Minnesota Vikings

The Reeel Deal Lions won a week before the real life Lions, and here are a few keys:

These Vikings have gutted the hell out of their D-Line, and have only one reliable lineman in Pat Williams. Matt Stafford had plenty of time to throw unless the Vikings were blitzing, and was only hit by a lineman (Ray Edwards) once. They liked to corner blitz from dime, so we punished them hard with fast passes to the slot.

They have one decent corner. The rest are simply terrible.

The Vikings also traded for Randy Moss, which, between him and Percy Harvin, would seem to create matchup problems for Man coverage. But then, my secondary on the Lions can't cover in Man to begin with, so we didn't even try. It was zones and zone blitzes throughout the day and it worked well enough for my defense to grab 3 interceptions.

He didn't mess with the left side very often - most of his throws were to the right. So, often, I'd just zone blitz in a way that'd cover the right side at the expense of the left, and we were rarely if ever punished for it.

He ONLY ever ran to the outside, which is just fine with me since Adrian Peterson getting hit-sticked in the open field by hard-hitting safeties (Louis Delmas and Bernard Pollard) is a recipe for disaster. Adrian Peterson has one of the worst carrying stats among HBs in all of Madden. Hit stick him with your heaviest hitter, and he WILL drop the ball. Early on, Pollard clobbered him for a fumble and we recovered, letting us go ahead 24-7 early. I wound up spreading my linebackers just about every play, and that combined with their speed (Ernie Sims and Julian Peterson are both 85+ SPD) neutralized the Vikings' run game enough that they were forced to go to the air.

He liked to throw to Moss and Harvin, obviously, but Harvin's just not a very good receiver in terms of catching the ball in the middle of a bunch of zones, so we just keyed on Moss and their passing attack wasn't much of a threat. Keeping guys in the flat zones also limited Peterson in the passing game (he had 3 receptions for 17 yards).

All in all, I recommend a heavy dose of cover 2 and cover 3 if your personnel fits it, with the occasional zone blitz when you know he has to throw. His QBs aren't great, he'll make mistakes under pressure, and they've only got one real threat once you take away the outside run (just look for tosses, mostly).

In summary:
-Stop Moss with zone coverage, especially on the right side
-Cover the outside runs
-Hit stick that cupcake Adrian Peterson
-Be patient on offense and watch for corner blitzes - you can burn him bad if you see it coming.
-Don't be afraid of his D-Line. His DEs in particular are terrible.
-His CBs and safeties are pretty bad, also.