Stefon Diggs made good on his Week One (and rookie) hype by making splashes in front of a national audience. Nine receptions on nine targets (plus two throwaways in his direction), Diggs put together 182 yards of offense, and was 29 yards shy of breaking the Vikings regular season single-game receiving record.
It seems like Stefon Diggs is indeed a monster.
None of that would be possible without Sam Bradford, who put on a show. Lost in Diggs’ explosion were 41 yards from emerging Adam Thielen on four receptions and a touchdown from Kyle Rudolph, all orchestrated by Bradford—who arrived in Minneapolis two weeks ago and has been cramming to learn the playbook.
There were a lot of tricks the Vikings could have pulled to make things a bit easier for Bradford, and they needed some of them, but ultimately Bradford executed despite poor support from the blockers in front of him.
With pressure on nearly half of his dropbacks, Bradford overcame extraordinary adversity, completing passes on 69.2 percent of those attempts under pressure for 6.8 yards an attempt and two touchdowns.
Some of this came without the run support of Adrian Peterson, who was injured in the middle of the third quarter and didn’t play particularly well beforehand—logging 1.6 yards per carry and only showing flashes of his old self on perhaps two of his 12 carries.
That’s not to say that Peterson had blocking support, either. As bad as the offensive line was in pass protection, they may have been worse once again in run blocking. While it seemed like not much was asked of Matt Kalil and Andre Smith as run blockers (and it certainly seems like their pass protection duties were too much to handle), the interior had significant trouble once more defending against Mike Daniels and the rest of the Packers defensive line—Alex Boone in particular, the high-priced free agent the Vikings lured from San Francisco—struggled to create running lanes and prevent tackles-for-loss.
Pro Football Focus disagrees, however, and it will be interesting to see if Boone looks better upon rewatching.
Tight end Kyle Rudolph certainly should be happy with his final line—three receptions for 31 yards and a touchdown—but he’ll need to do more on the edge as a run blocker and clean up drops, one of which happened on a poorly placed pass (evidently rare on the night) from Bradford. Still, it’s hard to say he had a bad game, and he performed better as a blocker than he has in some time.
In all honesty, Bradford wasn’t perfect but he was as close as could be expected considering the circumstances. The Packers put unreal pressure on him, and their cornerbacks aren’t too bad—Damarious Randall was coming off of an excellent game against Jacksonville and had a great rookie year.
Excluding the final throwaway, Bradford was completing passes at a 73.3 percent rate, and threw for 9.5 yards per passing attempt. With two touchdowns, he produced a 125.1 passer rating on all but the last play and a 121.2 rating with it. That 125.1 number would be his second-highest in his career behind a 16-pass effort against Houston in 2013.
In terms of adjusted net yards per pass attempt, he put together his third-best mark despite taking four sacks. It was a stunning performance.
There are things to cleanup—Bradford passed for 5.2 yards per attempt when passing to players not named Stefon Diggs, though some of that has to do with drops from receivers and the design of the offense; it’s not fair to compare passes to running backs (there were four targets to running backs for six yards) to all other passes.
On defense, the Vikings performed extremely well. That’s to be expected of Mike Zimmer-coached defenses, but it’s still sweet music to fans of Minnesota.
The defensive line did an excellent job both plugging up the run and creating pressure. Though PFF’s pressure total (25 percent of snaps) seems low, the Vikings did damage and logged eight quarterback hits, per ESPN.
Much can be made of the Vikings’ offensive run production, but Packers running backs only averaged 2.8 yards per carry. That’s not to say that Minnesota was perfect in run defense, and Eddie Lacy’s low yardage total (50 yards) hides a surprisingly high success rate. Even knowing that Lacy averaged 3.4 yards per carry on 11 of his runs (the other being a 13-yard rumble on 2nd and 10), he still managed to run successfully on 57 percent of his runs—being used in unfavorable running situations hurt his statistics more than his performance did.
From that perspective, run defense needs to show up a little more, though it would have looked much better if the Vikings recovered one more of the four fumbles they forced (statistically, they recovered two fumbles, but as one was immediately fumbled away, that hardly counts).
