“I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel. I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real.” Yep, that feels about right. Just when the team turned the corner and was showing what they could be, this happens. I have never been a huge Kirk fan, but man this sucks. He was playing so well, the team had started to fully realize its identity, and the defense has been playing lights out the last 3 weeks. Due to the injury I plan to focus on the defense and skill position players on offense for this quarterly update. We will once again look at EPA and Success Rates, I will also throw in some PFF grade analysis.


EPA by Player – RESIGN DANIELLE!


Lets start where we usually do with the EPA by player through the first 8 weeks of the season. As you can see below, Addison is a star and has really come into his own the last few weeks. He now leads the team in total EPA and EPA/play (Mundt is better per play, but only has 2 plays) with Jefferson out. It has also become increasingly clear that Mattison is just not a great lead back. After the first 4 weeks of the season, Mattison was averaging -0.096 EPA/Play on 74 total plays. He is now nearly twice as bad from an EPA/play stand point at -0.178 per play. Compare this to Akers who has settled in as a solid RB with a +0.059 EPA/Play on his 39 touches. Akers has had 30 runs since joining the Vikings ahead of week 3. He ranks 15th of 54 total RBs with at least 30 carries since week 3 in total EPA (0.588) and EPA/Play (0.019). Compare that to Mattison in the same time frame who is 39th in EPA/Play (-0.135) and 43rd in total EPA (-11.706). I was happy to see Akers getting his own series to be the lead back on Sunday in Green Bay, but it is time for him to be the main guy with Mattison filling in from time to time. Also, don’t sleep on Ty Chandler. He has limited touches, but is doing a lot with those touches.





I haven’t done this before, but wanted to see how much havoc Danielle has been causing on the defensive side of the ball from an EPA standpoint. I pulled up every defensive player with a sack to see the total EPA lost for their sacks. Danielle is 8th in the entire league from a total EPA lost by the possessing team from a sack. Below you can see the top 10 for the league, including Harrison Smith making an appearance at #10!





Team EPA – Don’t look now, the RedZone offense is improving.


When shifting to EPA from a team standpoint, a few developments stick out. First, lets look at the defensive side of things. In the chart below, I put each team’s defensive EPA/play allowed split by the first 5 weeks of the season (x-axis) and the last 3 weeks (y-axis). As you can see in the first 5 weeks the defense was middle of the pack at best (12th worst overall). In the last 3 weeks, not only are they in the top tier of defenses, they are the 4th best defense from an EPA/play allowed standpoint! The only teams with a better defense in the last 3 weeks are the Jets, Giants, and Jaguars. If the defense continues down this path, we could be looking at a top 10 defense by the end of the season.




Next, I wanted to circle back to the RedZone offense that we looked at 4 weeks ago. If you remember, the Vikings had the worst offense in the league when inside the opponents 20-yard line. While their overall RedZone EPA/Play is still bottom 5 in the league, it has improved. After week 4, the team was averaging nearly -0.4 EPA/play in the RedZone as an offense. Now they are sitting at just under -0.2 EPA/Play in the same situations. The difference is even more glaring when I put the first 5 weeks vs the last 3 weeks RedZone EPA on the chart (2nd chart below). Here you can see that in the first 5 weeks, the offense was virtually tied with the Giants for the 2nd worst RedZone offense (-0.354 EPA/Play). In the last 3 weeks, they are firmly in the top half of the league, and actually come in with the 8th highest EPA/Play in the RedZone (0.119).








All of these charts showing the drastic improvement in the last 3 weeks, just makes the Cousins injury that much more heartbreaking. Hopefully the defense can continue its run and Jaren Hall/Josh Dobbs aren’t a total disaster. If that can happen, there is enough here for the team to still win some games.


Success Rates – I think we can move on from the Mattison experiment.


Switching gears to the success rates for the team, similar trends continue as we saw 4 weeks ago. Mattison and Osborn continue to disappoint, and JJ, Addison and TJ continue to stand out. Mattison in-particular is the worst player on the team with at least 20 touches from a success rate standpoint. He not only is the worst on the team, but he is one of only 18 RBs in the entire league with at least 100 rushing attempts. Of those 18 RBs, he is the 4th worst in Success Rate (43.4%). The only players worse than him are Barkley (38.2%), Pierce (40.4%), and Jacobs (43.2%). The 18 RBs also average a 48% success rate overall so he is well behind the pack. Looking at KJ Osborn we see some similar trends/issues. He is the 2nd worst on the team, and when you look at all pass catchers in the league with at least 40 targets (65 qualifying players), he is the 8th worst. His 42.6% success rate is more than 10% short of the 65-player average of 53.8%. Putting this into even more perspective, JJ hasn’t played for 3 weeks, only has 6 more targets/plays than KJ does now, and still has 14 more successful plays (34) than KJ (20). When JJ comes back, I will be shocked if KJ see more than a couple targets per game. He is clearly the 4th best option in the passing game now, and that will show in a week or two when JJ returns.





