Previewing The Donatell Diary
K. Joudry
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Ed Donatell will be bringing a new approach and perspective to the Vikings defense. Anyone who watched his opening press conference could see that.
One of the questions we all have, though, rests in how the defense will actually perform under his leadership. Over these past two seasons, we’ve grown accustomed to a non-existent run defense and collapses at the end of halfs. Can Donatell solve these problems? If he does, Minnesota will be well-positioned to make some noise in the 2022 season.
During his first Vikings presser, Ed Donatell stressed the importance of setting the edge, having multiple defensive fronts to make life difficult for the QB, and having corners who can play man coverage. These are important info tidbits that give us a sense of how he’ll approach things in Minnesota.
To drill down a little deeper, I’m planning on working my way through some Denver film to get a sense of what that defense did well and not as well in 2021. They only allowed 18.9 points per game, a far better mark than Minnesota’s 25.1 per game. Plus, teams only had an average of 214.8 air yards against them (Minnesota allowed 252.9). How did they achieve this success?
The Donatell Diary will look to get to the bottom of these questions. I’ll be keeping an eye on how he uses certain players. Does he like to blitz his middle linebacker(s)? What does he demand from his edge defenders? How does he use his safeties? All of these details (and many more) will give Vikings fans some clues about what they can look forward to.
We can be reasonably certain that Donatell will be bringing a fresh energy and approach into his defense. Whether that leads to different results remains to be seen, though there’s reason for some purple optimism.
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