Harrison Smith, Mistral Raymond deliver positive 2012 debut

It's just one week. But Vikings coach Leslie Frazier was comforted by what he saw out of starting safeties Harrison Smith and Mistral Raymond in Sunday's win over Jacksonville. Smith, of course, was making his first NFL start. Raymond made his sixth.

The quick synopsis of their initial outing together: solid but not spectacular. And it gives Frazier confidence that the defense can make big strides forward soon.

Frazier has been effusive in his praise of Smith, who moved around well Sunday, was consistently in the right spots and "played with a lot of poise."

Raymond also had a pass break-up and seemed to gain confidence the more aggressively he played.

"There are going to be some moments where [our young safeties] may not be as aggressive as you would like for them to be because so many of the things they're doing are for the very first time," Frazier said. "You have to understand that and let them continue to grow and mature at their position. But they both have shown that they are going to be very, very good players."

The Vikings defense has often been referred to as a Cover 2 system. But they didn't rely exclusively on Cover 2 against the Jaguars and will always lean toward mixing things up when they have the personnel to do so.

"In reality, even when people have described us as a [Cover] 2 team, when we have had the personnel that will allow us to be a little bit more than 2, when we were playing our best defense, we were not a heavy Cover 2 team," Frazier said. "And our personnel is getting back to where we need it to be. The last couple of years, we've struggled on the back end from a personnel standpoint. But we're getting to where we need to be so we can mix it up a little bit more and not be as predictable as we had become."

"We were in a three-deep coverage," Frazier said. "And what you want to be able to do in three deep, you never want to let anyone get behind you. That's what you're always preaching in three deep. And we probably could have done some things to help Chris in that situation that we could have done a little bit different or a little bit better. But the ultimate goal in three deep is not to let anyone ever get behind you. That's the premise of the coverage."

Bottom line: the internal explanation of that malfunction is that Cook erred first in letting Shorts get behind him and then in twisting the wrong way as Gabbert's throw arrived.

Other updates from this morning ...