Where is the Vikings' offense and defense breaking?
A 5-1 start for the Minnesota Vikings firmly supplanted them as the division favorites in the NFC North. With the other preseason NFC contenders still struggling to find their form, the runway for the Vikings to make the playoffs and secure home-field advantage through at least two rounds in the postseason is well within reach.
Yet, the tenor around this team heading into the bye week wasn’t all roses. The team has narrowly tallied wins over the last month that could’ve just as easily wound up in the loss column.
“We know we’ve got to get a lot better,” Adam Thielen said after Minnesota’s Week 6 win in Miami.
With the bye week now behind them, the question is, will they? To understand where specifically some improvement will be needed, here’s a look at several specific areas where the Vikings are struggling on both sides of the ball.
Where the Vikings defense is breaking
On a macro level, the Vikings’ bend-don’t-break defense has largely held up through the first six games of the season. Minnesota is 12th in points allowed (19.7 per game) despite being 27th in yards allowed (384.5 per game). The Vikings’ defense has not surrendered a 30-point game thus far and has allowed a somewhat stagnant Minnesota offense to find its footing in several games this season. Considering where the Vikings’ defense was last year, 24th in scoring and 29th in yards allowed, it’s a welcome improvement, especially without Mike Zimmer at the helm of the defense for the first time in nine years.
But in one key area of the field, this iteration of Minnesota’s defense is breaking time and time again: the red zone.
The Vikings have allowed a league-high 80 percent of their opponents’ red zone opportunities to turn into touchdowns, and even that doesn’t quite paint the full picture. The last time the Vikings made a “stop” in the red zone came back in Week 2 when the Eagles kicked a field goal on 1st-and-10 from the Vikings’ 20-yard line with three seconds remaining in the first half, which capped off an 8-play, 75-yard drive that took 81 seconds. The clock stopped Philadelphia, not the defense.
The two other times Minnesota kept an opponent out of the end zone came in Week 1 to the Packers. The Vikings made a critical stop on 4th-and-1 at the one-yard line, stuffing an A.J. Dillon run to maintain a 7-0 lead in the second quarter. Then in the fourth quarter, Minnesota again stopped a Green Bay 4th-and-1 play, this time from the 18-yard line, with Eric Kendricks breaking up a pass to Robert Tonyan just short of the end zone that sealed the season-opening win.
Those plays, however, have been few and far between. The last 10 red zone trips – which have been quarterbacked by Jared Goff, Andy Dalton, Justin Fields and Teddy Bridgewater – have all resulted in touchdowns, with no forced turnovers.
The Vikings are last in Football Outsiders’ red zone DVOA. When broken down by play type, they rank last in rush DVOA and second-to-last in pass DVOA in the red zone. In goal-to-go situations, they are last in the NFL as well.
For a team that is fully leaning into a bend-don’t-break approach, the importance of turning touchdowns into field goals is paramount to success.
Minnesota’s defense has remained afloat despite these struggles because of their ability to stop drives in the middle of the field. Using DVOA once more, the Vikings rank 11th in “mid-zone” defense (plays between the opponents’ 40-yard line and their 40-yard line) and 15th in “front zone” defense, (plays between their own 39 and 21-yard lines).
While not in the upper echelon of either statistic, it’s been enough to limit opponents to 15 red zone trips, the third-fewest in the league. The Vikings’ bye week certainly makes the unit look slightly better in that metric without an extra game of data to add, but assuming another average game for the defense would still keep Minnesota around the top 10 in fewest red zone trips allowed.
In some of these scenarios, the Vikings have been aided by their opponents' mistakes. The Dolphins’ first-quarter drive that got as close as the Minnesota 26-yard line before five penalties in seven plays ended any chance of a productive scoring chance certainly comes to mind. Or a series of penalties by the Chicago Bears that stunted several drives and even took a Justin Fields touchdown run away. In that respect, some regression could be coming, as the Vikings’ opponents have been some of the most penalized in the league and that will likely balance out.
Credit has to go to the Vikings’ defense too. Minnesota is allowing a third down conversion rate of 34 percent, seventh-best in the NFL, which has halted numerous drives in their zone and forced field goals. In each of the last two games, both one-score wins, the Vikings forced their opponent to kick a field goal after being stopped between the 20 and 30-yard lines.
