Time to get it together, guys..............
EAGAN — Mike Zimmer looked on with exasperation during Wednesday’s Minnesota Vikings practice as the offense did pretty much whatever it wanted against his vaunted defense.
Whether it was because Kyle Rudolph tip-toed a touchdown reception in the back of the end zone or Adam Thielen caught one wide open, Zimmer was none too pleased with the overall effort of the D.
Less than a week into full practices it has become an alarming trend for Zimmer and instead of letting it fester, he took to the podium after Thursday’s walkthrough to voice his discontent.
“We need to play a lot better,” the Vikings’ head coach said. “I feel like the offense has got a lot of grit and fight, and I haven’t seen much out of the defense yet. That’s my major concern at this point.”
Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the offense has operated with more attention to detail. There are a lot of moving parts on that side of the ball, especially with offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski and adviser Gary Kubiak teaching a new scheme. For the offense, there’s no time for messing around with so much to learn and Week 1 a little more than a month away.
The defense, on the other hand, has been roughly the same thing for the past six years. Add in the fact that Minnesota finished in the Top 5 of total yards allowed for three straight years and switching it to autopilot from time to time seems understandable.
“As I’ve told a few of them, they’ve been together for quite a while now, and they think they’re pretty good, so maybe they just go out and practice and there’s no intensity level,” Zimmer said.
“They aren’t making mistakes because they’ve been in the same defense for six years now; it’s just a little bit of, maybe, complacency, like, ‘Hey. We are in the Top 5 in defense every year.’ ”
In the interest of fairness, the defense isn’t allowed to tackle during training camp, meaning the offense probably has at least a couple of extra seconds to work with on any given play.
There’s also the fact competition is scarce with most of the starters know exactly where they stand, whether it’s Linval Joseph at nose tackle, Everson Griffen and Danielle Hunter at defensive end, Eric Kendricks or Anthony Barr at linebacker, or Harrison Smith, Xavier Rhodes and Trae Waynes in the secondary.
“I just think they need to get more competitive,” he said. “We need to come out here and compete every day. In all the situations, the offense has won every time, so if they want to be great on defense, they’ve got to play with a chip on their shoulder. I haven’t really seen that yet.”
His players took the comments to heart, performing much better during Thursday’s practice, and owning their previous mishaps afterward.
“If he says we’ve got to step it up, we’ve got to step it up,” Rhodes said. “There were some things we needed to correct. We had some errors in some situations and periods of the practice.”
“He knows what it looks like when it’s right,” Smith added. “I think he was talking about a mentality and I think we’re going to get that right.”
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