The Math Says Probably Not - 2021 Edition

After Week 2, we explored whether the Vikings were truly out of the playoff race given their 0-2 start. Now, five weeks later, they’re 3-3 and among a crop of teams that need a midseason run to seriously consider a push for the playoffs. With the bye week over, it’s a good time to re-evaluate that contention.

The core of that prior analysis was the difference between the standard 0-2 team and how various statistical forecasts projected the Vikings — along with the fact that close games are better off treated as ties when projecting forward.

But the Vikings have only had close games, barring a two-score win over Seattle, going 2-3 in those matchups. It would be one thing if the Vikings could only eke out a nail-biter against the 0-7 Lions, but they also managed to essentially tie the 7-0 Cardinals.

Broadly, the historical record tells us that 3-3 teams make a 14-team playoff 41 percent of the time in a 16-game season. Unlike last time we checked in, this matches the projections of analytically inclined prediction systems.

numberFire gives the Vikings the longest odds at 35.6 percent while PFF places them a little higher at 39 percent. TeamRankings puts the Vikings at 40.5 percent and FiveThirtyEight’s Elo system puts them a little higher at 41 percent. Marginally higher still is Football Outsiders, which places them at 42.5 percent. The rosiest projection belongs to ESPN’s Football Power Index, which predicts a 45.9 percent chance of the Vikings making the playoffs. Some of these were calculated immediately after the Week 7 games, while some will need to recalculate a few days after re-running their projections.

Either way, the tight spread of odds tells us that the Vikings have roughly two-in-five odds of making the postseason with some wiggle room in either direction, depending on what factors are included in the calculation. Once again, it’s worth figuring out why the Vikings’ odds are what they are — and if the Vikings have the quality to make a run at the postseason.

None of these projection systems think poorly of the Vikings as a team and instead give a lot of respect to the Vikings’ schedule. PFF seems to be the most forgiving in this regard, but that unfortunately still means having the fourth-most-difficult remaining schedule. Football Outsiders estimates that the Vikings have the third-hardest schedule going forward, with the Rams, Cowboys and Ravens providing major challenges as the third-, fifth- and sixth-best teams in their system. TeamRankings agrees with FO at third, while ESPN thinks it’ll be even tougher with the second-hardest schedule.

numberFire doesn’t have a ranking for the future strength of schedule, but they must think the Vikings have some world beaters coming up as they give the Vikings the longest odds of reaching the playoffs but internally rank them higher than anyone else as the sixth-best team in their system. Unfortunately, the Rams rank second, while the Cowboys, Ravens and Chargers rank fifth, seventh and eighth, respectively.

By contrast, ESPN and FiveThirtyEight rank the Vikings as the 10th-best team, while Football Outsiders places them 12th and TeamRankings places them 14th. PFF happens to agree with The Athletic’s power rankings from Week 6, putting the Vikings at 15th.

This is an area where Vikings fans probably disagree. Seeing them gut out close wins as a result of giving up lost leads is excruciating, especially when seeing how opposing quarterbacks played. Baker Mayfield, Jared Goff and Sam Darnold may all have had moments earlier in the season, but when they struggled against the Vikings, it appeared that they were playing poorly instead of the Vikings defense playing well.

But the underlying numbers support this observation. The Vikings have the eighth-best differential in expected points per play. They rank 15th in point differential per game, in net points per drive and in net drive success rate, which looks at the rate at which teams generate first downs. They look even better in opponent-adjusted statistics, ranking sixth, seventh, eighth, eighth and ninth in the opponent-adjusted versions of EPA per play, play success rate, point differential, net points per drive and drive success rate, respectively.

Interestingly, the Vikings generally rank higher on defense than they do on offense in a number of advanced statistics. They rank higher in total points per game on offense than defense (13th versus 14th) but rank higher in defensive DVOA (sixth versus 13th), expected points per play (fifth versus 18th), points per drive (ninth versus 20th), play success rate (seventh versus 28th) and drive success rate (fifth versus 21st).

The disconnect between total points and the play-level or drive-level statistics is simply because the Vikings have had a lot of drives. The more drives a team has, the more points they’ll score, but the more points their opponents will score — even with a high-level defense.

A defense that only gives up 1.5 points per drive is doing a great job and would generally rank second or third in a given year. That essentially means one field goal every other drive or a touchdown every fifth drive. In a 10-possession game, that team will only have allowed 15 points. In a 13-possession game, that same stellar defense will have allowed about 20 points.

Because the Vikings are either punting or scoring quickly on offense, the defense trots back out onto the field relatively quickly. Because the defense is either allowing quick scores or forcing fast punts, the offense then gets an opportunity to respond. Offenses that wait until the play clock expires before snapping the ball can reduce the number of possessions in a game as well.

