After Cordarrelle Patterson's 104-yard kick return touchdown opened the second half for the Bears on Monday night, ESPN's cameras caught a furious Mike Zimmer screaming at Vikings special teams coordinator Marwan Maalouf about kicking it to Patterson, who made two All-Pro teams as a return man in Minnesota and a third with Chicago last year.
It was a moment after which safety Anthony Harris could tell his coach he need not worry.
"There were a couple of times that I was upset on the sideline and Anthony Harris came over and said, 'Coach. Just call the game. We're going to win,'" Zimmer said. "Those were good. They keep me in line, too."
That kind of confidence, so typical of the Vikings' defenses of Harris' first five seasons, has gone missing at times this season, with an inexperienced secondary and front-seven stalwarts like Danielle Hunter and Anthony Barr out for the season. But in Monday night's 19-13 win, when Patterson's TD was the only one the Bears would get, the Vikings' group showed for the third week in a row it could be the stopper.
The Vikings became just the 12th team in the league this season to hold an opponent without an offensive touchdown, in a year where scoring is up and defenses seem in as precarious a position as ever.
Before Monday night, the Vikings had held an opponent without an offensive touchdown eight times under Mike Zimmer. The opposing starting quarterbacks in those games: Austin Davis (the Rams QB who started for an injured Sam Bradford in Zimmer's first career win in the 2014 opener), Jay Cutler, Matt Ryan, Brett Hundley, Mitch Trubisky, Matthew Stafford (twice) and Case Keenum.
It's not exactly a list of Hall of Fame passers, and it should also be noted that Monday's effort came against one of four teams to go without an offensive touchdown twice this season; the Jets, Giants and Cowboys (the Vikings' next opponent) are the others.
But the Vikings' ability to close out a game on defense is a different story than we saw in a 1-5 start, when they blew double-digit leads on the way to one-point losses to Tennessee and Seattle, while nearly giving away a 15-point fourth-quarter lead to the Texans. On Nov. 1 in Green Bay, D.J. Wonnum stripped Aaron Rodgers to end the Packers' chance to rally, and Eric Kendricks and Eric Wilson came up with the interceptions the Vikings needed to turn the Lions away twice in a 34-20 win last week.
The fact the Vikings did it again on Monday night against Foles — the quarterback whose charmed run to a Super Bowl LII MVP involved shredding Zimmer's best defense in the 2018 NFC Championship Game — seems noteworthy, too, even if the quarterback has regressed to the level he's played at for much of his career and the Bears' offense (either because of injury or ineffectiveness) is short on playmakers.
Foles' bid to become a modern-day Kerry Collins — the middling passer who somehow always saved his best for the Vikings — came up empty, as did whatever hope for payback Bears QB coach John DeFilippo might have had for his first game against the Vikings since his 2018 firing as offensive coordinator.
Wonnum, who had another sack and two quarterback hits on Monday night, has improved as a pass rusher, and the Vikings have found a role for Hercules Mata'afa, whom they brought back after releasing earlier this year. Mata'afa had a hit on Foles to force a third-and-5 incompletion (and a field goal) in the first quarter, and worked a stunt that led to Wonnum's sack after the defensive end jumped back across two gaps on the final play of the third quarter.
The Vikings have found they can be more aggressive with their blitz packages, with Eric Wilson morphing into a solid replacement for Anthony Barr and Harrison Smith spending more time near the line of scrimmage. And when Smith does back out, the Vikings' use of two-deep shells has helped calm things down for their young corners. Chicago hit only two pass plays of 20 yards or more, with Foles finding Allen Robinson on a deep corner route for 24 and hitting Anthony Miller for a 21-yard catch-and-run after Jimmy Graham's vertical route against Eric Kendricks cleared the middle of the field.
Told the Vikings registered defensive stops on 9 of 11 third downs, Smith remarked, "You're going to win a lot of games like that."
The Vikings' issues on potential game-clinching fourth downs earlier in the season were not lost on him. But on this night, when Foles' fourth-down pass beyond Chris Jones glanced off the fingertips of an outstretched Miller, the Vikings could breathe easy.
"The guys up front were doing a great job," Smith said. "D-line, linebackers were doing a great job in the run game, so we were able to do some things on the back end to help take away Robinson and stuff like that. He's a really good player. They've got guys that can make plays, but when you're doing a good job stopping the run and you're not always having to get a safety involved, it really opens up your whole play-calling sheet. Everybody, players did a great job, coaches called a great game. They had us ready to go and prepared, and it was just a good team win."
