Minnesota Vikings snap counts expose multiple potential trends to monitor this season
The Minnesota Vikings won their first game by a whopping 22 points over the New York Giants this past Sunday. It was the first time they had won a game by three scores since December 15th, 2019 when they beat the Los Angeles Chargers in the soccer stadium they called home until So-Fi Stadium opened […]
The Minnesota Vikings won their first game by a whopping 22 points over the New York Giants this past Sunday. It was the first time they had won a game by three scores since December 15th, 2019 when they beat the Los Angeles Chargers in the soccer stadium they called home until So-Fi Stadium opened up.
The game was close early but it felt like the Vikings' lead was insurmountable in the second half. That led to the Vikings being able to coast on offense in the fourth quarter while the defense held court with relative ease.
Minnesota Vikings snap counts show trends
The day after the game comes the snap counts for each team. Looking at them as a whole don't mean a ton but there are some things you can use to potentially predict things moving forward.
Week one as a construct is an anomaly. There are many factors that go into how much a player does or doesn't play, especially since most starters barely play in the preseason. However, these splits could become trends and are worth watching.
Running back splits somewhat close
The Vikings have two running backs that they will use this season. Aaron Jones is viewed as the top back and Ty Chandler is his 1b. The real question is how much each player will play moving forward.
In week one, Jones played in 30 snaps and Chandler played in 19. That is essentially a 60/40 split with fullback C.J. Ham getting some third-down snaps, something I predicted going into the season. Jones is a very talented and efficient back, but he does have injury concerns. Chandler is also very explosive but hasn't shown the consistency to be a three-down back.
Looking at this split shows that they believe in spelling Jones regularly and I would expect this to continue.
Edge rushers get a lot of run
The four edge rusher package is likely to become a thing that we see often, especially with the versatility that the edge group has. Out of 70 snaps, the Vikings had all of the edge rushers amass at least 29 snaps (41%).
Jonathan Greenard: 52 (73%)
Andrew Van Ginkel: 41 (58%)
Dallas Turner: 36 (51%)
Pat Jones II: 34 (48%)
Jihad Ward: 29 (41%)
This is an impressive amount of snaps for all of them as a collective whole and it sends a potential signal of how defensive coordinator Brian Flores wants to play football moving forward. It also could be due to playing a quarterback that likes to run and next week against the San Francisco 49ers could call for more beef up the middle.
WR3 doesn't seem to be solidified
Going into week one the third wide receiver spot seemed to be set in stone with Jalen Nailor's performance during training camp. However, the snap counts don't really tell us all that much. Brandon Powell played in 30 (55%) snaps while Nailor played in 26 (47%) snaps.
The one caveat that has this potentially skewed is the injury to Jordan Addison. He played in 28 snaps (51%) before being ruled out of the game in the third quarter. How much did that play a factor? Hard to say for sure, but it's worth monitoring.
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