After the first half of week 3 against the Detroit Lions, the Minnesota Vikings are tied with the Lions at 14 a piece.
The game didn’t start off really hot, as both teams missed field goals on their first possessions. After that, both teams settled in and started executing their game plan.
It felt like two separate games as the Lions dominated the first quarter and the Vikings played much better in the second.
Here are the 3 main takeaways from the first half.
Kirk Cousins has (mostly) lost his confidence
Cousins was objectively awful against the Philadelphia Eagles. He checked it down when he didn’t need to and pushed it down the field in poor spots. The confidence he had in week one looks to be completely gone.
Cousins isn’t seeing the field well or making confident decisions. This is why the offense isn’t clicking. They threw the ball four times inside the 10 yard line on their touchdown drive but only one was completed. Cousins regained a little bit of that at the end of the second quarter but it still isn’t near what it was against the Packers in week one.
The Lions are dominating on 4th down
The Lions are an aggressive team. Head coach Dan Campbell subscribes to the analytics of fourth-down play calls. He also understands that, with this rebuild, you have to use tactical advantages to help compensate for any talent gap. They did it all of last season and have continued that this year. The Lions are 3-4 on fourth down in the first half and converted them with relative ease both through the air and on the ground.
Vikings offensive play calling is too high variance
The idea of bringing in head coach Kevin O’Connell was to maximize this offense and help usher in a new culture. After week one, the results just haven’t been there. O’Connell showed last week that he abandoned the running game and hasn’t been consistent enough with maintaining it.
He did scheme up K.J. Osborn perfectly on a wheel route out of a bunch formation but Cousins was unable to step into the throw and sailed it out of reach. There have been too many situations where Cousins has been a drop-back quarterback and that is just not playing to his strengths. Getting Cousins and the offense into more advantageous situations needs to be a priority.
