Blueprint to beat the Minnesota Vikings

The Tennessee Titans have their opening matchup this weekend against the Minnesota Vikings. Luckily for them there is a blueprint in place to help them shut down Adrian Peterson.

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If you have heard it once, you have heard it a thousand times, “It doesn’t matter who the quarterback is in Minnesota, the Vikings offense runs through Adrian Peterson.” If that is true, then the Tennessee Titans need to take a look back to Week 6 of the 2015 season.

There, they will find film of a Kansas City Chiefs game against the Vikings where Peterson was held to just 60 yards on 26 carries (2.6 avg). Even worse, if you take away his one run of 23 yards, he would have stood at 37 yards on 25 carries which is an abysmal 1.5 YPC.

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So, how did the Chiefs do it? How did they shut the Vikings running game down? Well, that’s what I am here to answer.

No pass rush on 50/50 downs

Not all downs are created equally. Without getting too much into it, 3rd and 13 screams pass while 3rd and 1 is usually a down that traditionally has more runs that passes. On the other hand, some downs really don’t mean anything special. 1st and 10, 2nd and 6, 3rd and 3 all of those could mean anything from a play call standpoint.

So, what the Chiefs really tried to do was to make sure that instead of penetrating and missing tackles, they would stay in their gaps and get a constant vice-like pressure on the offensive line.

This means that whoever is the quarterback is going to have more time in the pocket to dissect the defense, but Kansas City very clearly made the choice to force the Vikings to beat them with the quarterback instead of the running back.

Blitzing safeties

When the Chiefs did do something more exotic, they chose to send people from the secondary rather than to send a linebacker. This is something I do not expect the Titans to copy against the Vikings on Sunday.

While that may have worked with them, Dick LeBeau is famous for his zone blitzes and sending linebackers on crossing blitzes from different areas of the field. However, to do that you need to make sure that you don’t give up any blatant holes in coverage.

With the strain that is on the thin Titans secondary already, I doubt he would want to push that even further by forcing them into more difficult tasks.

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Set the edge

Defenders made a very clear effort to for Adrian Peterson back inside on designed outside runs. This usually meant less than sound play from the defense where the linebackers and DBs made sure that if the edge was set by the ends/rush linebackers, that they play outside-in.

Now, they didn’t do great against designed inside runs because obviously that is what the defense was trying to force. However, setting the edge forced some negative runs, and I mean like -5 and -6 yard runs. Those can be drive killers, especially with a new QB.

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