Ed Donatell Shares Thoughts on Defensive Struggles & How to Improve for Remainder of 2022 Season

Here’s how you improve your defense… You fire Ed donatell..

i feel ed’s been given a fair chance… it’s time for him to go… can’t let being afraid to hurt someone’s feelings be the reason you don’t win a Superbowl 😒

if this scheme is suppose to be getting better then wouldn’t it be improving slightly each game? it’s getting worse if you ask me 😒

Making Hunter a stand up and recognizing it will take him a year to adjust seems like your sacrificing a year of a prime players talent to fit your scheme of ” Bend don’t break”.

Kevin O’Connell’s biggest mistake so far…hiring Ed. Might be the reason we do not get our first Super Bowl. Everything else seems to be in place…the talent is there!

Mr. Ed Onashell on behalf of all Viking fans that have endured the pain of this franchise over all the years. Please step down as play caller before you add another deep cut into all our hearts. Please and thank you.

“Tough times don’t last; tough people do.”

– Gregory Peck

A couple weeks ago it was passing yards are basically insignificant. Today it’s we’re giving up a lot of passing yards. We wanna bring that down, because we really think it could help our team….. I mean jeez man, its offensive how much of a bullshitter this guy is. Maybe nothing will change but Pettine needs to call plays from here on out. You can’t keep doing this, it’s insanity. The lack of pressure, the lack of any significant adjustments, allowing any NFL caliber QB to be comfortable & throw the ball around like it’s a 7 on 7. He’s selling fools gold. Even in the wins there’s been how many ints to end the game? Dantzler stealing the ball from ISM. You cannot sustain even the good days. Someone with authority has to step in here before all the work from this unique season is ruined.

He’s such a hard person to hate. The lack of flexibility to bridge the gap between his scheme and the strengths of the current players is probably the most frustrating part.

Hopefully we can improve our defense this weekend Ed

If it took this much fan & media pressure for him to acknowledge this evolving issue, it’s beyond his ability to fix. Should have been addressed already. Can’t say I’m confident that we will see adequate change to allow us a deep playoff run.

Not an Ed hater, I think he’s probably a great dude to a cup with. But this sounds like a nervous man. And he should be. His scheme isn’t working. We have an old D and that’s hard, so adapt to their strengths.

You got it ED, we will make our defense get better 😊

Danielle Hunter shouldn’t have to waste a second deciding if he should cover Penei Sewell or keep Rushing the qb on 3rd down and long. The problem is teams have figured us out and Ed does not know what to do about it. He has been giving this same speech for three weeks now.

Im gonna be honest, I get that our defense gave up 34 points and 480+ yards but at the same time, our offense in this case needs to step up. Like 23 points with an offense with JJ, Cousins, Theilen, Osborn, TJ, and Cook is just unacceptable. We should have atleast 30 points every game with this offense. The eagles had to score 45-48 points to beat the lions and tbh we need to do that as well. I hope we can get a good defense to come through, but at the same time when they do come through, the offense doesn’t get it done. There’s a lot more holes to cover than we needing a better defense tbh.

We have the worst Defense in the league. This is a broken scheme. You can’t change it mid season but you can adapt it to the personnel we have. You MUST adapt it. We can’t waste this record.

Listing excuses and then saying we won’t look for excuses is what Ed does very well…. tells us what he thinks we want to hear. Breaks my heart because he’s the nicest guy, but he’s just killing this team right now!

Ed Donashell definitely had ” The Talk” before he went up on that podium. 👍🏼

What I’d do to fix this defense:

I’d keep Hicks and Kendricks off the exteriors (THEY NO LONGER HAVE THE SPEED) and keep them spying the QB in the middle of the field. In those “OLB Roles”. For the exterior, we should place Metellus on the right side of Hicks (In my eyes he’s the slowest) and move Cam Bynum down on the left side of Kendricks.

You’re probably saying, “This guy is crazy, Bynum is small” Well, safeties are meant to be good tacklers and all we need is someone fast to wrap players up until our slow LBs get there to finish the tackles but, Metellus can definitely hold his own and I’m sure Bynum can too. We are really only getting beat by speed.

Now I guess you’re wondering what we do with our safety position.

We go out and get Anthony Harris. Yes, I know but I believe Anthony Harris is better than Bynum

So, we have: Top Harrison and Anthony Harris —- Bottom: Metellus, Kendricks, Hicks, Bynum

2nd Option:

We keep everything as is but, we run three safeties

So, we have: Top: Anthony Harris, Harrison Smith, Cam Bynum Bottom: Hicks (Anthony Harris will float overtop to keep everything Infront of Hicks), Kendricks) and Metellus on the exterior by himself because he’s younger and has the speed.

I believe this would stop 80% of our coverage issues and then our line would actually be able to start getting to the QB.

The reason we’re getting torched is because we don’t have the right personnel playing in the 3-4 defense but, they’re literally on the team. The 3-4 defense is supposed to have 4 true linebackers. The two interior linebackers should be great in coverage and be able to read and adjust to plays quickly.

Kendricks is fine in this role, but he hasn’t been dropping back into coverage like he normally does and neither has hicks. What’s happening is they’re always getting caught in the middle of those deep passes because they keep jumping underneath for some reason. If they can at least keep everything Infront of them; eventually the line will get there, and they’ll start to get that pressure. In other words, we can’t complain about a lack of pressure if the wide receivers are wide open in 5 seconds. The secondary has to do their job to make it difficult for the QB to have somewhere to go with the ball.

Tip for you Ed, if you continue to play soft coverage teams will continue to move up and down the field on us. The scheme is killing us every game and the offense is the only thing keeping us in games