As free agency approaches, many people, myself included, consider interior defensive line one of the Minnesota Vikings’ top needs. Ask any Vikings fan, and they’ll (rightfully) tell you that Minnesota’s interior pass rush has been very disappointing.
Over the last three seasons, Minnesota’s interior defenders have only tallied 14.5 combined sacks, never eclipsing 5.5 in a season. That’s disproportionately low compared to the team’s 129 total sacks. The Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles saw excellent pass-rush contributions from their interior. They combined for 11.5 of the team’s 41 sacks in 2024 and seven of its 16 playoff sacks.
Sacks aren’t the only stat that matters. Still, you can look at the pass-rush win rates for the Vikings’ interior and see a picture just as bleak. Based on that, it makes sense to call for the Vikings to add a quality interior pass rusher, whether that’s Milton Williams from the Eagles, top free agent Osa Odighizuwa, or maybe a player in the first round of the draft.
However, there’s a catch. The way the Vikings use interior defenders does not align with more traditional fronts. Because of that, Minnesota can’t swap out a Jonathan Bullard or Jerry Tillery one-for-one with a Milton Williams and expect better results.
Let’s investigate exactly how the Vikings use their players on the interior so we can determine what role a potential pass rusher will have in 2025.
a run-first approach
The Vikings split their defensive approach between run-focused and pass-focused downs. On first-and-10 or second-and-medium-to-short, they prioritize stopping the run, mostly putting five or six players on the line of scrimmage and often rushing all those players. Their goal is to show several threats on the line of scrimmage, preventing too many double teams, and trust their unique coverages on the back end to help shut down any passing play.
That also means the Vikings don’t ask interior defenders to attack the quarterback.
The play below is a good example of what I mean. The Green Bay Packers are in “21 Pony” personnel, with two true RBs (rather than one RB and one FB) and one TE. They initially spread RB Chris Brooks out wide but then motion him in as a blocker, putting eight offensive players in the box.
Minnesota responds with nine defenders on screen, including a five-man DL of Jonathan Greenard, Harrison Phillips, Jonathan Bullard, Jalen Redmond, and Andrew Van Ginkel. That means Green Bay’s OL must identify all nine players. The Packers mess up their identification, with the TE and LT climbing to the second level and failing to block Redmond. Bullard does a great job of knocking back the LG, slowing Josh Jacobs‘ feet enough for Redmond to make a run stop.
The play above was typical of Minnesota’s early-down defense. Against a pass, it looks something like the play below. There is a heavy run focus, with an interior player like Bullard trying to stack and shed rather than get after Jared Goff at the snap.
Eventually, bodies break through. Their better pass rushers, Van Ginkel and Ivan Pace, have one-on-one matchups because the Vikings are rushing six, and Goff throws the ball away on a play that sure looked like intentional grounding.
There’s a selfless element to how Minnesota’s interior defenders rush the passer on early downs. Their primary responsibility is the run. Even then, when opponents pass, they’re often asked to sacrifice themselves on a stunt.
Watch Bullard on the play below. He starts as a 3-technique, outside the RG’s shoulder, but crosses his face at the snap. That forces the RG to move inside, allowing Ivan Pace to blitz through the open B gap with a one-on-one against the RB.
However, Bullard’s work is not done. After going towards the C, his responsibility becomes engaging both the RG and C simultaneously as Blake Cashman is looping around on a contain rush. You can see Bullard reach his arms out to both blockers, trying to take two.
Despite being a pass rusher on that play, it was never Bullard’s job to get the QB. His role was to help free up his teammates rather than attack Jordan Love.
Bullard’s job with the Vikings was to do the dirty work without glamor. That’s not something you want to pay a player $20 million per year to do or a role for a first-round pick. But if we move on to pass-first situations, we see that the Vikings don’t use any “interior defenders” at all, preferring to put four players they list at outside linebacker on the field.
Hold on a second. Does that mean the Vikings don’t have a role for a player like Milton Williams? No, they still do. It’s just that the Vikings would list the player a Williams type would be replacing as an outside linebacker and an edge rusher on free-agency lists like at Over the Cap. Think Jihad Ward.
Ward was Minnesota’s designated interior pass rusher in 2024. To his credit, he had a strong year. PFF credited him with 31 pressures on the season, while NextGenStats credited him with 39.
