Matthew Coller: The 'Peanut Punch' is now standard for the Vikings

Former Bear Charles Tillman terrorized the Vikings with his tackling technique, now every Viking defender is following his style.

Dec 1, 2024; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Arizona Cardinals tight end Trey McBride (85) fights off the tackle of Minnesota Vikings safety Harrison Smith (22) and linebacker Blake Cashman (51) during the second quarter at U.S. Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images / Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images

EAGAN — Twenty years ago, the Minnesota Vikings were training 17-14 early in the third quarter to a struggling Chicago Bears team and had the ball at their own 14-yard line. Quarterback Daunte Culpepper reacted to a Bears blitz by flinging the ball to the flat where Randy Moss was waiting wide open. He caught the ball, approached the first down marker and was met by Bears cornerback Charles “Peanut” Tillman. As the two collided, Tillman shot his hand into the football and sent it flying. Safety Mike Green picked it up, giving Chicago the ball deep in Vikings territory.

At that time, Tillman was a promising second-year player. In the subsequent seasons, he became a Pro Bowler on the back of his ability to force fumbles. Tillman had as many as 10 forced fumbles in a single season and caused 44 over his career, the sixth most ever and eight more than the next best defensive back.

Tillman’s technique for knocking the ball loose would end up changing the way tackling in the NFL was taught in the future. Now as the Vikings get set to play the Bears on Monday Night Football, two decades after he first started terrorizing them with the “Peanut Punch,” they have fully committed to mastering the Peanut Punch.

The Vikings have caused nine forced fumbles, recovered seven and sit second in the NFL in percentage of drives in which they have caused a turnover.

On the other side of that, the Vikings have fumbled nine times this season in part because they are far from the only team Peanut Punching at the football. Tillman’s signature move has become the industry standard way of tackling as teams emphasize turnover ratios as a key to winning.

“Peanut was doing it at an elite level back in 2008 and '09, but I think you really saw the celebration of it probably come, let's call it 2017, '18 or so,” special teams coordinator Matt Daniels said. “It's common now. I watch the fumble tape and it's usually, on average 35 to 40 fumbles a week. Usually what you're getting eight or so of those are mishandled snaps…but outside of that, it's punch outs.”

Safety Harrison Smith entered the NFL when Tillman was still in the league (he retired in 2015) but Smith said that nobody was teaching the Peanut Punch around the NFL when Tillman was playing.

“It wasn’t really coached,” Smith told Purple Insider. “I don’t know when exactly it started being coached but you saw a couple guys emulate Peanut. Josh Norman was pretty early too. Shaq Leonard. Fred Warner is great at it. Somewhere in the mid-2010s it started becoming coachable. Now that’s just the standard.”

The Vikings All-Pro safety has had to unlearn some of the traditional tackling techniques from his early days of playing football to train himself to focus on punching at the ball rather than just wrapping up the ball carrier.

“Me and Gilly [Stephon Gilmore] were talking to Flo[res] about that, we had to break ourselves from just going for tackles because my whole life I was never taught to do that,” Smith said. “Now if you don’t [Peanut Punch] it’s a minus. You have to punch it, especially if you’re the second guy in for a tackle. That should be the standard, you never know when it’s going to pop out.”

Smith noted that there was also a schematic reason for taking fewer jabs at the football when he played under Mike Zimmer. The Zimmer scheme was focused on man-to-man coverage, meaning if Smith were to miss a tackle in open space it could result in a much bigger play. With Brian Flores’s defense playing largely zone coverages, the players rally to the ball and there’s often someone else in the area to clean up a miscue if the punch doesn’t take down the runner.

“You have to make reasonable decisions,” Smith said. “If there’s people around you [it’s easier] but it’s a true one-on-one tackle that you have to make it then it’s a different scenario.”

© Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

Safety Josh Metellus, a perpetual Peanut Puncher with five forced fumbles in the last two seasons, hadn’t been told to swing at the ball until he played under former Vikings defensive coordinator Ed Donatell in 2022.

“When Donatell was here he was big on it and I latched onto that as something that I could help take and further my game,” Metellus said. “Every time I go for a tackle if that ball is there I’m taking a shot at it. I’ve messed up my hands too many times trying to go at the ball but it’s worth it.”

Metellus has watched tape of Tillman to study how the forced-fumble artist himself was able to have such success.

“He’s the one whose tape we have to watch, we all watch [Peanut Tillman],” Metellus said. “The coaches put it up and we have terms for every way to punch the ball out. You have to figure out why it’s called ‘Peanut’ and if you know ball then you know why. There’s a bunch of guys who do it. I practice it, even in the offseason.”

Running back Aaron Jones, who has had a couple balls stripped out this season, said that ball carriers have to be much more aware of the football being punched away from them than when he first came into the league.

“I feel like when I first got in the league, it wasn't as prominent,” Jones said. “You may have a few players known for it like Peanut, a couple of players known for it, but I feel like as it probably Year 3, Year 4, it started becoming more prominent and that's what they're coaching on the defensive side… As ball carriers, we just have to be more cautious of that and know when you're in a crowd you got to put it away and when you're in an awkward situation you have to try to fight to get the ball [pointed up and tucked in] or get two hands on it.”

Each week head coach Kevin O’Connell makes the punch part of the team’s weekly preparation, particularly identifying which players they need to be most concerned about getting a good swipe at the football.

