Will Continuity Bring Vikes A Championship?

Continuity in the NFL can be vastly overrated. Owners, general managers and coaches often prefer familiarity over change. They jump through hoops to explain the reasoning for past failures and rationalize why the future will be different.

Sometimes patience pays off, and other times it just delays the inevitable.

This year, though, presents a different type of challenge. Teams are dealing with shortened offseasons, unique circumstances in training camp and no preseason. It’s reasonable to think that teams with a certain degree of continuity — whether it’s with schemes, personnel or coaches — will have an edge over teams that are attempting to implement a plethora of changes.

So how can we measure which teams have the most continuity and which have the least? Below are three key factors.

Coaching: Is the team bringing back the same head coach, offensive play-caller and defensive play-caller?

Quarterback: Does the team have the same starter as last season?

Expected returning snaps: Using The Athletic’s team-by-team 53-man roster projections, we can look at which players are expected back. We can then determine the percentage of expected returning snaps — both on offense and defense — from last season.

A perfect score of 100 (not realistic) would mean a team is returning its head coach, offensive play-caller, defensive play-caller, starting quarterback and every player who logged a snap in 2019.

Admittedly, this is not a complex mathematical formula. But it should give us a sense of which teams have the most and least continuity going into the 2020 season. It’s also worth noting that while continuity should benefit good teams, that’s not necessarily the case for teams that were bad last season.

1. Kansas City Chiefs (92.3)
No team is running it back to a more extreme degree than the defending Super Bowl champs. The Chiefs had starting right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and running back Damien Williams opt out but still return Andy Reid, both coordinators, Patrick Mahomes, and their top five pass-catchers from a year ago. Offensively, they’re projected to return 72.2 percent of last year’s snaps, which ranks 18th. But the continuity is even more pronounced on defense where the Chiefs are positioned to return 83.8 percent of their snaps — tied for second most.

2. Green Bay Packers (91.9)
Largely because of the first-round trade-up and selection of quarterback Jordan Love, it feels like a lot has happened with the Packers this offseason. But while there could be scheme changes related to Matt LaFleur running the ball at a higher rate, Green Bay is mostly bringing back the same team it had in 2019. The Packers have the same head coach, offensive play-caller (LaFleur), defensive play-caller (Mike Pettine) and quarterback (Aaron Rodgers). Offensively, the Packers return 79.1 percent of their snaps from last season (eighth), and defensively they are at 74.8 percent (sixth). The defense, specifically, could take a step forward with a lot of the same players operating in the same scheme.

3. Buffalo Bills (91.9)
The Athletic’s Joe Buscaglia projected that Trent Murphy would eventually be cut. If we project Murphy to make the roster, the Bills would jump the Packers and Chiefs and be first on this list. In addition to bringing back Sean McDermott, Josh Allen and both play-callers, the Bills return 86.3 percent of their snaps (fifth) on offense. That includes all five starting offensive linemen from a group that performed well last season. Buffalo’s big offseason move was trading for Stefon Diggs. Given that the rest of the offense is pretty much the same, it will be fun to observe the kind of impact a number one receiver can have on overall performance. Defensively, the Bills have much more turnover, ranking 14th in percentage of returning snaps.

4. New Orleans Saints (91.6)
They’ve gone 26-6 in the regular season over the last two years, only to suffer a pair of disappointing playoff losses. Sean Payton, Drew Brees and defensive coordinator Dennis Allen return to attempt what could be one final Super Bowl run together. The Saints released guard Larry Warford and lost Ted Ginn in free agency. Defensively, cornerback Eli Apple, safety Vonn Bell and linebacker A.J. Klein are gone. But overall, they return 73.8 percent of their defensive snaps, which ranks seventh. Offensively, they’re at 77.2 percent (10th).

5. Baltimore Ravens (91.3)
Towards the end of last season, it looked like the Ravens might lose one or both coordinators to head-coaching jobs, but Greg Roman and Don Martindale are back, along with John Harbaugh and Lamar Jackson. The Ravens rank seventh in percentage of returning snaps on offense (they lost standout guard Marshal Yanda to retirement) and are 13th on defense with the losses of defensive back Brandon Carr and nose tackle Michael Pierce. This degree of continuity on a team that went 14-2 a year ago is one reason why sportsbooks have the Ravens just behind the Chiefs as Super Bowl favorites.

