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A porous offensive line, influenced by years of neglect, was a big factor in preventing some of the best years of the Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman partnership from being even better.
Bad offensive line play sabotaged the 2016 season, contributed to the lopsided 2017 NFC title game loss and has made life more difficult for Kirk Cousins since he arrived in 2018.
Of late, though, it has been less about neglect and more about hits and misses. Spielman's Vikings picked an offensive lineman in the first or second round of every draft from 2018-21 in a quest to get it right, and there is some evidence that three of those pieces (tackles Brian O'Neill and Christian Darrisaw plus guard Ezra Cleveland) can form the foundation of a functional line even if 2019 first round pick Garrett Bradbury's ineffectiveness leaves a hole at center.
Instead, as the Vikings enter 2022 under a new regime, there is this to ponder: By the end of the Spielman era, the defensive line was as big a problem as offensive line and was suffering from neglect — something I talked about on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast.
This shows up in two big ways.
The first hadn't occurred to me until reading Andrew Krammer's story Tuesday about the Vikings' first free agency move of the offseason: reportedly signing Harrison Phillips, a defensive tackle, from Buffalo.
As noted in the story, this is the third consecutive offseason the Vikings have made a defensive tackle their first signing: Michael Pierce in 2020, Dalvin Tomlinson in 2021 and now Phillips, whose arrival will mean the end of Pierce's time in Minnesota.
Some of this year's change could be attributed to a scheme change to a 3-4 defense and a new regime wanting new players. But it also speaks to an inability to find stability on the interior of the line ever since parting ways with Linval Joseph after the 2019 season.
In 2017, the Vikings were No. 5 in NFL run defense, allowing 3.7 yards per carry. That figure went up every year thereafter: 4.1 in 2018, 4.3 in 2019, 4.6 in 2020 and 4.7 in 2021, when the Vikings were in the bottom five of the league.
They couldn't stop the run and couldn't get consistent QB pressure, which speaks to a combination of injuries (Danielle Hunter) and more importantly the second factor in this defensive line analysis: years of draft neglect.
The Vikings under Spielman didn't pick a DL in the first or second round of any draft from 2014-2021. The last was Sharrif Floyd in 2013. Eight years, all with a defensive-minded head coach who likes to rush the passer, and nobody in the front four chosen with a high pick.
Of course it's hard to address every area of need, especially when you are investing so much draft capital to compensate for years of offensive line neglect.
Perhaps the new regime led by Kwesi Adofo-Mensah can find a way to address both lines at the same time.
