Diggs "It's the same S*** every week."

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Some of this has to fall on the $84M man.  He was supposed to be purple Jesus and he's been nothing of the sorts. 

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Take out Wilson's 40 yard run after the FG block, and they average 4.2 yards per carry.  Same as Dalvin did.  But Dalvin got 13 carries.

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@FSUVike said:
Um, giving up 5 yards up the gut on every damn run until the opponent gets into the RedZone and you finally buckle down is not good Defense.

Wanna know why?

1. You know your Offense is sputtering and needs as many possessions as possible to get some positive momentum. But instead of generating a 3 & Out you keep giving up long drives that eat up the clock.

2.  You have far more assets invested in that side of the ball. Where are the turnovers? The Defensive scores? For a Defense First type of team you aren't producing much in the way of game changing moments like the Bears or Ravens.

3. Joseph and Richardson are allegedly Elite Interior D-Linemen, everybody loves Kendricks, and you can't stop getting run on right up the fucking gut, play after play, game after game.

4.  Ben Gedeon falls for every single misdirection. Every single time. Fuck that dude.

Sorry, there are 3 Units in Football and Minnesota threw most of their eggs into the Defensive one. Giving up over 200 yards on the ground to a team missing a major receiving threat is a joke.

This was before the game...



The defense had 3 3-outs last night including the Seahawks first drive of the game and at the Seahawks like 2 yard line, giving the offense very good field position.

You can also check out the defense compared to the rest of the NFL here:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestatsdef

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It wasn't the defense. Some fans want to make this rocket science. 

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Holding the Hawks to 6 points in Seattle until there are under 3 minutes left in the 4th quarter is pretty great IMO.  Wilson had 70 yards passing last night, Brees had 120 earlier this year.  Rodgers was under 200 two weeks ago.  The defense played great overall.

Some of you must not remember how terrible our defense had been for most of the past 25+ years before Zimmer came along.

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Year after year we tout the exploits of our D linemen...Griffin, Jared, BRob, Danielle, Weatherly, Joseph, Sheldon...et al.  But the stiffs we put to protect our largest investment most could not point out with a team directory. 
Five guys are the base of the whole offense and yet we spend pennies on the dollar on journeymen and rookies.

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Here's a couple more ranking for the defense NFL Matchup just put out...






I don't think it's the defense.

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Great Defenses are helping the Bears & Ravens WIN games. The Vikings Defense is keeping them IN games. As a Roster Construction enthusiast that's not good enough for me when I look at how much resources have been invested in one side of the ball vs. the other.

You all feel differently and are giving the Defense a pass. Fine. I'm not. And my biggest pet peeve remains teams running the ball straight up the gut.

Seriously, I hate getting run on up the middle like Sauron hates hobbits. Like Sheer Khan hates fire. Like Eleven hates men in lab coats. Like Thanos hates 50% of life.

And when you contrast that with Minnesota's inability to run in between the Tackles it becomes that much more frustrating.

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@FSUVike said:
Great Defenses are helping the Bears & Ravens WIN games. The Vikings Defense is keeping them IN games. As a Roster Construction enthusiast that's not good enough for me when I look at how much resources have been invested in one side of the ball vs. the other.

You all feel differently and are giving the Defense a pass. Fine. I'm not. And my biggest pet peeve remains teams running the ball straight up the gut.

Seriously, I hate getting run on up the middle like Sauron hates hobbits. Like Sheer Khan hates fire. Like Eleven hates men in lab coats. Like Thanos hates 50% of life.

And when you contrast that with Minnesota's inability to run in between the Tackles it becomes that much more frustrating.

I hate that as well.  It is very frustrating watching that, and then seeing guys sucking in and getting burned on the edge.
But I will repeat, that isn't what is killing our team.  With the rules geared towards passing, our D seems to have chosen to limit the offenses and make them work for it.  Look at it this way.  Seattle is a power running team.  What usually happens when a power running team is having its way and has a lead.  They keep running and wear the D down.  But what actually happened Monday night?  Our D adjusted and shut down their run in the second half.
Every D has weaknesses.  You can't play every possibility.  So it seems we have chosen to force teams to grind it out and then when they get impatient, we capitalize and stop them.

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@FSUVike said:
Great Defenses are helping the Bears & Ravens WIN games. The Vikings Defense is keeping them IN games. As a Roster Construction enthusiast that's not good enough for me when I look at how much resources have been invested in one side of the ball vs. the other.

You all feel differently and are giving the Defense a pass. Fine. I'm not. And my biggest pet peeve remains teams running the ball straight up the gut.

Seriously, I hate getting run on up the middle like Sauron hates hobbits. Like Sheer Khan hates fire. Like Eleven hates men in lab coats. Like Thanos hates 50% of life.

And when you contrast that with Minnesota's inability to run in between the Tackles it becomes that much more frustrating.

If the offense could score some points, maybe we'd see the defense be able to make more game changing plays...  we can go back and forth like this all day.
Bottom line, the Vikings aren't playing complimentary football.  Look how many times we've gotten good field position from a 3 and out or a turnover and then the offensive has failed to capitalize.  Or on the flip side, we drive down and score a TD and then the defense gives up a long scoring drive.  We had some great energy last year where it seemed like the offense fed off the defense and vice versa. 
That isn't happening this year...  I think a lot of that is because we don't have an offensive identity.  We won a bunch of games the past 3 seasons by being a good running team and making big plays off play-action.  Then we go out and pay a bunch of money to a QB that excels at play-action and is known as an accurate deep passer...  what do we do?  Change the offense to throw 70% of the time and completely abandon the running game for long stretches of the season.
You can gripe all you want about the defense, but this team doesn't have any balance on offense and isn't playing to our QB's strengths.