MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell sat for a minute in his office space in the visitor’s locker room after his team’s sweat-it-out victory in Miami, reflecting on which performances by the defense he wanted to highlight in his postgame address to the players.

The names kept popping in his head: Patrick Peterson, Harrison Smith, Za’Darius Smith, Danielle Hunter, Dalvin Tomlinson. He decided to scrap the script.

“You know what?” O’Connell thought to himself after the Vikings beat the Dolphins 24-16 to improve to 5-1 in his first season on the job. “Everybody gets a game ball.”

The prizes this time weren’t actually awarded, the gesture merely symbolic, but after the offense — and special teams — largely drove the three previous victories this game provided a glimpse of how this defense can deliver when needed, too.

The Vikings allowed 385 net yards passing — the fourth-most in the NFL this year and the most against them in 47 games since a win at Dallas (393) on Nov. 10, 2019 — in a total inflated a bit by Miami being in catchup mode late. The most telling data was the season-high six sacks, three turnovers forced and only three points allowed over the first 49:56 of the game.

This came on an 86-degree afternoon in a stadium where the visitor’s sideline always runs hotter on a Sunday when the offense punted a whopping 10 times to continually send the defense out on the field for more. The Dolphins ran 73 plays, netting 458 yards.

“You guys were our backbone,” O’Connell said to them.

The Vikings currently rank eighth in the league in sacks per pass attempt (8.2%), but they only tackled the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage a combined four times over the previous three games. Za’Darius Smith had two sacks, as did backup outside linebacker Patrick Jones II for the first two of his career in an elevated role with D.J. Wonnum sidelined by an illness.

“We harped on this all week of getting pressure on the quarterback,” Smith said. “We’ve been lacking a little bit on that, but today we brought that pressure.”

Despite all the room Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle found to run after the catch, the secondary was plenty sharp, too.