6. San Francisco 49ers (91.3)
They made a blockbuster trade, sending defensive tackle DeForest Buckner to the Colts, and have some turnover on offense, but for the most part the defending NFC champs are running it back. Kyle Shanahan, defensive coordinator Robert Saleh and Jimmy Garoppolo all return. Defensively, they rank fourth in percentage (79.9) of returning snaps. Among the 12 players who logged at least 400 snaps on defense last season, Buckner is the only one no longer on the team. Offensively, the 49ers rank 19th in percentage of returning snaps, having lost a pair of offensive linemen (Joe Staley and Mike Person) to retirement and Emmanuel Sanders in free agency.

16. Minnesota Vikings (78.5)
On the surface, it feels like they should be much lower. The Vikings lost offensive play-caller Kevin Stefanski and traded Diggs. But other than Diggs and guard Josh Kline, they’re bringing back every offensive player who played at least 200 snaps last season, including Kirk Cousins. Overall, the Vikings return the sixth-highest percentage of offensive snaps. The defense is a different story as Minnesota has moved on from Everson Griffen (still unsigned), Xavier Rhodes, Trae Waynes, Linval Joseph and Mackensie Alexander. Mike Zimmer will have his work cut out for him as the Vikings rank 23rd in percentage of defensive snaps returning.

29. Cleveland Browns (53.0)
They are another team with a new head coach (Kevin Stefanski), offensive coordinator (Alex Van Pelt) and defensive coordinator (Joe Woods). They bring back Baker Mayfield and return 73 percent of their offensive snaps, which ranks 18th. The defense, though, is a different story. Cleveland moved on from linebacker Joe Schobert, safety Damarious Randall, defensive back T.J. Carrie and others. They return just 49.4 percent of their defensive snaps, which ranks 30th.

30. New York Giants (51.3)
You guessed it. New head coach (Joe Judge), offensive coordinator (Jason Garrett) and defensive coordinator (Patrick Graham). Left tackle Nate Solder opted out, and the Giants have tried to retool their offensive line. They rank 27th in percentage of returning snaps on offense, despite bringing back Daniel Jones. The Giants have even more turnover on defense. For the purposes of these rankings, we’re assuming that DeAndre Baker will not be back with the team. They’re returning just 49.3 percent of their defensive snaps (31st).

31. New England Patriots (51.0)
Bill Belichick, his coaching staff and much of the secondary are back. But pretty much everything else is different. The Patriots let Brady, Kyle Van Noy, Jamie Collins and Danny Shelton walk in free agency. They traded safety Duron Harmon. Right tackle Marcus Cannon, linebacker Dont’a Hightower, safety Patrick Chung and tight end Matt LaCosse opted out. Offensively, New England returns a league-low 44.7 percent of its snaps from last season. Defensively, the Patriots are at 61.9 percent, which ranks 18th.

32. Carolina Panthers (15.3)
The score in parentheses is not a typo. The Panthers are last by a wide margin. They are the only team in the league with a new head coach, offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator and starting quarterback. They bring back just 57.6 percent of their offensive snaps (29th) and 34.2 percent of their defensive snaps (32nd). Ownership invested in Matt Rhule for the long-term, but fielding a competitive team, given the turnover on the roster and the unique circumstances of this offseason, will present a huge challenge.

“I was on the phone with Coach Parcells for an hour this morning talking about trying to get over the hump,” Mike Zimmer said in his end-of-year press conference. “We’ve been to the conference championship, we’ve been to the divisional game, we’ve been in a wild card game where we lost by a field goal and just try to figure out how do we get over this hump of getting to the next level and eventually winning this thing.”

The offseason went almost exactly as you would have pictured on that sunny, 60-degree day in NorCal when the Vikings’ offense produced just 147 yards of total offense against the mighty San Francisco defense. They cut Xavier Rhodes, who was drafted in 2013 and peaked as arguably the best shadow corner in the league. They cut Linval Joseph, perhaps the most dominant nose tackle in the NFL from 2015-2017. Trae Waynes and Mackensie Alexander, top draft picks from 2015 and 2016, left in free agency. And Mr. Minneapolis Miracle Stefon Diggs, the last man off the field back in January, was traded away after making it clear to the team he was disgruntled with his role in the offense.

During the Zimmer era, seven of the 11 defensive players who started versus the 49ers made the Pro Bowl at least once. On offense, Kirk Cousins and Dalvin Cook made it in 2019 and Adam Thielen had twice been before. Diggs never reached a Pro Bowl but was second in the NFL in yards per reception last season. There was enough talent to have a shot every year.

