The Vikings' Defense Showed What Could Have Been Against Washington

After the Vikings' dismantling of the Commanders, Matt Fries dug deep into the defense to discuss how the Vikings ran Washington into the ground — and the missed opportunities this season represents

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The Minnesota Vikings’ season hasn’t gone how they wanted. After going 14-3, the team clearly had playoff aspirations after spending big in free agency this offseason. With a top-tier defense and a massive amount of offensive talent around a young QB, no one on the team saw them sitting at 5-8 through 14 weeks.

Abysmal QB play derailed the Vikings’ season. However, the Vikings’ impressive 31-0 shutout win against the Washington Commanders on Sunday showed the world a glimpse of who they wanted to be. JJ McCarthy had his best game by far, and the defense put up a dominant performance, forcing three turnovers and another turnover on downs in the shutout.

Statistical Dominance

Per Next Gen Stats via TruMedia, the Vikings’ defense allowed minus-0.37 EPA/play against Washington, which was their second-best performance of the season and the 17th-best performance among all NFL games this season, per NextGenStats — distantly behind the Vikings’ Week 3 game against the Bengals, the single best defensive performance of the season, but impressive nevertheless.

It gets even better if you look at just their pass defense, as the minus-0.60 EPA/dropback they forced ranks 9th-best on the season (author’s note: it should be noted that the Vikings’ performance on the other side of the ball occupied two of the eight performances that were worse than Washington’s in this game).

Year-Over-Year Differences

The Vikings’ dominance in the game led to a rare occurrence for them in the 2025 season – Washington had more dropbacks (34) than designed rushing attempts (18), per PFF data. Opponents have dropped back on fewer than 50% of their plays in 6 of the Vikings’ 13 games, and have dropped back fewer than 53% of the time in 9 of the Vikings’ 13 games.

At large, the NFL drops back (counting scrambles as dropbacks instead of rushing attempts) almost exactly 60 percent of the time (60.009%, to be exact, at time of writing), per PFF data. In 2024, the Vikings’ opponents dropped back 66% of the time.

This drastic play-calling split in favor of the run means the Vikings have faced the fewest passing attempts (356) and the 3rd-most rushing attempts (405) in the NFL. This is a stark contrast to the 2024 season, where they faced a league-leading 637 passing attempts and the 4th-fewest rushing attempts (392) in the NFL.

The dichotomy is pretty much entirely explained by game script. In 2024, on average, the Vikings led by 6.5 points when their defense was on the field, 3rd best in the NFL. In 2025, their average margin on defense is -5.5 points, 26th in the NFL.

From a vibes perspective, the Vikings’ defense feels significantly worse than it did in 2024. The losses are certainly part of the reason why, as well as the lack of turnovers. But the vibe difference is also heavily explained by the difference in game situation, and thus opponent play selection, caused by the Vikings’ putrid offense.

Looking at it mathematically, that’s not quite true because rushing in general is so much less efficient than passing — but it comes close. Per Next Gen Stats via TruMedia, the Vikings are allowing minus-0.05 EPA/play (6th in the NFL) and a 55.5% success rate (13th) on opposing dropbacks in 2025.

That’s nearly identical to (and technically better than) the -0.01 EPA/play (4th) and 55.3% success rate (8th) they had in 2024. They are notably worse against the run, allowing -0.05 EPA/play in 2025 (22nd) after allowing a stellar -0.17 EPA/play in 2024 (2nd).

So, the Vikings’ defense is about as good against the pass as they were last year. However, they are significantly worse against the run in 2025 than they were in 2024, which helps explain why the defense feels so much worse, despite the fact that they’re still 8th in the NFL with a very respectable -0.06 EPA/play mark.

Last season, the Vikings had a league-leading 24 INTs. Only 6 of those interceptions came when they were tied (3) or trailing (3). This year, they only have 5 interceptions, and only 1 of those came when they were tied or trailing.

