Vikings’ offensive issues can be fixed with one simple change, and it’s one that hasn’t happened yet
The Minnesota Vikings’ offense has yet to fire on all cylinders, but one change could help unlock what they haven’t consistently.
Everyone is frustrated with what’s going on with the Minnesota Vikings’ offense right now. There has been some good elements with Kevin O’Connell‘s unit, but they have yet to maximize what they have. One of the biggest issues has been failing to string plays together, ranking 27th in EPA/play (-0.089) and last in success rate (34.4%).
When watching the offense, the vibes are not great. They have issues in a lot of areas, but the biggest one is failing to sustain drives. The issues have been layered across multiple areas, but most have been put on O’Connell and quarterback Kyler Murray.
Minnesota Vikings offense is so close to taking off
When watching the Vikings’ offense, there is one element that stands out: routes not open down the field. Some of that is the defense is in the right coverage, as they get paid too. The other aspect has been the play calling. Everyone keeps calling out that there are issues with it, but what are said issues?
My biggest one is loaded in this one play.
You can point to a couple of different things with this play as to why the Vikings are struggling offensively. The biggest one isn’t the offensive line, even though they allowed pressure on Murray. It’s also fair to point out that the left side was two backups in left tackle Ryan Van Demark and left guard Joe Huber, as both Christian Darrisaw and Donovan Jackson left the game due to injuries.
While the blocking wasn’t perfect, it hasn’t been that big of an issue so far this season. The biggest element on this concept, which appears to be Bow, is how the linebackers treat the Vikings here.
They get a lot of depth, preventing the basic (in-route) by Jordan Addison from being the easy throw. There are a couple of ways you can get the linebackers forward. One of them is play-action, and the Vikings have run that 27.4% of the time with Murray under center. The other is a little simpler: call routes that draw them forward.
The beauty of O’Connell’s passing attack has been to generate explosives down the field. Overall, it’s shown to work and generate a lot of those explosives. However, it focuses too much on attacking the intermediate areas of the field, and the linebackers know they can get depth without having to worry about anything underneath.
Simply put: force them forward.
Murray is used to more of an Air Raid-based approach with shorter concepts and a rhythm-based attack. Those elements should become more of a focus moving forward. Run spacing concepts like mesh, stick, and curl/flat to force the linebackers to be weary of those shorter routes. Then, you can stack concepts to take advantage of that, like stick/nod and the curl/wheel that the Vikings like to run.
The linebackers have been consistently getting depth throughout the season and O’Connell will have to find ways to draw them forward to make his intermediate passing game more successful.
When Murray threw in the 10-19 range over the middle of the field, he’s completed 3-of-4 for 62 yards against the Dolphins. This season, it’s 6-of-10 for 113 yards and an interception attacking the entire field from 10-19 yards, and the interception came on a batted ball by Vita Vea against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
When Murray attacks the intermediate levels of the field, which hasn’t happened often due to coverage, it’s been successful. Once they find a way to get the linebackers to stop dropping, it will do wonders to open up throws for Murray.
The good news overall is Murray has found a way to attack defenses. He completed 13-of-14 passes for 120 yards in the fourth quarter with an EPA of 0.58, ranking fourth among qualifying quarterbacks with five or more dropbacks in Week 4. There is still time to get things figured out, and one small change could be what unlocks things.
