Vikings Mailbag

@kyebaxter At what point do we just assume the Vikings think the offensive line is the least necessary part of the team's success? It feels like they have done more to attempt to shore up the kicker than the offensive line...not that kickers have exactly thrived here either.

The fact that they’ve ranked 32nd in O-line spending for a few years now pretty much locks that in. What’s odd is that I asked Mike Zimmer at the NFL Combine in 2020 how he thought Kirk Cousins could build on his career high 2019 numbers and he said “better pass protection.” And then they played Dakota Dozier for 16 games.

It’s a little bit of the nature of the beast in a salary cap league though. If you spend toward the top of the NFL on defense and at quarterback, something has to get left out.

But we can still question some of the allocations of funds. If you were to design the ideal spending of each dollar, would so much go to linebacker? Probably not. Would so much have poured your cash into safety last year? Probably not. And would the QB have to be a little bit better to justify 15% of the cap space? Probably yes.

It looks like they have decided that guard is the position that gets sacrificed in spending and they are going to keep taking swings and hope for another Joe Berger.

@owenstuntin Since the Vikes got more money with the Barr reconstruction than reported, should we still go after more free agents or save the money? Possibly Austin Blythe if he hasn’t signed already?

Definitely. The question is whether they want to throw a bunch of money at one of the remaining good free agents like Melvin Ingram or Jadeveon Clowney or spread those dollars out between a handful of players. They still have a serious need at safety unless they think either Josh Metellus and Myles Dorn are going to hold down the fort there. (Yes, there is a player named Myles Dorn on the roster).

If they were to come away with an average starting safety, another guard for a competition, a cheap third receiver and a situational pass rusher with that $8 or so million they have left, that wouldn’t be a bad haul for free agency overall.

@laneherby Why did they never get Brett Jones a chance?

My guess is that teams put a lot more emphasis on “traits” when making decisions than we do. We look at the PFF results after the fact and decide how it went. So they might look at Dakota Dozier or Pat Elflein and say that they are quicker and can execute certain types of blocks in the run game more effectively. We would look at those guys getting steamrolled on key downs and producing poor grades and ask why the better pass blocking (though less aesthetically pleasing) Brett Jones isn’t in there.

Another thing is that the difference between an OK pass blocking grade (Jones) and a terrible pass blocking grade (Dozier) might only be two or three plays a game. So the team might not be willing to sacrifice what they can do in the run over a couple plays.

I tend to think that process is pretty flawed. Those two or three drop backs add up and could be the difference between winning and losing.

@bschiwal Is new guy depth, there to scare Bradbury, or moving to guard? Is this trade hurting potential other splash FA acquisitions?

With this team and the offensive line, I’ll always add the “you never know” disclaimer to all my answers but I’d be very surprised if Cole’s acquisition had anything to do with Bradbury. My guess is that they had a chance to acquire a guy on the cheap who could either be a backup or compete for a spot at left guard so they went for it.

Mike Zimmer praised Bradbury at the end of the year and hinted that his play dipped at the end because he was battling injury. The numbers match up with that. I’ve gotten every impression that they liked what they saw from him.

I wouldn’t suspect that the $2 million spent on Cole severely hurts their chances of acquiring anyone else. The concern you might have is how many other players they can still get now. Assume they have $8 million left in space. One guy at this point in the game probably isn’t costing more than $8 million. What if you need two $5 million players? They can usually maneuver the cap but they are running out of chess moves to make.

@northstartrade2 Is there anyone the Vikings can sign to the o line thst will allow them to draft BPA in the first round. I can’t stand picking for need. That’s how you miss great players.

You want those things to converge like they did with Justin Jefferson. He was the best player on the board and a need. That might be the case with offensive line if somehow Sewell or Slater gets to 14.

If they had any type of long term outlook, I don’t think there’s anyone they could get now in free agency who would absolutely preclude them from taking O-line. Since they seem to be making aggressive moves to win right now, they could still sign Mitchell Schwartz to start at right tackle or Alejandro Villanueva on the left side. Eric Fisher might fall into this category depending on health and an Orlando Brown Jr. trade would certainly do it. Austin Blythe is the only guard that I’d say would possibly plug a hole for the short and long term.

So I suppose the answer is yes but it’s a pretty small group.

