PHILADELPHIA — Who’s fault is it, anyway?
There are lots of stats that tell lots of different stories about the Minnesota Vikings’ loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on the road on Thursday night. We can start with this one: In 2022 there were 38 instances of a team finishing with a minus-3 turnover differential or worse and only one club on the wrong side of that margin won the game. So the Vikings can pretty safely point to their four fumbles against the Eagles as an explanation for why they fell short 34-28 on the road.
And that is exactly what they elected to do.
“Seven-to-one in turnovers lost in two games and we have lost by a combined nine points verse two playoff teams from a year ago,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said, adding that it is central to their team philosophy to protect the ball and the staff will emphasize it even more going forward.
There was a pang of optimism in the head coach’s comments, rooted in the fact the Vikings remained in the game despite giving the ball away repeatedly.
“There is a lot to be proud of from a standpoint of… very rarely can you lose the turnover battle four-to-one and have a chance at an onside kick with the chance to win the game,” O’Connell said.
Some of Thursday’s fumbles were the ultimate bad-bounces, particularly Justin Jefferson’s reach for the goal line that resulted in a likely touchdown drive being turned into a touchback for the Eagles.
Jefferson blamed himself after the game but that strange rule rarely comes into play when the NFL’s best playmakers reach for the goal line each week around the NFL.
“Justin is just trying to make a play in that moment and the hardest thing to do is to get a guy not to reach the ball out when they are that close to scoring a touchdown in a critical moment,” O’Connell said.
“Players do it all the time to score a touchdown, and so we often joke, ‘Don’t reach for the end zone if you’re not going to score,’ is kind of the wink, so it’s tough,” Cousins said.
Before the fumble the Vikings traveled the length of the field quickly before halftime and hitting multiple receivers along the way. That is the part Cousins tried to hang onto despite the disappointment of the loss. He knows that 9,999 times out of 1,000 that Jefferson goes out of bounds and they have first-and-goal at the 1-yard line.
“I think you evaluate all football games in that light when you say, ‘OK, let’s,’ – we don’t just look at it with one broad stroke brush, and say, ‘Oh, we lost that was bad or we won that was good,’” Cousins said. “If anything you have to avoid it when you win. Last year I think it was a lot of times where we were winning but you have to look back and be like, ‘This isn’t good enough, this isn’t sustainable,’ and so there’s a little bit of the opposite, too, when you lose – saying, ‘Hey, I liked what you did here, I like what you did here,’ but obviously there’s a need to coach and fix things and be hard on ourselves anytime you lose.”
There are stats to back up the idea that the Vikings are doing a lot of right things outside turnovers. Cousins delivered passes to Jefferson all night despite the Eagles throwing lots of different coverages his way. The star receiver, who is now only the second player to clear 5,000 career yards before age 25, had 11 catches for 159 yards on the night.
“Even on the throw where he does fumble at the pylon, that’s him beating another double team and Kirk finding him,” O’Connell said. “Some of the plays over the middle, he’s fearless. In a lot of times when you’re facing shell coverage, double teams, you’re going to have to be willing to go into some traffic over the middle. His detail, his technique, his fundamentals, and then just his sheer competitiveness…His overall football understanding of how he’s being defended, I don’t know if I’ve seen anything like it.”
The Vikings’ other two top targets Jordan Addison and TJ Hockenson were in the middle of big plays as well with the rookie catching a 63-yard touchdown and finishing the play in spectacular fashion and the veteran tight end grabbing two TDs.
This all happened despite the Vikings being down to their third tackle after Christian Darrisaw reaggravated his ankle injury and Oli Udoh suffered a serious leg injury during the game.
The passing game has mostly been as advertised through two games and there is nothing that equates to winning as much as successfully throwing.
So there is merit to the argument that cleaning up the fumbles — or getting more fumble luck — will get them back on track if they keep doing what they are doing. But a lot more happened on Thursday night than the funny-shaped ball bouncing aimlessly around the turf and into green hands.
For the second straight game the Vikings allowed their opponent to command time of possession. On three long drives alone the Eagles racked up 22 minutes of time with the football. That’s more than the Vikings had all night. They did so by taking advantage of the mismatch between their offensive line and the Vikings’ undersized personnel, rushing for 259 yards and posting 19 first downs on the ground.
“The hope was we could try to limit the impact and potential explosives and try to make them drive the football and then change some groupings up,” O’Connell said. “Use some different elements to try to keep them off-balance if we could.”
The Eagles indeed were a little off balance at times but found solid footing in the second half with one drive marching 16 plays and 13 of them were rushing. Quarterback Jalen Hurts also hit two throws of 50-plus yards and ended the game with a 78% completion percentage.
“Wanted them to run it first, second, third, first, second, third and see if we could possibly turn the football over, but with the turnover margin being what it was, they were just on the field too much,” O’Connell said.
Considering the Bucs were able to command the clock in the second half of Week 1 and win without allowing the Vikings’ offense back on the field, we are now looking at six quarters of opponents taking what the Vikings’ defense is giving them.
Part of that is that Vikings haven’t been able to sustain a ground game. They ran for a total of 28 yards on nine carries. Game flow dictated the total carries but the general ineffectiveness from the opening week carried over against another stout defensive line.
“We’ve got to go back to work and find ways to run the football,” O’Connell said. “Whatever personnel grouping we feel like gives us an advantage. We’ve got to get more connectedness upfront. We’ve got to be able to attack certain fronts when looks present themselves, and just continue to hunt to be efficient because it’s not a good formula. Especially when you’re putting the ball on the ground, but it’s not a good formula to play like that when, as confident as I am in our pass game, it’s just not going to sustain.”
The big picture on Thursday’s loss is that only around one in 10 teams that starts 0-2 makes the playoffs. The Vikings feel that certain parts of their team are strong enough to win against anybody but they can’t win against everybody on a strong passing attack alone. They let two good performances from their quarterback get away and the margin for error in a competitive division is now that much thinner. Next Sunday’s game against the Chargers is bordering on must-win if the Vikings want their odds of making the postseason to stay alive.
With this weekend off, O’Connell sends his team into a mini-bye week in which he wants to look for solutions and not lose sight of the areas where they thrived against a Super Bowl contender.
“I think there’s a lot of areas where we can focus on as a staff to play more complementary football which we have not done up until this point,” O’Connell said. “I think there’s a lot of ways that we can continue to build each other up. But my hope is that our team stays confident. We recognize exactly why we’ve lost both of these games and have a really focus centered mindset to fix those problems.”
