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Minnesota played well enough to win today. Despite last week's game finishing nearly as close, the Purple made significant strides in the last seven days. Not trying to play the "moral victory" card, just going with the fact. And the fact of the overall progress from 1 to 2 is the best takeaway from this game.
Today was not Kirk at Lambeau circa 2018 where he dueled the future HOF as he rarely has any of the quarterbacks against him since coming from the Capital. But you could say 8 was at an even more appealing level, since what he did & how he did it seems very replicable. Maybe this is the guy we would have had several times over if the OL had regularly been as effective over the years as they were today. A straw-poll of fans this week would have likely produced numbers closer to 10 than 1, and yet that's how clean they managed to keep KC. To say their effort today was a revelation is not overselling it!
They also helped carve out some nice running lanes for Dalvin Cook, who in turn had a gutty performance despite getting twisted & turned with every handoff that he took. It's those sorts of showings that will help him shed the injury-prone designation.
Perish the thought, but if K.J. Osborn can continue his two game trend of play-making then Cook will find himself with more room to operate in the not-too-distant future. Most of his damage came on the opening touchdown but if he can keep making big plays he will force his way onto the field & defenses will have to adjust to the true three-wide threat.
First it was Eric Wilson, now Nick Vigil has taken the "Barr" role & managed to make big plays from it. It's almost like it may have been a mistake to pay the Purple's Andrew Wiggins. The mustachioed former third round pick came a toe-drag short of a crazy fumble recovery then had the pick-six. As with Osborn, if he goes a third straight game with a big play (or multiple) then he should be allowed to keep the job until he proves otherwise. With the exception of a couple isolated plays by Cam Dantzler late in the game & the interception by Xavier Woods, the rest of the defense left a lot to be desired.
Which is about as good of a segue as I can muster.
Even grading on the curve that Kyler Murray creates, today was not nearly good enough by the defense. "Limiting" a team to 34 points is the expectation when you have an air-raid-minded head coach, not a crotchety defensive one. If Bashaud Breeland gets the start in the home opener then things could go bad quickly against Seattle. He was the single-worst member of the defense today.
It wasn't all sunshine on the other side though. There were still a multitude of times when the play call did not match the situation, most notably with nine minutes to go in the game they took the sideline shot toward Jefferson when three yards & a cloud of dust would have keep the drive alive. Young Kubiak is learning on the job, and that's not a great situation to be in when the team is NFC Championship or bust. So he may improve, but down & distance consideration seems like a rather basic thing factor into the calls.
And this wouldn't be done right if Greg Joseph's miss wasn't included. The positive spin - it's better to get the miss out of the way now than to pull a Gary Anderson. But saving the first miss for the first quarter next week (or better yet, Carolina a month from now) would have been approximately 1,000,000x better.
Overall, there was progress made since last Sunday. That shouldn't get lost in some of the noise that will be made the next few days. But there's still plenty of room for improvement with another Championship game hopeful on the horizon, which is to say that it was different but the same.
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