@mikekerrane What are the chances Ezra Cleveland takes meaningful snaps at tackle this year? Seems like that is what he was drafted to be but even with Reiff gone there’s very little chatter about him moving from RG

Let’s go with a 50/50 coin flip. That answer could certainly change with the rest of free agency or the draft. If they do not sign or draft someone to start at left tackle, we’re probably looking at Brian O’Neill moving over to left tackle and Rashod Hill starting on the right side. Based on recent history, they do seem to enjoy their camp competitions for offensive line positions. We could see a Hill/Cleveland competition for a tackle spot and if Hill wins the job, Cleveland stays at guard.

Right now there’s still so little clarity and we haven’t had a chance to talk to Mike Zimmer about any of this during the offseason. Usually we’d have his thoughts from the Combine to give some general indication of where things stand.

@dinzeo82 Will Cole start week one

If you were demanding more than a “maybe!” answer from me, I’d have to guess the answer is yes, that he starts at left guard. I would normally think Cole would be a depth guy based on his previous performance but that probably means he’ll start. It just seems like any time we think they’re going in a certain direction with the O-line, it goes the opposite way.

We thought Ezra Cleveland was the future left tackle and then he’s playing guard from Day 1 at training camp. We figured they’d replace left guard last year in free agency or the draft and they rolled with Dozier. Who would have expected them to move Mike Remmers to guard in 2018? We didn’t expect them to randomly cut Pat Elflein last year.

I try pretty hard to understand how the offensive line works (see all the podcasts with Jeremiah Sirles and Brandon Thorn) but I often end up being wrong when guessing about what they’ll do up front.

@chinanderm Any chance Cole plays center and Bradbury moves to guard? Just spitballing here…

Is there any chance? With this team, there’s always a chance of a player moving positions. Do I think that’s a good idea? Probably not. But you could see the wheels turning with some type of Nick Easton comparison with Bradbury — a guy that got overpowered at times by the beast NFC North nose tackles and then played decently at guard. I think you’d prefer to see Bradbury grow at center.

One thing that studies on player development have found is that O-linemen peak later than other positions, so it would make more sense to let Bradbury keep improving.

@palpatinesrobes Will the interior offensive line ever get sorted out?

This question has a pretty bleak feel to it. Someday. If you look at offensive lines around the league, many of them are like defenses where they have good years and bad years and stretches where they dominate and stretches where they struggle. This has been a (somewhat self-inflicted) long stretch of struggling to get the interior O-line together but it only takes one good player to change the fortunes.

If Joe Berger was younger and Pat Elflein/Nick Easton hadn’t suffered injuries, that might have been a strong interior line for awhile.

Just like it probably felt in the early 2000s like the Vikings would never have a good defense and eventually it happened, someday they will have two good guards. That day may not be in 2021.

@eleysium When Zimmer is done here and the Vikings change from zone blocking, will they need all new O line players due to body type, etc? I feel like that’s what other teams have had to do and it takes years to fix.

Good question. Brian O’Neill can play for anybody. Ezra Cleveland isn’t small by any means. Center would maybe have to be changed but that spot doesn’t have to be super big in any scheme. They ran some gap stuff last year that worked.

I think a lot of teams are mixing and matching these days based on matchups and how they want to run play-action off their running game so it wouldn’t be a big issue. I also don’t know when Zimmer won’t be the coach. It could be a long time from now.

Which former or active player would you most like to interview if you were ever given the chance to?

There’s obviously hundreds of players who would be fascinating interviews but one guy I’d love to chat with (maybe I can make this happen at some point) is Joe Webb. He has one of the most unique NFL stories in the history of the game. Someone drafted in his spot shouldn’t still be in the league, yet he’s made an incredible career out of doing anything and everything that he was every called upon to do and he’s still on a roster. That’s wild. How many guys have touchdown passes, touchdown catches, kick returns, punt returns and tackles? Probably not many. Plus everyone who I’ve ever asked about Joe Webb says he was a great teammate. I’m always interested in talking to people who have positively impacted others.

Via DM: If there was a punter guaranteed to always drop the ball on the one-yard line regardless of where they punted from but you had to draft him #1 overall, do you do it? You have to… right?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: So I went back and looked at every punt from 1999 through 2020 and the average EPA on the 52,977 punts over the last 21 years is -0.036. Zero is an average result, so that makes sense, and the reason the result here is below zero is because teams who go for it on fourth downs over the last 21 years on average get above-average results, and so the number reflects that opportunity cost of not going for it.

If you look only at the 17,324 punts over the last 21 years that were downed inside the 20-yard line, the average EPA/play shoots up to 0.31. That’s a really good result — for comparison, Tom Brady‘s career EPA/play is 0.216. The average NFL team punted the ball about 3.7 times per game last year, so that means a punter who could guarantee any punted ball would be downed inside the 20-yard line would be worth more than an extra point per game.

