Know the KC Chiefs’ Week 5 Opponent: Key Facts About the Minnesota Vikings
The Chiefs hit the road once again and are looking for a win in Minnesota. What’s important to know about the Vikings in Week 5?
One week after narrowly surviving to avoid an 0-4 start, the Minnesota Vikings — 2022’s luckiest team and 2023’s most unlucky — prepare for the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs.
The Chiefs’ previous two matchups failed to live up to the “offensive fireworks” preseason hype, but a Minneapolis trip to battle Justin Jefferson, T.J. Hockenson and Kirk Cousins could provide the offensive urgency Kansas City needs.
Entering as 4.5-point underdogs, here’s what’s worth knowing about the talented-yet-flawed Vikings.
The dead zone
How exactly does a team with top-three statistical players at QB, WR and TE rank just 16th-best in points per game? The short answer: offensive brilliance, up until the moment it’s time to, well… score.
For four weeks, a Vikings fan’s worst nightmare was seeing their team on Scott Hanson’s NFL RedZone. The only thing worse than having an NFL-high 11 giveaways? Losing six of those inside an opponent’s 30-yard line. No team over the last 16 seasons has had that mixture of poor luck and ineptitude with opponent-territory turnovers.
Despite athletic upgrades at receiver, Minnesota has struggled to replace Adam Thielen, perennially a top-tier red zone threat; Alexander Mattison, who entered 2023 with just two fumbles on 474 touches, has fumbled once and nearly lost two others. Even Cousins has a 44.3 passer rating inside an opponent’s 10-yard line.
An offense this well-coached and multifaceted figures it out, but for now, the Chiefs’ defense has some bend-but-don’t-break appeal.
Blitzes, blitzes and more blitzes
Watch a snap or two of Minnesota’s defense, and it won’t take long to uncover their principle tenet under Brian Flores: they love to blitz.
Minnesota has blitzed on 57% of their defensive looks; no other team is above even 50 percent. Even so, the Chiefs should feel bullish, largely for three reasons:
Um, Patrick Lavon Mahomes II.
Despite the tendencies, the Vikings rank bottom-10 in hurries and knockdowns.
Two Sundays ago, Justin Herbert saw it at a historic rate and went 40-of-47(!)
The cool thing about Mahomes — to pick just one — is how quickly he can make defensive-minded coaches second-guess utilizing their strengths, as evidenced here and here.
Flores, a zero-blitz frequent and defensive aggressor, likely won’t deviate. In three games against Mahomes — one as Miami’s head coach and two as the Patriots’ LB coach — Flores-led defenses have fared as such as against Mahomes:
63-of-101 (62.3%), 1,040 yards (346.6/game), 10.2 yards/target, 9 TD, 5 INT, 106.4 rating
31 blitzes (10.3/game), 17 hurries, 10 hits
Mahomes’s big-play potential is heightened against Flores’s safety-less looks, but turnovers increase. In the aforementioned 2018 game, the Patriots showed single-high, one safety creeping into a loaded box, forcing Mahomes to anticipate the blitz’s location. Eyeing Travis Kelce on a crosser, Mahomes misses linebacker Dont’a Hightower sneaking back into the middle hole for a pick.
Mahomes’ recent versions are more cerebral, and the style of play i
