The Minnesota Vikings celebrated the new year with one final win on the season, beating the Detroit Lions 37-35 at Ford Field in a game that was all offense.
That game specifically can be summed up by the quarterback play of each team. Kirk Cousins threw for a season-high 405 yards and three touchdowns while Matthew Stafford passed for 293 yards, three touchdowns and one interception, which proved costly.
Offense and no defense was the story of the season, and since it’s a new year and this final game of the season was played by two teams that won’t make the playoffs, I will be summing up the entire 2020-2021 Vikings season rather than the final game of the season.
Here are the five numbers that tell the story of the season:
73%
Perhaps the biggest storyline of the season was Dalvin Cook living up to his contract extension. Because Cook’s stats tailed off a bit toward the end of the year while Justin Jefferson was having a record-breaking rookie season, it was sort of brushed under the rug since the season ended without a playoff run, but Cook was still exceptional and mostly healthy in a career-defining year.
Cook had 73% of the team’s designed rushing yards over the course of the season. All while missing two games. You’d think with a running back room made up of Cook, Alexander Mattison, Mike Boone and C.J. Ham the carries would have been shared based on the current trend of NFL offenses splitting carries among backs. But no, Cook was the main option all year and proved he was worth an extension.
Cook’s year in review looks like this: 1,557 rushing yards, 16 rushing touchdowns, 5.0 yards per attempt and 111.2 yards per game. All career highs for his career. Cook’s consistency adds to the confidence in the Vikings’ offense for seasons to come.
13
Another key part to the success of the Vikings’ offense this season was Adam Thielen taking a new role in Gary Kubiak’s offense. Thielen had fewer receptions and yards this season than he has in the past, but he had one notable stat to offset the lack of passing in the 2020 offense.
Thielen hauled in a career-high 13 receiving touchdowns this season, good for third in the NFL just behind Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill. Thielen’s new role in the offense seems to be to mentor Jefferson and be a massive red zone threat — a role that was passed onto him from Kyle Rudolph, it seems.
Thielen played in all but one game — he missed Week 12 due to COVID — and while his receiving yards were lower than past seasons, he proved that he can ride out his career doing everything he is asked of and more.
I fully believe Thielen was a huge reason for the early emergence of Jefferson. He is one of the most important players on the Vikings, a major factor in the success of the offense this year.
24:3
Cousins didn’t have an ideal start to the season. He had an 11:10 touchdown to interception ratio before the bye week and after six weeks of anywhere from serviceable to terrible performances, fans jumped off the Kirk bandwagon.
Once the team had the bye and was able to settle into an offensive identity, Cousins threw for a 24:3 touchdown to interception ratio to close out the season. The tremendous improvement restored fans’ faith in Cousins’ ability to lead an offense.
Sure, his performance may have played the second biggest role in the awful 1-5 record, following the decimated defense, but he elevated his play and showed that he hasn’t lost a step. The offensive line has to be the biggest factor in Cousins’ poor performances, but also the sheer amount of chaos this season due to the pandemic also played a large part.
He was a solid quarterback overall this year, even with the slow start, especially considering the improvements he made in his pocket presence and mobility this season.
23
The Vikings had only 23 sacks all year, good for 28th in the NFL. We all know this stat, but it’s worth bringing up again: Yannick Ngakoue still leads this year’s Vikings in sacks with five. As a reminder, he only played in six games.
The lack of pass rush was the single biggest reason the defense was unable to perform as well as they had in the recent past. There were issues on all levels of the defense at times, including the young corners and injured linebackers, but the lack of pass rush put much more pressure on them.
This has been Zimmer’s worst defense to date. He even said it himself. The good news is that next year a slew of players will be returning, and the draft and free agency will supplement the exposed depth we saw this year.
175
My personal favorite storyline this year has been Jefferson’s rookie campaign. He was the fifth receiver selected in the 2020 NFL draft but outplayed every other rookie in the NFL’s history and surpassed both Randy Moss and Anquan Boldin’s records for receiving yards as a rookie in the final game of the season.
Jefferson had a season-high 175 receiving yards in Week 3, his first start, and it looks like there will be many more 100-plus-yard games considering he’s already had seven of them in his first year alone! His future is limitless, and he is one of the bright spots of an otherwise disappointing season.
From Stefon Diggs to Moss, Jefferson may always be compared to the best receivers in Vikings history, but it is clear Jefferson is his own player already. His performance in Detroit helped the Vikings start 2021 on a good note and has the fan base looking forward to next season. Cheers.
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January 05, 2021 at 06:31AM
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5 Numbers That Tell the Story of the Vikings Season - Zone Coverage
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