The 2017 Minnesota Vikings defense is widely regarded as the team’s best defense since the Purple People Eaters. Featuring elite players on every level of the unit, that defense carried the team to an amazing 13-3 campaign and a trip to the NFC Championship Game. However, as the stars from that unit have gotten older, the Vikings have not been able to come close to the levels of that 2017 unit.
While this regression is attributable to the coaching of Mike Zimmer and Ed Donatell over the years, some of it has to go on former general manager Rick Spielman. Why? The Vikings have had some really bad defensive drafts since the 2015 draft landed them two studs in Eric Kendricks and Danielle Hunter.
In 2016, the Vikings took two Clemson defensive backs in Mackensie Alexander and Jayron Kearse, as well as linebackers Kentrell Brothers and Stephen Weatherly. None of those players contributed to the Vikings in any way, and only Alexander and Weatherly turned out to be just average starters.
2017 was not much better. Defensive tackle Jaleel Johnson did not pan out, to say the least. His development was particularly important to a team that was not only dealing with a career ending injury to 2013 first-rounder Sharif Floyd, but also saw Linval Joseph and Tom Johnson slowly age. Linebacker Ben Gedeon only turned out to be a special teams player, and defensive end Ifeadi Odenigbo had one good playing stretch of his career.
2018 saw the drafting of cornerback Mike Hughes and defensive end Jalyn Holmes. Hughes’ Vikings career was plagued by injury, and Holmes has been below average to say the least.
As the defense aged in 2019 and 2020, their young players from prior drafts did not pan out, and that bit the team as the defense began to crater. 2020 brought out of the worst defensive seasons in team history, as most of their aging stars were let go or spent the entire season injured. During these two seasons, the secondary became a notable defensive issue and that still holds true today. In addition to Hughes’ struggles, the Vikings drafted six defensive backs in 2019 and 2020, none of which panned out. The defensive line has also struggled with injuries and consistency, and none of the drafts in either of those two years have not helped matters. Oh, and the Vikings sent away 2021 draft capital to the Jaguars for defensive end Yannick Ngakoue right before the start of 2020, a move that backfired.
2021 saw the team add Chazz Surratt, Camryn Bynum, and Patrick Jones. Surratt was a bust, Bynum turned out okay, and Jones is a good rotational piece. However, neither of those three can fix the mess that has become the Vikings defense. I won’t evaluate the 2022 draft yet, which was the first for second-year general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, because I am a firm believer that it takes two seasons to evaluate a draft class.
While the coaching certainly fell off over time, the Vikings have done themselves no favors trying to improve it, largely thanks to bad drafting. Free agency and trades, with the exceptions of veteran players Patrick Peterson and Za’Darius Smith, has not helped much either. Hopefully Brian Flores can return the Vikings defense to a somewhat respectable level, but the team needs to do better when it comes to acquiring players. They only have themselves to blame when it comes to construction of this now porous defense.