Of the seven Green Bay drives not to end in a clock stoppage, touchdown or interception, the defensive line put in the key play (a tackle for loss, pass deflection or sack) on four of them and created pressure on two of them.
The run defense needed more, but the defensive line that was always at fault for unsuccessful runs, and Eric Kendricks once more had an up-and-down play, with some excellent plays, like a tackle for loss and early pass deflection, and some poor run fills on other plays.
The Vikings and Vikings fans will take it, but it’s always good to find ways to improve.
Anthony Barr had an excellent game, though it seemed pretty quiet early on. Initially, handling his assignments in run defense and pass coverage kept him off the broadcast screen and in replays—which is generally a good thing—though he did create push against the Packers’ offensive line in both run defense and while rushing the passer.
Chad Greenway, when he was on the field, also produced for the Vikings, with critical stops that included a tackle for loss in the run game.
In the secondary, Andrew Sendejo had his trademark roller coaster game, with one of his nine tackles a clear success for the defense and occasionally filling the run lanes to move Starks or Lacy off their target. However, if the fumble had been fully recovered instead of fumbled away in the runback, he largely had a bad game and allowed too much to happen in coverage.
Harrison Smith had a good game, though this hardly tracks as one of his best. A critical stop in the run game, along with some deep-field defense when lined up as the free safety, made sure that Rodgers kept his targets short—31 of his 40 targets (including those not counted because of penalty) were below 15 yards and only nine, two of which were completed, were beyond the 15-yard mark.
Terence Newman wasn’t targeted too often, but it’s easy to remember how many problems he had early on against Davante Adams and once against Jordy Nelson. Those initial two penalties were huge, and probably should outweigh the rest of his performance, but he didn’t allow a pass to be completed for more than six yards after that. On a play-to-play basis, Newman had more good plays than bad. He did end up with two pass deflections, after all. Still, the magnitude of his bad plays casts a shadow on what he could do on a more consistent basis.
The kind of amnesia that allows him to forget those early performances might also apply to Trae Waynes, who was putting together a truly awful game until the very end. Waynes was targeted again and again, allowing repetitive underneath completions with a pass deflection to break up the monotony. Aside from that, three penalties would have defined his performance were it not for the interception in the final minutes of the game.
Would Waynes have needed that interception if he had done a better job earlier in the game? Probably not, as the Packers would have been forced into third and long two plays prior or wouldn’t have scored a touchdown to Jordy Nelson at the goal line. Each Packers score involved a coverage breakdown from Waynes, so it’s probably correct to say his performance overall was worse than it was better, but it’s hard to take away what amounts to a (mostly) cost-free learning experience in the value of resiliency.
His grade for the game will probably be poor by both the Vikings internally and grading groups like Pro Football Focus, but it’s hard to do anything but let him have this in the home opener.
Add excellent performances from the special teams units—a 31-yard return average on kick returns, a clean game from Blair Walsh and phenomenal punting from Jeff Locke—and it’s hard not to be excited about the Vikings’ debut in their new stadium.
There are nits to pick—the running game and offensive line are clear concerns, a team shouldn’t have to punt seven times, the run defense was deceptively poor and the cornerback play wasn’t up to par—but the Vikings played well on both sides of the ball with a quarterback who first saw the playbook two weeks ago.
Worries about injuries, like Adrian Peterson’s currently rumored minor ligament injury (pending MRI), Bradford’s left hand and the potential injuries to Stefon Diggs and Danielle Hunter at the end of the game, will be worth monitoring going forward—not to mention familiar concerns about inactive Xavier Rhodes and Sharrif Floyd.
But they had star performances from emerging stars—like Danielle Hunter and Stefon Diggs—and very good performances from rotational players like Tom Johnson, Shamar Stephen and Adam Thielen. All of that is buoyed by quiet, but effective performances from key players like Anthony Barr, Kyle Rudolph and Harrison Smith.
It’s hard to imagine this being anything but an enormously positive win for the Vikings.
