The Vikings’ offense has plenty of questions marks. The team’s defense has one really big exclamation point in defensive end Everson Griffen.
Griffen, now in his eighth season, has nine sacks in seven games. He’s also the sixth NFL player since the sack became an official stat in 1982 to have at least one sack in each of his team’s first seven games.
He already has more sacks in 2017 than he managed in all of 2016, and he’s on pace for 20.5 for the season.
Griffen, who had two sacks in Sunday’s win over the Ravens, may get a chance to add to that total by facing someone other than Joe Thomas next week, when the Vikings face the winless Browns in London.
As a team, the Vikings have 21 sacks for the season, an average of three per game. More importantly, the Vikings are 5-2, which matches their same record through seven games a year ago but with much more momentum and optimism than 2016, which began with five straight wins and quickly fell apart.