Monday Morning Mailbag: Assessing Vikings at Midway Point & Kendricks' Stellar Play

[Viktor]

It seems to me that the Vikings are starting to hit their stride. Do you think it hurt this team with so many young players to not have a preseason? It seems to me that it would have given them time to work out the mistakes and figure what their roles were. Younger players always need more practice to get their feel for Zimmer's system?


— Byron Voigt


We'll end with this one from Byron, who brings up a valid question about the lack of preseason games.


To start, let's take a look at the Vikings starting lineup on defense from Sunday's game. I mentioned this in my postgame story on the defense, but you could argue that Kendricks, Eric Wilson, Shamar Stephen, Harrison Smith and Anthony Harris are the only starters that remain from what the Vikings envisioned back in training camp.


That group seems to be rounding into form and certainly looks better than they did in the first few weeks of the season.


Did the lack of preseason games hurt the young players? Of course. But since no team had a preseason, I hesitate to use that as a reason why the unit struggled so much early in the season.


However, I will say that these encouraging signs seem to be a good sign for the future for youngsters such as Jeff Gladney, D.J. Wonnum and Troy Dye. As I mentioned above, we'll see if the team can make a surprising playoff run over the final eight games.


But if we continue to see the defense trend in the right direction, that should give the Vikings plenty of optimism for the future.