Minnesota Vikings vs. Dallas Cowboys Preview & Prediction | PFF

Minnesota Vikings vs. Dallas Cowboys Preview & Prediction | PFF

This video is presented by Western and Southern Financial Group. A game plan for your financial future. Every great team starts with a strong foundation and your future should too. With life insurance built like a championship roster, Western and Southern helps protect what matters most so you can focus on winning today while planning for tomorrow. Whether you’re just starting out your journey building your dynasty or ready to retire like a champion, Western Southern has the right play for your life stage. Visit western southern.com to get your free life insurance quote today. Western and Southern built to win. Vikings and the Cowboys Sunday Night Football here. This one’s in Dallas. We’re going to talk about the Cowboys or the Vikings here for this one. We’re going to talk about Dak Prescott. We’re going to talk about Dak Prescott versus Brian Flores, who blitzes more than anyone in the league. And Prescott’s been outstanding against the Blitz this season. Look, the Vikings, they’re going to try to get you behind the chains. You want to run the ball on early downs to keep yourself out of super obvious passing situations. But Dak Prescott against the Blitz, you have to feel good about his ability as a veteran and as someone who attacks down the field in these situations to get the job done. The highest completion percentage in the league. Against the Blitz this year, it’s 72%. The third best passing grade and the sixth fastest average time to throw. He’s been around long enough. This is his 10th year in the NFL. He’s able to process these things and it’s much easier as a veteran quarterback to see all of these disguises and blitz looks when you get the double mug, when you get simulated pressures, rotations all over the place, guys flying around. This is not an easy defense to play against no matter what their record is because of how creative Brian Flores is with the blitzes. Dak Prescott like he was a couple weeks ago against the Chiefs. He’s going to have to be on his game mentally to beat this Minnesota defense, especially in third and long situations where he can run into the most trouble. Do I have faith in him to do it? Yes, because of those numbers and his experience, but it is never an easy task to go against Brian Flores in a game Dallas desperately needs to win. Vikings looked looked good last week. I think that’s an understatement with them winning 31 to zero. But I on the offensive side of things, I thought McCarthy looked more confident. And that’s obviously what you want to see. He was 16 for 23. And I think that that 23 number is is really what I want to focus on here because we’ve seen the Vikings have McCarthy on really opposite ends of of what the throwing volume could be. We we’ve seen him have more than 30 attempts in a game and I feel like it does not look great whenever that’s the case. You’re putting too much on his plate. And then also though in the games where he attempts less than 20 passes, it doesn’t look good because he has to be more involved than that for you to win the game. So I think that the 23 passing attempts, not that it’s like a magic number that you have to hit, but I feel like that’s the sweet spot. 23 to 27 passing attempts. Like that’s kind of where you want JJ McCarthy to live. That’s the ideal game script for you because you look at the yards per carry averages that they had last week. Aaron Jones, he had those 76 rushing yards. He had a 5.4 yards per carry average. Jordan Mason 52 rushing yards, 47 or 4.7, excuse me, yards per carry average. So when you have this this to me was just such a balanced football game. And then you look at the diversity of how many players JJ McCarthy was able to get the ball to in his 16 completions. Jordan Addison, Jaylen Naylor, Josh Oliver, TJ Hawinson, Jordan Jefferson, Ty Felton, um all of these guys were able to get receptions and it just felt like sort of the perfect game plan. Now, they were playing a Washington Commander team that is not very good in coverage. So, you go, okay, that was that was always going to be a little bit easier for you. But Dalton, it’s not like the Cowboys have been great at coverage either. They’ve struggled over the last couple of years when it comes to coverage. Now, things have gotten better because their defensive line has gotten better over the last month with the addition of Coin Williams. But to me, that game plan that we saw last week was sort of the game plan that you need to have if you were the Vikings. And unfortunately for them, I don’t think that that game script is enough to keep up with the Cowboys potency on offense. I think Dallas wins this game. I’ve got this one 31 to 20. I I just don’t think that the Vikings can play a game where they’re keeping up with Dallas. So, unless the Vikings defense just really forces a lot of turnovers, makes Dak very uncomfortable. I think this is Dallas’s game to lose, especially with them being at home here. You know, something I find very strange, a weird stat for this game. You were talking about the run game and Minnesota’s need to have balance. You know, I never would have guessed this. You know, Minnesota right now is the highest explosive run rate in the league. I never would have guessed it. 15.4%. 4%. I never would have guessed that. I I don’t I wouldn’t have guessed that. They wouldn’t have been the first team that I thought of. But when I now that you say that, I think about how there have been many weeks this season where I have gone back to look at their numbers, their rushing averages, and I go, “Okay, yeah, actually these averages are pretty good.” But in my head, I remember watching the game or the film, and I go, I felt like you I feel like you didn’t run the ball that well. I felt like there were a lot of like two yard, three yard at the line of scrimmage type of carries. So saying all of that makes sense because that’s how they would even it out and get the higher yards per carry averages is if they have more explosive runs. Yeah. No, for sure. I I mean, and there have been times where I I know some Minnesota fans have been frustrated with them not running the football more and adding more balance that offense. Maybe they’re going to get to that now. You know, kind of a confidence game against Washington last week. and you do still want to be able to run the football. And you mentioned it with McCarthy, he was very rarely the guy at Michigan who was going to carry them with 40 45 pass attempts. So, it’s hard to expect him this early in his career to do that. Now, for Minnesota, like you said though, if they’re trying to go shot forshot with the Cowboys, especially in Dallas, I think they’re going to have a hard time doing that. As long as Prescott can handle himself well against Flores and all the blitz packages, I think the Cowboys are going to be okay in this game. I’ll take them 28 to

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Minnesota Vikings and The Dallas Cowboys.

Get 30% off your PFF Subscription with our Holiday sale!:
Code: HOLIDAY30
Link: https://subscribe.pff.com

Dominate your fantasy league: http://fantasy.pff.com/
Download the PFF App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pff-fan…
Join our newsletter: https://forms.gle/maqTaBKcmdPR5Vma6
NFL/NCAA Player Grades: https://www.pff.com/grades

Thank you to our sponsors. If you’re interested in supporting our shows, please reach out to sales@pff.com