Vikes Grate The Cheese - Who Gets The Game Ball?

What went right

Jordan Addison’s return, Jefferson’s spectacular catches

When targeting either Jordan Addison or Justin Jefferson, Sam Darnold went 9-for-11 with 157 yards and two touchdowns.

Addison made his impact known right from the outset with a touchdown reception but also picked up first downs on his two other catches as well.

“I feel so good about that room and having that full room healthy and rolling like they were was really fun to see,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said.

Justin Jefferson made two other-worldly grabs that had a huge impact on the game. His Moss-like touchdown catch, per O’Connell, was expected to be a quicker concept but Sam Darnold recognized the coverage and threw the ball up for grabs.

“We have to give Justin some [opportunities] to do that,” O’Connell said. “Probably need to continue to find ways where we're willing, down and distance wise to give him an [opportunity] because I don't look at them as 50 -50 balls when you're throwing those to Justin Jefferson.”

Jefferson’s target share has been somewhat dictated by the Vikings’ enormous leads but he hasn’t gotten the ball as often as in the past. He’s averaging 5.0 receptions per game and 89.5 yards, which are below his 6.9 catches for 102. yards over the last three years.

Late in the game when the Vikings needed a big conversion, Jefferson made a sideline toe-tap grab that was reminiscent of Cris Carter. Both head coach and QB were wowed.

“I have not seen a player on a speed out off of those steps cover that much ground,” O’Connell said. “His ability in that moment to know that it's really a nine to 10 yard completion, but he's going to open up a stride and stretch it out to 12, 13 yards, and Sam's going to throw it the way he did versus the all-out zero pressure was really something. So big moment in the game, and I'm glad we got that one right on the challenge because it was big -time execution.”

“That was unbelievable,” Darnold said. “One of the better catches I have ever seen. Just the way that he was able to catch the football and then be able to toe tap there as well. Just a special play.”

Pass protection

Per PFF, Darnold was only pressured on 11 of his 33 drop-backs and the Vikings O-line put together its most complete game of the season. Christian Darrisaw, who is putting together an All-Pro season versus the league’s best pass rushers, gave up one QB pressure and Brian O’Neill allowed zero. In total the three guards were responsible for four pressures but both players graded well (Brandel 84.0, Ingram 68.3) and Bradbury only gave up two pressures vs. his nemesis Kenny Clark.

When Darnold has a clean pocket this year his QB rating is 127.1. It’s absolutely vital that the Vikings’ strong protection continues.

The short passing game

ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky called the Vikings’ screen game the best in the NFL following Sunday’s game. Darnold indeed leads the league at 9.1 yards per pass attempt on screens and has the fifth most total yards. This is a massive upgrade from the last two seasons.

Against the Packers the Vikings gained 54 yards on five screens.

It wasn’t just the screens that worked, when throwing the ball under 10 yards in the air, Darnold was 13-for-14 for 128 yards and one touchdown. Overall this year 57% of Darnold’s passes are under 10 yards and he’s completing 82% of them for an average of 6.6 yards per play.

Aaron Jones’s complete impact

Certainly the Vikings’ veteran running back posting 93 yards on 22 carries against his former team was the headline of Aaron Jones’s performance but he was involved in every part of the game, catching four passes for 46 yards and stepping up to make a key pass block against a Packers rush that allowed Darnold to deliver a pass to Jefferson.

“Aaron's one of those guys that no matter what, he's gonna meet the moment and make the play, whether it's our screen game execution, whether it's a big run when you need it,” O’Connell said. “His role in the pass game has been pretty critical because I kind of look at Aaron stat line as, I'm looking for that total yardage, because he is an impact player in the past game, and those touches all matter for him, and he's just been phenomenal,” O’Connell said. “Whether he's getting the ball or not, his execution has been really, really good in year one in the system. And even though you're getting a smart veteran player that's had such an impact in this league.”

Josh Oliver gets a game ball

The quietest big-time performance of the day came from tight end Josh Oliver. He played 46 snaps, allowed zero pressures in pass protection, caught a touchdown and recovered an onside kick. O’Connell gave him a game ball for his play.

“He was maybe the most physical player on the field, Rashan Gary, Preston Smith, some of the best edge players in our league, and some of those plays required him to have to fight the good fight against those guys, in some cases, without help,” O’Connell said. “He catches the touchdown. And not a guy we talk about a lot, but continues to be a huge part of our offense.”

Forcing turnovers

The Vikings’ defense picked off Jordan Love three times and forced a key fumble.

Linebacker Kamu Grugier-Hill explained that he read the Green Bay route combination and broke off the play in order to jump the route.

