Minnesota Vikings: How They Can Salvage Season, Make the Most of Remaining Games

The Minnesota Vikings lost to the Green Bay Packers 24-21 on Sunday afternoon to fall to 4-7 on the year.

With any thought of a playoff push now in the rearview mirror, what's left to hope for Vikings fans as the team plays out its final five games?

How can Minnesota salvage what's left of this year and make the most out of its remaining games?

Sunday's loss to the Packers followed a similar pattern to much of the Vikings' 2014 schedule: The defense probably played well enough to win, but the offense just couldn't generate enough points to get a victory.

While a close ballgame with the red-hot Packers was probably more than most Vikings fans anticipated heading into Sunday, Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer made it plainly clear what he thought of staying close to the Packers meant to the team at his presser on Monday:

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Mike Zimmer: "We're not into moral victories around here.''

— Chris Tomasson (@christomasson) November 24, 2014"

That's exactly what you want to hear from your head coach and Zimmer's the perfect place to start when assessing the rest of the Vikings' season.

Unlike past seasons, the Vikings aren't in the market for their next franchise quarterback, so there's no reason for a certain segment of the fanbase to hope the team loses out to get a higher draft pick. Any quick glance at the last 10 drafts shows you you're just as likely to find a star picking between 10-15 as picking fourth or fifth when it comes to non-quarterbacks.

Also, unlike last season, the coach isn't going anywhere, so there's no reason to hope for losses in order to get a new coach and a reboot to the program.

Jim Mone/Associated Press

Any logical assessment of Zimmer has to be pretty positive, regardless of what the Vikings' record is at the end of the season.

Zimmer is a straight-shooter, a no-nonsense football guy who's clearly made the defense miles better than it was for the last couple of seasons. He's a breath of fresh air when it comes to talking about his team and assessing it after wins and losses. 

He doesn't say what he thinks he should say, or what he thinks might sound good, or whether he should protect his players. He says what he thinks, he says what's on his mind and he's not condescending or egotistical about it. 

He's proved to be not so full of himself that he won't back off some statements when given time to rethink them, and he's man enough to apologize or retract something if he thinks that's the proper course of action.

All of that is fine and great, and you'd hope every coach would be like that (very few are), but in the end the more important question is: Can Zimmer coach?

While Minnesota probably won't have a very good record at the end of the year, the answer is yes, Zimmer can coach.

Zimmer inherited a roster that had very little depth and lacked high-end talent at most of the skill positions. His best player, running back Adrian Peterson, was lost for the season after being put on the exempt list and then suspended due to child abuse charges.

His starting quarterback, Matt Cassel, broke his foot in the third game of the season and was lost for the year. The guy who many expected to lead the team in receptions, Kyle Rudolph, missed six games after having surgery to repair a sports hernia.

Zimmer has taken a defense that ranked 31st in the NFL last season and has it in the upper half of the league this year, currently ranking 14th overall in team defense.

The offense isn't pretty right now, but that's in large part due to the missing players already mentioned.

What Zimmer can do to salvage the rest of the season is to simply stay the course. Continue to teach his young team to play football his way, to work hard and realize there aren't any shortcuts to getting better.

Zimmer can use the last five games to continue to evaluate the players he has on hand and decide who he wants to keep and who he's better off without.

After Zimmer, the most important figure on the Vikings is rookie quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. It's been an up-and-down first year for Bridgewater; he's looked very good at times and not so good at other times.

Ann Heisenfelt/Associated Press

Like most bad football teams, he's playing behind an offensive line that isn't playing at a high level, so he's having to learn on the fly, while under heavy duress most of the time. It's not an ideal situation for a young quarterback to learn under, but it's what faces most quarterbacks who are drafted in the first round.

The thing to like best about Bridgewater so far is that nothing seems to rattle him. Even when he's under siege from opposing defenses, his body language doesn't change and his demeanor remains calm and collected. 

Like a boxer who never seems to do well in the first three rounds but gets better as a fight goes on, Bridgewater seems to get better as each game goes on, which is a great sign in that he is clearly picking up things as games unfold.

Bridgewater doesn't have a big arm and his accuracy on deep balls hasn't been very good. The first one obviously isn't a deal-breaker (nobody would accuse Peyton Manning of having a big arm), but the second one will be problematic if he doesn't show some improvement.

While wins and losses won't be crucial down the stretch in 2014, the Vikings should continue to take deep shots down the field. Bridgewater still has much to learn at the NFL level, and one of those things is tempo. He needs to get a better feel for how quickly things happen at the pro level.

How long does he have in the pocket? How long are guys open during certain routes? How quickly does he need to get rid of the ball once he's made up his mind where he's going with it?

