Losing 20-16 at home on national TV stings. Worse, the Minnesota Vikings lost to a Dallas Cowboys team that sat Dak Prescott and didn’t even have to. Even worse, they led, or were tied, for over 59 minutes of the game. There’s plenty to be said about Mike Zimmer’s double-timeout fiasco, the ultra-conservative offense, and generally poor execution. But the Vikings made several mistakes in this game that amounted to an embarrassing and perhaps dooming loss.
But instead of recapping all the horrors we witnessed on Halloween night, I’d like to focus on the preparations leading up to it. The Vikings had an extra week to prepare for Dallas. The Cowboys also had a bye week, but they were dealing with uncertainty over who would start at quarterback. Leading up to the game, the Vikings prepared for both Prescott and Cooper Rush. There wasn’t much tape on the latter, but they did what they could.
Preparing for a backup
The Cowboys have a high-flying offense with Prescott, but their run game has been formidable in its own right. The bog-standard answer to a good run game is to put an extra player in the box to help out. But to do that takes that player away from his deep coverage responsibilities. The challenge Dallas poses with Prescott is: How do you defend that run without giving Prescott endless opportunities to throw against single coverage? It’s a real conundrum. I took a stab at that myself. But as it turned out, Prescott didn’t play.
Let’s pretend for a moment that we were in charge of the Vikings. How would you plan to attack a backup quarterback on a team with a vaunted run game? With no Prescott, you’re not as threatened by one-on-one coverage. So you can freely load the box, right? If the Cowboys run game can’t get going (and it was, by and large, stymied), then Rush will have to outduel your defense. That was the Vikings’ idea, in essence.
But we don’t have to agree with the Vikings about that. The Dallas passing offense isn’t good solely because of Dak Prescott. They have Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb, and up-and-comers like Cedrick Wilson that threaten speed and explosiveness on the outside. While Rush may not have intimidated them, Lamb, Cooper, and the rest still took the field. Meanwhile, Minnesota is without Patrick Peterson, its best corner. Bashaud Breeland and Cameron Dantzler have both struggled mightily. That mismatch still exists.
Strange as it sounds, the Vikings deeply underestimated Rush in this game. That’s not to say Rush was immaculate. He was responsible for two turnovers and could have thrown a couple more but for drops by Dantzler and Breeland. But he was capable of delivering the ball, provided the receiver got open enough. By leaving Dantzler and Breeland in single coverage against Cooper and Lamb, the receivers were open enough.
If the goal was to make Rush beat them, was that goal truly achieved? How good of a quarterback did the Vikings require Rush to be? He was gifted with constant open receivers and free completions, up to and including the final touchdown drive. Is that “making Cooper Rush beat you,” or is that “making Cooper Rush avoid singlehandedly losing the game”? Furthering matters, it seems like the players didn’t get much work on the eventual Cowboys’ signal-caller.
That may be defensible. There’s only so much time in the week that coaches can work with players. Still, it means the staff didn’t give Rush’s ability to beat them any credence. In precisely that scenario, we are learning that the Vikings didn’t think it was possible. If Prescott played, they probably would have been more prepared. And while Rush is nowhere near the quarterback Prescott is, he isn’t a potato either. The Vikings played a game that a backup quarterback could win.
Scared of the edge rushers
On the other side of the ball, the Vikings played with an appropriate amount of fear for Halloween. Cris Collinsworth mentioned that the Vikings were “scared of the edge rushers” Dallas had on the broadcast. That’s understandable, as Randy Gregory, Osa Odighizuwa, and even Micah Parsons have been terrors off the edge. Christian Darrisaw has been up and down, and both guards have had their struggles, so they wanted to protect their young players. If they can get the ball out quickly, they can nullify most stunts and punish Dan Quinn’s aggressive blitz packages.
That all sounds well and good, but those quick passes have been the backbone of the Vikings’ offense. That means that these quick concepts are already on film in abundance. The Cowboys easily resolved to take those comforts away with aggressive linebacker play and softer man coverage. That gave the Vikings two choices: test those edge rushers and coverages by calling longer-developing plays, or stick with it and hope their skill players could break more tackles.
The Vikings went with the latter. Cousins passed behind the line of scrimmage constantly, even during their final attempt at a game-winning drive. However, in fairness, that wasn’t the plan.
This bears more investigation throughout the week, but everyone carries their portion of the blame. Kirk Cousins did not respond well to the threat of pressure, even when pressure did not ultimately come. The pressure itself, surrendered at times by everyone on the offensive line, played its role. Klint Kubiak holds responsibility as the offensive coordinator. Having no counter or subversion when the Cowboys sell out to stop your quick game is the mark of a green offensive coordinator who isn’t ready for the job. And, ultimately, the buck stops at Zimmer for how the whole chain is organized. We could even indirectly blame Rick Spielman.
The Cousins Chaos Meter
As the 2021 season continues to frustrate us, the 2022 offseason becomes more of a crossroads. Will the Vikings double down on Cousins to relieve some salary burden, or is he simply too chaotic? To track this, I’ve invented and patented the Cousins Chaos Meter. This measures Kirk’s aggressiveness, but also his rate of goofy, weird nonsense that can throw any game into chaos.
Sunday night may have been the worst game from Cousins we’ve seen in some time. He checked down constantly, missed wide-open receivers, and responded poorly to even the slightest disturbance to his pocket. Whether this was a factor of coverages and pressure like Cousins said, or a factor of Cousins misreading coverage and pass rush, remains to be seen. We have seen both types of performances since Cousins became the Vikings’ quarterback.
C.J. Ham caught more passes (three) than Justin Jefferson (two). The Vikings went 1/11 on third down, with several of those passes coming behind the line of scrimmage to a player without any space to work. Cousins checked down too quickly from clean pockets and danced his way into pressure in his own right. There wasn’t much about Cousins’ game to be happy with. While the Chaos Meter isn’t designed to measure quality, the two align in this case. This game was rock bottom for the Vikings’ offense.
The Cowboys presented several challenges, not many of which were hidden. Sure, the Cowboys hid their intentions with regard to which quarterback would start. That’s hardly an excuse for the Vikings employing a game plan that allowed Cooper Rush to beat them. Amari Cooper, Randy Gregory, Micah Parsons, and CeeDee Lamb were all right out in the open. The Vikings opted for strategies that let those players dictate the game. The least they could have done was contest that.
