How the Vikings' red zone defense shut the door on the Jets
MINNEAPOLIS — Coming into Sunday’s game, the Minnesota Vikings ranked 26th in the percentage of red zone attempts in which they allowed opponents to score touchdowns. Well, those rankings are going to look significantly different come Monday morning.
Against the New York Jets they gave up just one touchdown on six trips, including stuffing the Jets at the goal line with under two minutes remaining and picking off quarterback Mike White to end the game.
Add this one to the pile of the 10-2 Vikings finding unique ways to win every week.
How did they toughen up in the red zone versus the Jets? Let’s have a look…
Clutch Cam
When the Vikings drafted Lewis Cine in the first round, it wasn’t clear if Cam Bynum would see the field in Ed Donatell’s defense. Through the team’s 10 wins, he’s been on the field for every single snap and made his biggest play of the year versus the Jets.
With 16 seconds remaining in the game the Jets had the ball on the Vikings’ 19-yard line and New York dialed up a concept that had created a number of big plays throughout their 486-yard performance. Bynum, remembering Patrick Peterson’s game-ending INT in Buffalo, read the routes and put himself in position to end the game.
“I know they were running double in-cuts all game and they got us on it a few times on that last series and mainly all the big plays were in-breaking [routes] so I knew that if I showed inside a little that as soon as the quarterback’s eyes came to [the No. 1 receiver] it was going to be mine and thank god I was able to come up with it,” Bynum explained.
Bynum’s exceptional awareness put him on the map last year when he was thrown into action against the Baltimore Ravens following a Harrison Smith late scratch due to COVID. He picked off Lamar Jackson in that game and proved to be a quick study. Linebacker Eric Kendricks said that Bynum’s efforts go under the radar because his contributions aren’t always in the form of splash plays like Sunday’s INT.
“Cam is a guy who gets it,” Kendricks said. “He gets all the situations, he’s a smart player. No moment is too big for him like you saw in the end, he just does his job right and does it well. He plays a lot more fast and aggressive than how people may perceive him so I think him having the chip on his shoulder and underdog mentality really helps him.”
Bynum and Smith have been asked to take on very different roles this year from Mike Zimmer’s defense in 2021 and the two have worked together to better understand their assignments. Smith said he’s seen Bynum grow throughout the year into a player they can count on during the key moments.
“I’m still trying to give him little points here and there that I can pass along,” Smith said. “He’s a ballplayer. He’s complete. He plays the pass really well and he tackles. He’s very active. He was a big difference in the game.”
Reps
The more times you do something, the better you get at it, right? The Vikings’ has certainly had enough opportunities to practice their clutch execution on defense. Whether it was making a fourth-down stop versus Detroit, holding the Saints to a long field goal at the buzzer, causing a Dolphins fumble, sacking Kyler Murray, intercepting Taylor Heinicke, picking off Josh Allen in overtime, sacking Mac Jones or slamming the door shut on the Jets, making game-saving stops appears to be part of their DNA.
“That’s what we live for every single week knowing that the game might come down to us and that’s how we want it,” Bynum said. “Big moments in the fourth quarter, it wasn’t easy and the odds were stacked against us with them in the red zone a bunch of times and after they scored it was, ‘let’s go again.’ We wanted the game in our hands.”
While players don’t want to talk about 2021 this deep into the season, you can’t help but juxtapose the struggles with making gotta-have-it stops late in games last year.
“I hope those situations we were in last year and years prior for the veterans we have on our team, I hope it leaves a stain in your mind to where you want to finish those games because we’ve been on the other side of that thing,” Kendricks said.
Statistically speaking it’s proven difficult historically to repeat one-score wins over and over but with every victory the team gains more belief in its ability to make stops. Can you swing the tides by feeling the pressure less than your opponents? The Vikings certainly think so.
“It grows each time, which is pretty much every week at this point, the confidence,” Smith said.
As we look at everything through the lens of the postseason now that the Vikings are teetering on the edge of clinching a division title, Smith thinks that the close calls will give them invaluable experience when the stakes are higher in January.
“We always talk about, ‘We don’t have to make it that way,’ but it’s good practice for us,” Smith said. “It’s not always what we want but if you’re getting reps in that…high stress environment, all these games are playoff environments in the fourth quarter. That’s not how you draw it up but it could pay dividends.”
Intensity, joy, execution
The emotions of high-pressure red zone situations seem to be quelled by a team of experienced players who have not panicked when games on a single play.
“In the fourth quarter it feels normal, it feels like any other play,” Bynum said. “The pressure is on us, we’re in the red zone, it’s fourth down and it’s one play to lose the game or win the game but to us that’s normal football.”
“Once they get down there we have a calmness about us that remains calm and remains aggressive,” Kendricks added.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Smith finds joy in red zone opportunities.
“Things happen a little faster down there. It gets pretty fun down there,” Smith said. “You feel like a kid playing ball when everybody knows there’s only so much grass to play with. I think this team, we just have confidence we’re going to win…I’m still not sure why or how but I think it starts at the top.”
The Vikings’ head coach explained it in more technical terms. Against the Jets, all levels of the defense worked in unison at the goal line, whether it was stopping their attempts to pound the ball in or forcing an inaccurate pass on a key fade route to the back corner.
“When the field shrinks, it's about execution, and it's about tightening up and finding a way to just be a little bit better,” O’Connell said. “Every blade of grass matters down there. Every time you can put your foot in the ground and make a break, every time we can get pressure on the quarterback, force him off the spot, it all works together.”
What about all that yardage?
While the Vikings made nearly every play imaginable inside their own 20, the same cannot be said for the rest of the field. They gave White and the Jets shot after shot at a three-score comeback by allowing explosive plays that quickly got Gang Green into scoring position.
What are we supposed to make of a game in which the Vikings’ defense was on the field for 83 plays and nearly 500 yards against?
“We never want to give up yards like that but as long as long as we’re coming down with the the win,” Bynum said. “There are a lot of intricacies with the small details of maybe one guy getting out of their assignment so we have to play clean ball and get off the field. A lot of times we gave up those yards and held them to three points. That’s a win for us but at the end of the day we don’t want to give up that many.”
Smith: “From a vanity standpoint, yeah, you don’t want yards. You want to limit those but keeping them out of the end zone is the number one thing. We’ll take that and try to cut those yards down.”
O’Connell put some of the defense’s glaring yardage numbers on the offensive side where they struggled to put the Jets away with one more long drive or score.
“I think you have to continue to look at it just because it just puts a lot of pressure on your football team and vice versa on the offensive side, trying to avoid times where we get a little stagnant and don't earn 1st downs, to stay on the field and maybe allow our defense to rest a little bit more. Time of possession was pretty close, 31-28, but it feels like offensively we could have done a better job in those moments to maintain kind of the ability to maintain that momentum, which then might have just made it a little bit easier for our team to not need it to come together in the end the way it did.”
The bottom line on the Vikings’ red zone execution is that it worked for this week and all that matters is walking out of the stadium at 10-2. Some of the ways in which they have won may fall under the category of being unsustainable but it does seem sustainable that they find a different way each week, whether it’s special teams or offensive output or forcing a key turnover. They’ve done it all. Now they stay in the hunt for the No. 1 seed in the NFC and have a chance to clinch the North next week because of it. And if they need red zone stops again, well, they’ll be prepared from all the snaps they got there on Sunday.
