The Minnesota Vikings Should Win The NFC North Again In 2016
Even though many NFL fans and experts expect the Minnesota Vikings to lose their position atop the NFC north, that shouldn't be the case This is because the Vikings will continue to implement an offensive system where Teddy Bridgewater was primarily in charge of handling the ball off or running the ball on his own in an effort to get the opposing defense to stack the box. Once the Vikings made the opposing defense honor the running game by stacking the box it allowed them to run some play action passes. Where they would fake the handoff to Adrian Peterson making the opposing defense believe that they are going to run the ball. As a result, the opposing defense will keep the box stacked thus giving the Vikings receivers more man to man coverage and Teddy Bridgewater more open space on the field to lead his receivers to the ball which would have increased the likelihood of the pass being completed. This allowed the team to keep drives alive while forcing the opposing team to put more players in coverage to decrease the likelihood of the offense scoring a substantial amount of points in a short period of time thus giving Adrian Peterson room to run the ball again. The combination of these factors enabled the offense to stay on the field for a prolonged period of time in fact, during last season the offense was on the field for an average of 30:26 minutes.
As a result of this, the Vikings offensive unit will have a direct impact on the performance of their defense because the longer the offense is on the field it will increase the amount of energy they can recover between possessions. This allows them to have enough energy on most possessions to be able to properly execute their defensive game plan. Which is primarily centered around making sure that the opposing wide receivers are not able to get open for as long as possible until the players near the line of scrimmage are able to beat the offensive line. For instance, the Vikings play a lot of press man coverage where a defensive back lines up near the line of scrimmage and as soon as the ball is snapped he puts one arm on the body of the opposing wide receiver in an attempt to disrupt his route. As a result, the quarterback will be forced to hold the ball for a couple more seconds to look at the other wide receivers which will increase the likelihood of the quarterback getting hit, taking a sack or throw a inception.
