Just win, baby. That's basically the only positive.
I'll start with the defense. The secondary is not very good. I'm sure a big part of this is that Cine and Booth are not contributors yet. Will they ever be? Remains to be seen but if not, Minnesota will have to spend lots of draft capital or cap space in free agency on it again.
The pass rush today was even worse. You cannot give an NFL QB that much time, even if you're dropping 7 into coverage. And Detroit also ran the ball pretty well. Donatell's strategy is to play conservatively and wait for a 3rd down opportunity to try to get off the field. I don't see this working against good offenses. You have to actively make plays and create problems instead of waiting for an offense to mess up on 1st or 2nd down to try to jump on them on 3rd. Green Bay in Week 1 is an outlier, but Philly and Detroit are both pretty good offenses and we didn't do much against either.
On offense, I think we have a problem at WR. Thielen is aging and has lost a little edge - it happens. Osborn is not what we hoped he would be on the high end. He is a serviceable, maybe above-average WR3, but he is not a WR2 right now. Irv Smith is maybe a bust and is definitely not a difference maker at this point. We have now seen two straight defenses decide to shut down Jefferson and dare Minnesota to do something else to figure it out. Thank God we were able to do so on that last drive, because before it, we were getting beat by that plan.
After Week 1, I was optimistic that this team would win the North and maybe be a legit contender in the NFC. But I definitely don't think that anymore. I just don't think the roster is as good as we had hoped and had been led to believe. This isn't a team in a "window," and it's not particularly close to one, either. It's not a bad team, but I think it's pretty close to the league median. Around 9-8 with a shot at the #7 seed is my expectation now.
