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The Minnesota Vikings defense has some standouts and the Pro Football Focus grades showcase that
The Minnesota Vikings are a fascinating team.
Despite a 2-4 start, the Vikings have good underlying metrics and Pro Football Focus has the offensive line as one of the best units in the National Football League.
As we head into week seven, here are the PFF grades for each member of the Vikings defense.
Despite the Minnesota Vikings rocky start, nose tackle Harrison Phillips has been a bright spot
It is no secret that the Minnesota Vikings have had a rocky start to the 2023 season. That’s probably putting it lightly.
After bringing back a solid amount of the core that helped lead them to a crazy 13-win season, this 2-4 start feels very anticlimactic.
Even through circumstances such as this, there are bright spots to be found throughout the roster. One of them happens to stay in a three-point stance on the defensive side of the ball.
After the Philadelphia Eagles game, Doug Farrar of Touchdown Wire highlighted Minnesota defensive lineman Harrison Phillips as a potential secret superstar of this Vikings defense.
On the surface, this was a wild assessment to have after Philadelphia’s offensive line manhandled this Minnesota defensive line. Everyone except Phillips.
He had five run stops that week, tied for the most by any interior defensive lineman with the Jets’ Quinnen Williams, and added a sack and hurry.
Phillips has been a consistent positive for this Vikings defense that has started to find their stride under new defensive coordinator Brian Flores.
Since week four, the Vikings are seventh in EPA and 13th in success rate. Part of that is due to their ability to stop the run, they are tied for eighth in yards per attempt allowed in that span. Phillips has been one of the main reasons for this success.
In this exercise, we will show a sequence of plays from the second quarter of Sunday’s game against the Chicago Bears that outline Harrison Phillips’ effect on this defense, and how Flores has been utilizing him to accentuate his abilities.
Touchdown Wire named two Vikings defensders secret superstars.
Minnesota Vikings inside linebacker Ivan Pace Jr. and defensive lineman Harrison Phillips were named secret superstars by Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar.
The idea of secret superstars was created by Farrar to highlight players with excellent performances that fly under the radar.
Not every great NFL performance is given by a well-known player. Just as often as you see the league’s marquee names ball out, there are those under-the-radar guys who rise up at the right time to add weight to their own names.
It happens every week, and we have collected this list of the most prominent Week 2 performances from those players whose deeds outweighed the import of their reputations.
Pace has been the highlight of the Vikings defense over the first two games, starting both of them as a UDFA out of Cincinnati. Farrar highlighted his impact on the Vikings as both a blitzer and stopping the run.
Pace was a highly productive and versatile linebacker out of Cincinnati, but he went undrafted in 2023 due to concerns about his size. You’d think NFL teams would re-think the effect of speed linebackers in a base nickel and dime defense league even when that speed linebacker is 5-foot-10 and 235 pounds, but it is what it is. So, the Vikings got themselves a steal in Pace, who has a sack, five total pressures, 14 tackles, and six stops through his first two professional regular-season games.
Defensive coordinator Brian Flores has liked to use Pace as a blitzer from just about every gap through the first two weeks of Pace’s NFL career, and he’s quite effective, especially around the middle. On this stunt against the Eagles last Thursday night, Pace crossed the right side of Philly’s offensive line with defensive tackle Pat Jones II, messing up the protection. From there, it was chaos in the backfield, and this set up Danielle Hunter’s spin-move sack from the other side.
Phillips was the highlight for the Vikings in the running game, tying for the NFL lead among defensive linemen in week two with five stops.
Against the Philadelphia Eagles last Thursday night, Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores chose to work with light boxes and a frequent five-man umbrella up top, which led to the Eagles rushing for 259 yards and three touchdowns on 48 carries. When 63% of your defensive snaps are in light boxes, your defensive linemen had better be able to hold up.
