Dolphins at Vikings Preview: Last Chance to Impress
Joe Oberle
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The Vikings players who crowded the corner of the endzone to pummel quarterback Taylor Heinicke in congratulations for his winning 2-point conversion against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday Night Football, all left the field. The cheering and celebration stopped as the players entered the locker room at U.S. Bank Stadium and the smiles likely left their faces as head coach Mike Zimmer addressed them about the game. If Zimmer’s postgame press conference was any indication of how he talked to his players, it was not a happy time.
“Got a lot of work to do, [to] try and get back on track and try to get this thing turned around,” Zimmer told the assembled media. And he wasn’t cheerful when he did so.
The Vikings escaped with a dramatic last-second victory over the Niners, but the starters in the game did play well, as they dug a 14-point deficit in little over a quarter and didn’t look good doing it. The first team offense didn’t play well, the offensive line didn’t protect, and the defense looked like someone else was playing in their uniforms.
With another preseason game scheduled just four days later—a game in which the starters won’t be playing—many of the Vikings were already looking ahead to prepare for the regular season against New Orleans on Sept. 11. It is much better than looking back.
“If we come in at halftime next week and are doing the same thing then it becomes a concern,” left guard Alex Boone said. “More than a concern, a problem. To have everybody out there for the first time together talking, communicating, playing together, it was good for that. But we have to do more on offense. We’ve got to run the ball a lot better and we’ve got to convert more third downs.”
Boone says the “potential” offensive line starters were finally lined up together and things should improve going forward. Unfortunately, that is what he said last season and we all know happened then—the line played very few games with the same lineup intact all season due to injuries, so they never really got time to gel. The more immediate problem is that the starting line won’t get time to gel on Thursday either—when the Miami Dolphins come to U.S. Bank Stadium for the final preseason game. So, they had better do their gelling in practice over the next two weeks.
“I think that we’ll be fine,” Boone said. “It will always take care of itself with practice, sitting in meetings together, talking together. Now we have to go out, we have to execute and do it. And that’s one of the things that’s going to be a big test for us coming up is getting out there and actually practicing well and making sure we all understand what we are trying to do. Make sure everyone is on the same page.”
Let’s be honest, here, the offensive line wasn’t the sole offender when it came to stinking up The Vault on Sunday night. The defensive players were pretty much pretenders, even to the point of confusing their head coach, who is intimately involved with their development.
“We were very uncharacteristic tonight in some of the things that we did,” Zimmer said about the breakdowns in the secondary.
Zimmer didn’t want to talk about his starters much after the game, so we won’t either, since they aren’t scheduled to play on Thursday. What we saw on Sunday from those other than the starters included a slightly reheated battle for the backup quarterback spot. Case Keenum played well and has clearly solidified his spot as the backup to starter Sam Bradford. But Heinicke’s late-game heroics could go a long way to helping him regain a roster spot. (Ironically, Heinicke’s dive for the pylon on the 2-point conversion for the win was reminiscent of a play he made in a previous game—diving for a first down—when he got injured.)
Heinicke needs to follow that game up with another solid performance on Thursday against the Dolphins to ensure himself a roster spot. He has great mobility in the pocket (which contributed to the Vikings win Sunday), but he needs to be more consistent in his passing to remove all doubt. Regardless, the Vikings have a tough decision on whether to roster him or expose him to the rest of the league (which was surely watching) on the practice squad. I don’t think they can put on him the practice squad after that final drive against the Niners.
“We took what was there, and if something broke down, we just tried to make plays,” Heinicke said of the final drive. “Can’t really practice that, and I thought we did a good job in the time being, but again, we’ll go tomorrow, look at film, see what we can get better from that, and maybe next time it’ll be easier. We’ll get better tomorrow from film.”
Other battles to pay attention to on Thursday night include the battle for weakside linebacker. Ben Gedeon got his second consecutive start there on Sunday, but depth in the entire linebacker unit is a concern, especially with Emmanuel Lamur leaving the 49er game with concussion symptoms.
The offensive line still doesn’t seem quite settled, as Joe Berger started at right guard but Pat Elflein spent some time there while Nick Easton started at center. Elflein played some center, as well, so it will be interesting to see who plays where and how much on Thursday. Zimmer didn’t offer much clarification on Sunday.
Look for more action for wide receiver Laquon Treadwell, who caught three passes in the 49ers game in his first preseason action of 2017. His hamstring injury kept him out of the first two games, and he would like to see more action on Thursday.
The same could be said for Latavius Murray, who got on the field as a Viking for the first time on Sunday, and is anxious for more.
“It felt good, it felt really good, just to be back out there,” Murray said. “I felt like a little kid honestly. It just felt good to be back on the field again, but that’s the good thing about this game, there’s always room to improve, individually and as a team, I know we’re gonna do that as soon as we’re back on the field.”
Murray is a veteran so he certainly knows when an NFL team needs to improve, yet that was pretty obvious about the Vikings on Sunday. The starters won’t start on Thursday, and that includes Miami quarterback Jay Cutler, but the Vikings need to put a better product on the field for the final preseason game—even though it doesn’t count. And if all that fails to materialize, then enjoy former U of M Golden Gopher Mitch Leidner getting his first NFL action in a Vikings uniform Thursday. That’s hopefully something we can all cheer about.