Vikings Defense Faces Tough Task of Slowing Down Miami’s Speed on Offense

The Vikings are preparing to head to Miami for Sunday’s game which, while the Twin Cities got its first snow Friday, will bring the (literal) heat. Players made sure to hydrate early in the week and will continue preparations for the high temps, and Daniels is prepping his unit in the classroom for a bounce-back game.

Daniels pointed out that Miami’s special teams group is probably the veteran-most the Vikings will face this season, with an experienced specialist trio of punter/holder Thomas Morstead, kicker Jason Sanders and long snapper Blake Ferguson. Waddle and Hill are threats to return punts, and Mostert can return kickoffs.

“We’ve had great conversations on how we want to attack those guys and how we want to pin them in the corners and kind of what the scope of that looks like from a coverage standpoint,” Daniels said. “But we’re excited about going up against this unit; it’s a big-time opportunity for us, especially coming off the week we had last week.”

Handling the other heat | By Craig Peters

The Dolphins defense likes to bring has much figural heat as a South Florida summer.

Offensive Coordinator Wes Phillips was asked about the secondary this week but pivoted to credit the entire defense as a whole.

“I think you’ve seen these guys against certain teams, if you don’t have a really tight plan, a really good understanding of your protection plan, they’ll bring [Cover 0] pressures where they’re bringing in one more than you can block at any point in the game. It might be a first-and-10.

“They’ve got different front structures, double-A backer package, they’ve got odd package, they’ve got a lot of different things that present a challenge. We just have to be great with our rules. We feel like we have a tight plan for those things and that’s a big part of it.