Team Notes week 6 2021

According to ESPN.com's Courtney Cronin, it's possible Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer's job was saved on Sunday by an unlikely and ironic source.

After a wild final two minutes, Greg Joseph booted a 54-yard field goal to help the Vikings narrowly escape the winless Detroit Lions 19-17. Considering the problems Zimmer has had with kickers over the years, a kicker taking the heat off the head coach was an interesting twist -- for the moment.

It was the third time in five weeks the Vikings had a game decided on a last-second field goal attempt. They're 1-2 in those situations.

"I'm usually saying, if they're kicking, 'Miss this, blankety-blank,' and if we're kicking it it's, 'Make this, blankety-blank,'" Zimmer said after the win.

The Vikings are 2-3 and travel to Carolina on Sunday to face the Panthers with a chance to head into a Week 7 bye with a .500 record. But this win carried a different feeling, one that was reflected in the exhausted body language of a coach and his players who missed countless opportunities to put their opponent away.

As Cronin put it, "Sunday's win felt like an indictment of where the Vikings sit under Zimmer; a team that played not to lose rather than to win convincingly."

At the close of the 2020 season which resulted in the Vikings missing the playoffs with a 7-9 record, Zimmer found a silver lining with the state of his offense. It was the most explosive unit he said he's had during his tenure in Minnesota, having ranked fourth in yards and 11th in scoring.

It looked anything but elite against Detroit and has only flashed that vigor through the first five games.

The Vikings have scored two touchdowns in their last two games and have not scored in the second half since Week 1. There is plenty of blame to go around, from penalties to the offensive line's struggles to the mistakes of first-time play caller Klint Kubiak, but it has felt like the Vikings offense has gotten worse, not better, as games wear on.

Minnesota found early success Sunday going to wide receiver Justin Jefferson, who had five catches for 104 yards in the first two quarters, but the Vikings seemed to abandon that strategy before halftime.

Leading 13-6, Minnesota had 41 seconds and two timeouts at the end of the first half. A strike to Jefferson or Adam Thielen, who saw one target go his way until the game's final moments, could have opened up an opportunity to score a touchdown, or at least put the team in field goal range.

Instead, Kubiak called back-to-back runs for Alexander Mattison, who was playing in place of an injured Dalvin Cook, that totaled six yards.

The Vikings chose to run the clock out on themselves. A loud chorus of boos let coaches and players know what the fans thought of that decision.

"I shouldn't have to explain all of this to you," Zimmer said postgame, "but the plan was to run the ball the first play, see how many yards we get and then go from there. If we get a first down, then we get on the ball and we move. But we got like no yards so that was that."

Minnesota thought a more conservative approach offensively was good enough to get it done against a struggling Lions team.

Instead, the Vikings invited Detroit to hang around.

Zimmer does not call offensive plays, but his influence is stamped all over Minnesota's approach. And the resulting self-sabotaging felt constant.

Kirk Cousins was a perfect 6-of-6 for 115 yards on passes thrown more than 10 air yards downfield to Jefferson, according to ESPN Stats and Information. But Jefferson was targeted twice in the second half, catching both for 20 yards.

Overall, Jefferson is building on his Pro Bowl rookie season with 33 catches for 462 yards through five games. He's sixth in the league in catches and receiving yards, making the failure to keep him in the mix throughout the game doesn’t make sense.

"I guess you just move on to the next play," Jefferson said. "I mean, throughout the game, you're not going to get every single ball, open or not. You've just got to keep moving and keep playing. I know the ball is going to come to me eventually."

There were seven instances of runs called on second-and-7 or longer, none of which yielded a first down. The Vikings have the fourth-highest designed run percentage on such plays this season. Only four of those runs out of 29 called in the first five weeks have resulted in first downs.

It wasn't until the final 33 seconds of the game that Cousins found Thielen. Cousins led the Vikings on the game-winning drive to set up Joseph's 54 yarder by hitting Thielen on throws of 21 and 19 yards, respectively.