A common third-and-long rep for the Vikings in 2024 looked like the play below. You have Ward and Greenard on the interior, with Cashman also walked up to the line, while Dallas Turner and Van Ginkel are the edge rushers. Sometimes, Pat Jones would be on the interior with Greenard and Van Ginkel on the edge, but you get the point. Ward was a fixture in the middle and productive, like on the spin move below:
But how often is a role like Ward’s useful? Let’s move on to the data to understand the prevalence of each role the Vikings have on the DL.
a look at the data
Bullard, Ward, and Tillery each played over 40% of the snaps for the Vikings. Bullard played 574, and Tillery and Ward played exactly 467. That’s in the same range as a player like Williams, who played 501 snaps for the Eagles, a team that also employed a heavy rotation.
But situation matters, and it’s important to contextualize those snaps by situation. There’s no easy way to sort snap count by down-and-distance or opposing formation, but we can use overall run/pass rates as a proxy. Teams threw the ball against the Vikings at the highest rate in the NFL, 63.6%, because they were leading so often.
Now, let’s look at the individual players’ roles. When Jihad Ward was on the field, opponents threw the ball a whopping 86.2% of the time. However, for Bullard, opponents had a 47.7% pass rate. Per NextGenStats, Tillery’s snap profile is similar. Opponents had a 53.4% pass rate on plays he was in. Those three players exemplify the heavy split that the Vikings had in their personnel packages based on situation.
If you’re looking at Minnesota’s interior pass rush, who is the player to replace? The answer is pretty clearly Ward. But Ward had a decent season by most pressure metrics, including a 10.5% pressure rate per NextGenStats. That falls short of Williams’ 12.5% or Odighizuwa’s 11.2%, but at least it’s in the same zip code. Vikings fans may be upset with Bullard’s pressure rate of 2.7% or Tillery’s rate of 5.5%, but their responsibilities aren’t the same as what other teams ask their interior pass rushers to do.
Williams faced passes on 59.5% of his snaps last year. Odighizuwa faced them on 59.4%. So what does a projected role for them look like?
approaching the IDL need
Williams and Odighizuwa are plus pass rushers, but PFF also rates them as poor run defenders. That leads to concerns for their early-down snaps, where the Vikings typically run three interior defensive linemen, as shown above. The Vikings have Phillips, a stalwart run defender, but Redmond is more of a gap-shooter in the same mold as the two potential free agents.
If it were up to me and money wasn’t an issue, I would keep Bullard while adding one of Williams or Odighizuwa. In my plan, Bullard would continue his early-down role, but the new player would take over Tillery’s snaps on early downs and Ward’s in passing situations, with Redmond backing them up. That would lead to about 60-70% of the snaps for the incoming free agent and hopefully a major boost to an already strong pass rush.
The key would be to get quicker interior pressure on early-down passes by opponents, something the Vikings haven’t been able to do. That pressure can’t come at the expense of run defense, but keeping Bullard helps maintain that balance. On third downs, a rush of Greenard, Van Ginkel, Turner, and Williams/Odighizuwa would terrorize an opponent, no matter how good their OL is.
However, money is an important factor. The Vikings paid Bullard, Ward, and Tillery a combined $6.8 million in 2024. They aren’t likely to make much more in 2025. PFF projects Williams and Odighizuwa to make $21 million per year. In 2023, PFF determined that a first-round pick was worth roughly $29 million in surplus value over the course of a rookie deal, over $7 million per year.
The Vikings already had an excellent defense last year, and they have a crazy number of players hitting free agency. That includes Byron Murphy and Cam Bynum, who will command large contracts and two open CB spots requiring significant investment to fill. There are other needs, like iOL, and the chance that the Vikings might want to keep the space to franchise tag Sam Darnold.
Minnesota had a ton of success with three undervalued players at the position. So, given other cap constraints, it may make sense to run it back with cheap options. It’s also notable that the Vikings had three young players in Redmond, Taki Taimani, and Levi Drake Rodriguez unexpectedly showed promise last training camp and make the 53-man roster. Given the salary cap crunch, staying cheap at the position may be prudent, even if that doesn’t excite fans.
