Vikes Views: Are the Vikings an Offensive or Defensive Team?

The Minnesota Vikings are a bit of a difficult team to analyze. The defense has started the year strong, but had it's share of bad games. The offense has been a little bit more consistent with an exception to last week. Most teams it's fairly to easy to say where it lies. The Chiefs have a great defense, but they are clearly led by Mahomes and Andy Reid. You would think the Vikings with Kevin O'Connell would be more offensively minded, but sometimes it feels like it's defensively driven.

The Vikings are 13th in Offensive Yards per Game (12th Passing/21st Rushing) and 8th in Offensive PPG. Darnold has been a surprise, but certainly not MVP level like most QBs of 6-2 teams. Justin Jefferson continues to prove he's the best in the league. He's leading the league in yards and the next few have played one additional game. The other receivers are hit and miss. Addison appears to be running open quite a bit, but Darnold isn't looking his way. Hockinson has been out. The run game started off great, but has fallen off recently. The beginning of the year, the offense setup the defense for success by starting out strong. The team was lead by the offense for the first 5 games of the year. Looked that way until about 1⁄4 way through the Rams game.

The Flores defense deserves a lot of credit too. The Vikings are 16th in Defensive Yards per Game (2nd Rushing/28th Passing) and 7th in Defensive Points per Game. The Red Zone defense has been strong, but also aided by the big leads and several teams needing to go for it on 4th down. Not only have the fast starts been great offensively, but the defense has been getting stops and turnovers early. The big leads are built on getting the offense back fast. This team seems to feed off of each other. The offense sputters a little in LA and the defense wasn't able to stop the Rams offense over and over. The defense has a rough four drives against Detroit and the offense wasn't able to answer back until later in the game.

Complimentary football is a must for any team that wants to compete. Brady won his Super Bowls with Top 10 Defenses (6th, 1st, 2nd, 8th, 1st, 7th, 8th). The games the Vikings have won this year, both sides complimented each other. The two losses, they struggled together. Like the answer to most questions, it's a little bit of both for me.