Goal #1: Fix. The. Trenches. - OL & DL Discussion

SO WHAT KIND OF PERSONNEL DID THE VIKINGS ACTUALLY PLAY?

Because charting services can struggle to accurately represent the positions, it’s hard to determine how often the Vikings used each type of front. I’m sure there’s a service that has that information but not one I have access to. Sports Info Solutions provides charting data based on personnel. They have Minnesota’s three most common fronts as 3-3-5 (329 snaps), 4-2-5 (255 snaps), and 2-4-5 (106 snaps). Notably, they also have the Vikings using a ton of time, with 82 snaps of 1-4-6, first in the NFL, and 71 snaps of 2-3-6, which was seventh.

Anecdotally, the Vikings seemed to run fronts that fell into four categories:

The five-DL surface, like on the above play against the 49ers above, with three IDL inside the tackles, two edges, and one (or two, if they played really heavy) LB behind that. They typically used this against heavier personnel, like two TE- or two-RB sets the 49ers are in (that’s Christian McCaffrey on the edge of the screen), but also used it against 11 versus certain teams. I believe SIS charted these snaps as 3-3-5.

The four DL surface like on the above play against the Bengals. where they have two IDL inside the tackles, two edges, and two LBs stacked. I believe SIS charted these reps as 4-2-5, even though Hunter and Wonnum are technically LBs.

“Blitz looks” like the play against the Bucs above, which were typically used in passing situations, but Brian Flores was also crazy enough to pull out whenever. In this instance with many players on the line of scrimmage, I believe SIS went back to counting each player based on their designated position, so that play would be a 1-4-6. The Vikings ran these looks quite often, so I believe this is why SIS would chart a significant number of 4-2-5 looks as well as 2-4-5 looks.

Goal line defense, which in some cases included up to four IDL-type players.

Meanwhile, a team like the Bears has a much cleaner profile on SIS. They ran 685 snaps of 4-2-5, 204 snaps of 4-3-4, and just 73 snaps of 3-3-5.

We can also try to determine usage by looking at snap counts for players. I bucketed Vikings players into edge rushers (Hunter, Wonnum, Jones, Marcus Davenport, and Andre Carter II) and interior defenders (Phillips, Bullard, Lowry, Khyiris Tonga, Sheldon Day, Jaquelin Roy, and T.J. Smith) and looked at their total snap counts. Edge rushers played 2,655 snaps, while IDL played 2,174. Because of Minnesota’s aggressive blitz looks on passing downs, edges clearly played more than IDL. But when you consider that the Vikings played 1,131 snaps on defense, they still played an average of 1.92 IDL per play.

PASS RUSH IS A HUGE NEED


It’s obvious that the Vikings have a huge need for pass rushers. They only had two players record more than three sacks last year, Wonnum and Hunter. Both are impending free agents. For most of the season, Hunter was their only pass rusher who could win in one-on-one situations. This created issues at the end of the season. Opposing QBs tore Minnesota’s secondary apart when they blitzed because no one besides Hunter was ever winning.

The lack of impact was particularly notable from the interior of the defense. Through Week 17, the Vikings had only an 8.6% win rate from their interior defensive line, which was by far last in the league.




Part of the reason for that low pressure rate from IDL has to do with the design of Minnesota’s defense.

...

THE VIKINGS’ DEFENSIVE LINE NEED IS TIED TO THEIR EDGE RUSHER NEED

Even with blitz schemes and stunts, opposing offenses can scheme an individual rusher out of a game. It’s much more difficult to do that with two quality pass rushers. With Hunter scheduled to be a free agent, the Vikings currently have zero. Minnesota needs to make re-signing Hunter or getting a similar high-level player a priority in free agency.

Once that is accomplished, the team can start looking toward adding another pass rusher. The Vikings showed that they could put together an excellent run defense with the combination of Phillips, Bullard, and Tonga/Lowry/Day/Roy on the IDL. They will need to re-sign Bullard to do that, but he should be pretty cheap. If the team is able to add two high-level edges, that interior group will be able to hold up fine, even if it doesn’t give much in the way of pass rush.

However, if they want to make a move and invest in a disruptive interior force while only adding one good edge rusher, that path is just as valid. What they should do in this case depends on what position the best pass rusher available in free agency or the draft plays.

So, ultimately, who was right about the Vikings’ defensive needs, Daniel Jeremiah or Kevin Seifert?

Taking an IDL at 11, like Daniel Jeremiah did, or investing in one heavily in free agency absolutely makes sense for the Vikings. They need impactful pass rushers, and a player on the interior can absolutely provide that in Brian Flores’ scheme, even though he didn’t use his interior defenders that way last year like Seifert suggested.