Misc. Thoughts: Colts

[VikingOracle]

I have already written in another thread about my crazy experience trying to watch the complete game but this is a hard game to put into words and will largely pull from other sources.

• Cousins.  Have never been a big Cousins supporter but I am trying to find room on his bandwagon.  I think the narrative around him needs to be completely erased.  ESPN: "Cousins is also the first Vikings player to throw for 400-plus yards in consecutive games and now has the most 400-yard games in Vikings franchise history (five)."  ZoneCoverage:  "Perhaps most impressive was that Cousins, widely viewed as a player who needs everything around him to be perfect, was as effective as he was despite being sacked seven times. Cousins has now been sacked 40 times this season. Only Russell Wilson and Daniel Jones have been sacked more this season."
• FiveThirtyEight.  "Salfino: So after the big comeback to get to one score, where the Vikings always win for some reason, the Colts fumble and stop the Vikings. They get the ball back and really the game comes down to a QB sneak. After all this. After all the win probability frittered away, the Colts have a fourth and a foot at the Vikings 36-yard line and Ryan, who was 9-for-11 on sneaks since 2020, does not convert. QBs are 82.4 percent getting a yard or less on third and fourth down since 2020. And 82.5 percent this year. But should a TE or someone take that snap? A real runner? Would that make it near 100 percent?"  I actually think the ball spot on the 4th down QB sneak might have been just a bit of a make-up call for all the poor calls that did not go the Vikings way earlier in the game.  
• FMIA:  I had a mental note to comment about this (even checked the jersey number) but Peter King wrote it better:  "Ezra Cleveland, guard, Minnesota. The Vikings left guard made the kind of effort play every coach should show his team on tape, and it was not the most noticeable play, certainly, of the Vikings’ stunning win. With the Colts up 36-28 late in the fourth quarter, and the Vikes at their 36-yard line, Kirk Cousins threw a screen to Dalvin Cook, and Cook was off to the races. As was Cleveland. Sprinting like an Olympian, he deflected Colts LB Zaire Franklin out of pursuit midway through the run, then ran with Cook all the way down to the end zone. What hustle. Cleveland didn’t make a vital block, but he showed the conscience that great football players show."
• FiveThirty (2):  "Week 15 saw THREE 17-point comebacks!"
• Osborn: ZoneCoverage:  "For the first time this season, a receiver not named Justin Jefferson broke the century mark when K.J. Osborn set a career high with 157 receiving yards. Osborn caught 10 of 16 targets on Sunday, including Minnesota’s first touchdown."  Frankly, I think Osborn may benefit the most from the Hockenson acquisition.
• Blitzes:  ESPN: "The Vikings made a major second-half adjustment. After blitzing Ryan on four of 17 dropbacks in the first half, they blitzed him on 12 of 20 thereafter."  I think every armchair coach here can agree that this was long overdue.
• CBs:  SI.com:  "Interestingly, Cameron Dantzler was active, but didn't play. Shelley got the start opposite Peterson and was the Vikings' highest-graded player by PFF. When Peterson missed seven snaps with cramps, Boyd was the one who replaced him. On Monday, Kevin O'Connell said that Dantzler was basically only active for emergency reasons."

[Guest]

I thought the spot of the ball on the Ryan Sneak was a bad spot. There wasn’t definitive video to overturn it. 
I’ll take a make up call once in a while, god knows they have given the Packers enough breaks over the years. It would be nice to be one of those teams other fans bitch about because we are getting the breaks.

[Guest]

On the QB sneak, I'm pretty sure the replay showed Ryan had his back turned to the line and the ball was behind his body.  The Vikings stopped his forward momentum and he was short so once they blew the play dead...  The last fall to the side and upfield was well after the whistle blew so the spot was actually good.  He didn't get it.

