Minnesota Vikings Snap Counts Against St. Louis

With the game between the Minnesota Vikings and the St. Louis Rams in the books, we're finally getting some of the data that details how many snaps all of the players for the Vikings played. Let's take a look at some of the data.

(Assist for this one to ESPN's Ben Goessling, who has this data formatted a lot more nicely than the NFL Game Books have it.)

A few observations from these numbers:

-As Goessling says in his piece, the Vikings are making a commitment to keeping Adrian Peterson fresh, which explains his relatively low (for him) percentage of snaps. He did have 70% of the team's rushes, however (21 for Peterson, 3 each for Patterson and Cassel, 2 for Asiata, and 1 for McKinnon.)
-Jerome Felton only seeing 29% of the snaps makes the decision for the team to keep both him and Zach Line seem a bit curious. If this team isn't going to feature the fullback that much, two of them don't really seem necessary.
-Quite a difference for Cordarrelle Patterson. . .in the opening game against Detroit in 2013, he played five snaps on offense. He had 40 more than that this year.

Let's check out the defensive side of the ball.

A few observations here, too.

-If you would have asked me which Vikings defender played 100% of the snaps, Blanton would not have been my first guess. I probably would have said Harrison Smith before I saw the numbers. But he led the team in tackles and had a pretty solid game overall.
-As Goessling points out, last year guys like Jared Allen and Brian Robison were playing over 80% of the snaps in the season opener. This year, no Vikings' defensive lineman was at more than 73%, and it seemed like they were much fresher towards the end of the game as a result. The pressure on the Rams quarterbacks was relentless all afternoon, even with the second-string guys in the game.
-At some point, injuries are going to become a real issue with Xavier Rhodes. I love the guy and think he has all the talent in the world, but towards the end of last season and now in this game, it seems like he's always got some sort of nagging issue that pulls him out of the game. If the Vikings are going to stand up to the passing attacks they're going to see over the next four weeks, they need a healthy Xavier Rhodes. Jabari Price got some snaps in his place, though, which is good for him going forward.
-Of the Vikings' four active safeties, the only one that didn't see the field on defense was Andrew Sendejo. Even rookie Antone Exum saw some snaps in the defensive backfield. Sendejo did play 22 special teams snaps, tied for the team lead with three other players.
-The score gave the Vikings an opportunity to "empty the bench" a bit and give a lot of guys some snaps, but I wonder if we're going to see more of this going forward, regardless of the situation. We'll see how much confidence Mike Zimmer and company have in some of the younger players on this team as we move on through the seasons.

And those are your snap counts for the Week 1 victory. Any thoughts on how the Vikings used their personnel this past Sunday?