Where do you rank our offense for 2022?

Is regression coming on 3rd down?

The Vikings' offense is quite the mixed bag of results. The Vikings rank 16th in points and 18th in yards per game. They rank 11th in Football Outsiders’ DVOA and 4th in offensive PFF grade.

That’s also the case on a down-to-down basis. This chart, courtesy of PFF’s Timo Riske, shows the Vikings generate first downs at a 73 percent clip, just slightly above average. Notably, however, is Minnesota’s performance on first and second down. The Vikings are the best in the NFL at converting first downs while on first down. They’re at 34 percent, no other team is above 29 percent and the NFL average is 23 percent.



The effectiveness tails off a bit on second down, but they still convert more than any NFL team when combining 1st and 2nd down. Where the issues arise are on third down. Minnesota has converted on just 29 percent (10-34) of third downs this year, that’s 26th in the NFL. That drops the Vikings’ overall effectiveness considerably.

It’s visualized another way here from Baldwin, showing Minnesota has one of the best EPA/play on early downs and one of the worst on later downs.

The good news for the Vikings, which Riske points out, is those third down conversions often regress towards the mean. For one, third downs are happening much less frequently than early-down plays, giving this stat a high level of variance on such a small sample size. Early downs also give the offense more freedom to play how they want to play and give a clearer picture of how effective the offense can be.

Given how well the Vikings are playing on early downs, it’s not a big leap of faith to say the third-down offense will come around.

There are always caveats. More so than any other down, third downs require a further depth of target as defense commonly sits on the line to gain and force a short completion. Cousins’ average air yards to the sticks is -2.2, sixth-lowest in the league, per Next Gen Stats. That means he’s routinely throwing short of the line to gain and forcing receivers to make a play to get the first down. Cousins also ranks 19th in Next Gen’s aggressiveness stat. These tendencies are fundamentally restrictive to converting on third downs and put much more pressure on the coaching staff to scheme up late-down YAC opportunities. Both Cousins and the coaching staff will need to adapt for the third down woes to be corrected.