Brian Flores’ defense was dynamite in “weighty” situations last season, holding offenses to a 37.1 percent conversion rate on fourth downs and 35.6 percent on third. That ranked 1st and 4th in the NFL.<\/p>\n
If practice is any kind of indicator, those figures could persist in 2025.<\/p>\n
At the end of Wednesday’s session, the first-team, second-team and developmental groups traded chances to move the sticks on varying third-and-distances. Overall, it was a struggle for the offenses.<\/p>\n
McCarthy completed his first attempt near the right sideline to Rondale Moore \u2013 but too far from the line to gain. On his second dropback, McCarthy was covered up in a hurry as Cashman flew in for a sack.<\/p>\n
The second group suffered a similar fate, as Sam Howell took back-to-back sacks. On one, Ingram-Dawkins pressured from the interior while Gabe Murphy and Bo Richter collapsed the edges.<\/p>\n
When the first team eventually came up for another try, Dallas Turner said, “Not so fast!” The 2024 first-rounder exploded out of his stance and powered right tackle Brian O’Neill into McCarthy’s lap.<\/p>\n
Toward the end of the drill, the offense found a groove, advancing the chains on three straight plays. Brett Rypien zipped a pair of passes to Tim Jones and Thayer Thomas for first downs; Thomas elevated to collect his target; and Max Brosmer precisely delivered a deep pass to Dontae Fleming on the final snap of practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian Flores’ defense was dynamite in “weighty” situations last season, holding offenses to a 37.1 percent conversion rate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[14288,7,233,259,2529,14289,1025,31439,6,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-267667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-3-observations-story","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-vikings","12":"tag-minnesotavikings","13":"tag-news-3-observations","14":"tag-news-index","15":"tag-news-training-camp","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114984651730044015","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}