The Minnesota Vikings lost a really tough game to the Philadelphia Eagles 24-7 on Monday night and it didn’t feel as close as the score would indicate.
The Vikings struggled mightily throughout the game on both offense and defense so there weren’t many high spots during the game.
Here is the latest stock watch for the Vikings after week two.
Stock up: Special Teams
The game was ugly on offense and defense but all four special teams units were really good on Monday night. From the start, the kickoff coverage unit was great in getting down the field and forcing the Eagles to take the long route to the end zone. Ryan Wright had a nice game punting including pinning the Eagles inside the 10 yard line. Overall, a solid night for all four units.
Stock down: Kevin O'Connell
The Vikings offense looked rough from the start and the play calling and creativity had something to do with it. The drop back passing game was not working, as it normally doesn’t with Kirk Cousins, but they completely abandoned any semblance of a running game. The Vikings only called nine running plays with six of them going to Dalvin Cook. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense considering the Eagles just allowed D’Andre Swift to average nearly 10 yards per carry on 15 carries. On top of that, the offense looked a lot closer to what John DeFillipo ran in 2018 than last week against the Green Bay Packers.
Stock down: secondary
This was a rough game for the secondary as a whole. They got beaten consistently throughout the game and a lot of that was underneath. The really big issues were in communication. On the second touchdown pass, Cameron Dantzler and Camryn Bynum failed pass Quez Watkins off correctly allowing him to score an easy touchdown. They didn’t cover well across the board allowing easy catches all day against the Eagles receivers to take advantage of yards after the catch.
Stock down: Kirk Cousins
The game against the Eagles was awful from Cousins. He struggled mightily in a similar way to the 2018 offense run by DeFillipo. Cousins is not a drop back quarterback but rather needs a play-action based offense to be successful. In the second half when the Vikings were trying to come back, they used a lot of empty sets asking Cousins to deal from the pocket with an offensive line that isn’t consistent in pass blocking. On top of that, Cousins wasn’t reading the field well whatsoever. He was making bad throws that resulted in 14 plays of havoc (11 passes defended and three interceptions). You can’t do that and expect to win football games.
Stock up: Patrick Jones II
In a game that didn’t have many standouts, Jones II had one of the better plays of the game for defense. In the second quarter, Jones II had a great run stop coming around the edge and getting Miles Sanders on a tackle for loss. This is really good to see from Jones II who had some issues in the running game during the preseason.
