After drought, Vikings offense puts up a big number

Vi­kings coach Mike Zim­mer asked for 28 points from his offense. He got that, with a point to spare, in the 29-26 vic­to­ry over Washington on Sun­day.

Zim­mer rec­og­nized the offense's per­form­ance in the lock­er room af­ter the game, but he was in­ter­rupt­ed by of­fen­sive co­or­di­na­tor Norv Tur­ner.

"Coach, you should've asked for 28 [points] a month ago!" said Tur­ner, turn­ing the rau­cous ap­plause into heart­y laughs.

The Vi­kings offense av­er­aged a little more than 17 points in its first eight games, and Zim­mer said he want­ed to give the unit some­thing to shoot for against Washington. The Vi­kings ec­lipsed 28 points twice, against the Rams and Fal­cons, but scored only 48 in their past four games.

"I prob­a­bly should've asked for more soon­er," Zim­mer said.

Jokes a­side, Zim­mer said he felt the Vi­kings scored their touch­downs when they need­ed them most. Three of the four scores oc­cur­red dur­ing the se­cond half. They re­claimed the lead for good with 3:31 left on a 1-yard touch­down run by Matt Asiata in re­sponse to Washington's pre­vi­ous touch­down drive.

"That's the mark of a good foot­ball team, I think, is when the oth­er team goes down and scores, you got to re­spond," Zim­mer said.

Short of his goal

Vi­kings run­ning back Jerick Mc­Kin­non near­ly scored his first ca­reer touch­down on the first of­fen­sive drive in the se­cond half. The rook­ie plowed up the mid­dle on a hand­off and stretched as far as he could on the 9-yard gain but fell a yard short.

"Arms weren't quite long en­ough, but it's all good," Mc­Kin­non said. "We still won, so that's the key fo­cus."

Mc­Kin­non went back to the hud­dle af­ter the play, though he like­ly knew the in­evi­table would hap­pen. Asiata, who has served as the goal line back this sea­son, trot­ted onto the field to re­place Mc­Kin­non, and the Vi­kings scored on the next play for one of Asiata's three touch­downs.

But Mc­Kin­non and the Vi­kings of­fen­sive line sprung the run­ning game on that drive with con­sec­u­tive gains of 15 and 9 yards be­fore Asiata's touch­down. The Vi­kings had just seven car­ries for 14 yards in the first half but fin­ished the se­cond half with 20 car­ries for 86 yards.

"It was a good drive though to come out the se­cond half," Mc­Kin­non said. "Washington, they re­al­ly have a lot of good run fits that first half. …We came out in the se­cond half run­ning pret­ty good. A lot of cred­it due to the [of­fen­sive line] just mak­ing those holes."

Day of containment

It wasn't pret­ty, but the Vi­kings defense con­tained an ex­plo­sive Washington offense at TCF Bank Stadium. De­fen­sive tack­le Sharrif Floyd said the team knew Washington want­ed to run lat­er­al­ly with the re­turn of quarterback Robert Griffin III. His pres­ence gave run­ning back Al­fred Morris his most pro­duc­tive game this sea­son, with two TDs and a sea­son-high 92 yards.

"[Griffin's] def­i­nite­ly an e­lite quarterback, and we knew where he want­ed to go when he want­ed to get out of the pock­et and where he want­ed to go on his boot," Floyd said. "Once we knew that, and we stopped the run and could just fo­cus on him, it made it a great day for us."

Griffin scram­bled seven times for 24 yards and Washington kept a bal­anced at­tack with 29 rush­ing attempts and 28 pass­ing at­tempts. The Vi­kings al­lowed 347 yards but min­i­mized Washington's im­pact on the score­board, hold­ing its offense to two field goals and a turn­o­ver on downs late to seal the victory.

"They try to mix ev­er­y­thing that they got into a game, and that made them dif­fi­cult to re­al­ly read," Floyd said. "At the end of the day, hit­ting the guard and hit­ting the tack­le, it's still going to be a run or still going to be a pass at the end of the day. Just put your­self in the right po­si­tion."

Practice-squad moves

The Vi­kings put prac­tice squad quarterback Chandler Harnish, who has been with the team since Week 5, on in­jured re­serve because of a Lisfranc foot in­ju­ry and signed quarterback Pat Dev­lin to the prac­tice squad. They also signed tight end RaShaun Allen to the prac­tice squad and re­leased tight end Ryan Otten.

Del­vin signed as an undrafted free a­gent with the Dol­phins in 2011 but has not ap­peared in a regu­lar-sea­son game. Allen signed as an undrafted free a­gent with the Sea­hawks this sea­son and ap­peared in one game.

Etc.

• Zim­mer said tight end Kyle Rudolph is ex­pect­ed to par­tici­pate at Tues­day's prac­tice dur­ing in­di­vid­u­al drills. He isn't sure yet if Rudolph will re­turn from sports her­ni­a sur­ger­y in Week 11 against the Bears.

• The coach­ing staff will re­ceive the week­end off dur­ing the bye. When asked how he'd spend the time off, Zim­mer said, "I'm going to get away too, nev­er get too far away. I u­su­al­ly take my iPad with me and prob­a­bly sit by the fire and watch some of things I need to watch."