2021 Offensive Line Discussion

In the first three games of the season, the Minnesota Vikings had the fourth-best pass protection in the NFL. According to Pro Football Focus, Kirk Cousins benefited from the sixth-lowest pressure rate at 27.6 percent and was taken to the ground just five times, a sack rate of 4.0 percent.

Individually, we were seeing great games from newly re-signed Brian O’Neill as well as makeshift guards Ezra Cleveland and Oli Udoh. O’Neill hadn’t allowed a pressure all season and Udoh allowed only three, placing 15th in pressure rate among guards.

That streak of good play came to a crashing halt against the Cleveland Browns, who fielded a front with two first-rounders — including a Defensive Player of the Year candidate — and a set of extremely capable tackles and rotational players across the defensive line. On Sunday, Cousins was under duress on 55 percent of his snaps, higher than any other starting quarterback in Week 4 and the fourth-highest pressure rate Cousins has seen in a Vikings uniform.

Those other games included a Week 17 matchup in 2018 against Chicago (55.3 percent), a 2020 Week 3 matchup against Tennessee (62.1 percent) and a 2019 Week 2 game against Green Bay (69.7 percent). Unsurprisingly, they were all Minnesota losses. The highest pressure percentage Cousins has seen in a Vikings win (with at least 15 dropbacks) came against Houston in Week 4 of 2020, when he saw a pressure rate of 44 percent.

Generally, pressure rate and win rate converge at about 40 percent — quarterbacks who are pressured between 38 percent and 42 percent of their dropbacks in a game only win 40 percent of them. Pressure them at a rate greater than 45 percent, and win percentage drops to 36.7 percent. For games matching the catastrophic 55 percent rate we saw for Cousins, the leaguewide win rate plummets to 26.7 percent.

Offensively, pocket disruption comes from a variety of places — the offensive line, quarterback, offensive game plan and so on. Those had all been working in the Vikings’ favor in the first few weeks.

So what went wrong in Week 4?

In previous years, the fact that the Vikings were one of the slowest teams to get rid of the ball played a major role. This year, Cousins has been quick to throw. Though he was slightly slower in this respect in Week 4, he still managed to get the ball out faster than his peers, averaging 2.46 seconds in the pocket with the ball. That mark ranks eighth-fastest among Week 4 quarterbacks and was much faster than his 2020 average of 2.75 seconds, which ranked 22nd among 36 quarterbacks last season.

This has resulted in a decided drop in explosive plays and fewer deep shots overall, but the offense found a good balance Sunday. Most of the team’s downfield throws occurred on quick one- or three-step drops against single coverage rather than wait-in-the-pocket-type dropbacks like on play-action or five- and seven-step drops.

It’s not necessarily as simple as an offensive line that consistently gave up quick pressure, but it’s worth starting there. PFF tries to assign pressure to a specific pass protector (or the quarterback) whenever possible, and most of the pressures given up against the Browns were assigned to the offensive linemen. Rashod Hill gave up an astounding 10 pressures while Udoh gave up eight.

For a franchise littered with mediocre pass-protection performances, this manages to stand out in a big way. Last year, Dakota Dozier never gave up more than seven pressures, and the leader in single-game pressures was Ezra Cleveland with eight allowed in Week 14 against Tampa Bay.

Over the past three seasons, there have been about 200 full games for individual Vikings offensive linemen. Out of those 200, only seven resulted in more than five pressures given up. Two of those seven instances occurred against the Browns on Sunday, and they happened to be the two highest pressure totals.

The fact that two offensive linemen allowed that many pressures in the same game is astounding, but it’s even more unbelievable when accounting for the fact that Cousins’ time to throw was remarkably quick. In the eight-pressure game from Cleveland last year, Cousins held on to the ball an average of 2.86 seconds before throwing, a fairly long time for modern NFL quarterbacks.

In short, the offensive line bears quite a bit of blame for the pressure this last week. They gave up pressure in under 2.5 seconds on 32.5 percent of dropbacks, the 15th-highest of any game played this year, but that also means 22.5 percent of dropbacks saw pressure on longer plays. That’s high among games played this year, as well, ranking 44th.