“We were in a two-high [safeties] and they were condensed [formation] so I knew Harry and them could handle the vertical [routes] so I was like, ‘I’m going to go try and steal this one,’” Grugier-Hill explained. “That’s a good thing that Flo[res] does, he allows the players to be the players.”

Murphy Jr. had several opportunities to make a play on the football and finally grabbed an interception.

He also punched the ball out late in the game — something Flores had been pressing him to do.

“It goes back to details, we’re all getting to the ball, every guy on the field is flying to the ball,” Murphy Jr. said. “Other teams see that on film, when all 11 are going to the ball it’s a different feeling. The punch-outs and things like that are coming, that’s the defense playing together.”

The Vikings now rank second in the NFL in percentage of drives that they have caused a turnover.

No injuries

O’Connell announced that the Vikings came out of the game with a clean bill of health and that linebacker Ivan Pace Jr. will have a good chance to play next week. With the trip to London and the bye week, it remains unclear exactly how much practice time the Vikings can give TJ Hockenson and Dalton Risner but appear near ready to get back to practice and in the lineup at some point after the bye. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Hockenson’s return could be either against the Rams or Colts.

Minnesota Vikings 31, Green Bay Packers 29

Why the Vikings won: The Vikings’ pass-blocking held up well all game, allowing just eight pressures and one sack. Sam Darnold performed well again, too, partially because he was pressured on just 33.3% of his dropbacks.

Why the Packers lost: Early interceptions from Jordan Love hurt the Packers, and Green Bay was always chasing Minnesota on the scoreboard. Love eventually tossed four touchdown passes and showed resilience, but three drives were thrown away by interceptions. Love earned a 66.8 passing grade, but there was rust in his return from an MCL sprain.

Reasons For Concern

There are some alarm bells worth noting.

Darnold has been playing a little bit worse every game; it’s not something immediately obvious amidst an undefeated start, especially as the most recent game started with a blistering scoring run.

Darnold threw a pick in this game but could have another. The fact that Xavier McKinney bobbled the ball and perhaps shouldn’t have been awarded the pick is a bit immaterial to the fact that Darnold is showcasing the downside to his risky playing style.

These were not merely products of pressure, either. Darnold had been excelling all year in a clean pocket, but struggled even when the pocket was kept pristine by the offensive line. His pick came from a clean pocket and though we still see some of the stuff that was exciting – going through his progressions to hit Josh Oliver on the drag route for his second touchdown was huge – but some of the stuff that made him more volatile and less viable is creeping back in.

Last week, we saw it with an ill-advised backwards pass that turned into a fumble as he was hit on the throw. That was on top of an odd decision to scramble out of a sack to hit a shovel pass that might have been ruled a fumble. This week, we saw even more.

Is any of this to suggest that Darnold is bad? No. He’s been playing well and he deserves recognition as someone who is, at the moment, at the top of his game. It’s no accident that Darnold regularly appears in the top five of various quarterback metrics. But without course correction, this will vanish.

It should also be noted that the four-score lead was a little illusory as the two missed Narveson kicks would have made it three scores. That sounds like nitpicking until we evaluate how the rest of the game played out. Naturally, the Vikings would have played a much different game if had been 28-13 to start the second half so it’s not quite the case that these missed kicks were the difference.

But it does stand out when the final margin was as close as it was.

Does it matter that the second scoring drive was replete with Packers defensive penalties or that the Vikings earned back multiple receptions on another scoring drive with challenges? Probably.

These are the kinds of bounces that will occur for teams throughout the season so it’s not cause for alarm – along the lines of the sustainability concerns over the last two years – but it bears watching.

The Defense Gave Up 29 Points and Despite That Was Good

The Vikings continued their blitz-heavy approach with extra rushers sent on over half of Packers dropbacks. Love, typically a deep thrower, was more conservative on these blitz looks, often throwing slants or screens when confronted with those extra pass rushers.

While those plays were ultimately better for Love – before his final drive he averaged 6.8 yards per attempt against the blitz, higher than his 5.1 yards per attempt when unblitzed – the threat of the blitz forced Love into bad throws throughout the game – he had two turnover-worthy plays when unblitzed, including when the Vikings just rushed three.

Those rush-three looks are one reason why Love had longer times-to-throw on unblitzed downs at 2.99 seconds while only completing 45.8 percent of his passes when seeing four or fewer rushers.



Because of the diversity of these looks, the Vikings needed to generate pressure from a variety of players. That happened, with eleven different players logging a pressure and four logging at least three pressures. Jonathan Greenard, Jihad Ward and Pat Jones II were the biggest pressure producers, though it should be noted that they were helped along with block-occupying roles from Harrison Phillips and Jonathan Bullard.

