“Embarrassing, really, is the word,” Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer said after the Vikings lost to Philadelphia 21-10 on Sunday. “I’m very disappointed in the performance we gave today.”
The game the Vikings put on tape was pathetic. They turned the ball over, got quarterback Sam Bradford killed (not literally), failed over and over again in the red zone, gave up a 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and fumbled a punt.
“If you’re going to do those things you have no chance to win,” Zimmer added.
While there’s plenty of blame to go around, the most might have to go on running back Matt Asiata and right tackle Jeremiah Sirles. According to Pro Football Focus (PFF), Asiata and Sirles had two of the 10 worst individual performances in the NFL on Sunday.
Another sack on Bradford. This one on Matt Asiata who didn't pick up the blitz.
— Paul Charchian (@PaulCharchian) October 23, 2016
PFF says Asiata allowed four quarterback hits in 10 pass-blocking situations and he dropped a pair of passes. “Sirles surrendered two sacks, two hits and four hurries in 39 pass-blocking snaps, and wasn’t a whole lot better in the run game,” PFF said.
In 2014 Zimmer was skeptical of Pro Football Focus because the people grading the games don’t know know the plays:
“… I know that the people that are grading our games and our defenses and our offenses, they don’t know if the tackle gets beat inside, if we weren’t sliding out to the nickel or who our guys are supposed to cover. I guarantee they don’t know who is in our blitz package and what they are supposed to do. I would just ask everybody to take that with a grain of salt, including our fans. We as coaches get paid a whole bunch of money to do the jobs that we do, evaluate the players that we evaluate and grade them how we grade them and not based on someone else.”