But like the great Kurt Cobain song, there was always something in the way. Whether it was Blair Walsh or Teddy Bridgewater’s injury or Philadelphia’s offensive and defensive line or John DeFilippo’s bad-fit offense or the irony of some aforementioned Pro Bowlers losing their fastball by 2019 when they finally had an offense worthy of contending.

Now the Vikings’ roster has been overhauled. When they return to US Bank Stadium against the Packers in Week 1, there will be somewhere around seven new starters depending on which players win certain camp competitions. But they will have the same coach and the same general manager who built the came-so-close teams of the last six years. Only days before training camp, they were both signed to multi-year contract extensions (sources said Zimmer’s is three years, presumably Spielman’s is too).

What will it take for Zimmer and Spielman to do it again, only this time to get over the hump and reach the Super Bowl with a revamped group?

Passing is king

If we break Zimmer’s tenure into two parts — Part 1 being 2014-2019 and Part 2 starting in 2020 — Part 2 will have a few things that Part 1 did not: A quarterback who has started three years in a row with the Vikings and continuity with the scheme. Part 2 also has Super Bowl experience at offensive coordinator.

When the Vikings signed Kirk Cousins during the 2018 offseason, they expected the bones of the 2017 team that reached the NFC Championship to stay the same and Cousins to be the missing piece that would get them over the top. But much changed between 2017 and 2018. The Vikings faced a tougher schedule, suffered more injuries (and the absence of Everson Griffen for five games), saw a decline in offensive line play and struggled to grasp John DeFilippo’s offensive system, which was much different than Pat Shurmur’s the year before.

And sometimes things simply didn’t go their way in big games. In Green Bay they tied 29-29 when rookie kicker Daniel Carlson missed a potential game-winner and against the Seattle Seahawks, linebacker Bobby Wagner blocked a punt that should have been called back for a penalty.

By 2019, the skeleton of the 2017 team was weathered. Xavier Rhodes went from a top player at his position to playing at a bottom-five level. Linval Joseph no longer penetrated the offensive line like he did back in the day. Everson Griffen’s final six weeks were nowhere close to his prime.

Not that Cousins joined a poor team, just one that drifted from No. 1 in points and yards allowed on defense in 2017 to fourth and 14th in yards and ninth and fifth in points allowed.

The Vikings’ running game also dropped off from second in rushing yards in 2017 to 15th and 13th the last two seasons. Dalvin Cook proved every bit as explosive as expected when he was picked in the second round but struggled with injuries.

One consistent thing you will hear from NFL analysts about Cousins is that he’s only as good as the circumstances around him. The 2019 Vikings had an easy schedule (tied for the most non-playoff teams on the slate) and solid overall team and won 10 games. When things were a little tougher, they won eight. When they faced teams that were better than them, they lost.

Cousins wants to change that.

“One of the focuses for me this season will be to, if we’re not running the ball well and things aren’t going well, to be able to make those plays that can get us right back into a game and win a game,” Cousins said. “I think you saw it in the Denver game, we were down and able to get back in it and win. But being able to do that more and against a team like San Francisco. It’s not an easy task, but those are the challenges when they eventually come up this season, it’s a goal and something you’re working toward to say, hey, in those moments to try to find a way to dig deep and make enough plays to win.”

Anyone who watched the Super Bowl understands that any team that reaches the Super Bowl in 2020 is going to need special plays from their quarterback. Patrick Mahomes’s third-and-15 throw comes to mind. Cousins’s passes to Adam Thielen and Kyle Rudolph in the playoff win over New Orleans have to come consistently, not just one time at the Superdome.

But when we talk about reaching the Super Bowl, it isn’t just wow plays in big moments. Nothing gives a team a better shot at that than being a consistently successful passing game.

“There are statistics you can look at like success rate that tell you on a particular play whether you gained more yards than anticipated based on down/distance, I think those are important,” Pro Football Focus analyst Kevin Cole said. “If [success rate is high] there are going to be big plays. Certain players will give that to you more often, certain play types will give that to you more often but the key is maintaining [high success rate].”

