The 'Viqueens' Defense

All right, we are three weeks into the NFL season and this week our Lions will face off against an 0-2 Vikings team that is reeling from consecutive losses. Let’s take a look at their defense, and as always questions, comments!!!, and suggestions are welcome.

This week the Lions will go up against a Vikings defense that is considered elite by many in the NFL. A lot of that credit has to go to their defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, who I think is one of the most underrated coaches in the NFL. Since taking over for Mike Tomlin in 2008, Vikings defense has allowed an average of 20.2 point per contest, and has never ranked below 10th in scoring defense.  Along with that, Vikings have amased 92 sacks, which ranks 3rd among teams in the last two years.

The Vikings run a standard 4-3 defense that is basically a cover 2, but mixes in plenty of Tampa 2 and zone blitz principles. What the Vikings do defensively has a lot to do with Leslie Frazier’s background. Frazier broke into the NFL with Andy Reid and Jim Johnson’s Eagles as a defensive backs coach, where he had the opportunity to learn the zone blitz scheme from one of the best. After a short stint with the Benglas as their defensive coordinator, Frazier served as the defensive backs coach for Tony Dungy’s Colts, where he learned the finer points of the Tampa 2 from the inventor of the scheme himself.  

The other key thing about the Vikings defense is that they tend to leave their corners on island a lot, and it makes sense when you have guys like Cedric Griffin and Antoine Winfield, who are excellent tacklers and are pretty solid coverage guys. The good thing for the Lions is that Griffin is banged up, and it’s a question how much he’ll play. That means Lito Sheppard, a guy that even the Lions didn’t think was good enough to sign, will play a lot. The problem is that we are missing Nate Burleson too, and really don’t have a receiver that I think can take advantage of the situation.

With that said, I think the biggest key to the game is the how the Lions offensive line holds up against the Vikings front four. They don’t need to do as good of a job as they did the past two games, nor should they be expected to perform the same, but if they can keep Shaun Hill upright, then the Lions have a great shot of winning this game. Here is a stat for you guys: the Vikings tallied 48 sacks last season, but in the four losses, they only managed 8 sacks. If you take away the four sack game against Pittsburgh, then the Vikings only got to the quarterback 4 times in their other three losses. For the record, Vikings tallied 5 sacks in 2 games against Detroit last season, although anyone that watched the games could tell that Minnesota brought tremendous pressure.

Now, I wanted to take a look at the Vikings defense and see what works against them and what doesn’t, so let’s look at some tape. The first video is from their game against the Carolina Panthers, who like the Lions, had their backup in Matt Moore in there at quarterback.

NFL Videos NFL GameDay Vikings vs. Panthers highlights (via darklordbbw)

The first play I want to bring to your attention starts at 0:12 of the video. You will notice immediately that the Panthers are in a 3rd down situation, they have their receivers spread out and the Vikings are showing blitz. Run the play, and you will notice that the Vikings get solid pressure from the edges with Allen and Edwards, but Moore doesn’t have pressure up the middle (ie Panther’s interior line does a good job of blocking the Williamses), so he can clearly see Mushin Muhammad and makes a solid throw for a first down. The other play I want to focus on from the Panthers game is the play starting at 2:21. Notice again that the Panthers are in a spread formation. Run the play and you will see that Steve Smith breaks away from the defensive backs and scores a touchdown. If you want to, go ahead and watch the whole highlight reel and you will notice that the Panthers scored almost everytime from the spread look, and I think that is the best way to attack the Vikings defense that has two of their top three corners injured.

Personally, I would like to see them utilize the spread formation as much as possible and have Jahvid Best lined up outside against Lito Sheppard or Chris Cook. Best in my mind is good enough of a route runner to get open against those guys, and as we saw in the Panthers game, the Vikings secondary has trouble containing guys with elite speed. Also, I think it would be a good idea to show two and three tight end looks and use both Pettigrew and Scheffler as slot receivers because they create mismatches against either defensive backs or linebackers.

In the end, I think the Lions will be fairly successful against the Vikings. I’m going to say that this the Lions first win of the 2010 season, and they will win 28-24.