyleshaner How often have Za'Darius Smith and Danielle Hunter been off the field at the same time? And is it better to ensure one of them is always on the field or to maximize their snaps together by giving them plays off at the same time?


It was on my mind to ask about what subject when Ed Donatell talked Thursday and I didn’t get the question in. It seems that they believe in DJ Wonnum and Patrick Jones being able to fill in admirably when Hunter-Smith are on the sideline — and so far the results haven’t been bad. They’ve racked up seven pressures and two sacks combined. It stands to reason that they should mix and match so either Smith or Hunter with one backup — and that goes for Phillips/Tomlinson too. It seems they have gone with a full D-line rotation like a hockey line change so far. To me that’s playing with fire. James Lynch and Jonathan Bullard have been in for 54 pass plays with zero pressures.

@dmoney0919 Seems our secondary has a glaring weakness for speedy opponents. The Cine and Booth Jr picks look to eventually address that. But for now, I think it makes the Vikings much more of a match up dependent team. Is this a sizable concern? Or can adjustments be made to mitigate this?


Oh it’s definitely a sizeable concern. This is also why I wouldn’t go crazy criticizing Ed Donatell for the “shell” defenses. They’re going to have to play over the top of receivers because they do not have the speed to match up one-on-one with any of their corners or safeties. They used a pretty common strategy to mitigate that and it didn’t work because the Eagles were patient and willing to complete pass after pass. If they started blitzing like mad and left guys on an island it would be a recipe for getting beat deep. Of course, playing over the top does require everyone to get their assignments right and that did not happen on the Quez Watkins touchdown.

@smccullough5 What's the worse flop from the Philly game: 4 2nd half possessions inside the opponents 30 and scoring 0 points or the lack of defensive adjustments against a team that moved the ball with ease?


The offense by far. I’m going to hold steady in saying that the defense wasn’t wrong strategically, it was smacked by a better opponent with a great offensive line. Danielle Hunter got one pressure, Harrison Phillips and Dalvin Tomlinson only totaled one pressure, Hurts made an unbelievable play on his touchdown, he was patient and smart in the pocket and delivered beautiful throws to the intermediate areas and they gave up one massive touchdown on a coverage bust. It’s a natural footbally reaction to look at the defense not working and ask, why didn’t they change it? But if they don’t coverage bust on one touchdown and get beat on an unbelievable individual effort that had little to do with scheme for another, it looks a lot different.

I wouldn’t expect Cousins to throw three picks in the opponent’s territory every week but not being able to score in the red zone is a concern.

@headcoach21 What’s a bigger issue for a team early in the season that could be a long term problem. Players struggling on the field or coaches botching situational football??


I’d just like to welcome Kevin O’Connell to the KWBYO club. The Kirk Won’t Bail You Out support group, featuring Jay Gruden, Kevin Stefanski, Gary Kubiak and more! If the scheme isn’t great or the situational play calling or decisions aren’t perfect or if somebody’s hurt or the other team stops the run or whatever else goes wrong…he isn’t going to save your tail. He particularly isn’t going to do it if some players around him aren’t as strong as they were 2-3 years ago. We love to look at a loss like the one at Philly and point to all of the things that went wrong, but we lose sight of the fact that the issues could have been overcome. So yeah, it’s the players. There’s some guys that I think will play better as the season goes along like Thielen and Irv and O’Connell should become more comfortable with in-game management but other shortcomings probably won’t be fixed. And being in the KWBYO club means there’s no room for error.