Teams historically produce significantly more interceptions when leading. Across the entire NFL in 2025, teams have recorded 175 interceptions with the lead, 54 interceptions when tied, and 69 interceptions (Ed. Note: Nice!) when trailing. That’s not quite as drastic a split as what the Vikings’ defense has seen, but it’s in the same direction.

The Plan That Went Awry

Over the offseason, the Vikings invested heavily in improving their interior pass rush, bringing in Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave. This led the team to de-emphasize the run and trade away Harrison Phillips. It’s easy to see the logic. You take a run defense that was fantastic, downgrade a bit there, and hopefully bring your pass defense to new heights. The run defense ended up worse than the Vikings’ front office probably expected, but the problems there are exacerbated by the opposing run/pass split based on game situation.

It’s worth noting that, through a certain lens, Hargrave and Allen have worked as expected. The Vikings’ pressure rate, per NextGenStats, has gone from 35.7% (9th in 2024) to 40.0% (2nd). Jonathan Allen (7.9% pressure rate, per NextGenStats) and Javon Hargrave (10.7%) each have 25 pressures on the season, not to mention the breakout Jalen Redmond (9.8%) with 27 pressures.

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Last year, the Vikings did get 39 pressures from Jihad Ward (10.5% pressure rate) in sub packages, but their primary DTs, Harrison Phillips (4.7%) and Jonathan Bullard (2.7%), provided almost nothing in terms of pass rush, with 16 and 7 pressures, respectively.

Other charting data confirms this — PFF’s data is even more optimistic than NGS’. They have Allen (31 pressures, 12.0% pass rush win rate), Hargrave (26, 12.5%), and Redmond (30, 7.6%) as clearly better than Ward (31, 9.6%), Phillips (16, 5.1%), and Bullard (6, 1.1%).

What Could Have Been

The vision the Vikings had for their 2025 team is all but dead. They can technically still make the playoffs, but they need a lot of help to the point where it’s not even really worth considering.

Still, the Washington game gave us a taste of the potential this team had. Let’s go through the tape and see what the Vikings’ defense, particularly their pass defense, may have looked like this year with better support from the offensive side of the ball.

Pass Rush Performance

Sunday wasn’t the Vikings’ best pass rush performance of the season, but they were still very effective at getting after Jayden Daniels and Marcus Mariota. The defense’s 37.5 percent pressure rate in the game ranked 8th out of their 13 games this season, but would rank 7th in season-long performance among NFL teams this year and is much better than the 32.8 percent pressure rate Washington has allowed thus far. When looking at all games this season, it’s about a 65th percentile rate, firmly above average.

The Vikings run an extremely high rate of blitzes, of course, but one element that stands out is their high rate of simulated pressures, where they show a blitz look but drop off into coverage. According to FTN Fantasy, they rank first in the NFL, not just in blitz rate but in simulated pressure rate, too, at 14.0 percent.

In the situations where they drop out of their pressure look, they still need to win with just four players rushing. Fortunately, the Vikings have the talent to do that.

On this early third down, the Vikings put 7 players on the line of scrimmage, but dropped Harrison Smith, Eric Wilson, and Blake Cashman to have their base four rush. Jonathan Greenard does Jonathan Greenard things and explodes off the line of scrimmage, compromising the edge and forcing Daniels to step up in the pocket. On the other side, the Vikings have a stunt on, and Andrew Van Ginkel coming across the formation.

Daniels is extremely athletic, and outruns Van Ginkel. But the Vikings’ zone defense left him nowhere to throw the ball. Because the Vikings have eyes on Daniels in zone, Smith is able to peel off his coverage and knock Daniels out of bounds, forcing a punt:

On the play below, the Vikings put 6 defenders on the line of scrimmage – from left to right, Greenard, Jonathan Allen, Wilson, Javon Hargrave, Jalen Redmond, and Van Ginkel. This creates a difficult job for rookie right tackle Josh Connerly, as the protection scheme has to respect the threat of Wilson rushing. Because of this, he is required to block Allen before kicking out to block Greenard off the edge.