Minnesota Vikings at Tampa Bay Buccaneers Final Thoughts/Score Prediction
Joe Johnson
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It’s game day!
I figured I’d put down my final thoughts going into today’s MASSIVE game in Tampa! I’ve already covered some of the national media’s lack of faith in the Vikings:
https://purpleptsd.com/only-12-of-nfl-experts-pick-vikings-over-buccaneers-what-the-who-what-what/
As well as how massive the game actually is (in general as well as for Zimmer, Cousins):
But as there’s A LOT more to get into, I wanted to summarize my scattershot thoughts before they become old and outdated like a mid-20’s former Homecoming King drinking alone in his class of 2002 letter jacket (sigh, thems were the days!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZjviMmXIY8
Brady’s Deep Ball
The Minnesota Vikings are facing their best opponent in week’s in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers today, a team that has lost three of their last four games and are coming off a much needed bye. Despite the Bucs’ quarterback having a sick 0.0 passer rating on pass over 20 air yards (which is nothing new for him) since around week 4.
Before that, though, Brady and the Bucs were setting the league aflame with their pick your poison offense and stellar ageless deep ball from what appeared to be an ageless Brady.
The Athletic opens an article about this topic (because I refuse to pay for anything that is already available for free elsewhere (which is why I’m getting my COVID-19 vaccine from the conversion van next to Walgreen/‘s)) by saying:
“In the first four games of this season, Brady had six pass plays of 35 yards or longer, already more in a month than he’d totaled in all of last season with the Patriots. Concerns about Brady’s arm strength at age 43 were replaced by stories about the improved talent he had to throw to, and that downfield threat was part of the Bucs’ promising 6-2 start.”
While you’d think that I’d be relieved by this, we’ve seen Brady waver mid-season before only to come alive a few weeks before the playoffs and tear up the competition. If he was incapable of completing those passes, the following wouldn’t be the case:
“No quarterback in the NFL has attempted more passes of 20 yards or longer than Brady this season, with 58. But there has been a pronounced change in the last four games, and what had been one of his strengths has become a significant problem. In the first seven games, Brady went 17-for-39 on such passes, with three touchdowns, no interceptions and a sterling 116.1 passer rating. In the last four games? He’s 1-for-19.”
Barring some sort of hidden rotator cuff injury, Brady still has the deep ball in his repertoire. If there’s any team that may be susceptible to exactly that, it’s the Vikings.
Or rather, the Vikings from around the same time that Brady and the Buccaneers completed their last 20+ yard pass.
The improvements of the Vikings defense since the bye
Since the bye? The Vikings corners have been stellar, including and especially the former gigantic liability that is and was Cameron Dantzler. There was a lot of digital ink (dink?) spilled after the Jaguars game over Dantzler’s performance and emergence, like the following from SportsIllustrated.com:
https://www.si.com/nfl/vikings/news/cameron-dantzler-potential-saves-vikings-breakout-game-jaguars
After a season in which he nearly broke his neck and missed time on the COVID-19 reserve list, Dantzler is looking like the type of pick that defenses can build around. That’s really exciting news for a team that already has an elite offense (although it does make me wonder just how good this team would’ve been in 2021 with Danielle Hunter, Michael Pierce, and the recently traded Yannick Ngakoue.
The latter certainly could’ve come in handy down the stretch, but this is a Vikings team that is re-opening it’s recently shuttered Super Bowl window, and so I’m sure the third-and-fifth they received (after trading a second-and-fif) is better long-term than renting Ngakoue for a season.
But I digress.
How good are the Bucs?
Point being. This Tampa team might not be able to beat the Vikings down the field, but they’re going to need all hands on deck and for their front four to bring all sorts of pressure on a quarterback who gets rid of the ball before he can be hit.
These Bucs, despite their recent struggles, are still ranked fourth overall according to our friends over at LineUps.com:
Ruh roh. Rarhettio’s.
These Vikings can sling… The… Rock (?) with the best of them. The Vikings are averaging 26.6 points-per-game in 2020 (vs. 28.7 by Tampa) and nearly 28 ppg since the bye. The Bucs have put up 24, 24, and 3 points in their three losses in the last four games (with the 3 coming against a team that the Vikings will face before the end of the season, the Saints).
