The Minnesota Vikings have a much needed day off today as the coaches and players pushed through four days of practices in the summer heat of Mankato, Minnesota with heat indexes reaching the triple digits.
From a reporting standpoint its nice to have a moment to sit back and reflect on the first four days of training camp after watching what Mike Zimmer announced, would be a set-in-stone depth chart, until himself and his staff have the opportunity to reasses the roster on their day off.
This means my eyes will be locked in early friday morning during walk-throughs to see just exactly how the Vikings staff has agreed to, temporarily, shuffle around their depth chart for round-two of training camp, and who in the coaches eyes are ready for an internal promotion.
The three biggest positions of curiosity strike at the right guard position, safety spot, and middle linebacker role. Thats not to say there aren't plenty of other intriguing players to keep an eye on like rookie Stefon Diggs, who has buzzed so far in camp and watched his stock rise. Or, Trae Waynes who could make a push for the starting cornerback spot opposite Xavier Rhodes by the time the team heads into the preseason.
Quick Hits
The Mike Zimmer defensive reputation that follows the head coach wherever he goes did an outstanding job in his first season taking the league's worst defense and masking up many weaknesses with virtually the same talent, which was good enough to rank 16th best in the league.
At Wednesday's practice I got a real taste of what that defense could look like in his second full season, implementing the same schemes and philosophies for another year in a row. While offenses are notoriously known for starting out sluggish and slow during the first few days of camp, there was something more to the story by day-four as I watched Zimmer’s first-team defense look stifling in full 11-on-11 drills.
The front-seven in particular seemed downright dominant as a bevy of different looks and pressures confused the offensive-line giving up what would have been sack after sack, specifically on the left side, where a combination of Sharrif Floyd's burst of the snap and Everson Griffen’s bend around the edge was too much for even big name guys like Matt Kalil and Brandon Fusco. With the front-four applying pressure, linebackers and secondary players were able to read and react to a quickly thrown ball and more times than not make a positive play for little to no gain.
Four practices is a very small sample size and even less when you consider players put on pads for the first time tuesday, but myself and fans included got a real taste of what the Zimmer defense could look like in 2015, and it was a very encouraging sign of things to come.
- Speaking of the offensive line, Matt Kalil is on the hot seat more than ever entering his contract year. A guy who -struggled mightily the past two seasons showed a glimmer of resurrecting his quickly fading career towards the end of the 2014 season. After watching Griffen get the most of him during full-team scrimmages, I was intrigued to see the individual drills coach Zimmer set up against offense and defensive lineman.
The drill was meant to give coaches a different look against multiple players instead of the same matchup they see on a daily basis. The drill was a pass rush situation where an offense and defensive lineman would line up against one-another and just play football.
Kalil stepped up in a big way shutting down guys like Justin Trattou and Danielle Hunter, helping him gain some sort of confidence going into the day off (and left us scratching our head as to maybe Everson Griffen is just really that good.)
Other noteworthy performances in the drill was B.J. Dubose who powerhouse guard Brandon Fusco to the ground, Phil Loadholt who pancaked Hunter on back to back reps, and Linval Joseph who made rookie Tyrus Thompson look like, well, a rookie multiple times.
- You could feel the crowd grow tired and stale on Tuesday after Cordarrelle Patterson was unable to come up with and hold on to another catchable (yet contested) deep ball down the sideline.
The third year wide-out burst onto the scene his rookie year but was plagued by an awful 2014 campaign as it seemed the expectations of warping into a legitimate number-one wide receiver in the NFL was too much to ask for the still raw player from Tennessee.
However, once Wednesday's practice had concluded, Patterson had tallied up a handful of passes caught in 7-on-7s and 11-on-11s, soaking up nearly every ball thrown his way for a very efficient practice.
Patterson, who looked bigger and leaner when he showed up for camp, seemed more explosive out of his breaks and even more aggressive when attacking the ball in the air.
Patterson got the best of rookie Trae Waynes on a 10-yard crossing route and came back the next play with a eight-yard comeback.
While he still hasn’t crafted his deep-ball game, it was clear to me Patterson has evolved as a route runner and pure pass catcher in the shallow and intermediate levels of the field, and seems primed to push for serious playing time in a suddenly heavy rotation of wideouts.
Wednesday was clearly Patterson’s best day thus far, and an a foundation of momentum to build upon when they return Friday.