But this theoretical punter can do much, much better than that and can drop the ball at the one-yard line from anywhere on the field, guaranteed. There have been just 508 punts over the last 21 years that have been dropped right on the one-yard line, excluding plays that were challenged and overturned as touchbacks. The average EPA/play on those punts? 0.687. And note that that figure includes punts to the one-yard line that were returned (including two occasions that were returned for a touchdown, one by Patrick Peterson in 2011 coincidentally enough). If we limit to just the punts that were downed at the one-yard line, the average EPA/play jumps up to 0.731.

But even that understates how valuable this player will be, because most punts that wind up at the one-yard line start much farther away from your own goal line. The average punt that lands at the opposing one-yard line starts around midfield, at the opponent’s 48-yard line, but the average punt over the last 21 years comes from your own 35-yard line. That’s an additional 17 yards per punt because this punter can drop the ball at the one-yard line from anywhere on the field, which makes a huge difference: the average EPA/play of the 11 punts that went 64-66 yards and landed at the one-yard line was 1.439!


The only thing capping this player’s value is the fact that most teams will only punt as a matter of last resort, and even with a punter this good, a team is still better off trying for touchdowns and field goals rather than punting the ball on early downs. The average team punted the ball 59 times last year, so if you assume this punter earns 1.439 EPA/play based on the value of a punt that goes to the one-yard line from the average NFL starting punt position and does so 59 times in a season, this super punter would net a team on average an additional 5.3 points every single game for their career.

So how valuable does that make this punter? It’s roughly the difference in value between Aaron Rodgers and Alex Smith over the last decade: Rodgers posted an average 0.242 EPA/play over the last decade (ranking second only to Patrick Mahomes), while Smith posted an average 0.104 EPA/play over the last decade (ranking 23rd between Cam Newton and Jared Goff). Over an average of 600 passes per year, that’s about 145 total EPA compared to about 62 total EPA, compared to our super punter providing roughly 85 total EPA per year.

On an absolute basis, our super punter provides about as much EPA as an average starting quarterback. But given his unique talents and the positional scarcity, he’s probably the most valuable player in the league (though you could still make an argument for Mahomes). And since he comes with the guarantee to always down the ball at the one-yard line, there’s no risk. So yes, he’s absolutely worth a first-round pick in my eyes.

Looking at past performances, what are realistic expectations for first-round tackle Christian Darrisaw and third-round guard Wyatt Davis? — @wirsingbrent

Last year was an anomaly for rookie tackles, with so many of them playing phenomenally well out of the gate. Even the least impressive first-round pick, Andrew Thomas, played well in the second half of the season. Tristan Wirfs, Mekhi Becton and Jedrick Wills look like immediate Pro Bowl candidates.

More realistically, first-round picks tend to struggle a bit more than those three did and have a trajectory somewhat similar to Thomas. There have been 20 picks at offensive tackle in the last five years, though a few didn’t play tackle (or at all) right away, including Germain Ifedi, Laremy Tunsil, Jonah Williams and Isaiah Wilson.

If we isolate ourselves to tackles that played at least 750 snaps, there have been 12 rookie first-round tackles. Not a great sample to draw from, but a good starting point. In that group, the average overall PFF grade was 68.9, with a run-blocking grade of 65.2 and a pass-protecting grade of 69.2.

That ranks just a bit below where Riley Reiff graded last year and about where he graded over the past three years. An upgrade over Reiff is certainly in the cards (Ronnie Stanley is a great example of a player whose play was above Reiff’s level, along with the excellent tackles of the 2020 class), but the most likely outcome is a similar-quality player. That gives him a lot of room to improve and he costs less against the cap, but the Vikings didn’t sign themselves up for an automatic upgrade.

In the third round, rookie starters are unsurprisingly much rarer, even at a historically less valuable position like guard. Only eight third-round players in the last five drafts took significant snaps at guard and only four took over 750 snaps. That said, there is some pretty significant selection bias in the sample: One has to be much better than the average third-round pick to force his way into the lineup.

As a result, we don’t have a robust sample of how good a rookie third-round pick is because the ones not good enough to play generally don’t. While first-round picks almost universally play significant snaps and we get to see how good they generally are, that just isn’t the case in the third round.

The data we do have, however, suggests that they don’t play well. Their average PFF grade is 56.6, with a run-blocking grade of 60.4 and a pass-protection grade of 51.7. That’s an upgrade over Dakota Dozier and Dru Samia, but it’s still well below league average. There have been good rookie third-round guards, like Damien Lewis, but the ones who turn out to be assets often do so after their rookie years — think Joe Thuney, Graham Glasgow and Nate Davis.

