Winless Birds expose Cousins, Vikings D
Dustin Baker
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Winless Birds Expose Cousins, VikingsDefense
Following the Minnesota Vikings near-victory in Seattle during Week 5, a sense of optimism suggested the team could hang with the big boys. The Vikings were two plays away from winning that contest and canceling the Seahawks’ undefeated streak. Head coach Mike Zimmer’s gameplan was superior in every facet of the matchup. On two late plays, though, Minnesota failed to execute. One was a 4th and 1 was that failed offensively, the other was a 4th and 10 that failed defensively.
Onward – or so we said. Atlanta, on paper, was supposed to be a sight for sore sights as the Falcons just terminated once-loved coach Dan Quinn after five winless games to begin 2020. Julio Jones was banged up, Minnesota’s defense showed seedlings of growth, and the Week 6 game would shake down in Minneapolis.
Well, the Falcons were rejuvenated under interim coach Raheem Morris. Julio Jones showed absolutely no signs of rust or blemish in torching Minnesota for the first time in a long while. The Vikings mature-on-the-fly defense blatantly regressed. And, homefield advantage evidently means nothing.
Atlanta thrashed Minnesota 40-23 sending the Vikings to an unconquerable 1-5 record. Even with the NFL’s expansion to seven teams per conference in the postseason, the purple and gold have no business playing in January with teams that consistently execute well.
Before Week 6 of 2020, Zimmer’s Vikings routinely had defensive smorgasbords when the Falcons showed up on the schedule. On this occasion, it was the Falcons – with a brand new, interim coach – that exposed the Vikings.
Defensive Maturity Not Fast Enough
We’ve rattled off the offseason defensive departures ad nauseam to help explain the Vikings current adjustment phase to theirnew normal. To do so again would be redundant. It’s worth mentioning again, however, the team is without the experienced services of Danielle Hunter, Anthony Barr, and Michael Pierce.
The nonexistence of those three men matters – a lot. It’s simple to say out loud, “Well, next man up.” That cereal-box slogan is fine and dandy in some spots, but the absence of Hunter, Barr, and Pierce has been fatal. The men filling those six shoes flat-out are not good enough. The sunshine-and-rainbows mindset was that Mike Zimmer could coach 11 kangaroos into a formidable defense, but that was obviously way too generous.
The youngsters in the bunch are indeed maturing. But the speed of their development is not conducive to the playoff aspirations that the Vikings front office and fans touted this summer. Rookie cornerbacks Cameron Dantzler and Jeff Gladney will be astute playmakers in time, just not yet. On some plays they look great, on some plays there’s a yearning for Xavier Rhodes – if you can believe that.
Every week, the Vikings are surrendering reams of points. It’s relentless. Teams that make the playoffs do not have a couple of good defensive plays per game and cling to those. Defensive consistency is paramount to postseason football, and the Zimmer Vikings are generally a pioneer of this tendency. But not in 2020.
Cousins Performance is a PersistentQuagmire
When a player like Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes has a “bad game,” it means he played average. Think 250 passing yards, one touchdown, and two picks.
When Kirk Cousins has a bad game, it’s sheer schizophrenia. There are throws that Cousins will make on ordinary Sunday afternoon that make a viewer say, “My God. What a throw. This guy is money.” After that couch analysis, the assumption is that you just saw the real Kirk Cousins.
One week later, Cousins will have a first half as he did against the Falcons – woeful, mind-boggling, and spooky. This is the one aspect of the 32-year-old’s game that prevents him from receiving a national benefit of the doubt regarding his stardom. His stinkers really stink.
What’s more, it’s like clockwork: when he plays poorly, the Vikings lose. The aura surrounding his bad games seem to drag the entire team to its knees. Perhaps with a Vikings defense reminiscent of 2017, Cousins’ mistakes could be masked. But that 2017 defense and this 2020 defense have more dissimilarities than Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
This Loss is Postseason Coffin Nail
The piecemealed utopian plan was for the Vikings to spank the Falcons at U.S. Bank Stadium, spend two studious weeks preparing for Green Bay, lets the chips fall at Lambeau Field, and then forge ahead to a handsome winning streak against lesser quality teams.
That machination is now in postmortem. Why? If the Vikings are capable of showing the nutty performances against the Colts and now the Falcons, it’s more than a couple of outliers. These are trends. While it’s true that these could easily be the worst two games of the 2020 season, we know “that team” lives in there somewhere. The lackadaisical ways will rear their heads again, rest assured.
The most damning element of the Week 6 events is that Falcons were among the NFL’s worst teams. This was not a division rival that came to Minneapolis and wreaked havoc. It was a wayward, 0-5 Falcons team that exposed the Vikings as pretenders.
If you haven’t realized it already, the remainder of this season will be spent watching young players get better. Excitement will be derived from it, and that will serve as the primary point of enjoyment.
This is a 1-5 football team. It’s time to digest that.