Patrick Peterson has some answers for the Vikings' struggling defense, but next season will bring more questions

Patrick Peterson — Jim Thorpe Award winner at Louisiana State for the best college defensive back, fifth overall pick in the 2011 draft and NFL 2010s All-Decade team member who might be headed to his ninth Pro Bowl later this month — carries a gravitas uncommon to most NFL players when he assesses the Vikings defense.

He also enjoys a suite of platforms from which to do it: Peterson makes a weekly Monday afternoon appearance on KFAN-FM, broadcasts his "All Things Covered" podcast with former NFL cornerback Bryant McFadden on a YouTube channel with more than 25,000 subscribers and holds a weekly news conference in the Vikings locker room each Thursday.

The popular theories for how to fix the 32nd-ranked Vikings defense, following a 34-23 loss in Detroit that swung on two long Jared Goff touchdown passes, have centered largely on the schemes the Vikings need to scrap or the defensive coordinator they need to replace. Peterson has another.

"Just as guys, as players on the field, we have to understand the moments that we're in," he said during his news conference. "Understand whatever the offense has given us. Believe what we went through in our studies to try to make a play before the play has even started."

With teammate Cameron Dantzler sick this week, Peterson did not play host to his weekly dinner-and-film study session for Vikings corners on Wednesday night. Ordinarily, though, the sessions give Peterson a chance to tell his younger teammates just how much they can improve by deciphering an opponent's tendencies before the game and playing with alertness during it.

He has known Vikings defensive coordinator Ed Donatell since meeting him on a pre-draft visit to San Francisco in 2011, and long admired the scheme Donatell ran under Vic Fangio. Those 49ers teams reached three consecutive NFC Championship Games and a Super Bowl from 2011 to '13; their Bears team led the league in defense in 2018 and their Broncos team was third in the league defensively in 2021, Fangio's last as head coach.

The scheme does not include as many pre-snap checks, he said, as some of the blitz-heavy schemes in which he played in Arizona. But it does require the kind of on-field cohesion the Lions game showed the Vikings secondary still lacks at times.

Goff's first TD, a 41-yard pass to Jameson Williams, came after Dantzler missed a pre-snap signal that the Vikings would check to a different coverage, Peterson said on KFAN on Monday.

In the second quarter, when Josh Metellus (playing safety in place of the injured Harrison Smith) responded to the Lions' motion by leaving his deep safety position three seconds before a snap, Goff recognized the Vikings were in a three-deep coverage and quickly targeted Dantzler, who would not have safety help against D.J. Chark. The receiver caught the pass for a 48-yard score that put Detroit up 14-7.

"We gave them two free touchdowns, if you ask me," Peterson said on KFAN. "That just comes down to guys executing their assignment at all times. ... We're going to get teams' best shots. We have to understand that, and we have to relish that — because when you get in the playoffs, it's the best teams that are still standing."

The Vikings return home with a second shot to clinch the NFC North on Saturday against a Colts team that's turned the ball over more than any team in the league and has scored fewer points than all but one. They could have some different approaches to pressuring the quarterback, after coach Kevin O'Connell called for the Vikings to be more aggressive. On Thursday, O'Connell said he'd had a good week of dialogue with the team's defensive staff about new ideas and subtle changes to tighten up the Vikings' coverages.

"I think there's been an urgency over there that I've felt in their preparation – both with things we want to do a little bit better and obviously some new things, tweaks, things we think might help those guys be in some better positions," he said. "Now we've got to go execute that plan."

The Colts game begins a four-game onramp to the playoffs with forgiving matchups for the Vikings secondary: None of their final four opponents has a passing attack ranked better than 19th in the league. If a defense that's allowed 51 pass plays of 20 yards or more — the second-most in the league — is going to get it right before the playoffs, now would seem to be the time.

It could also be an important window for the Vikings to determine what their secondary will look like in the future.

Of the five Vikings defensive backs who've played more than 400 snaps, two (Peterson and Chandon Sullivan) will be free agents after the season. Backups Duke Shelley and Kris Boyd will also be free agents. Dantzler is entering the final year of his rookie contract in 2023; the two corners the Vikings drafted in the first four rounds (Andrew Booth Jr. and Akayleb Evans) have been limited to a combined 267 snaps because of injuries.

At safety, Smith carries a $19.2 million cap hit before his age-34 season; the Vikings might be loathe to think about life beyond the six-time Pro Bowler with first-round pick Lewis Cine losing most of his rookie year to a compound fracture in his left leg and second-year player Camryn Bynum still learning.

Cine and Booth were the fourth and fifth picks the Vikings have spent on defensive backs in the top three rounds of their past five drafts. Only two teams (the Raiders and Buccaneers) have used more high picks on their secondary.

The final two first-round cornerbacks former General Manager Rick Spielman selected, though, are no longer with the team. The Vikings traded 2018 first-rounder Mike Hughes to Kansas City after the 2020 season, and cut 2020 first-round pick Jeff Gladney after he was indicted on felony family violence charges in August 2021. Hughes is now with the Lions; Gladney was killed in a car accident in May.

The Vikings' investments in the secondary — seven first- or second-round corners and two first-round safeties since 2012 — brought several years of certainty to a position group that had been a liability for much of the early 2000s. Attempts to reconfigure the secondary since 2019, though, haven't produced long-term answers. Peterson, enjoying a resurgent season at age 32, says he plans to be retired within three years. The Vikings are still trying to coach up the younger options behind him.

"You just have to look at the totality of, understanding what routes we're getting, understanding splits, understanding the particular spot of the game," Peterson said. "It's just understanding the formations, how offenses are lining up against you and the process of eliminating [routes] from there. Once you have a good understanding of that, I think that can put players in closer proximity to the receiver."