This week’s blitz design put safeties near the edge quite a bit, just like with the majority of blitz looks last year. In that role, both Harrison Smith and Josh Metellus harassed Love, with Smith’s unblocked pressure contributing to Murphy’s interception in the end zone to keep the Vikings’ lead alive in the fourth quarter.

It might seem odd to praise a passing defense for a game where the opposing quarterback earned 389 yards, but these volumetric descriptors are deceptive; the Packers dropped back to pass an astounding 56 times. Before the final drive, where the Vikings gave up yards cheaply on purpose, Love had 300 passing yards on 50 attempts.

Six yards per passing attempt isn’t good, even in this year’s low-offense environment. Love’s totals look gaudy, but earned minus-0.14 EPA per play before the final drive, a 24th-percentile outcome. After the clock-draining final drive, Love earned minus-0.02 EPA per play, or a 37th-percentile outcome.

The Packers offense overall managed a very poor 41 percent success rate.

Though the VIkings didn’t get the game out of Andrew Van Ginkel or Josh Metellus that they’re accustomed to, both defenders are at this point being graded on an impossible curve they set for themselves with their first three weeks of play. Van Ginkel struggled a little bit and Metellus was a bit quieter than usual, but others showed up in big ways.

Harrison Smith, Camryn Bynum and Blake Cashman all had good games among those in the back seven. Up front, there needed to be more in the way of run defense – the Vikings’ best run defense plays came from second- or third-level defenders – but their pass rush went well, as noted above.

The critical defensive player in the secondary was probably Byron Murphy Jr., who not only grabbed a critical interception late in the game but also forced a fumble at, somehow, an even more important juncture. While he was the defender in coverage for one of Love’s passing touchdowns, his positioning was largely OK and he more than made up for his performance on that play.

Shaquill Griffin earned a pick in coverage of Romeo Doubs – though this was more about Cashman’s blitz pressure and the subsequent receiver bobbles – and Kamu Grugier-Hill earned his customary early-game interception, this time in coverage of Christian Watson.

With standout performances from Greenard, Bullard, Murphy, Smith and Grugier-Hill, the Vikings saw more high-level defensive play from players they expect a lot out of but haven’t had the opportunity to be big earlier in the year.

The Offense is Humming

Darnold has some stuff to work out, that’s pretty clear. Again, it was his worst performance of the year but that’s only because of the frequency of his mistakes. His successes were fantastic. As a deep-ball thrower, he doesn’t need to be as consistent to have a positive impact on the game – it just would be nice.



A big part of this success came from the receiver rotation. Still missing tight end T.J. Hockenson, we still got to see this partially-built Death Star run a fully operational offense with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, Jalen Nailor and Aaron Jones wreaking havoc.

The Vikings opted to use Addison a bit like how the Packers have used Jayden Reed over the past few weeks, both stretching the field with him and using him on jet sweep packages to get speed on the outside.

Addison is a more complete receiver than Reed, however, and Minnesota took advantage of that fact by punishing Green Bay’s double-teams with peppered shots in the midfield for their second-year emerging star.

Jefferson finished the game as the Vikings’ most efficient and most volumetrically productive receiver – by both EPA and raw yardage – but Addison was leading the team for most of the game until Jefferson’s fourth-quarter explosion.

That’s not to say Jefferson wasn’t impactful throughout the game – his ability to pull coverage was a big reason why Nailor and Addison could be as productive as they were. Darnold’s ability to cycle through his progressions quickly enough to find them gave the offense the potency it needed to come out to such a big lead.




This was guided in a big way by the offensive line, who also helped craft a very efficient running game. Though 4.2 yards per carry seems pedestrian for a running back, Jones’ yards often came in constricted down and distances, meaning its impact was far greater.

With a rush success rate of 47 percent and EPA per rush of plus-0.03, Jones was actually a 75th percentile runner at his position in this game. Christian Darrisaw stood out as uniquely capable in both elements of blocking, with high-level pass protection and run blocking throughout.

Joining him as pass protectors were, once again, Blake Brandel and Brian O’Neill. O’Neill and Brandel were not nearly as effective as run blockers, but Garrett Bradbury and Ed Ingram played opposite roles as highly effective run blockers to counter their own deficiencies as pass protectors.

Darnold often got rid of the ball quickly against interior pressure, so we don’t see it much on the stat sheet, but the pass-rush losses up the middle were alarming. They didn’t result in catastrophic plays – the sack came against Brandel, who was otherwise clean – but they quickened an offense that would have liked to take more time.