“You see it every single week,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said. “We spent a lot of time talking to our guys last week because [Atlanta safeties] Simmons and Bates, you just kept seeing these guys showing up being pretty surgical with that punch out.”

One potential explanation for the Peanut Punch’s popularity increasing is that, in the analytics era, sports have leaned toward more risky things with bigger payoffs. Baseball teams focus on home runs rather than bunting runners over. NBA teams’ three-point shooting volume has nearly doubled in the last decade. Teams go for fourth downs more than ever. Risking a missed tackle is worth it when there is the potential for a game-changing play.

“Everybody started to become more conscious about how you win games,” Van Ginkel said. “And turnovers are one of the biggest deciding factors and if you’re +1 or +2 in the turnover battle then your winning chances go way up so it’s become a bigger point of emphasis. They change the game. You get a punch out on the goal line or something, that’s seven points right there.”

So how are the Vikings teaching it? How do defenders decide when the right times are to Peanut Punch?

This is going to sound simple but it starts with making a fist.

Your natural inclination when tackling someone would be to grab with your hands and try to drag them down but if you make a fist and then still perform the typical wrap up at the level of the football, there is a good chance the fits ends up connecting with the ball.

“If you're tackling with the proper technique, more times than not you don't have to consciously think about, ‘oh man if I go for the football here. do I have to be concerned with not actually making the tackle?’ The takeaway tactic is a part of the actual tackling process itself so you never really have too much to worry about,” Daniels said.

Charles Tillman causing a fumble against the Vikings in 2013. © Dennis Wierzbicki-Imagn Images

That is easy to say but there are plenty of times where players do not have a perfect technical tackle in front of them and they have to make a choice about whether to try to knock the football out.

“You have to be in the right position to do it, if you’re out in the open field one-on-one you have to make sure you secure the tackle,” Van Ginkel said. “If you have guys coming and they always preach rallying to the ball then you can take more opportunities at it.”

Getting into the right positions to punch at the ball is vital, Metellus explained, because ball carriers in the NFL do not give defensive players many extra opportunities to take them down if you swing and miss.

“[Wild swinging] is not effective because if you get a guy like Bijan Robinson who, if you miss an open field tackle he can go [for a touchdown], so in situations where the ball is there like when they don’t see you coming, that’s an opportunity or when the runner is trying to break another tackle, that’s an opportunity,” Metellus said. “It’s picking your spots. You can’t just go do it for every tackle.”

Smith said that he looks for chances to take a swing at the inside of a runner’s elbow because the most secure part of the football is going to be where the runner’s hand is gripping the ball. He also tries to reach in at the last minute before they hit the turf.

“If you hit [the inside of the elbow] then it has a better chance of coming out,” Smith said. “Where you see it a lot is right before a player hits the ground. You see that every week when their knee is just off and they are bracing for the ground and the ball pops out. That’s when guys are most vulnerable because it’s hard to physically hard to prepare to hit the ground and worry about the ball.”

Van Ginkel added to that: When runners are trying to do something spectacular, the door might open to create a punchout. “The runners are vulnerable…when they are spinning then they get loose with it or when they try stiff arms then the ball gets away from their body. It’s being aware of those opportunities and taking advantage of them.”

All of this sounds reasonable until you consider how fast everything is happening in the moment. Van Ginkel said that uses every practice during 11-on-11s to focus on when and where he might be able to take away the football. But even then, how is it possible to hit somebody on the inside of the elbow or swipe 0.0001 seconds before they hit the ground?

“We're talking about the elite of elite athletes out here and they do an unbelievable job of things happening fast, be able to pinpoint, be able to punch the football out,” Daniels said.

Charles Tillman playing the Vikings in 20212. Mandatory Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki-Imagn Images / Dennis Wierzbicki-Imagn Images

So, is it working?

Fumble data is tricky to parse out because most fumbles come from quarterbacks and the numbers do not indicate whether somebody punched at the football when they caused a fumble. Overall it’s the hardest time in NFL history to cause a fumble. Before Sunday’s games, this season the average game has 1.0 fumbles. When Tillman first started throwing punches there were 1.4 per game. In 1991 it was 1.8. In 1983 it was 2.2. And in 1946 they couldn’t hang onto the ball for anything, as the average game featured 3.4 fumbles.

Defensive backs are having less success getting the ball out than they did in recent history. DBs have caused 108 fumbles, which makes for about eight per week. In 2010, NFL defensive backs forced 10.3 fumbles per week.

So, it’s not working?

Well, if you watched Sunday’s slate of games, you were probably very convinced that punching the ball works as there were numerous instances around the NFL of the ball being swatted out.

There are plenty of possible explanations why the overall numbers aren’t as high as in years past. Those stats might be due to the rules emphasizing the receivers not getting hit over the middle of the field as much. Punching might be the only way to get the ball loose these days, rather than throwing a massive hit like corners or safeties would have done in the past. Or it might be that teams are preaching ball security more and more on offense and only putting players on the field if they trust them to secure the ball. The punch is more likely keeping the open-field fumble around than causing its decline.

It’s also notable that some teams are clearly better at it than others. The Raiders, for example, have forced just two fumbles. The Eagles and Steelers have caused 17.

Smith said that he wished he would have been doing it for his entire career. He has always been graded as one of the best tacklers in the NFL but only has 12 career forced fumbles.

“I had always thought about it,” Smith said. “I did it in high school one time in the open field and got it out but high school is much different. I wish I would have been doing it the whole time.”