Do you wish Cordarrelle Patterson had been a Viking for life? — @brettkollmann

One of the best kick returners in NFL history staying a Viking would have been gold. He’s been able to threaten kickoff coverage units regardless of the “supporting cast” of special-teamers blocking for him. While he was in Minnesota, the Vikings led all NFL teams in starting field position following a kickoff — whether that was a product of Patterson’s returns or teams choosing to kick away from him.

In 2017, when he was with the Raiders, they were second in the league in the stat and the Patriots were sixth the following year with Patterson. Over the combined 2019 and 2020 seasons, the Bears were fifth in the league in starting field position after a kickoff.

If we combined all those teams into one 2013-2020 combination, Patterson’s return units would rank first in the NFL.

The only team to come close to that mark would be the Chiefs, who over the same period of time were led by legendary special-teams coordinator Dave Toub. After that are the Baltimore Ravens — whose head coach is a former special-teams coordinator — who are over a full yard behind.


Avg Field Position after KOs (2013-2020)

TEAM AVE FIELD POS (KO)
Las Vegas Raiders (With CP) 27.31
New England Patriots (With CP) 27.21
Patterson Teams (Combined) 27.16
Minnesota Vikings (With CP) 27.14
Chicago Bears (With CP) 27.1
Kansas City Chiefs 26.74
Baltimore Ravens 26.07
Seattle Seahawks 25.9
Minnesota Vikings (Without CP) 25.85
Green Bay Packers 25.37
Buffalo Bills 25.36
Cincinnati Bengals 25.33
Indianapolis Colts 25.08
Dallas Cowboys 25.04
Philadelphia Eagles 24.92
Carolina Panthers 24.9
New Orleans Saints 24.86
Detroit Lions 24.59
Chicago Bears (Without CP) 24.52
New York Jets 24.51
New England Patriots (Without CP) 24.46
New York Giants 24.44
Los Angeles Rams 24.42
Las Vegas Raiders (Without CP) 24.25
Cleveland Browns 24.24
Tennessee Titans 24.15
Denver Broncos 24.13
Atlanta Falcons 24.09
Jacksonville Jaguars 24.09
Miami Dolphins 24.07
Houston Texans 24.03
San Francisco 49ers 23.94
Washington Football Team 23.92
Pittsburgh Steelers 23.86
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23.84
Arizona Cardinals 23.52
Los Angeles Chargers 23.26
Over his time in the NFL, Patterson leads all players in kick-return touchdowns with eight. Tied for second place are seven players — with two.

He has had 239 kick returns between 2013 and 2020 and averaged 29.8 yards per return attempt. That’s first among all contemporaries with at least 20 returns. The next closest is Isaiah Rodgers, who is averaging a yard less. Of those with at least 50 returns, Jacoby Jones runs second, 1.5 yards behind Patterson. And of those with 100 returns, Benny Cunningham ranks second, 3.5 yards behind Patterson. The distance between Patterson and Cunningham is the same as the distance between Cunningham and last place, ninth-ranked Brandon Tate.

In fact, Patterson ranks first in average return yardage in NFL history among returners with at least 100 returns, beating out Abe Woodson (1958-1966) by a full yard. Of returners with at least 50 returns, only Gale Sayers (1965-1971) ranks above him.

As Jon Bois explains, kickoff returns have become irrelevant in the modern NFL — unless Cordarrelle Patterson is in the game.

It would have been fun to be able to watch every single one of Patterson’s returns live.

Could we see greater use of invert coverages after Zim (head coach Mike Zimmer) toyed with them in 2020? For cornerbacks with a lot of savvy but less speed, like Bashaud Breeland and Patrick Peterson, dropping into an overtop zone and using their eyes to break on the ball, it seems like an advantage. Especially with 22 underneath. — @elihartskin

I’m generally not a huge fan of invert coverages, which ask cornerbacks to replace safeties in typical coverage shells. In Cover-2, for example, a corner might line up on the outside near the line of scrimmage but must move back off the snap to a deep half while the safety rushes to replace the cornerback’s coverage responsibility.

There is trap potential in these kinds of disguised coverages, and I imagine a player like Patrick Peterson could be well-suited to take advantage of this kind of confusion. But it typically creates significant leverage problems for defenders and would still require a degree of speed from the corners to get to their landmarks on time. The reason slower corners convert to safety is that the deep alignment of the safeties at the snap allows them to get to landmarks quickly without requiring as much raw speed. Adding distance to that can make things difficult.

