Klint Kubiak New OC

Last year the Vikings finished 11th in points, 18th on percentage of drives in which they produced points and ninth in offensive EPA.

Those numbers are solid but if you grouped offenses into tiers by those key categories, the first tier would be Green Bay, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Buffalo, Tennessee. The second tier: New Orleans, Indy, Cleveland, Baltimore, Seattle. The Vikings would be grouped with clubs like Vegas, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Arizona.

When you think of the offense in those terms, it’s clear that the Vikings need to improve their efficiency on offense in order to move their name onto the list of true contenders.

The Vikings did not make any personnel changes this offseason that have the potential to push them up into the next tier (unless rookie Wyatt Davis is a game-changing guard), so Kubiak will need to improve situational performance and maximize player usage in order to take the offense to the next level.

Second down

There has been much made of the Vikings continually running on second-and-long, setting themselves up for difficult third downs rather than taking the “risk” of pushing the ball through the air — and rightfully so. On second downs with at least seven yards to go, the Vikings passed the fewest times in the NFL (109 of 183). They picked up first downs on 25.1% of plays, which was 17th in the NFL despite Cousins averaging 7.9 yards per attempt in those situations.

One of the results of regularly running on second-and-long was the Vikings averaging 7.1 yards to go on third downs, the seventh longest in the league.

It may fall under the category of the over-arching philosophy that the Vikings want to run on second-and-long with hopes of taking advantage of lighter boxes or lighter personnel along the D-line, but even a small adjustment would provide a bump toward being more efficient.

There’s another second down situation where much of the league is missing opportunities and the Vikings could get an edge.

In studying teams’ decisions based on down and distance, Kevin Cole of Pro Football Focus noticed that there has been a decline over the last 15 years of teams taking shots on second-and-short.

For a team that lives to take play-action shots downfield, second-and-short plays offer an opportunity for huge gains.

Last year on second down with three or fewer yards to go, Cousins went 12-for-15 with 135 yards and two touchdowns for a 120.7 QB rating, yet 17 quarterbacks threw more second-and-short passes than Cousins. Overall the Vikings ran 62 times and dropped back to pass just 16 times.

On those same plays, opponents seemed to know what was coming as Dalvin Cook gained just 2.8 yards per attempt.

Here is the chart Cole created to demonstrate how teams have been pushing the ball downfield more on third downs and less on second down in recent years:



Another interesting element of second-and-short passes is that the entire league took just 22 sacks on 624 dropbacks in those spots.

That seems to suggest that defenses are not “pinning their ears back” or running stunts/twists/blitzes for fear of getting burned by explosive runs.

With Cook regularly busting off runs of 6-8 yards on first down, the Vikings should have all sorts of opportunities to aim for big plays downfield to Adam Thielen, Justin Jefferson and Irv Smith Jr. when teams are gearing up for an extra dose of Cook.

The reason teams are running so much might be to guarantee a fresh set of downs but the rate of gaining first downs isn’t huge between passing and rushing on second-and-short plays. Runs produced first downs 67% of the time, and passing got first downs on 60% of plays league wide.

On the Purple Insider Podcast, Cole said that running in these spots repeatedly can end up requiring the quarterback to convert third downs, which is a high variance play.

“People think these running offenses are low risk in a way or low variance in a way but I actually think it’s a little bit different than that,” Cole said. “There’s an argument that you’re making it a little bit higher variance…what you’re doing is relying on the quarterback to convert…a handful of third downs and a handful of explosive first downs off play-action. You can do really, really well or you can do really, really poorly in those situations.”

“You give yourself two or three plays in a game where if you hit those two or three plays you win but over a long enough timeline the wheels are going to fall off.”

Mike Zimmer said that he set up OTAs and minicamp to simulate situations and give Kubiak plenty of chances to hone his craft under different circumstances.

“For all the new or young coordinators, I think it is important that they get a chance to kind of practice their game-like situations, certain calls and understanding the game, whether it’s we’re winning or losing or two-minute,” Zimmer said.

We’ll see whether that results in moving the needle toward efficiency.

Another stat worth noting when it comes to situational play calling is the Vikings’ lack of early-game passing. Only the New England Patriots threw fewer passes in the first quarter, yet Cousins had a 108.4 rating on 97 passes. Like second-and-short, the first quarter represents an opportunity for aggressive throws.

Overall quarterbacks had a 95.3 rating in the first quarter last year, which was a tick higher than the 93.1 rating in the second, third and fourth quarters.