That doesn’t speak to the quality of either unit in any particular way because three-and-outs on defense and fast scores on offense will lead to quick drives (and therefore more drives) even though performances like that are quite good. Conversely, those events occurring on the other side of the ball — defenses allowing quick scores and offenses punting after three plays — tell us that those units are performing very poorly. In either instance, the possessions are short and the number of drives in a game increases.

The Vikings are allowing 1.86 points per drive while the Packers have allowed 2.15. The Vikings defense does a better job of preventing points and forcing punts on each possession, but because the Vikings defense plays more drives, the Packers end up with fewer points allowed per game, ranking seventh, while the Vikings rank 13th. Because defensive drives are almost always followed up by offensive drives, this doesn’t put the Vikings at any disadvantage; a defense that has to deal with more drives also has an offense that gets more opportunities. That’s why points per drive as a statistic offers more predictive power than points per game.

So if the Minnesota defense is so good from play to play and drive to drive, why does it seem like the defense keeps allowing comebacks? While it’s responsible for mistakes against Arizona and drives like Carolina’s final push that resulted in a 96-yard march down the field for a touchdown, it can’t be held responsible for the punt-block touchdown earlier in the game.

The defense additionally holds very little responsibility for the two drives against Detroit where the Lions marched a collective 59 yards for 11 points. And it didn’t force Greg Joseph to his miss his kick or make Alexander Mattison fumble the ball. On top of that, it wasn’t responsible for Dalvin Cook’s fumble against Cincinnati. Notably, the turnovers the defense has generated have been less impactful than the turnovers the offense has allowed — the Vikings rank fifth in expected points given up per turnover, meaning that when they give up the ball, it means a lot more than when other teams do. This typically means early in downs or deep in scoring drives.

That’s not to say that they’re perfect but rather that they’ve been unluckier than most defenses in terms of their public perception.

An alternate measure of how well a team has performed over the course of a game is sometimes called “game script” and is best understood as a team’s average point differential throughout a game. A team that dominates for three and a half quarters and builds up a three-score lead is typically quite good, even if they put in their backups in the fourth quarter and allow two meaningless “comeback” scores to create a one-score game. On the other hand, a team that wins with an overtime touchdown played quite a bit closer than a six-point difference usually indicates. Game script accounts for this. Historically, this has predicted future performance better than raw point differential.

From that perspective, the Vikings rank 11th in the NFL. When adjusting for the opponent — the Vikings have had the third-most-difficult schedule by game script — the Vikings jump up to sixth in the NFL. None of this is to say that the Vikings won’t continue to make game-changing errors going forward, but rather that they could very well make them in the second quarter rather than the fourth.

That’s a lot of statistics to throw around, but the conclusions all point in the same direction — the Vikings are a lot better than their record. Their mistakes, while catastrophic, aren’t characteristic of their overall level of play and should even dip down going forward.

But that’s only part of the equation. The Vikings need a path to the playoffs, too. The fact that the middle tier of the NFC has fallen flat on its face early in the season is a big help. In fact, the Vikings would make the playoffs if the season ended immediately.

Despite being .500, the Vikings have survived seven weeks better than their primary competitors for a wild-card spot. Carolina, San Francisco, Washington and Philadelphia all took a step back while very few NFC peers took a step forward. The Rams are the only second-place team in their division substantially above .500, with the Saints 3-2 heading into Monday night and the Vikings staying 3-3 through their bye. The next-best records belong to the Falcons (3-3), Panthers (3-4) and Bears (3-4). The aggregate opponent-adjusted metrics suggest the Vikings are the best team among that group.

These levels of performance won’t continue at the same rate, of course. Schemes change, coaches evolve and rosters respond to injury and player development. For the Vikings, the biggest short-term issue will be continuing that level of defensive performance after losing their best-performing cornerback. On the other hand, they could (and should) improve offensively. The Vikings’ offensive ranks in these statistics are uniformly lower this year than last year despite improving nearly every positional group, like the interior offensive line and the receiver group. The play calling has reduced exposure to risk but diminished its explosiveness. Still, it might turn back to explosive playmaking; the offense has increased its rate of play action and deep shots recently and should have more time in the pocket as Christian Darrisaw grows into his role.

From a projection standpoint, we’re in a difficult spot. The Vikings are probably a better team than their record indicates, but they also have one of the most difficult schedules going forward. As a result, they could finish something like 9-8 despite being a surprisingly high-level team. Luckily, that could be enough to make the postseason as their competitors also have difficult schedules and share a number of opponents.

Good teams create opportunities, and if the Vikings come out of this next stretch with an even or better record, they could seriously threaten a postseason run.