Invited In
Before you start throwing stones at Kirk Cousins, you need to first get a better
perspective of the trap set by the Chicago Bears coaching genius on this
day. To begin, you need to look no further than the inactive's ...
Defensive Tackle Akeim Hicks & Right Guard Josh Klein out. On its
surface, you're thinking one for one ... great! Well, that might be true
but not when our coaches were invited into the Bear's trap. Now ask
yourself the questions. How many time did you see Cook trying to blast
into the center of the line ... less Hicks ... hoping for a result.
Also, just because Zimmer's crew was outclassed today
doesn't mean that it's time to get rid of Mike Zimmer either as everybody has a
bad day. The only thing that matters is in how he responds to this
thrashing and how he prepares to quickly move against any and all threats in the
future.
Now look at it from the Bears perspective. There is a perceived weakness
in the center our of defensive line with Hick's out so let's invite the Vikings
into this perceived weakness and then turn the tables on Mike Zimmer's crew by
game planning our weakness as an attack point for our defense to
concentrate. Brilliant! The result was a long day for Dalvin Cook in
attacking this perceived weakness. It also ignored the strength of Dalvin
Cook and the echoing voice of Vince Lombardi. We are going to run it in
the alley & if you look at all Dalvin's success before today's game you'd
notice that Dalvin's greatest strength was to run it in the alley. So how
many times did this happen ... 0! They did try to screen's into the Alley
but Bear's focus never strayed from Cook leaving the offense no time to set up
the screen. Misdirection, decoying Cook might have proved very successful
today however we were not prepared for that eventuality.
Now again, let's consider the Bear's perspective on their game plan.
Dalvin Cook is the Vikings greatest threat ... so just like Belichick would say
... we are going to take him away from them. During the entire game, he
was keyed & focused on like a caffeine laden laser. The result early
in the first half would be a bunch of outlets to CJ Ham. You could say
that we were asleep at the switch because we were to arrogant to think that the
best defense against the run couldn't take away our best offensive threat.
They were successful by playing into the Bear's hands and as time progressed the
frustration mounted. Stated directly, Dalvin Cook is only apart of this
offensive juggernaught. This is not a one man
offense.
The game plan should be to accept three & four yard dump gains rather than
hoping to hit the long ball ... which as it turned out ... only was hit
once. Long set ups exposed Kirk Cousins to six sacks today. Now for
one moment consider this tidbit. Today, whenever Alexander Mattison walked
on the field, the Bears had no answers. Regardless of what play was
called, the Bears defense had no idea what to do. The plan was both
focused & simple ... take Cook out of the game ... where with anything else,
we would respond on the fly. We never exploited the Bears flow & focus
on Cook.
Now even with Mitch Trubiski in the game, what was our plan of attack on
defense. If you said that we should be making the Bears beat us through
the air, then you'd begin to see our short comings today. Then, to
exacerbate this even further, with Trubiski out of the game, the obvious
response should have been to attack their weakness by applying pressure to their
back up quarterback. Two high safeties was in direct response to being
beaten over the top whereas Hit Man Harry in the box, rushing five on every play
and applying pressure early & often was the only response that should have
registered ... but we never swayed our defensive plans as they easily absorbed
our rushers the whole day long.
In retrospect, today, as the Bill's were trying to score on that final drive,
what did Belichick do on defense on those last two plays? He blitzed both
times from the edge. Can you see the contrast here? All day, the depleted
Bear's offensive line, less Long, held our four rushers in check the entire
game. This wasn't Joe Montana out there ... this was the Bear's backup
quarterback where the wrong answer was to allow him to set up and throw ... time
& again. The answer should have been attack ... attack ... attach
& aim for the jugular by applying unrelenting pressure. That didn't
happen ... did it?
Did it appear that we tend to treat all teams exactly the same, as if we are
facing A. A. Ron in his prime week after week? In other words, today,
there was no need to be tentative defensively but that is exactly what we
endured.
How many time must we say that there are four entities on that field?
