Having a good four-minute offense and two-minute defense is Coachspeak for possessing the ability on both sides of the ball to protect leads late in the fourth quarter.
The Vikings have some of the key ingredients needed to be very good at both. They have the league's best running back to shorten games and many good pass rushers to disrupt opposing quarterbacks in obvious passing situations.
Yet a once-promising season sits in ruin because the Vikings have failed in both areas. Some want to assign blame to either Christian Ponder's four-minute shortcomings or the secondary's two-minute deficiencies. But since ties are back in vogue, let's call it a draw and distribute blame equally.
Four times this season, the Vikings have blown a fourth-quarter lead with less than a minute left in regulation. Three of those have come on the road. So when coach Leslie Frazier says his team is this close to being successful, he's actually right, even though his team still deserves its 2-8-1 record.
In game clock time, the Vikings could say they're 1 minute, 22 seconds from being 4-0 rather than 0-3-1 against the Bears, Browns, Cowboys and Packers. That, they could say, is 142 seconds from being 6-5 and tied with the Lions atop the NFC North.
Then again, there are numbers behind those numbers. And they in no way reflect even remotely what anyone would consider satisfactory situational execution of a four-minute offense or a two-minute defense.
On the late fourth-quarter drives that resulted in the Vikings losing their leads, the four opposing quarterbacks — Chicago's Jay Cutler, Cleveland's Brian Hoyer, Dallas' Tony Romo and Green Bay's Matt Flynn — were a combined 25-for-36 passing (69.4 percent) for 279 yards (a 70-yard average), 13 first downs, no sacks, three game-winning touchdowns and one tying field goal.
Those four teams converted five of seven third downs and the only fourth down. And, get this, the Cowboys went 90 yards in 2:09 without even facing a third down.