When it comes to breaking tackles, there are teams who were born to do it, like Dan Campbell's Detroit Lions, and then there are those who avoided contact like the plague, such as Kevin O'Connell's Minnesota Vikings. Through the first four weeks of the 2023 NFL season, Detroit leads the league in broken tackles with 19. As for the Vikings, well, they are in last 19 behind them at zero.
I don't know if T.J. Hockenson got that former Lions stink on the Vikings after being traded over at the deadline last year or if Minnesota general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah envisions himself working in the recruiting department of a Big 12 program, but the Vikings have been the antithesis of a Mike Zimmer-led team under O'Connell. They used to be tough as nails, now they are as soft as Charmin...
What the hell happened to you? While I get that Dan frickin' Campbell, man, has his players wanting to run through a frickin' barbed wire fence, man, the Vikings are who we thought they were: A dome team looking for a new quarterback at the end of the season, preferably someone who plays in either Los Angeles or Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Either way, you cannot reach the postseason if you cannot run.
Maybe letting Dalvin Cook go was a bad idea? Adofo-Mensah wants to Poprocks and Coke blow it up!
Minnesota Vikings are as soft as the Metrodome roof that once collapsed
While some Vikings fans may argue that teams that are proficient at breaking tackles like the Lions and the Atlanta Falcons have already played the saddest run-stuffing team on the planet known as the Green Bay Packers, this is the NFL. Do your job and break a frickin' tackle, man. This is a team that gave us the Purple People Eaters, Fran Tarkenton scrambling and Bud Grant refusing to wear sleeves.
Minnesota nice is a real thing, but these are tough people as well. Playing in a dome is practical, given the Twin Cities' climate, but shouldn't you be able to use speed to your advantage playing on the fast track known as turf? Would-be tacklers don't have to always be certain tacklers. A good, ole stiff arm or a shuffle of your Nikes should do the trick. Yet, here we are... Four weeks in and no broken tackles.
As a man incapable of breaking any tackles, I can understand the difficulty of shedding a full-grown man with hate in his eyes and anger on his breath on the reg. Then again, y'all do this for a living, and I just write about you. This may or may not be fair, but this is our reality. If the Minnesota Twins can win multiple postseason games, then the Vikings can break a tackle or two before the end of the season.
When the Vikings do break a tackle, I hope U.S. Bank Stadium blasts Prince's anthem "Let's Go Crazy".