2022 Offensive Woes - same old sputtering offense?

I'm not sure fascinated is the right word here.

Osborn is often running go routes to clear out coverages. He’s not in a lot of the progressions, aside from as an alert (he’ll rarely be targeted as an alert, he’s not a matchup weapon).

There aren’t a lot of targets to go around. Jefferson is the first read on most of their plays (5th in the league for targets for WRs), and Thielen (30th) has been getting the bulk of the rest. And now Hockenson will likely capture a big target share especially on 3rd downs.

Osborn is a decent receiver but he doesn’t have the speed to be a deep threat, the route running chops to consistently beat man coverage underneath (the Renfrow or McKenzie style slot), or the size and catch radius to be a possession target. So it’s hard to find a niche where he’d be guy you want to design a play to go to.

Where I think Osborn has been most valuable is his blocking. He’s usually lined up in the slot, and often asked to get his nose dirty in the box, trying to dig out a safety. His grades are only average, but that’s a tough assignment, and he’s held up pretty well. This is the unglamorous part of the “Cooper Kupp role”.

Osborn would be the WR2 if either of Jefferson or Thielen miss time, but I still wonder if they’ll eventually give some of his WR3 snaps to Reagor, who’d be better threatening deep on those alert go routes. Nailor might be another option, as a decent all-purpose receiver with better deep speed, who’s a willing blocker.

Chandler broke his thumb in the Bears game, he’s on IR.

I thought they’d use more of a RBBC this year but Cook is still the bell cow. Aside from load management, I can understand why they wouldn’t want to take touches away from him to give to Nwangwu and Mattison.

You can’t watch the games and seriously think Osborn is no better than Treadwell was.

He runs his routes correctly, gets some separation, and has good hands when the ball’s on him. He’s not elite at anything, but he’s pretty good. His YPRR is bad mainly because he’s not getting targeted, and he’s not getting targeted in large part because he’s not part of the progression, and/or because Cousins is checking down (too much?) if his first read (usually JJ) isn’t open. If they rework the scheme to get Osborn more targets, I’m sure he would produce more. I think he could be a low end WR2 if one of the top 2 guys went out.

Osborn’s blocking isn’t anything like Treadwell, who was famous in college for leveling DBs with blindside blocks outside the numbers, but never had that translate to the pros. It’s more like Kupp for the Rams, or Lazard last year for the Packers — a WR who acts as an H-back, which allows the run game to function in 11 personnel.

Obviously blocking isn’t the main value a WR should offer, and any WR can run deep in a straight line, but Osborn is doing the little things (including running routes correctly, which Reagor didn’t do the one chance he got) that keep players in the lineup.

Fans overrate “upside” in skill players, usually based on combine measurements or a couple of big play highlights, and they undervalue competence and a high-floor level of consistent performance. We’ve seen that this year with Bisi vs ISM and Mattison vs Nwangwu — in both cases the high floor player is just a better NFL player than the better athlete with “upside” but with inconsistent or limited performance.

OK we're on the same page there.

I thought the Reagor trade was made in part because they thought he could offer more juice in a rotational WR3/WR4 role. But as you say, he's not a good receiver.

Still, I think he could run a handful of go routes per game. It's telling that they had Hockenson play the full game on 4 days preparation, while Reagor hasn't cracked the lineup after half a year. He just doesn't seem like the brightest guy. 



I think it's more that O'Connell (as he promised when hired) has been working to put his best players in position to make plays. Everything has been schemed around Jefferson and to a lesser extent Thielen. Now we can probably add Hockenson to that list.

I think the emphasis on Jefferson has been one of the problems with the scheme this year. The teams who shut him down either with talent (Eagles) or scheme (Lions) were able to limit the offense as a whole, when that should have instead opened things up for other targets. Jefferson is very often the first read, and fairly often on a deeper route. Cousins sometimes ends up staring him down and either forcing the ball despite good coverage (the deep pass in the Cards game, the TD and INT in the Commanders game, etc), or progressing immediately to the checkdown (especially if the OL is leaky, as it has been), without looking for 2nd and 3rd options downfield. Kirk has always been too quick to take the checkdown, and I think that tendency is exacerbated by making his first read so often the player the defense is bracketing, instead of giving him some cleaner looks at other targets.

The Kubiaks (correctly IMO) are criticized for taking a cookie-cutter approach to their scheme, designing and calling plays almost in the abstract without accounting for talent differences or matchups, and without allowing flexibility from the QB in terms of changing play calls at the line, etc. Last year with Klint, the offense had the opposite problem with Jefferson's usage, especially early in the season -- in multiple games Cousins would target Thielen (or sometimes Osborn and/or Conklin) more than Jefferson. Fans and media complained they weren't making good use of their best player, but I think there was some logic to the Kubiak's approach -- the passing attack seemed less congested in the intermediate and deep areas than it has been this year (though some of that change this year seems to be the increasing use of contact/holding by DBs, which reached pre-2004 levels in a few of their games).

We know from last year (and his few flashes this year, like the end of the Lions game and the red zone TD vs Arizona) that Osborn is a good enough receiver to produce if he's getting targets. He did make some mistakes last year that I think were under-recognized (INTs that were IMO in large part his fault in the Rams, Steelers and Lions games), and he isn't better than Thielen as the media narrative was saying during training camp, but he's a quality player.

O'Connell clearly has been trying to learn and adapt on the job, figuring out on the fly how to adjust his scheme and play calling to situations and opponents. Overall I think it's going pretty well -- there's a lot of good stuff (1st down efficiency, low red zone scheme, minimizing negative plays), and a lot of the bad stuff seems fixable.

I keep repeating this but I really think Hockenson will go a long way to solving their biggest issue this year, the lack of a reliable possession target. If Ingram and Cleveland can just learn to handle stunts better, this could yet be a top 5-8 offense by the end of the year. I think Osborn's definitely good enough to be the WR3 in an offense that good.

It’s fair to point out the problems by this point.

I expected there’d be a learning curve, but the offense has had some rough patches, which cropped up repeatedly as recently as last game. They have some good pieces of the puzzle but the overall picture hasn’t come together yet. That’s a bit of a bad sign after 8 games (and a full training camp and preseason). I didn’t think they’d be worldbeaters but I expected them to be more consistently productive. O’Connell does seem to be learning as he goes, so hopefully he can still get them to click by the end of the year. Obviously the offense at its current level isn’t good enough to win multiple playoff games against good teams, though if Cousins continues to come up big in the clutch, he may be able to pull out a win himself. 

I think the defense has made more consistent strides. They got off to a rough start in September but I think they’ve played well since the Bears game. The run defense has been solid, the edge rushers are getting pressure, the back 7 has tightened up (except for the intermediate zones in Miami) and they’ve been forcing turnovers. I think they can end up in the top 8-10 range by the end of the year — good enough to win with, but probably not good enough to drag the team through the playoffs by themselves.