Second-year defenders shine for victorious Vikes

By Krupka  |   Monday, August 20, 2007  |  Comments( 8 )

Minnesota Vikings
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If you didn't already know that the Minnesota Vikings have a really good defense, Friday's performance on national television made you aware. The unit forced four turnovers, three of which were brought back for touchdowns, en route to a 37-20 thrashing of the New York Jets.

While it certainly was a collective team effort, two second-year players stood out in helping spark the dominant performance: defensive end Ray Edwards and linebacker Chad Greenway.

Edwards has parlayed a terrific training camp into a solid preseason thus far. He is making the most of his opportunity to start in place of Erasmus James, who continues to recover from surgery after suffering a torn ACL in his left knee last season.

Greenway, the Vikings' 2006 first-round pick, missed all of his rookie campaign after he was injured in the team's first preseason game on kick coverage. Like Edwards, Greenway, an ex-Iowa star, has performed very well in camp.

On the second play of the game, Greenway made a terrific play, snuffing out a screen pass to drop Jets running back Leon Washington for a 4-yard loss. With 3:36 left in the first quarter, Minnesota lined up in its base 4-3 defense with man coverage. Edwards went inside, then spun around and put heavy pressure on Jets quarterback Chad Pennington. With a hand on him, Pennington tried to dump the ball off to Washington, but Greenway was breaking for the ball the whole way, intercepted the pass and returned it 16 yards for a touchdown and a 14-3 lead.

Greenway finished with a team-high five tackles.

Last season, Minnesota was stout against the run, finishing No. 1 in the NFL against the ground game Against the pass, however, the Vikings were among the league's worst. The best way to improve a pass defense is to increase the pressure on opposing quarterbacks. Throughout camp the Vikings have focused on ways to improve their pass rush, which was nonexistent for most of last season. The defensive linemen combined for just 17.5 sacks, in fact.

However, watching Friday's game, you never would have known the Vikings had trouble rushing the quarterback last season. Time and again against the Jets' first-stringers, the Vikings were able to get heavy pressure rushing just their four down linemen. Something like that never would have occurred in 2006.

Although Edwards did jump offside once, he had an outstanding game. He put on a clinic against another second-year player, Jets left tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson. And when Ferguson, the No. 4 selection in the '06 draft, wasn't being handled by Edwards, he was getting crushed on a block by Vikings defensive tackle Kevin Williams, which helped spring a Darren Sharper interception return for a touchdown.

"Really we're just focusing on getting after the quarterback now," Edwards told the Star Tribune.

It's only the preseason, but the results thus far are encouraging. In two games the Minnesota defense has forced seven turnovers and scored four touchdowns.

Eric Krupka can be reached at ekrupka@realfootball365.com

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CommentsComments: 8  |  Sign Up  View all comments
No.1
stevo		09:30 AM
08/20/2007
Ray Edwards may have looked good, but we still have only one sack in two games by the d-line. Robison looks the best so far. My...
No.2
Corey S		10:34 AM
08/20/2007
Good point. Sacks are a huge plus, but even pressure (which we had almost none of last year) is an improvement so we can...
No.3
michael		11:44 AM
08/20/2007
I was impressed with Robison's dunk over the goalpost too! What an athlete. If Erasmus James can effectively come back off of his...
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