Vikings Left Searching For Answers After Second Straight Disheartening Loss
No one was quite sure what to expect from the Vikings this year.
Given all of the roster turnover they experienced this offseason and the unique nature of preparing for a season during a pandemic, there were a wide range of potential outcomes on the table. If several young players stepped up, this seemed like a team with enough talent to return to the playoffs and make some noise. If the losses of veterans like Stefon Diggs, Everson Griffen, and Linval Joseph were difficult to overcome, maybe a .500 record was more realistic.
But very few people envisioned...this. With so many big-name players on both sides of the ball, well-respected coaches in Mike Zimmer and Gary Kubiak leading the way, and a 50-29-1 record since 2015, it was hard to imagine the Vikings being, well, bad.
Yet through two games in 2020, the Vikings haven't just been bad, they've looked like one of the worst teams in the NFL. Zimmer's defense has given up 71 points and nearly 900 yards to the Packers and Colts, while Kubiak's offense has been lifeless and uninspiring outside of opening drives and garbage time. The coaching has been poor, the execution has been abysmal, and there have been sloppy mistakes all over the place. The Vikings have been outscored by a combined 31 points in the second quarter this year, with both games feeling more or less over in the third quarter, if not at halftime.
Three Takeaways From the Vikings' Blowout Loss to the Colts
It all adds up to an 0-2 team that hasn't shown anything that suggests there's even a remote possibility they'll turn things around quickly and contend for a playoff berth. This looks like a very bad team right now, and there are some huge questions beginning to arise about the long-term viability of the way the team is currently constructed – questions that will only become more pressing if the Vikings continue to lose in non-competitive fashion.
Everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong, and the Vikings aren't exactly sure why it has all snowballed the way it has.
"I don’t know," Zimmer said when asked about the offense's struggles against the Colts. "We’re not making plays, we didn’t throw the ball very well today, we ran it OK early and they’re a good defensive team. I’m not sure why, exactly. But we’ve got to get better. Fast."
One thing he did specifically point to is self-inflicted wounds. The lack of execution on both sides of the ball is concerning, but so are penalties and mental errors.
"I’ve been telling them we can’t start winning until we stop losing," Zimmer said. "Right now we are doing things to beat ourselves with the turnovers and sacks and safeties and penalties on third downs on defense. I’m just not going to deal with it anymore."
The formula that has worked so well under Zimmer simply hasn't been there in the first two games. Over the past five years, the Vikings have relied on playing great defense, and in doing so, have given themselves a chance to win even if the offense doesn't have a huge day. So far in 2020, the revamped defense has been gashed both through the air and on the ground. Usually known for their ability to generate big plays, the Vikings have a grand total of one sack and one takeaway thus far.
An inability to get off the field in that phase has caused the defense to be out there for far longer than usual. The Packers possessed the ball for a whopping 41:16 in Week 1 and the Colts weren't far behind that at 38:25 on Sunday. That inevitably causes some fatigue. The offense has struggled to extend drives and get into a rhythm, which just perpetuates a vicious cycle that leads to ugly results.
"This team has kind of been built on controlling the time of possession, playing great in the red zone and on third downs, and we haven’t been doing that very well," Zimmer said. "We’re going to have to get back to work and try to figure out what’s wrong because the identity of this team has not been what it has been for the last six years."
That's a key word: identity. The Vikings have ranged from mediocre to good to excellent in recent years, but they've always had a certain personality and a certain style that they could rely on. This year's team doesn't have that yet. They haven't been able to run the ball effectively, in part due to spending most of their time trailing. Kirk Cousins has regressed from a stellar 2019, playing probably the worst game of his NFL career on Sunday. And the defense, which has some new faces but also some old ones, has been lacking the toughness and edge that it became known for.
Zimmer said the team needs to figure out what it's good at and start doing those things. "Right now we’re not very good at anything," he said. "And we have to evaluate that."
Although the defense's struggles have been particularly odd to watch because of Zimmer's track record, we shouldn't necessarily be surprised. This is a team that lost five defensive starters this offseason, saw its big free agent acquisition opt out, and then placed arguably its best player on injured reserve before the season started. With so many unproven players thrust into action at key positions like defensive tackle and cornerback, the results shouldn't be all that shocking.
What's more concerning is how atrocious the offense has been. The team talked up its continuity on that side of the ball with Kubiak, Cousins, Dalvin Cook, Adam Thielen and plenty of other pieces carrying over from last year. And yet, outside of the first drive of each game and garbage time, that unit hasn't posed any sort of threat.
"We have a pretty veteran offensive group and that is concerning to me," Zimmer said. "These young guys are trying to come in here and learn in a short amount of time but that’s no excuse. The gameplan was simple enough for them this week that there shouldn’t be very many mistakes."
Cousins didn't offer much in the way of explanations for the offense's struggles following Sunday's game. He repeatedly cited a need to go watch the film and figure out what went wrong, and said it was a combination of factors that doomed them against the Colts.
Cook was a bit more blunt.
"We just gotta go out there and ball and right now we’re not doing that," said Cook, who has three touchdowns but just 119 yards from scrimmage this season. "We’re not taking advantage of the moments, we’re not capitalizing, we’re not making our own energy. We’re not capitalizing on those big plays to make a game switch over to our game and take the momentum. We’re not doing the little things, so we got to just focus and go back to work in practice on Monday and just correct it."
The problem for the Vikings is that there appear to be too many different things that need correcting. And even if the team makes strides and winds up playing well in the second half of the season, they're almost certainly not going to salvage the campaign as a whole.
By now, you're probably familiar with the history of teams losing their first two games. Since 1978, only 11 percent of all teams to start 0-2 have righted the ship and made the playoffs that year. Even if the expanded 14-team postseason theoretically increases the odds ever so slightly, the Vikings haven't done anything that suggests they'll be an outlier and not the norm.
There are still 14 games left to play. The Vikings hope to get Danielle Hunter back as soon as Week 4, and it's hard to imagine that they won't at least make minor improvements in the coming weeks considering how poorly they've played so far. But right now, the best-case scenario feels like 7-9 or 8-8. And a disastrous season with double-digit losses – something the Vikings haven't experienced since before Zimmer arrived – has suddenly become a very real possibility, maybe even a likely one.
Before this team can get better, it first needs to figure out what exactly is going wrong. Coaches and players need to find answers and fix things. If the Vikings are able to make adjustments and display some growth throughout the remainder of what feels like a lost season, there might at least be reason for optimism heading into 2021.
But if this horror movie continues all season long, there will be plenty of clamoring for major, long-term shakeups to the current plan. It's not time to start calling for Cousins' and Zimmer's jobs just yet, but that day might be coming soon if things don't start to get better.
This is a bleak moment for the Vikings. Only time will tell if it's merely a setback or the start of something much bigger.
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