One of the ways this bears out is in Expected Points Added, which calculates how many points a team would expect to score from a certain field position/down-and-distance and how they perform versus that expectation. Of the last 10 teams to reach the Super Bowl, nine of them have ranked in the top five in passing EPA (and that last eight in a row). Kansas City was No. 1 last year. The 2016 and 2017 Super Bowls matched up the No. 1 vs. No. 2 teams in passing EPA. In 2017 the Vikings ranked fourth. Last year they were ninth.

Defense and running EPA are certainly helpful but do not correlate anywhere near as closely as passing success. The 2016 Falcons and 2017 Patriots were 22nd and 24th in passing EPA on defense, for example.

“When we’re talking pass versus run, it’s about where your upside is,” Cole said. “A successful pass play might be six yards on first down but sometimes you will get 10, sometimes you will get 15, sometimes you’ll get 25 yards whereas a [successful] run play you’re going to get six, seven, eight yards.”

The bottom line is that a consistently efficient passing game with special-play capabilities can overcome a lot.

Kirk Cousins had arguably the best year of his career last season but there is more work to do if the Vikings are going to get over the hump and reach a Super Bowl. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings

That’s where Gary Kubiak comes in.

Kubiak joined the Vikings as an offensive advisor in 2019 and worked closely with offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski to implement the Kubiak/Shanahan offense, which has roots that extend back to Bill Walsh. Kubiak has been teaching and calling plays for this particular scheme since he took over as Denver’s offensive coordinator in 1995, a year in which the Broncos ranked third in the NFL in total yards and eight in points. He won the Super Bowl as John Elway’s play caller in 1997 and 1998 with offenses that ranked in the top two in points.

Kubiak won it again as a head coach with the Denver Broncos with the only team out of the last 10 that did not have a top five passing offense in EPA (but did still have Peyton Manning).

The man with the ring said it’s all about giving yourself a shot.

“The only way I know how to get over the hump is to keep going back to the hump,” Kubiak said. “You have to be good enough to get there every year and find a way to be playing in January. I used to always used to preach to my teams, ‘Hey, the bottom line, can we get ourselves in? Can we play better than anybody else for one month?’ That’s what this league boils down to, a lot of good coaches, a lot of good players, a very fine line between being really successful and being successful. I think we’re all searching for that but we’ll work toward that and stay committed to each day and try not to get ahead of ourselves."

Kubiak’s sentiment may ring more true in Part 2 of the Zimmer era when there will be seven teams in the playoffs and only one club that gets a bye. Since 2013 no team that played on Wild Card Weekend has reached the Super Bowl.

The key is more likely Kubiak’s ability to elevate quarterback EPA through is zone run/play-action scheme.

Take 2009 for example. With Matt Schaub at the helm, Kubiak’s Texans ranked fifth in passing EPA. The four teams ahead of Houston that year were quarterbacked by Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Drew Brees and Philip Rivers.

Last year Cousins thrived the same way ‘09 Schaub did, posting a 129.2 quarterback rating on play-action throws with 9.7 yards per pass attempt, 14 touchdowns and just two interceptions.

That type of performance can get you to the hump and give you a chance to get over it. But Cousins realizes that Kubiak’s scheme can’t hold your hand in tough situations. When teams are trailing, they can’t rely on play-action. It often comes down the straight drop back game. Cousins acknowledged that the Vikings’ passing game needs answers when the scheme hasn’t laid out the perfect blueprint.

“It could be any number of ways to do it…trying to find ways to make those plays and come out on top against a really good team when you know other things aren’t clicking for us,” Cousins said.

“Everybody is just so driven and determined to try to get that Super Bowl win here,” Spielman said. “We're always trying to, what I call AARs, after-action reviews, which is a military term, on what we did good but what we need to improve on and how we're going to improve moving forward."

Assuming a 2015 draft doesn’t walk through the door, the process will have to be better this time around than it was before to achieve the same results.

That doesn’t mean getting over the hump is impossible or even improbable. While a new era means turnover in different areas of the roster, the next Spielman/Zimmer run starts with a load of talented players in their primes including Kendricks and Hunter and two first-round draft picks Justin Jefferson and Jeff Gladney to build out the foundation.

It will take one year of everything coming together. Injury luck, field goal kicking, the right matchups, the right bounces and on and on. But the Vikings have a chance to weigh the odds in their favor with an explosive passing game, building team chemistry and taking as many swings as they can in the draft.

As the winningest franchise without a ring, it’s bound to happen eventually. Whether that comes in Part 2 of Zimmer/Spielman rests as much in the hands of the Football Gods as it does the head coach and GM.