With Bridgewater and Keenum, Vikings had only one option

Minnesota is going to stick with Case Keenum at quarterback right now and that’s really the only option for coach Mike Zimmer.

The Vikings are 7-2 and have a chance to run away with the NFC North. They’ve won five games in a row heading into a tough stretch. Keenum has had a lot to do with that, so even though 2015 starter Teddy Bridgewater is back from that devastating knee injury, Keenum can roll with this thing and see how far he can go.

If things go sideways, they’ve always got a pretty good Plan B.

We’ve seen Minnesota in the past win with the combination of a dominating defense and Adrian Peterson for 30 carries. But Keenum has been a big reason why they’re winning this year. He’s able to move in the pocket. He keeps his eyes downfield and made some big plays Sunday when they put up 38 points in winning at Washington.

Receivers Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs have been playing out of this world. I think they’re the best receiver tandem in the league right now and they’re making Keenum’s job easy.

He did throw two bad interceptions back-to-back in the second half of the Washington game. But you can give Keenum some time and trust me, if he starts to struggle, he’ll know. Everybody will know. He’s not going to fight you on it.

He’ll know it’s Bridgewater’s time to go in and do something with it.

They had him warming up on the sideline Sunday after Keenum threw the interceptions – and quarterbacks don’t just start warming up for no reason. When another quarterback throws a couple of picks, usually it’s common courtesy to not just go start warming up, because every camera in the stadium is going to go to you.

Someone told him to start warming up.

That just tells you the Vikings are ready to make a move if they have to.

I know Mike Zimmer. He’s an honest guy. Everybody who has played for him loves him because he is very blunt and honest. He’ll tell you exactly what he’s thinking. He doesn’t always tell the media what he’s thinking, but he’ll tell the players. I guarantee Keenum knows what he’s up against.

I know the Vikings want to get Bridgewater on the field, for a lot of reasons. He has played good ball and he’s coming up on a contact year, so they have to make a decision on their future, who takes them forward. It’s hard, because Teddy hasn’t played in a long time. To see him get emotional on the sidelines last week, active for the first time since Jan. 10, 2016, he probably thought at some point during this process that he might not ever play again. You just don’t know. You’re having a complete knee reconstruction and you never know if you’re going to be able to get back out there.

There’s an unknown for athletes that’s kind of scary, so for him, seeing him back on the field is fantastic.

But the problem is you have a 7-2 football team that’s playing good football – including its starting quarterback, who isn’t the franchise quarterback. It’s a unique situation.

It’s not like you can just go out and play around with this team, not when they have the Rams on Sunday and then have three road games in a row at Detroit, Atlanta and Carolina; the last seven weeks of the season, they will be playing five teams that have winning records going into the weekend.

Question of the week

From Arlene Merrow: What percentage of plays do you receive from the sidelines when the game is in progress? If you receive plays at the start of the game – how many plays are scheduled before and who dictates what you can call?

The whole process starts through the week of preparation. The coordinators build that game plan with the quarterback and the quarterback coach and you’re constantly tweaking and dialing it down to very specific details on the order you like certain plays called in certain situations. So, for example, third-and-2 is generally short yardage, third-and-3 to 6 is another category, and in each category you will have six or seven play calls that your coordinator likes and that you like.

What will happen is on Saturday, in your meeting the night before the game, th quarterback will rank those plays based on what he likes best in each of those situations. Obviously, coverage will dictate things and the way a defense is playing will dictate things. But in all those categories, third-and-short, third-and-medium, third-and-long, red zone from the 20 to the 15, from the 15 to the 10 and all the way down to the goal line, first- and second-down runs, first- and second-down passes, you put those plays in an order that you like and the good coordinators are very receptive to that. They talk you through that whole thing. Fourth-and-goal, what’s our pass play going to be? Two-point conversion? Everything.

As far as normal play calls and the freedom that you have at the line of scrimmage, a lot of coordinators are different. Some coordinators, they want you to run the exact play that they called. They have shifts and motions and ways to create mismatches and they want you to run it. The other side of that, they’ll give you a lot of freedom at the line. They’ll give you a play, but it will be packaged with two other plays so a lot of times it will be a run to the right, a run to the left or a pass and that will all come to your headset as a package. You get to the line, you see what the coverage is, you see what the defensive front is, and you get into the best of those three plays.

Guys like Tom Brady (really, any experienced quarterback who has been in the same system for three or four years) can go from those three plays to pretty much everything. There’s a code word or a hand signal that I can give to the receivers. There’s a call that I can make to the line and the running backs to get me into any play I want to run from that formation. There are so many ways to do it, but that’s for the top 5 percent.

The biggest thing with coordinators and play-callers is just trust. If a play-caller doesn’t trust that the quarterback is going to make the right decision, then he’s going to take a lot of that freedom away. If he trusts the quarterback who’s out there, then you’re going to give him a ton of freedom. It’s interesting stuff. We could talk about this for three days.

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 1:44 PM with the headline "With Bridgewater and Keenum, Vikings had only one option."