Plucky Vikings have plenty of playmakers
Saints forced to pick their poison, and simply couldn’t handle Minnesota attack
The Minnesota Vikings didn’t have much time to celebrate their upset win here over the Saints on Sunday.
By virtue of winning the NFC wild card game, the Vikings advance to the second round of the NFL playoffs this weekend. And their divisional round matchup is on Saturday afternoon, at the NFC’s top seed, the San Francisco 49ers.
Meaning Minnesota has one less day to prepare than in a typical NFL game week.
When that thought hit home, the smile came off Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen’s face during a post-game scrum Sunday with a few reporters, outside the ridiculously cramped visitors locker-room beneath the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
“It’s already our off-day, basically, because it’s a Saturday game,” said Thielen, one of Minnesota’s offensive heroes against the Saints.
“So when we get back on the plane we’ve got to start preparing for (the Niners), because they’re a really good football team, and they’ve had a week off. We know we’re going into a buzzsaw. The good thing is we know who we’re playing, and know what time we’re playing, so we can go about preparing.”
Right. Meantime, the 49ers — by virtue of their first-round bye — spent the past week having to prepare for one of three possible opponents: No. 6 seed Minnesota, No. 5 seed Seattle or No. 4 seed Philadelphia.
The Vikings are no fluke. If anything, they should have settled matters against the Saints in regulation rather than winning in overtime, 26-20.
With quarterback Kirk Cousins nailing elite-level completions in every quarter, including his 43-yarder to Thielen in overtime — which set up Cousins’ game-winning, four-yard touchdown throw to tight end Kyle Rudolph three snaps later — these gritty Vikings ought to give the fabulously physical 49ers a real game.
Teams that sell the Vikings’ talent short have paid the price.
For instance, running back Dalvin Cook showed no signs Sunday of being limited in any way coming off a dinged shoulder, as Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer had promised last week. Whether on quick hitters up the middle, on toss sweeps outside, or on outside zone blocking stretch runs, Cook smashed into and over would-be Saints tacklers throughout the first half, for 84 yards.
That’s how good Cook is, in case you were wondering.
The Saints’ defence adjusted and stymied Cook in the second half — holding him to just 10 yards on 12 carries — but at what price? Probably the freeing up of Thielen, top Minnesota wideout Stefon Diggs and Rudolph in the Saints’ secondary.
Indeed, whereas Cousins averaged 6.8 yards per attempt for
108 yards in the first half, thereafter he averaged 8.9 for 134.
Saints defensive co-ordinator Dennis Allen basically had to pick his poison.
“We have a lot of playmakers, a lot of guys who can do great things when they get the ball in their hands,” Thielen said. “It’s hard to make everybody happy and get everybody the ball, but when you get to the playoffs and you get late in the season, it’s all in. It doesn’t matter who gets the credit, and it doesn’t matter who’s making the plays.
“Hey, if we win the game, everybody had a piece of it, and today everybody had a huge piece of it.”
All those criticisms of Cousins and the Vikings early this season perhaps were not unjustified. They were to be expected. Offensive co-ordinator Kevin Stefanski was promoted to that spot only late in 2018. This past off-season, Zimmer hired longtime NFL offensive strategist and former Houston and Denver head coach Gary Kubiak, plus two of his longtime assistants, to help Stefanski redesign the Vikings’ attack.
Minnesota went 2-2 in September, twice failing to gain as many as 270 total yards. Cousins threw only three touchdown passes, didn’t look sharp, and the locals were grumbling. When the club signed him in March 2018 for a fully guaranteed US$84 million over three years, those weren’t the kind of performances people expected.
It’s hard to make everybody happy and get everybody the ball, but when you get to the playoffs and you get late in the season, it’s all in.
But Cousins and Co. ironed out those new-offence wrinkles pretty fast. In October the Vikes went 4-0, with Cousins completing 72 per cent of his throws for 10 touchdowns and only one interception — elite by any standard.
Was the transition to the Stefanski/Kubiak attack to blame for those September stumbles?
“Yeah, for sure,” Thielen said. “And I think that’s the great thing about this team, is that everybody has kind of just bought into this offence.
“We knew there were struggles early and things like that. But we knew if we just kept plugging away we knew what we could do. We saw it through (organized team activities), we saw it through training camp, what this offence could look like when we get things cooking.” JoKryk@postmedia.com
Twitter: @JohnKryk