Vikings’ biggest roster issue was glaring against the Giants and it’s not going away
There were serious questions about the Minnesota Vikings’ depth on defense, and it was glaring in the preseason opener.
The preseason opener for the Minnesota Vikings was a very mixed bag. They got the win over the New York Giants 13-10 and saw some impressive elements at play. The first-team offense had a sustained nine-play drive ending in a field goal with Kyler Murray under center.
On defense, the first-team flashed in a big way over Jaxson Dart, including an awesome sack from Jay Ward.
Even with the success of the defense, one of the biggest questions about it was at edge rusher. Unfortunately, that hasn’t gone away.
EDGE3 is becoming a grave concern
We know that Dallas Turner and Andrew Van Ginkel are both very talented edge rushers, but you need to have 3-4 deep at the position. Going into training camp, they didn’t have that, especially after trading Jonathan Greenard.
Right now, the EDGE3 is Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins, who can have a great role in a multitude of ways with his power and linear explosiveness. However, it became very evident on Saturday that he isn’t currently an edge rusher.
He played edge for the majority of his snaps on Saturday and there were some serious concerns that developed. He allowed running backs to break contain multiple times like in the above clip, mainly due to two things:
- Inexperience setting the edge
- Lack of lateral quickness
It’s not that Ingram-Dawkins can’t be a successful player in multiple ways, including on the edge. However, his issues, along with not bending the arc, raise major concerns about his effectiveness long-term. After Ingram-Dawkins, the Vikings are looking at Tyler Batty and Bo Richter as their other options at the spot, which certainly leads me to believe that an outside option is going to be the path for the Vikings.
The longer the Vikings go without finding someone to add to their edge depth, the bigger the concern will be.