Had it not been for the way the Vikings tried to run down the clock and hang onto the ball the series before, Minnesota wouldn't have needed that final drive to beat a winless opponent.

With two minutes remaining, the Vikings handed it off to Mattison on third-and-7 instead of calling a pass. A first down effectively ends the game. Instead, Mattison's fumble let Detroit take the lead on the next series.

"We have a lot of confidence in the receiver room, in this offense," Thielen said. "Yeah, do we want the ball in our hands to end the game? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, that's not our job. Our job is to make the play when it's there.

"We have a lot of faith in our offensive coaches. They do a heck of a job game-planning, doing their job and they are very critical of themselves as of us. At the end of the day, like I said before, you've got to make plays work. It doesn't matter what's called, we've got to make it work."

Whatever the case, the Vikings allowed themselves to revel in the win that almost wasn't, but it's right back to business this week.

Oh yeah. ... Then there was that weird sideline celebration as the game ended.

Turns out Cousins' extra-fiery response to Minnesota's walk-off win Sunday was exactly the type of emotion Zimmer has been looking for.

Some speculation circulated among fans when a sideline exchange -- both verbal and physical -- was shared between Cousins. Both easily explained the situation as nothing more than a celebration, though.

"Honestly, he's doing exactly what I want him to do. He's being a leader, he's being vocal, he's showing emotion. I've been talking to him about it all year," Zimmer told Twin Cities media members Monday. "It's no different than when [Sam] Bradford tackled me in practice, because I was trying to get him to be the same thing.

"He came over and said, 'You like that?' and kind of gave me a shove, and I shoved him back, and it was all good," Zimmer added.

Asked shortly after the game, Cousins said, "I was just celebrating with him. I was just fired up. ..."

Other notes of interest. ... Mattison played 44 snaps to lead the Vikings backfield as he had 25 carries for 113 yards. As noted above, Cook was inactive with an ankle injury. Fullback C.J. Ham played 32 snaps, and running back Ameer Abdullah was in for a dozen on offense.

Thielen (62 snaps) and Jefferson (60 snaps) had nearly identical workloads. K.J. Osborn played 42 snaps, while Dede Westbrook played a season-high 14 offensive snaps.

Tyler Conklin played 50 snaps to lead the tight ends group. The other two tight ends played the exact same amount of snaps as the week before. Ben Ellefson was on the field for 14 snaps again, while Chris Herndon played seven snaps.

When tight end Irv Smith Jr. was lost for the season with a knee injury before the season, Minnesota traded for Herndon from the New York Jets. The Vikings sent a fourth-round draft pick in 2022 for Herndon and a 2022 sixth-round pick.

Herndon doesn't have a catch this season and had two costly penalties on Sunday that negated first downs. He was called for an illegal crack-back block on Mattison's 9-yard run on third-and-1 in the third quarter and Minnesota had to punt

On the injury front. ... Cook missed his second game this season with a lingering ankle injury. With one game until their bye, it's fair to wonder if the Vikings won't hold him out until their Week 8 return.

That said, Cook returned to practice Wednesday, Chris Tomasson of the Pioneer Press reports. Jefferson and Thielen were among those not on the practice field for the start of Wednesday’s session, per Tomasson.

Mattison, who has now rushed for more than 100 yards in the two games Cook has missed, also didn’t appear to be practicing.

I'll have more on all of them via Late-Breaking Update in coming days.

Linebacker Anthony Barr returned Sunday for his first game since Week 2 of last season. He recovered from a knee injury in training camp after having last season cut short because of a torn pectoral muscle. He ended up playing 100 percent of the defensive snaps.

DEPTH CHART
QBs: Nick Mullens, Jaren Hall, Josh Dobbs, Kirk Cousins
RBs: Alexander Mattison, Ty Chandler, C.J. Ham, Kene Nwangwu, Cam Akers
WRs: Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, K.J. Osborn, Brandon Powell, Jalen Nailor
TEs: Josh Oliver, Johnny Mundt, Nick Muse, T.J. Hockenson