Glaring Issue on Defense

For all the attention given to the front four, the play of the secondary must improve as the season progresses towards the playoffs.

The Vikings’ pass defense ranks 25th in the league, allowing 253.8 yards per game. Even worse, the defense gives up chunks of yards (11.3 yards per completion). The silver lining in the Vikings’ porous pass defense is the ability to limit the opposition to only 14 touchdowns in 10 games. Although this speaks to how well the defense performs in the red zone, it does not overshadow the amount of yardage given up. In playoff games that will come down to field position, allowing large amounts of passing yards will prove costly.

To date, the pass rush has masked the shaky play of the two safeties, Madieu Williams and Tyrell Johnson. Going forward, teams such as the Bears, Cardinals and Bengals will exploit this deficiency, so the safety play must tighten up their coverage.

Between Williams and Johnson, they have only one interception. This statistic is unacceptable because in the Tampa-2 scheme the Vikings employ, the safety is positioned to ball hawk and make plays on the football.

I will absolve Madieu Williams of his play, as he is coming back from a serious neck injury that wiped out his first season as a Viking in 2008. Since safety is a position based on instinct and quick reaction, apprehension cannot come into the player’s mind. Williams is reluctant to break on the ball for fear of causing a big collision (only exception was in Week 6 when Williams hit Kelly Washington in the facemask with the crown of his helmet. I was shocked that Williams did not re-aggravate his neck condition on this hit and have not seen one like it since) whereas backup, Hussain Abdullah, invites contact. I am not suggesting that Williams be benched in favor of Abdullah, but the fact remains that Williams is not performing like the playmaker the Vikings envisioned he would be when he was signed as a free agent from the Bengals.

As for Tyrell Johnson, he has had several opportunities to intercept the ball, but has come up empty-handed (most notable and recent is the interception he dropped against the Packers in Week 8. Aaron Rodgers threw a deep ball into double coverage, which went right through Johnson’s hands). He has been able to break on the ball and arrive at the same time it reaches the receiver, but lacks the ability to come up with an interception.

Johnson’s lack of production is due to inexperience. As a second-year player, Johnson has yet to achieve the ability to discern between run and pass quick enough in order to make decisive plays on the ball. Until then, the Vikings will continue to have peaks and valleys in the passing game because teams have been able to exploit Johnson’s portion of the field.

[Shahaab Tehrani can be reached at: shahaabt@yahoo.com}