That wasn’t true for all of Minnesota’s defensive linemen, but Phillips was the exception. He tied with QuInnen Williams of the New York Jets with five stops in Week 2 — the most for any interior defensive lineman — and he had a sack and a quarterback hurry. When the Eagles ran No. 97’s way, the play usually wasn’t a success.
The Vikings have some players on defense, now the scheme needs to keep putting them in positions to thrive.
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From Baker Mayfield to Zack Moss to Ivan Pace Jr. to Deommodore Lenoir to Geno Stone, here are the NFL’s Secret Superstars for Week 2.
Not every great NFL performance is given by a well-known player. Just as often as you see the league’s marquee names ball out, there are those under-the-radar guys who rise up at the right time to add weight to their own names.
It happens every week, and we have collected this list of the most prominent Week 2 performances from those players whose deeds outweighed the import of their reputations.
Here are the NFL’s Secret Superstars for Week 2 of the 2023 NFL season.
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).
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Plenty of players saw their stocks improve or fall in the Vikings season opening loss to the Buccaneers.
The Minnesota Vikings lost the season-opener to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 20-17.
The Minnesota Vikings were 11-0 in one-score games last season but failed to do enough to keep the streak alive.
Minnesota’s three turnovers and six timely penalties cost the Vikings possessions and left a lot of points on the board. A key example was the interception by undrafted rookie Christian Izien before the end of the half.
Despite the loss, some players boosted their stock in the season opener. Others, however, saw their draft stock fall.
Madden 24 has some Minnesota Vikings rated highly
Over the last week, EA Sports has released ratings for every position in Madden 24. The Minnesota Vikings came out looking well with eight players ranked 80 or higher.
The best rating on the team came out on Monday when wide receiver Justin Jefferson was announced to be one of the few 99 overall-rated players.
Within the Vikings, who were the top 10 players on the roster?
After playing nose tackle in 2022, can Harrison Phillips thrive with a move away from a three-down nose tackle?
Welcome to the beginning of our 2023 season preview content!
Over the next few weeks, we will be looking at each player on the roster in-depth with backgrounds and how they currently project forward on the Minnesota Vikings roster.
What is the best-case scenario? What is the worst-case scenario? What should we expect from them during the preseason and beyond? We will break all of that down here.
As a staff, all of us at Vikings Wire ranked the entire 90-man roster 1-90 and will be releasing player profiles in reverse order.
After losing Dalvin Tomlinson, can the Minnesota Vikings defensive line take a step forward with Harrison Phillips and Dean Lowry?
The 2023 season is inching closer and closer by the day and we here at Vikings Wire are previewing the season from every angle. Today, begins profiling the Minnesota Vikings roster on the defensive side of the football.
We are currently writing player profiles on each Viking on the roster with projections for what their 2023 season could look like. How things look projecting forward is where the real intrigue lies.
Leading up to training camp, we will be looking at each position from a more in-depth perspective. Today, we will be looking at the defensive line.
The Minnesota Vikings Madden rankings for defensive line and edge rusher left something to be desired.
On Monday, the first batch of Madden 24 rankings were released as well as the first 99 overall in this year’s game.
They are currently releasing two position groups per day and started with wide receivers and safeties. On Tuesday, they released edge rushers and defensive tackles. Here is how the Vikings players were ranked.
Going into training camp, here are the projected starters on the defensive side of the football.
As the Minnesota Vikings near the start of their training camp, the defense will be a highly-contested unit.
Between multiple new additions — including free agents Marcus Davenport and Byron Murphy, Jr. — draft picks, and players returning from injury, defensive coordinator Brian Flores will have a lot of uncertainty to work through.
As a result, predicting the team’s starting defense before the start of camp is, well, challenging.
Still, predicting it allows there to be a discussion around multiple players. There’s no knowing which two linebackers start in Flores’ 3-4 base defense, but there’s an opportunity to offer educated guesses.
As a result, we’ll take an opportunity to project who will start for the Vikings in their base defense.