There are hundreds of other little things that can only be really learned under the crucible of NFL game action, and Bridgewater has five more games of reps to put under his belt during the 2014 season.

Vikings fans and coaches may not see any improvement this year, or only incremental progress. The hope, however, is that come next summer and then next season, they'll have a quarterback who's been around the block and for whom the game has slowed down a little bit.

If Bridgewater is making the same mistakes and missing wide-open targets at this time next season, it will be a much bigger issue than it is now.

Elsewhere on offense the Vikings have two players whose poor seasons have stood out like sore thumbs. Left tackle Matt Kalil was the fourth-overall pick in 2012 and was supposed to a franchise cornerstone the team could plug in for a decade and forget about.

Jeff Haynes/Associated Press

The only thing they'd like to forget about now are his past two seasons. 

After making the Pro Bowl as a rookie, Kalil struggled with injuries during his second season and his third season has been teetering close to disaster. Kalil has become a favorite whipping boy on sports talk radio in the Twin Cities, and racking up three penalties against the Packers didn't help his cause.

Pro Football Focus, which grades out every player after each game, has been particularly hard on Kalil all season, but Sam Monson called his game against the Packers an improvement:

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Matt Kalil, OT: -0.5

Breakdown: We have given Matt Kalil a lot of flak this season so it’s only fair to point out when he holds up OK. As you can see, his grade has a minus sign in front of it, so that’s about as far as we can go in terms of praise this time, but it represents only his third game not graded in the red this season and his second in three weeks.

Signature Stat: This was the first game all season that Kalil has not allowed his quarterback to hit the ground. He surrendered three hurries, but no sacks or knockdowns.

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Over the course of the last five games, Kalil simply has to bear down and play better. He may never be the franchise left tackle the Vikings hoped they were getting when they used the fourth-overall pick on him, but he's still just 25 years old and has proven he has the talent to be at least a useful left tackle.

Cordarrelle Patterson might be in the midst of the most disappointing season of anyone on the roster, but that might be because his explosive play as a rookie shot expectations through the roof for his second season.

The truth is, Patterson is just 23 years old and this is only his third season in big-time football. It's his third different offense in those three years.

Jeff Haynes/Associated Press

Does that justify the invisibility cloak he's been wearing for most of the year? Absolutely not. At 6'2", 220 pounds with blazing speed and cutting ability that is bestowed on very few people, Patterson should be putting up bigger numbers than he is almost by accident.

Thirty catches for 350 yards and one touchdown just isn't cutting it. That ranks him 94th in the league in receiving yards, just ahead of journeyman tight end Owen Daniels, only with two less touchdowns.

Over the course of the last five games of the 2014 season, Patterson has to assert himself on offense. It's not up to the Vikings coaches or Bridgewater to force the offense toward Patterson; it's up to him to make himself a bigger part of the offense. Get yourself open and make yourself available to your quarterback, it's that simple.

Defensively the Vikings are certainly headed in the right direction and have plenty of young pieces that are improving each week. 

Up front Everson Griffen and Sharrif Floyd are both having exceptional years and Linval Joseph was a great addition to the middle of the line.

Steve Nesius/Associated Press

Rookie linebacker Anthony Barr has been a terror for most of the season, but seems to have hit a rookie wall of late, making just 12 tackles over the last three games after having 25 during the previous three. Barr is still second on the team with 66 tackles, and he brings speed and a ferocity the Vikings defense has lacked for years.

The secondary could use a little more speed but has taken great strides under Zimmer. Harrison Smith is a star at safety and cornerback Xavier Rhodes is perhaps the most improved player on the roster, leading the team with 11 passes defensed.

While cornerback Josh Robinson probably never wants to see the Bears receivers again, he's had a very good bounce-back season after struggling at the slot corner in 2013.

Over the final five games the Vikings would like to see more of the same from their defense. It's a young group that needs a couple of more pieces to be among the league's best, but considering what Minnesota's defense looked like at this time last year, it's been a hugely successful season.

There will be no playoff push for the Vikings in 2014. What they are is a young team with too many young guys still trying to prove themselves to be ready to compete in the playoffs. 

Zimmer has done a great job of changing the culture around the Vikings and a couple of wins down the stretch would build confidence heading toward the offseason. The NFL is a "what have you done for me lately" business and every player has to prove himself not only every season, but every week. 

Nobody likes to be out of it with five games remaining, but the Vikings still have much to play for. Considering all the bad fortune that's plagued the Vikings in 2014, it would be pretty shocking if they were still in it. You usually can't make a team a winner overnight, but you can change the culture quickly and Zimmer has done that.

Better days aren't that far off for the Minnesota Vikings.