Tag: Minnesota Vkings

Vikings defensive coordinator clears up coverage bust

Ed Donatell clarifies what went wrong on the 53-yard touchdown pass to Quez Watkins

The Minnesota Vikings didn’t have a lot go right on Monday night against the Philadelphia Eagles and a lot of that had to do with the secondary.

The Vikings had a massively blown coverage on the first play of the second quarter that resulted in a 53-yard touchdown by Eagles wide receiver Quez Watkins.

On this play, it is QQH (quarters on the nearside with cover-2 on the farside) and Dantzler is responsible for carrying Watkins deep. He doesn’t carry the receiver and it makes Bynum look bad on the broadcast when he played this correctly.

At his press conference on Thursday morning, Donatell confirmed that it was Dantzler’s fault.

Cody Alexander, who claims to have created match quarters coverage, broke down the play on his Twitter explaining why this is on Dantzler.

Later in the game, Dantzler did have another coverage bust that led to rookie fourth-round pick Akayleb Evans entering the game. Because of Evans’ performance on Monday, Donatell also hinted that he might be getting more playing time moving forward.

Outside of these two plays, Dantzler did have a good game but you can’t be making these kinds of coverage busts all season. They need to be cleaned up and quickly.

[mm-video type=playlist id=01eqbyjpbajmjvnqmj player_id=none image=https://vikingswire.usatoday.com/wp-content/plugins/mm-video/images/playlist-icon.png]

Minnesota Vikings turn INT into amazing Adam Thielen touchdown

Adam Thielen with a fantastic catch, using one hand, to open the scoring for Minnesota against Chicago

He had sweet feet with the Alex Trebek cleats and needed just one hand to make a spectacular touchdown grab to open the scoring Monday as the Minnesota Vikings got the jump on the Chicago Bears.

First, Nick Foles was picked off by Harrison Smith on a Keystone Kops, kind of deflection play.

Six plays later, Kirk Cousins targeted Adam Thielen, who made the amazing grab in the end zone. After the PAT, it was 7-0.

The Chiefs Tyrann Mathieu was impressed with the handiwork.