Yet with better offenses on the horizon, Minnesota cannot rely solely on stopping teams before they reach the red zone. Allowing the sixth-most yards per game (as the Vikings currently are) does not indicate they can with consistency.
Yet improvement may only need to be marginal. For all of the defense’s deficiencies in 2021, the Vikings allowed touchdowns on only 55 percent of red zone trips. That was 15th in the league. That happened despite Minnesota ranking 26th in red zone DVOA. If the Vikings can make the move from worst to below average, it could be enough to continue surviving with their bend-don’t-break approach.
Where the Vikings offense is breaking
The insertion of Kevin O’Connell’s offense has yet to yield major dividends, at least statistically. Minnesota’s offense ranks 13th in points scored and 18th in yards through seven weeks. In 2021, the Vikings' offense ranked 14th in points and 12th in yards.
While there’s a multitude of reasons that have left Minnesota’s offense around average, some of the struggles have seemingly centered around Minnesota’s inability to convert on 2nd- and 3rd-and-long situations.
The Vikings rank 31st in DVOA on 2nd-and-long situations and 32nd on 3rd/4th-and-long situations, per Football Outsiders. In other words, when put into true pass sets where the defense is almost assuredly geared up to stop the passing game, Minnesota has been one of the worst offenses in the NFL.
That’s contrasted with really impressive numbers in several categories: 1st down, 2nd-and-mid (between 3-6 yards) and 3rd/4th-and-short.
By DVOA, the Vikings rank fifth in the NFL on first down, first in 2nd-and-mid and third in 3rd/4th-and-short.
That paints a very clear picture. O’Connell’s offense thrives when the full playbook is available. In each of those situations, the defense has to account for both the run and pass. There O’Connell can fully sell play-action and can use all of his pre-snap motions to their full extent.
And while that’s generally true of every offense in the NFL, the splits show the Vikings are at the extreme ends of the spectrum in both scenarios.
Still, the numbers seem to make sense for a Kirk Cousins-led team, who has always thrived on play action but frequently struggles when the pass rush can pin their ears back and come after him. Yet the statistics are much worse than any previous Vikings season with Cousins at quarterback.
Here’s where they have ranked on 3rd/4th-and-long situations since Cousins arrived in Minnesota.
- 2018 - 18th
- 2019 - 9th
- 2020 - 28th
- 2021 - 14th
- 2022 (through six games) - 32nd
It’s also been Cousins’ least aggressive season pushing the ball down the field since he arrived in Minnesota, which inherently on 2nd- and 3rd-and-long situations will not result in a first down or will require the receiver to make something happen after the catch.
NFL’s Next Gen Stats measures average air yards to the sticks, which measures how far a ball is thrown in relation to the first down marker. Anything negative means the quarterback is throwing behind the line to gain. Positive means they’re throwing past it.
On average Cousins is throwing -2.5 yards before the first down marker, the third-shortest mark in the NFL this season and Cousins’ lowest since arriving in Minnesota. Here’s the yearly breakdown for Cousins (in yards).
- 2018: -1.2
- 2019: -1.0
- 2020: -0.6
- 2021: -1.4
- 2022: -2.5
His average depth of target is much lower than at any point in his career in Minnesota or Washington. Currently, with an aDOT of 6.5, it’s a full two yards shorter than in 2021. The only other year of his career with an aDOT lower than 8 came in 2018 (7.9).
Next Gen Stats also measures aggressiveness, which is the number of throws thrown into coverage where a defender is within a yard of the receiver. While Cousins has never been one of the more aggressive throwers, he is having one of the least-aggressive seasons of his career. Here’s the breakdown (percent of throws thrown within one yard of a defender).
- 2018: 12.9%
- 2019: 12.8%
- 2020: 16.1%
- 2021: 15.9%
- 2022: 10.1% (fourth-lowest mark in the NFL)
This doesn’t mean Cousins is to solely blame for the offense’s struggles. The play-calling could be contributing to it as could the lack of a true receiving threat outside of Jefferson. Whatever it is, it has led to a stagnant 2nd- and 3rd-and-long offense that has been thriving otherwise.
Related: The physics of Ryan Wright's incredible 73-yard punt
