How does the Vikings' offense need to evolve?
Kevin O’Connell was frustrated with himself following the Minnesota Vikings’ loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Several times in the lead up to the Vikings’ win over the Detroit Lions on Sunday he admitted feeling like he had tried to make up the team’s Monday Night Football deficit on one drive rather than sticking to the plan. Against the Lions sticking more to his gameplan paid off (with some help from a defensive stop or two and a highly questionable Dan Campbell decision).
Despite trailing for the majority of the game, the 2022 Vikings offense had some shades of the 2019-2021, leaning on the run game with Dalvin Cook and Alexander Mattison and dialing up play-action passes for quarterback Kirk Cousins.
The Vikings still finished with a run-pass ratio that was slanted toward the passing game (25 runs to 41 passes) but they gained nearly five yards per carry on the ground and used play-action on 40.5% of dropbacks, a big jump over last week’s 12.0% versus Philadelphia (per PFF).
Where it deviated from the the old Kubiak run-and-bootleg offense was taking play-action shots down the field. On Sunday the Vikings threw the ball only four times in the air more than 20 yards and the lone completion was KJ Osborn’s game-winning touchdown. Intermediate passes were more effective with Cousins going 7-for-11 for 99 yards and one touchdown on passes that traveled between 10-19 yards and the remainder of throws went underneath.
“We’re just continuing to evolve and we are still just three games into our guys running this system and this offense, so there’s going to be some times where we’ve got to try to have that learning curve happen on the fly,” O’Connell said on Monday.
It seems unlikely that the Vikings view the evolution of their offense as turning back the clock to what they had in Minnesota previously. The offense was built to run through superstar receiver Justin Jefferson, who has been locked down the last two weeks by the Eagles and Lions, who often played man coverage against him with their shutdown corners and extra help over the top. The evolution has to start there.
“I think he had about eight or nine total snaps in the game where he didn’t have some variation of a double,” O’Connell said.
Of course, doubles aren’t an excuse considering all of the league’s best receivers are given extra attention. But the explanation on Monday for why the Vikings couldn’t get Jefferson open against their last two opponents was a little perplexing.
“I think the most important thing for Justin is just to continue the evolution of understanding… he’s had a ton of success in this league… He’s gonna see different variations of defenses that he’s gonna have to have a plan for, we’re gonna have to have a plan for him that allows him to kind of move within our offense but still stay true to who we want to be,” O’Connell said.
Is it Jefferson who needs to better understand the attention he’s going to get from defenses and how to counteract that or if the coaching staff has to better move him around to get him away from those coverages?
Against Detroit he played 71 snaps and lined up as an outside receiver on 56 of them. He was covered by former top draft pick Jeff Okudah on three quarters of his routes, per ESPN. Interestingly he lined up 34 times in the slot against Philly with largely similar results with Darius Slay in coverage.
“Early on, we missed some chances to get Justin some chances… that might have gotten him going a little bit… and I have to do a good job preparing him and equipping him with the things he needs to help him have an impact no matter how he’s being defended,” O’Connell said.
Hm. Does that mean the quarterback didn’t find Jefferson with early opportunities?
It might be a combination of everything at the moment. Or it might just be two games where things didn’t work out and an explosion of receptions is right around the corner.
O’Connell acknowledged that there were clearly times when things seemed amiss with players being on the same page.
“There’s just some indecisiveness somewhere across the board of guys doing their jobs depending on the look,” O’Connell said. “We’re seeing some things that maybe some other teams have done previously, just with our personnel and how they want to defend us, things that they want to feature against us. I think just the inventory of snaps as you go throughout the season…there’s some things that you’ll start being able to [adjust], in real time, maybe not always need sideline discussions.”
So is the evolution of the offense simply the players fully understanding the offense?
“We’ve got such talented players that we feel strongly about that when they feel comfortable completely, the execution will be a bit more consistent across the board and we’ll be at our best,” O’Connell said.
Whatever the case, the Vikings rank 16th in scoring, 18th in yards and 21st in percentage of drives in which they have produced points.
There is one particular small sample size trend that stands out: Cousins has a 61.1 QB rating when throwing out of the shotgun and 110.5 when under center (per Pro-Football Reference). He’s taken about an equal amount of passing snaps in both situations. It stands to reason that Cousins is asked to do more out of the shotgun as it pertains to getting players lined up, setting protections and making reads. Does that number indicate that they should lean more toward an under-center offense or that they will become more comfortable in the complete offense, rooted largely in shotgun, with time?
“We’re still getting there, it’s not where I want it to be,” Cousins said of the offense after the game. “There was so much that wasn’t good enough.”
O’Connell’s first big challenge as a head coach will be trying to figure out how much to change and when to change it. The lines between which parts need to evolve and which parts need time is blurry at the moment and the Vikings face a New Orleans club that has given up only 6.3 yards per pass attempt so far this year and features an elite shutdown corner.
“There’s a lot of things we can correct, a lot of things that jump out that we can continue our evolution as a football team,” O’Connell said.
What that evolution ends up being may determine whether the Vikings’ offense continues its ups and downs or takes off.
