The Vikings have used a base 4-3 defense for a long, long time. That’s going to be changing.
Asked during his introductory press conference whether the Vikings will use a three-man defensive front, new head coach Kevin O’Connell said that, indeed, the team will.
“I think from a base standpoint you can look at it that way,” O’Connell said. “But I think somebody threw out the stat to me the other day, with everybody really living in 11 personnel [one running back, one tight end] nowadays, I think depending on the defense you talk to, 81 percent of the time they’re in nickel defense, which essentially is just a 4-3 with a nickel in the game instead of -- a fifth DB, I should say, in the game instead of a third linebacker. A lot of times a big thing . . . is being multiple with your fronts because I know as an offensive coach if we know where you’re going to be, we know where you’re going to line up, that makes it pretty easy at least to design things to attack angles, understand how you want to run the ball, how you want to protect, but when you’re changing that picture and forcing opponents to deal with multiple fronts during a game, during a drive in some cases, that can be a real weapon for a defense, pairing that with some really good things on the back end, that’s kind of what we’re hunting.”
So it’ll be a 3-man base, but with multiple fronts aimed at keeping the offense guessing.
That makes sense on the surface, but the challenge comes from having the right personnel in place. If the defense will be fundamentally changing, some players currently on the team may not fit. And the Vikings would then need to find other players who are better skilled to running the defense.
The best coaching happens when the systems take advantage of the things the available players can do. Forcing a square peg into a round hole becomes a recipe for a bad defense. If the Vikings aren’t careful about the transition they plan to make, that’s precisely what they will have.
