2020 Offense Discussion Thread

At 0-3, the Vikings may be longshots to make the playoffs, but they’ll be gunning for it until they’re mathematically eliminated. How they intend to do that is anyone’s guess, but the most effective way might be to take advantage of something that finally worked in a regular-season game — the offense.

They put together a much better offensive showing Sunday against the Titans than any of their other games, scoring points when it mattered and even generating a few leads, including late into the fourth quarter.

While that wasn’t enough to secure the victory, it might tell us something: The Vikings offense needs to shoulder the load if they’re going to win games this season. The young and injury-depleted defense, with some help from the offense, has given up 34 points a game, including the two safeties.

Both units were given chances to win against the Titans last week, and there might be a little bit of disagreement over who ultimately bears responsibility. The issue here isn’t who is at fault; rather it’s about finding ways to improve the odds of winning.

Right now, it seems as if pivoting to being an offensive team might be more feasible and effective. Not only is there more continuity and health on offense, but there’s more potential for big plays, some recent success and history that suggests that course correction is possible.

Defensive improvement is certainly possible as the season goes on, but for now, the magic number for the Vikings is 35 points. Can they put up that kind of offensive production week to week? Let’s look at what needs to happen in order for the Vikings to build off Sunday’s performance.

Cousins ranks near the top of the NFL in big-time throws, something that tracks well with scoring despite low success rates. While there are turnover concerns, the Vikings should stay aggressive as they still have a receiving corps able to take advantage of it despite losing their best deep threat from last year.

That said, when they do have one or two running backs in the backfield, they should be more aggressive about play-action. Even if it was smart to avoid it against Green Bay, they still rank around league average in play-action passing rates over the past two weeks. Given how quickly the game got away from them against Indianapolis, they still didn’t use play-action very much, relatively, against Tennessee.

Committing to a play-fake on only 26.7 percent of their dropbacks against the Titans, they are sacrificing some opportunities that worked for them last year. Going forward, that will likely be a critical component of their passing offense. That’s particularly true while they’re concerned about interior pressure, as bootlegs on play-action give Cousins a moving pocket and a little bit more time. Their biggest play — Jefferson’s 71-yard touchdown — was a classic play-action concept, with Jefferson running an over route and Thielen running a dig underneath.

Turnovers

If they want more big plays, the Vikings will have to reduce turnovers. Entering the game, Cousins was leading the league in turnover-worthy plays. That’s not just the product of an interception bouncing off a receiver’s hands or Hail Mary picks — he’s had dropped interceptions for each unlucky pick. The good news is that’s not likely to continue.

Though Cousins has been surprisingly inaccurate over the last three weeks, his ball placement has improved each successive week. While the fact that he seemingly needs a few weeks to reacclimate to the NFL is disappointing, it does mean that the prognosis going forward isn’t necessarily all bad.

Throwing two interceptions against the Titans doesn’t seem like progress, but with one on a Hail Mary — as well placed to Thielen as one could hope for — there’s only one real pick he’s responsible for. The week prior, he threw two justifiable picks but also had two dropped interceptions.

He will very likely regress to his career interception rate, which before this year was 2.3 percent. That probably means he won’t hit his low total from last year (six picks) but that he’ll be on track for about seven or eight more over the next 13 games. The unfortunate corollary to this might be a return to his high fumble rate — about one every 63 dropbacks, or 1.6 percent. With about half of those recovered by the defense, that means a turnover rate of 3.1 percent.

That’s still better than where the offense has been, with Cousins responsible for two turnovers a game, a rate of 6.7 percent. Cutting those turnovers down alone will result in more points for the offense and help the defense. In 2019, the average turnover resulted in a four-point swing, according to the expected points model provided by Stathead.

Reducing quarterback-induced turnovers from two to one would, in theory, be enough to turn the Titans game around and would likely be the difference in some of their games going forward.

They do have some options to reduce turnover rate without sacrificing too much with regards to their ability to commit to big plays. Most of those are embedded above, with personnel changes and moving pockets.

But they could also be more aggressive about throwing to the sidelines rather than the middle. Cousins threw picks at twice the rate last year over the middle than to the sidelines, where he’s shown exceptional capability. That matches his 2018 and 2017 tendencies as well, and he’s also thrown for higher yards-per-attempt targeting the sidelines in each of the last three years.

More familiarity with receivers as they increase chemistry and stay on the same page on option routes will help as well, as should their increased willingness to put receivers over tight ends and running backs on the field on passing downs.

It’s debatable whether the Vikings should attempt to win more games, but the staff and players will try, regardless of whether or not fans or writers think they should be tanking for the No. 1 draft pick. If that’s the case, pivoting to becoming an offensive team will be their smartest approach. They’ve just shown that they can put together an effective offense, and if they want to maximize that, they should shift gears as quickly as possible.