Today, there's was our franchise, then there was the Bear's franchise's
resources, there are the Zebra's & lastly there is the clock. What
business in the world was there in calling a time out for the Bear's offense who
had quickly made the decision to kick, or fake, a rather long field goal at the
end of the first half. Instead, we call a time out for a clearly pressed
Bear's offense. With time to think, and the time to reconsider, they
instead bring out their regular offense & then convert that 4th down to
continue the drive. There was no excuse for calling that time out.
Regardless if they Bear's were planning to fake the field goal or not, our
special teams squad should have been both aware & alerted to the fact that
the Bear's field goal kicker was not at full strength. In other words, the
probability of a long field goal attempt, especially with that much time left in
the half, was improbable. A time out should have never been
called.
DO NOT CALL TIME OUTS FOR THE OPPOSING TEAMS OFFENSE WHEN THEY ARE UP AGAINST
THE CLOCK & WHEN THEY ARE FORCED INTO MAKING A QUICK DECISION. JUST
DON'T DO IT!
Dakota Dozier talks a great game, telling us what he's going to do to help this
team. In both of his Viking starts it is not clear what this team sees in
him as his play resembled the beating of a rented mule. Tell me, how
flawed is it to say that starting experience trumps every factor. That
statement has become some sort of protected idiom. To be direct, starting
experience does not provide you with anything, except for what we got a whole
bunch of today. At what point are we going to realize that inexperience
& potential will always trump ineffective & mediocre. There is a
reason why Dakota Dozier was picked off the streets. He's had three starts
in 2017 with the Jets & now two with the Vikings in 2019, as he strolled in
with Rick Dennison. It's not like the New York Jets were world
beaters. In other words, what would today's results have been with Oklahoma's
Dru Samia today ... hey ... we'll never know. You know, we'll be told that
Dru was not ready today, just like we were told last year that Brian O'Niel
wasn't ready in 2018. That gave way to our perenial back-up tackle Rashod
Hill which didn't set the world on fire. Well now you've trusted coach
Dennison in two failed road attempts at guard, both achieving flag after
flag. Maybe it's time to force all that potential talent into roles that
could help this team and stop listening to all those "WORDS" of that,
which has been cast off,
Would we have lost today's game if Kirk Cousins hadn't fumbled twice. Well
that's hard to say but it is as clear as day that 3 of those points resulted
from one of Kirk's fumbles and the other placed us in a drive killing 3rd &
35. That was after all those penalties helped on on our way down the
field. For any other franchise, they'd be sporting a touchdown off those
penalties. Was it solely Kirk Cousin's fault? Well no, if you
consider how many times Reily Reiff was beaten like a rented mule by Kalil Mack
however it doesn't excuse this offenses mind set. In three games, you've
had no answer for Mack where the only response should have been a quick short
passing game plan, to accumulate first downs, dinking and dunking your way to
field position, hoping that Mike Zimmer would apply the necessary defensive
pressure to force Chicago into a mistake. Did I have a problem with Kirk
Cousins today? Yes, but only in one regard. His mind set refused to
forgo the long ball and the stigma of having his accuracy that just might
delivering that ball. Sure the outcome might have been very different if
he had hit that first long ball however the refusal to accept the ticking time
bomb by the name of Mack was almost unforgivable. The Viking's first
priority should always be to take Kalil Mack out of the game, thereby forgoing
the long ball (including the 18 yard strikes). What would the result have
been today if we had given up on the power running game using a full back in
favor of using the misdirection of two explosive running backs (Cook, Alexander,
Boone & Abdullah) with the two tight ends protecting the edge, sporting
either Theilen or Diggs. Always understand that misdirection will always
trumps (Mack's) speed. If the defense sells out by swarming to Cook on the
right, like they did today, then the obvious answer might have been Alexander on
the left. Honoring these threats failed us today as instead we checked
down the ball to CJ Ham, falling into the Bear's plan
today.
The Viking Ghost Writer
http://MyVikingBlood.org
Date: September 30, 2019