Injury Updates:
The other good news is that Saints receivers Chris Godwin and Mike Evans have been dealing with injuries and either limited participation (LP) or did not practice (DNP) designations in practice this week.
Evans was downgraded Thursday to DNP after being upgraded, and while it appears that both will play (as their injury report suddenly went from this one day:
To having just ONE player on it the next (despite neither Jason Pierre Paul and Ndamukong Suh both missing practice).
Evans is one bad route away from tweaking his hamstring again, but considering his up-and-down status this week it wouldn’t be surprising if he was limited today against the Vikings (which’d be incredibly helpful).
The Vikings on the other hand?
According to Vikings.com the following players are either not going to play or will be a game time decision:
- LB Eric Kendricks – OUT (calf)
- RB Alexander Mattison – OUT (illness)
- TE Kyle Rudolph – DOUBTFUL (foot)
- TE Irv Smith Jr. – QUESTIONABLE (back
Considering that Dalvin Cook had almost 40 touches last Sunday? Yeah, that’s a bit disconcerting for the long-term prospects of this team/Cook’s life expectancy.
The good news is, though, that the Vikings’ offensive line is healthy after suddenly having more injured starting linemen than healthy ones earlier in the week.
The Vikings linemen have their work cut out for them going against the aforementioned combo of Suh and Pierre-Paul.
Score Predictions:
I know I used this picture already but his expression pleases me.
Josh Frey, Senior Writer, purplePTSD.com/VikingsTerritory.com
Tampa Bay is Minnesota’s biggest test since Week Eight’s game against Green Bay. While the Vikings stepped up and played arguably their best football of the season that week, the team that has shown up the past three weeks cannot win tomorrow. The Vikings will need to get out to a much faster, much more urgent start to have a chance against a very good Buccaneer defense.
In order to do that, Kirk Cousins will have to build on an awesome month of November. While the Vikings as a whole have not played great football of late, Kirk Cousins has played some of the best ball of his career. Instead, Dalvin Cook will need to show that he truly is the best RB in the league against a stout run defense, and the defense will have to put real pressure on not only Tom Brady, but also Tampa’s trio of running backs in Ronald Jones, Leonard Fournette, and Lesean McCoy.
While I do expect the Vikings to keep it close by exploiting Tampa’s secondary, I do not think Cook will be able to run free as he did against Green Bay. Tampa’s run defense is legit, and they will make it difficult on him to get going.
Vikings lose 31-24
Joe Johnson, Owner, PurpleTERRITORY Media
This may be the hardest game to predict this season not just for just the Vikings, but in terms any game this season across the entire league.
Sure, the Bucs defense is good but it really feels like they are as up-or-down each week as the Vikings have been. A lot of that falls on Brady, who is a Wild Card round loss away from retiring in quasi-disgrace. I mean, I’m being dramatic as this is Tom Brady, but that is definitely not the way he’d want to end his career (that’d be like Joe Montana spontaneously combusting after being traded to the Kansas City Chiefs in 1993).
The Vikings will try to run a game plan similar to that of the one they executed brilliantly against the Seattle Seahawks. That game had over five drives of 10-or-more plays, and if not for a failed conversion on fourth-and-inches late in the game? We’d be in completely different shape going into the playoffs.
As I’ve said ad nauseam recently in like ten articles and on radio that reaches from Canada to Iowa (N to S) and Wisconsin and North/South Dakota (W to E), this game will come down to whether or not the Vikings can clean up their copious amount of mistakes.
The Vikings simply can’t spot the Bucs a two-score lead before the half and then expect to shut them out in the second half while scoring a TD on every possession. If they can limit their mistakes and Zimmer can get back to thinking outside the box and blitzing/playing less conservatively.
The Vikings have can win this game, though. They really can. I mean, any team can win any game, any week, but the Vikings could and arguably should win this one.
I’m going to go with hope on this one. The Bucs are good enough for Zimmer to blitz/think outside the box more, and the Vikings offense is seemingly getting better each week while the Bucs have been bad lately.
Vikings: 38
Bucs: 34
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