Vikings vs Browns

[pattersaur]

Wasn't able to watch, but I paid loose attention to the gamecast and then saw the highlights. My takeaways...

• LOVE this WR group. Strong at the top and strong at the bottom.
• Every time I see Nick Muse, he's making a great block. He's in a tough battle for the 53 with Harry and Tonyan, but I'm hoping he sticks. I think he has a future.
• Mullens' knowledge of the offense is invaluable. We're lucky to have him.
• Ingram is the only OL starter to play in this game and he didn't play particularly well. I heard Risner is hurt? I'm hearing some on Twitter say that Risner is on the bubble? Man, I don't know about that. If he is, it's more because of good play by Jurgens and not Ingram.
• Cine is a physically talented guy. Were the Vikings showcasing him for trade? Or did the light finally come on for him? Sure, it was against 2s and 3s, but none of his plays were because he beat an inferior athlete. It was because he was playing fast, and with purpose. Finally.
• McGlothern needs to hit the treadmill; WTF Matt Corral?

Re: Muse. Agreed. Tongan might be fine if healthy but Harry hasn’t looked impressive at all.

[purplefaithful]

Cine finished with 10 tackles, a sack, and an interception while play a majority of the snaps on defense.

If the past few weeks at TCO Performance Center are any indication, young safety Lewis Cine might not have a future with the Vikings. He currently finds himself buried on the depth chart behind fellow safeties Harrison Smith, Cam Bynum, Josh Metellus and Theo Jackson, and more than likely faces an uphill climb to make the team.

Not ideal considering the Vikings selected him in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft.

Though it might end up being too little, too late, Cine made a statement Saturday afternoon in Cleveland, playing a starring role as the Vikings earned a 27-12 preseason win over the Browns. He finished with 10 tackles, a sack and an interception while playing a majority of the snaps on defense.

“It feels good to be running around playing football,” Cine said. “It feels good to show my true potential.”

It started with Cine hauling in a tipped ball for an interception. It continued with Cine laying the boom in the open field. It finished with Cine blitzing off the edge and recording a sack. All of it impressed head coach Kevin O’Connell in the immediate aftermath.

“It was great to see him really look comfortable out there and make some plays on the football,” O’Connell said. “I felt his physicality, and I know the guys on the sideline were fired up to see Lew do his thing.”

Will it be enough for Cine to make the team? That remains to be seen.

The glass-half-full people will say the performance from Cine could be a launching pad as he tries to get his career back on track. The glass-half-empty people will say the fact Cine played so much in a preseason game isn’t a good sign about his standing.

The reality of the situation likely exists somewhere in the middle.

Source: Twin Cities Pioneer Press August 17, 2024 at 8:35 p.m.

[MaroonBells]

LDR highlights...

https://twitter.com/TPPSkol/status/1825232322767331836

[purplefaithful]

LDR highlights...

https://twitter.com/TPPSkol/status/1825232322767331836

My own $$$ is he's on the final 53...

Its a hell of a story.

[Zanary]

I got to see most of the game, and while I rarely invest much into "scrubs" games, it looked like the coaches were invested in this one, as opposed to throwing the kids in vanilla formations at each other for 4 quarters. Hall having good plays was great to see, Mullens was everything I expected (ambition with a side of foolish risks), but as noted above...our run game should be a whole step better this season.

Now that we just added a solid veteran CB, I'm feeling better about the season, and I was already actually more optimistic than most...!

[supafreak84]

My own $$$ is he's on the final 53...

Its a hell of a story.

He's been our most disruptive interior lineman so far. If he doesn't start, he'll see a lot of snaps in rotation. Zero chance he doesn't make the team.

[purplefaithful]

CLEVELAND – Vikings safety Lewis Cine was sitting at his locker looking a little sad, frankly, and nothing like you might expect a guy to look after a game-high 10 tackles, one sack, one tackle for loss and an interception.

So, you go up to him. You tell him his coach, Kevin O’Connell, singled him out first in his news conference after Saturday’s 27-12 preseason victory at Cleveland Browns Stadium. You tell him O’Connell said, “Great to see him really look comfortable out there and make some plays on the football. I felt his physicality. I know the guys on the sideline were fired up to see Lew do his thing.”

Head down, Cine says, “I think it was a good game.” You wait for him to elaborate. Nothing.

So, to break the awkward silence, you say, “How do you think camp is going?”

“If I’m being honest, I don’t think camp really went the way that I wanted it to go,” Cine said. “I wanted to come out and really like let it loose, but I had a little bit of a hamstring situation early on. It’s hard to show what you got when you keep getting a pulled this, a yanked that.

“I’m thankful to coach O’Connell for letting me work through it until [Saturday] when I kind of had to prove that I’m me. And we’ll go from there.”

Cine hasn’t said it, but you know he has to be wondering why he’s still a Minnesota Viking. The answer is simple: He was a first-round draft pick in 2022. Otherwise, he would have been long gone, free to sign with a team that might be a better fit than the round-hole-square-peg existence the former Georgia star has lived for the past two years.

The Vikings kept six safeties a year ago. If they keep six again this year, the math says Cine, McCain and Ward are battling for two spots. McCain has versatility, having also played cornerback in his 131-game NFL career, and arrived last month in large part because he played well under Flores in Miami years ago. Ward also has cornerback flexibility that Flores has been tinkering with all camp.

In other words, you start to see why Cine wasn’t celebrating Saturday after what was easily his best three hours as a pro. It is, after all, hard to get too excited about sacking a quarterback when you’re a 24-year-old former first-round pick and you’re still on the field to get that sack with four minutes left in a preseason game.

What happens to Cine when cutdown day arrives Aug. 27? Good question, assuming he makes it to cutdown day as a Viking. General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah showed a week ago he’s willing to pull the chain on the eyesore that was his initial draft. He shipped second-round bust Andrew Booth Jr., a cornerback, to Dallas at a point when the Vikings are starving for help at cornerback.

And Cine is an even bigger bane of Adofo-Mensah’s ′22 draft. It’s just less noticeable because Adofo-Mensah inherited from Rick Spielman what has become one of the league’s best safety trios in Smith, Bynum and Metellus.

You sense a touch of sadness when you look at Cine after Saturday’s game. You’re kind of happy the kid played well, even if everyone will call it meaningless.

“It was just football, in my eyes,” Cine said. “Just having fun. Not thinking too much. Running around, having my legs under me, working on everything that I had to work on just to show myself.”

source: Startribune

[Montana Tom]

Watched highlights, so it seemed like a good day.

Preseason wins, while they don’t mean much to some, show how good your depth is. The Vikings seem to be better off as far as that is concerned.

Was glad to see the turnovers, and of course the Lewis Cine sighting.

Montana Tom, The safety was the new guy, Matt Corral, wasn’t it?

Yes it was...from the Cleveland sports press:

Facing a 3rd-and-16 from their own 9-yard line, the Vikings attempted a play-action pass, but Williams was ready. As the offensive line slanted to the left, the Vikings quarterback Matt Corral rolled out of a fake handoff, only to find himself face-to-face with two Browns defenders in the end zone.  In a swift and decisive move, Williams dove for the tackle, bringing down the quarterback and securing a safety for Cleveland. The play added two points to the Browns' score, making it 27-12.

[MAD GAINZ]

LDR highlights...

https://twitter.com/TPPSkol/status/1825232322767331836

I think LDR and McGlothern will be "surprise" guys that make the final 53.  Both have showed up in training camp and played well in these two preseason games.