The Minnesota Vikings are facing a number of issues at 0-3.
Some are of the acute variety, such as stumbling too much or getting caught in blitzes.
Then there are the ongoing problems with more complex causes and more difficult solutions, like Kirk Cousins’ lack of protection or a disjointed secondary.
The lack of an interior pass rush by the Vikings gets lost in the sea of issues that plague them.
The burden of many personnel decisions made by the previous administration falls on the 2023 Vikings in this regard. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah inherited a roster and salary cap game of Whack-a-Mole, and he hasn’t yet gotten around to fixing the Vikings’ interior defensive line, whose transition to a 3-4 scheme over the last two years hasn’t exactly been smooth.
With the five interior defensive linemen they have used through three games, the Vikings have created a total of six pressures. Harrison Phillips has six, while Khyiris Tonga, Dean Lowry, Jonathan Bullard, Jaquelin Roy, and Khyiris Tonga each have zero.
The Vikings are 24th in the league in pressure rate despite having a clear advantage in blitz rate thanks to the fact that four out of five opponents have been completely skunked.
Take a peek at the Green Bay Packers’ DT statistics from across the border, if you dare.
The interior rush being led by former first-round picks Kenny Clark and Devonte Wyatt has resulted in 36 pressures in three games.
Greater by six times than the Vikings.
Or just Phillips, really.
Phillips signed a modest three-year, $19.5 million contract with the Vikings prior to the 2017 season, and they are getting what they paid for from him. The remaining players are either veteran free agents, seasoned rookies, or Day 3 draft picks.
Adofo-Mensah took a chance on a group that might be effective at value, but their league-low in pressures has been anything but valuable.
With nine pressures from its interior group, the Denver Broncos are the only other team with fewer than ten.
It doesn’t appear that the Williams Wall will intervene to save them.
Adofo-Mensah can only take so much criticism on this front; the defensive tackle position desperately needs talent injection.
Former general manager Rick Spielman chose to make sporadic triages to the position, which had unpredictable results, for nearly ten years instead of making real draft investments.
While Dalvin Tomlinson was a good cameo from 2021 to 2022, Sheldon Richardson had a successful cameo in 2018 and a less successful one in 2021.
However, Michael Pierce was acquired by the Vikings from the Baltimore Ravens amid much fanfare, only to miss one season due to COVID-related issues and another one due to injury before being released.
Adofo-Mensah may split his semi-big swings with Phillips and Lowry 50/50 if we’re keeping score.
Early in the Mike Zimmer era, Spielman satisfied the needs of the interior defensive line by making the right connections to sign Linval Joseph at a high salary and undrafted journeyman Tom Johnson.
However, there was no pipeline to replace Joseph and Johnson as they grew older.
Not yet, that is.
During the first two days of the last ten drafts, the Vikings failed to select a defensive tackle. They are the only NFL team that hasn’t used a pick there during that time.
At defensive tackle, as previously mentioned, you get what you pay for.
Check out Pro Football Focus’ list of the top 10 pressure producers from the previous two seasons.
They were all first-round picks.
If you do the same over the previous ten years, you’ll only find 17% of the top-10 DTs who weren’t selected in Days 1 or 2 of the draft.
Unsurprisingly, while 25 other teams have, the Vikings haven’t produced a player who ranked among the top 10 in DT pressures during that time.
Richardson placed 14th in 2018, and Tom Johnson finished a close 11th in 2015. You could try citing a defensive plan that appeared to value run defense over pocket penetration, but that was probably due to the personnel’s infrequent ability to move the pocket.
Furthermore, each of the previous three years, the run defense has deteriorated to a bottom-10 unit.
In the third round of the draft, Spielman averaged about one dart throw per year on a defensive tackle, and depending on how you define “hit,” you might say he connected on one of them.
As a seventh-round pick who started 51 games for the Vikings, Shamar Stephen was the talk of the 2014 draft.
However, analytics also identified him later in his career as one of the least effective pass-rushing defensive tackles in football.
Any notion that Spielman was an expert defensive tackle was quickly dispelled after his draft missteps with Jaleel Johnson, Jalyn Holmes, Jaylen Twyman, and James Lynch.
Years of experience with pocket passers of Kirk Cousins’ caliber have shown the Vikings the value of a strong interior line.
They haven’t had defensive players capable of clearing out blockers in the trenches for years, though.
The team’s other issues are not the most recent ones. But it’s a significant one that dates back a full ten years.