[Guest]

Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell focused more on what went wrong vs. Colts than what went right in historic comebackAfter the Vikings completed the greatest comeback win in NFL history and clinched the NFC North on Saturday, first-year coach Kevin O’Connell received all sorts of congratulatory phone calls and text messages. But he didn’t dwell too long on all the praise coming his way.

After trailing Indianapolis 33-0 at halftime at U.S. Bank Stadium, the Vikings outscored the Colts 39-3 the rest of the way and won 39-36 on Greg Joseph’s 40-yard field goal with three seconds left in overtime. And O’Connell has been thinking lately mostly about everything that went wrong in the first half.
“Honestly, what I’ve spent the majority of my time thinking about is what put us in that situation in the first place and the role that I played in that, and more importantly, what I need to do better for our team,” O’Connell said Monday.
In the ugly first half, the Vikings gave up a Ryan Wright blocked punt for a touchdown and had a Kirk Cousins pass intercepted and returned for another touchdown. They failed twice on fourth-and-1 plays in their own territory, once when Wright threw an incompletion on a fake punt.

“We’ve got to get back to emphasizing details, and then some of the things we, quite honestly, did last week,” said O’Connell, whose Vikings next play Saturday against the New York Giants at home. “We’ve got to look at kind of an accountability, both as players and coaches, to making sure that we hold ourselves to that standard from the jump and not need to have a record-setting comeback to find a way to get a win.”
O’Connell said he’s been studying “the why” about various things happening. He said the Vikings “do not want to have blocked punts for touchdowns.” He said they can’t have a situation in which Dalvin Cook had a 40-yard run in the first quarter followed by Cook losing a fumble on a four-yard run. And he emphasized the need not to give up big plays.
At least O’Connell did have some reflection on the Vikings (11-3) setting an NFL record with their 33-point comeback win being the biggest in history. It erased the previous record when the Buffalo Bills came from 32 points down to defeat the Houston Oilers 41-38 in overtime in the 1992 playoffs.
“I did hear from some people, a lot the mentors and people that have helped shape my football journey and culture,” O’Connell said. “I was able to hear from all of them in some capacity, text messages of support, a couple phone calls here and there.”
And it has thrilled O’Connell that the Vikings were able to wrap up the NFC North division championship in his first season as a head coach on any level.

“Really proud of our team,” he said. “We set out on a goal at the beginning of training camp to hopefully have a chance to become NFC North champions. … (I) definitely want to take a moment and thank the Wilf family (ownership group). …I want to thank (general manager) Kwesi (Adofo-Mensah), our coaching staff and then, obviously, our players. …  It’s been a collective effort. … to get goal number one accomplished. There’s a lot of football left, and a lot of the goals that we have out in front of us.”
The Vikings are currently the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoff race and have little chance to catch Philadelphia (13-1) for No. 1. Minnesota is trying to hold off No. 3 San Francisco (10-4), which holds a possible tiebreaker, and O’Connell indicated that is a goal in the final three games of the season.
“We should try to be hunting for as many home games (in the playoffs) as we possibly can,” O’Connell said.
Being the No. 2 seed could result in having more than one home playoff game while being No. 3 could result in a road game in the second round. However, O’Connell said a “priority is having a healthy team.” He said in the final three regular-season games the Vikings will look to reduce the load for guys who “have bumps and bruises and have played a lot of snaps” and will seek to get some work in for younger players.
kevin-oconnell-dwelling-more-about-what-went-wrong-vs-colts-rather-than-vikings-historic-comeback

[Guest]

@Wetlander said:
On the QB sneak, I'm pretty sure the replay showed Ryan had his back turned to the line and the ball was behind his body.  The Vikings stopped his forward momentum and he was short so once they blew the play dead...  The last fall to the side and upfield was well after the whistle blew so the spot was actually good.  He didn't get it.

Maybe, just maybe, they blew the whistle a tad early like they had done on a couple of fumble plays.  Just maybe.

[Guest]

Colts weren’t half bad….  :p