1st Half vs Vikings.

Lending some credence that it is still pre-season, there are still some areas that give me concern.

1.) The Vikings in the first half had 4 sacks to our 0.

2.) The Vikings find a way to rush 6 and sometimes 7 at Russell when we only rush 4 for the most part relying on a zone coverage that gives up short pass after short pass.

During our Superbowl run we constantly played on the other side of line with our Defense. I just don't see that just yet.

I do see promise however from our young players like Reed and Clark. Rubin appears to be taking up space, lacking the upside needed to make an impact. Kris Richard will have to do some serious evaluating or the Hawks could get off to a slow start, which includes that 1st game against the Dolphins. I've seen it before when teams go into that first game, take it lightly, are ill prepared and lose that first game at home. Not wishing anything bad on the Hawks, but I just don't like what I've seen so far.

3.) The offensive line is much better than last year. Flat out. But I still am concerned about how teams view our receiving core. When you see defenses line up consistently on passing downs in man coverage, blitzing 6 or 7 people, it demonstrates that they don't have a lot of respect for the speed of our deep threats. Other wise they would have to back off in fear of getting beat. The problem is there isn't any "speed fear" outside of Tyler and occasionally Baldwin. Russ didn't have much time in the pocket to see down the field and got sacked or hurried for his efforts.

4. The last bright spot was Christine Michael. He sees the field and runs well through the seam with excellent acceleration.

Again I know its pre-season, but soon the real season will begin. There are two games left to find that speed to the ball with the defense playing on the opposite side of the line of scrimmage. If we accomplish that the O-line will continue to mature and get even better. We must find a way to get to the quarterback; get off the field on 3rd down, and throw the ball down the field, not 3 yards but 15 and 20 yards at a clip. That's the team that will make it to Texas in February.

One sack was a coverage sack and two were off blitzes, one an overload blitz. Pretty aggressive blitzing for week two of preseason. In context, all the sacks aren't so terrible.

If they got all of them with simple front four pressure, I would be more worried.

Smelly McUgly":2ifv85lr said:

One sack was a coverage sack and two were off blitzes, one an overload blitz. Pretty aggressive blitzing for week two of preseason. In context, all the sacks aren't so terrible.

If they got all of them with simple front four pressure, I would be more worried.

Click to expand...

Those big blitzes inevitably leave a receiver open. It's Bevell's and Wilson's job to be finding ways to exploit those mismatches.

I suppose that could fall under "stuff we don't see in the preseason", though.

It's preseason but the passing game didn't look sharp and there were way to many long 3rd downs given up on defense.

Harbaugh's first preseason game in the NFL was in New Orleans, and the Saints sent tons of blitzes that game.

Was useful scouting info when the Niners faced them in the playoffs that year. The OC said the Saints used all of their blitz packages up in August.

Probably not the most ideal thing to do for Minnesota being in a similar situation as a conference rival although I can understand why they did it after what happened in the playoffs.

The Vikings chose to blitz and pressure Wilson where we clearly did not plan on doing the same to Old Man Rivers. It was frustrating to watch yes, but it really is just practice where we are not showing our hand. Trying to compete? Certainly. Making mistakes that need to be cleaned up? No doubt. But what I usually see in the preseason - good and bad - (save injuries) has yet to make any real difference once the regular season starts.