Written by Tom Schreier
With all due respect to Shaun Hill, Austin Davis and the St. Louis Rams, the Minnesota Vikings season ostensibly starts on Sunday against the New England Patriots. The Rams may have brought the blitz and, well, had the NFL logos on their uniform, but without Sam Bradford and an otherwise flawed team, they will not present the kind of challenge that Minnesota will face in the next four weeks.
“I don’t think there’s been any celebration. I think we’ve been fairly business-like from the start of training camp until now. During the pre-season there was nothing,” said head coach Mike Zimmer in reference to the Week 1 win following a 4-0 preseason. “Look, we haven’t done anything. We have not done one thing yet. We have so much work to do, so far to go to where we want to get to, that I would be disappointed if we were celebrating one win on opening day.”
There is a reason that Zimmer is downplaying the first win. All wise teams know not to read too much into a single victory or loss, but letting their guard down now would be devastating. Minnesota has to face the New England Patriots, the New Orleans Saints on the road, the Atlanta Falcons and the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau. While the Week 1 win over St. Louis showed that Cordarrelle Patterson is a threat in the backfield and that the offense can put up points once it starts clicking, questions remain about the team’s secondary — which was virtually untested by Hill and Davis.
The quintet of Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers is daunting enough over the course of a season, but the Vikings play each of these quarterbacks in consecutive weeks. Each of these quarterbacks is capable of exposing any holes that the team has in its secondary. On top of that, each one of these players is well coached. Bill Belichick is considered one of the best coaches in the league, Sean Payton and Mike McCarthy have Super Bowl rings on their fingers and Mike Smith has been the head coach in Atlanta since 2008 and has multiple Coach of the Year awards to his name.
As is custom in the NFL, teams do not look ahead and will not comment on anyone but the squad they are facing in the upcoming week, but the Vikings had plenty of praise for Brady, Belichick and the Patriots.
“We’re going against Tom Brady!” defensive end Everson Griffen said on Monday. “Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and his coaching staff.”
“I think this is a great challenge for our team to find out where we’re at and get a chance to play this team,” Zimmer offered. “We have the ultimate respect, they’ve had our attention from Sunday at about 5:30, they’ve had our attention. I don’t know either way about playing them this week or several weeks from now. It’s probably the same thing.”
Safe to say, similar praise will be lavished upon the next three teams they face.
Another factor is that three of these four games will be played outdoors. While the special teams unit has to prepare for outdoor play in any season, TCF Bank Stadium presents it’s own challenges for eight games. Additionally, kicker Blair Walsh, punter Jeff Locke and long snapper Cullen Loeffler will be without special teams coach Mike Priefer, who was suspended two games by the league for comments that surfaced in a Deadspin article penned by former punter Chris Kluwe.
“That’s all outside noise,” said Walsh, who like Loeffler and Locke and many of their teammates, has come to the defense of Priefer. “Unfortunately it was brought on by somebody who used to play here, and it’s just unfortunate because Coach Priefer is a great guy and I think it revealed the true character of some people in that situation.”
The special teams unit has made special trips out to “The Bank” to prepare for outdoor football, and they feel that they have a pretty good grasp of how the ball will play outdoors. “It’s been a couple trips down there, but we love doing it. That’s not the worst job to have is going down to see what the wind is doing at the stadium,” says Locke, who said the most difficult task is finding the flag on the outside of the arena the best represents how the wind is going to carry the ball. “We don’t mind the extra work at all. But we did take a couple extra trips that we wouldn’t have at the Metrodome last year.”
And while they may have already played two outdoor games in the preseason, nothing perfectly replicates regular season game conditions. The kicks are meaningful, the fans raucous and opponents are no longer playing their third team defense and are going full speed. “I wouldn’t say butterflies,” says Locke. “I’d say this last game (Week 1) is when the butterflies would have been and we did a pretty good job on special teams among the three of us and on the coverage units.” Fortunately, if the team does have trouble outdoors, Priefer returns during Week 3 and they’ll have the reprieve of an indoor game before going back outside again.
The next four games will test the mettle of the coaching staff, however. Zimmer has given the impression that he will not place the demands of the fans above the needs of the team. Specifically, he and offensive coordinator Norv Turner have chosen to start Matt Cassel over Teddy Bridgewater, despite the fact that No. 5 uniforms are beginning to populate the stands and the team store did not offer Cassel jerseys at one point.
Zimmer is on the record as saying that Cassel will get a long leash, but what if the veteran quarterback falters at some point in the next four weeks? All four are meaningful games: the Patriots are Cassel’s former employer and he maintains a friendship with Brady, the Saints knocked the Vikings out of the playoffs in 2009 in Brett Favre’s good year with the team, the Falcons benefitted from Gary Anderson’s missed kick in 1998 on another potential Super Bowl team and the Packers are Minnesota’s greatest rivals. While all of that will inevitably be downplayed by the Vikings in upcoming weeks — and, honestly, may not be all that meaningful to the current players and coaching staff, except for maybe the rivalry with Green Bay — it does mean something to the fans.
As the Vikings try to generate momentum going into the grand opening of Taj Ma Zygi, they are going to want to fill the seats at TCF Bank Stadium and keep people engaged for the next two seasons. As pressure mounts, will Zimmer, Turner and Co. stick to their guns? Or will they rush Bridgewater into actions to satisfy the demands of their fans?
It’s all about to get very real for the Vikings, but to hear them say it, they are ready for the challenge. “I don’t know either way about playing them this week or several weeks from now: It’s probably the same thing,” Zimmer said in reference to the Patriots.
“It’s just this season is such a marathon anyway,” he added. “It’s who can survive the longest? Who can play the best over the course of the season?” And, well, how will this team perform in the next four weeks?
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Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3. |