That said, if Peterson thinks it would work for him, I imagine Zimmer would listen. By the middle of the season last year, the Vikings were running a much simpler coverage scheme than they have since Zimmer arrived — something that I imagine bothered him.

It seems pretty unlikely that the Vikings would pay for a legendary, veteran corner solely to play him in the flats and keep him entirely out of complicated coverages. So they will absolutely do scheme experimentation that will likely include invert coverages, but I imagine more if it will involve complicated matching rules and swapped underneath zones than invert.

Cleveland is not competing for the left tackle job. It really is just between Rashod Hill and Darrisaw. Cleveland is pretty much set at guard unless the coaches are consistently misleading the media in pressers — which is not outside the realm of possibility but also doesn’t match what we’ve seen in practices, where Cleveland is doing what we’ve expected him to do.

With Kyle Rudolph’s exit and no meaningful additions (so far) in the draft or free agency, should we be more concerned about Tyler Conklin and our TE depth in general? — @papa_ColinO

In all honesty, Kyle Rudolph’s role was not that expansive. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t valuable — he was, but that’s why he felt comfortable leaving. His biggest contribution came in the red zone, as Vikings fans well know. He didn’t contribute too much in terms of receiving yardage between the 20s. His red zone target total over the last three years (34) constitutes over a fifth of all of his targets, the second-highest percentage among tight ends with at least 1,000 total receiving yards in that period.

His first-down rate in the red zone (which includes touchdowns) is about league average, but that’s actually pretty valuable, as the ability to generate those valuable targets without being a detriment to the team can be a valuable skill. Adam Thielen happens to lead the league in that category, but it would still be nice to see another receiver, regardless of position, fill that role.

Justin Jefferson might be a great candidate given his contested-catch capability, but he didn’t generate too many red zone targets for the Vikings, earning a high catch rate but a low first-down rate relative to the league.

In that sense, it would be nice if Conklin or Irv Smith could fill the void left by Rudolph’s departure, but it could just as easily be Dalvin Cook. Running backs actually receive the vast majority of their receiving targets in the red zone, and Cook is no exception.

You can’t have Cook running the same routes as Rudolph, of course, but the key is to have options. If Jefferson can be more consistent in the red zone while Conklin runs the same routes Rudolph did, the spacing of the defense will be similar and the number of options might be able to replicate what was lost with Rudolph.

Still, it would be nice to see Smith and Conklin develop more completely.

Is Sheldon Richardson really going to start the year on the bench? — @kfoll3

Yes, and that’s something he expected coming in, suggesting that this would be the first year he came into an NFL team without being the starter. But starting “on the bench” doesn’t mean he won’t play a fairly big role on the team. There are over 2,000 defensive tackle snaps to sort out in a season and he could take 600 or more in a rotation with Dalvin Tomlinson and Michael Pierce.

John Franklin-Myers only started two games for the New York Jets last season but played 500 snaps and was eighth among defensive tackles in pressures. Malik Jackson was also a high-impact pressure producer for the Eagles despite only starting five games, and Charles Omenihu did much the same for the Texans despite also only starting five games.

I wouldn’t worry about who takes the first snap of a game at a position expecting heavy rotation. There are going to be about 60 more defensive snaps after that.

What do you think will be the biggest challenge for the Vikings this upcoming season, and who do you think could “frustrate” people when it comes to expectations? — @gabsmafra

I think some of the questions above speak to the answer here. Vikings fans might be expecting too much from Wyatt Davis and should be patient with him. There are a lot of areas that could be overlooked when it comes to optimism about the offense. Missing a red zone asset like Kyle Rudolph could hurt the offense while Davis could give allow pressure to some of the fearsome interior defenders on the Vikings’ schedule.

The assumption is that the offense will be fine and that things need to be fixed on defense, but it could very well be the case that the offense takes a step back even as the defense takes a step forward. That’s not necessarily my prediction, but it is a possibility. Any number of things could happen: the Vikings’ two-wide receiver strategy could be exposed by evolving defenses, Klint Kubiak could have issues scouting opponents and tendencies, teams could find a new strategy that severely limits the effectiveness of wide zone-style runs or the play-action plays built off of them or Kirk Cousins’ fumbling problem could return. That list doesn’t even include the possibility of injury.

The biggest challenge likely won’t be the offense. It’s probably going to be the issue they had last year in stopping opposing pass offenses, especially if they have speedy receivers that can specialize in exposing players like Patrick Peterson or Xavier Woods.