“Soft.” That’s the Vikings Self-Assessment.
The Minnesota Vikings 2021 season bottomed out last Sunday, losing to the Detroit Lions in walkoff fashion, 29-27.
Before the Vikings got a crack at Detroit, the Lions were 0-10-1 on the season.
Injuries adversely affected Minnesota’s depth chart. But even so, an intelligible and thoughtful gameplan should have knocked off the plebian Lions. The offense and defense played poorly in the 1st Half, allowing Detroit to grab an early lead – something that avoided the Dan Campbell-led franchise too frequently in 2021.
Of course, because they’re the Lions, Detroit coughed away the lead, giving Kirk Cousins and Minnesota’s offense a segue to victory. The Vikings took the lead down the stretch, thanks to Cousins’ heroism, and the world began spinning on its axis again.
After that, the defense vomited, surrendering a game-winning drive to Jared Goff – who had never won a football game without Sean McVay as his head coach before Sunday. He can eternally attribute the Vikings to the first non-McVay win of his life.
As Detroit marched down the field so easily – and so predictably – defeating the Vikings for their first win of the season, it later prompted some Vikings personnel to offer a poignant assessment of the team after 13 weeks.
Vikings safety Harrison Smith, the longest-tenured player on the roster aside from Everson Griffen, called the team (specifically the defense) soft.
Any Zimmer defense from 2014 through 2019 would not have permitted such tomfoolery from a bad team – or really any team, for that matter. Smith said about the Vikings:
“We were just too soft on them. Let them get out of bounds a couple times. It was pretty much it. That’s been an area we’ve struggled in all year and it bit us [Sunday]. We’ve got to fix it. We did for much of the second half, but kind of the two-minute and end-of-half area, it’s our Achilles’ heel right now.”
On the sentiment of soft and playing wildly incompetent at the end of halves, Smith ain’t kidding.
Time after time in 2021, the Vikings offense has produced enough points late in games, only for the defense or kicker to ruin the festivities. It’s happening so often that it is downright predictable. Every semi-cynical Vikings fan in the Northern Hemisphere knew Goff would complete the last-gasp touchdown pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown. Why? Because the defense doesn’t close out games. They’re soft. Nary a Vikings game in 2021 has been closed out by Zimmer’s defense. None.
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Zimmer’s defense used to close out games like clockwork. In fact, Zimmerball was the Vikings strategy for several seasons – and it worked. Get up by two scores, and sit on the leads. Easy peezee.
Zimmerball doesn’t work anymore. And even if it did, the Vikings defense would crumble – because that’s what they’ve done repeatedly in 2021.
Minnesota can make it right on Thursday Night Football against the Steelers. Pittsburgh, led by head coach Mike Tomlin, is emphatically not a soft ballclub, so the team will have to heed Smith’s synopsis.
Soft defenses rarely flourish.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs every Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sally from Minneapolis. His Viking fandom dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ and The Doors (the band).
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