Looking at the Vikings offense and opposing offenses success rates by quarter again, the continual improvement trend shines again. After week 4, the Vikings offense only had 1 quarter with a success rate above 40%, and the defense had given up a 50%+ success rate in 3 of the 4 quarters. Now, as you can see in the chart below, the offense is above 44% in the first 3 quarters, and the defense only has 1 quarter with a success rate above 50%. The improvement by the offense in the 1st quarter since week 4 is nothing short of amazing. In the first 4 weeks of the season they had a total success rate of just 32%. In the last 4 weeks, that success rate is 51.9%! The 51.9% success rate in the 1st quarter since week 4, ranks as the 12th best rate in the NFL. The first 4 weeks rate ranked as the 5th worst in the entire league.





PFF Grades – Look at the OLine!!


I wanted to take a second to look at some of the PFF grades for the players on the team. As with any metric or analytics, never use 1 of them as the end all be all to if a player or team is good or not. That being said, if you use the PFF Grades, EPA, Success Rates, eye test, etc. all together. It will give you a really good idea as to the quality of a player at their position. As a final reminder, PFF grades work as follows. If a player gets a grade below 60 that is not good, 60-70 is considered average, anything 70-80 is pretty good, 80-90 is exceptional, and 90+ is all-pro caliber play. With that being said, let’s dive into the OL grades first and see how they are doing. Obviously, I am not the first to tell you this, but the Vikings OL is actually pretty dang good now! I know that is crazy to think about, but we finally made it. The grades took a bit of a hit this past weekend against the Packers, but overall everyone is at a minimum a solid OL player. Below is a chart to show you each starters grades and their rank among qualified players at their respective position.





As you can see, Darrisaw and O’Neill are elite and easily a top 2 tackle pair in the league and it might be 2nd. Risner is going through a few growing pains, but the top 15 LG PBLK grade so far is encouraging. Bradbury was a top 10 center prior to the GB game, so that isn’t ideal to see it shrinking back to his career average. However, keep in mind this team has played 2 really good DLs in the last 2 weeks. Ingram is still Ingram, but he at least seems to be serviceable now and not a complete train wreck. In the OL world that is the biggest thing you can hope for. If your worst player is even just average, then you have a pretty dang good OL by modern NFL standards. The best way to see this is looking at the team grades for the PBLK and RBLK categories. They have a top 3 grade in the entire NFL in both categories, with the Eagles and Lions as the only other teams to even just be top 5 in both grades (Lions are also top 3 in both).



Next, let’s give some defensive players some love. First and foremost, Danielle Hunter is your sack leader in the league! He has been playing lights out this season, and I will not jump off the extend him train until he officially signs with a different team in March. We all know BFlo is using the 3 safeties all over the field, and it appears to be working. Bynum is a top 5 graded safety with at least 250 snaps this season. Metellus and Smith are also both top 15 safeties this year. All 3 of them have a 73+ DEF grade by PFF, with only 18 safeties reaching that mark. Finally, I wanted to give a shout out to Mekhi Blackmon who has a 70 overall defensive grade from PFF, the highest of any CB for the Vikings so far. He is the 36th highest graded CB with at least 100 snaps. The other 2 Vikings CBs to qualify are Akayleb Evans and Murphy. They both have a sub 60 grade, with Murphy sitting at just 45 overall (a bottom 10 grade).


All is not quite lost. I think.


This breakdown really makes the Kirk injury that much worse. This team was really starting to come into their own and really make something of this season. They still can be uber competitive, and I predict they still finish at or around .500 for the year. This defense is always attacking, and it is working more times than it isn’t. Are they still going to give up some big plays here and there, is the run defense still meh at best, of course. However, BFlo has big time buy in from the players, and you can tell they really love playing in this system and for him. The offense, while without a top 10-12 QB now, still has a solid if not pretty good OL and in my opinion the top collection of pass catchers in the league. If Jaren Hall can just be okay. If he can be what Teddy was in year 2, or what Keenum was in 2017, or even what Ponder was in 2012, this team can still win 4 or 5 more games. The schedule is favorable, not just from the offenses this team faces (all of the next 4 opponents are in/near the bottom half of the league in offensive EPA/Play. It is also decently favorable in the defenses Hall will face. An interesting few weeks ahead, that is for sure.


What’s next?


Speaking of the next few weeks, here is a quick breakdown of the next 4 opponents current EPA/Play and Success rates on both sides of the field. As you can see, on average the Vikings will be facing 4 very middle of the pack or even bad offenses in the next 4 weeks. Then, it is a fairly mixed bag of opposing defenses. You have a clearly top 5-10 defense in the league in New Orleans. But after that, Atlanta is fine and then Denver and Chicago are just plain bad.





Finally, before I get into my predictions for the next 4 weeks, I wanted to do a little gloating. Not often am I right on predicting the NFL (just look at my betting slips!) so when it happens I have to make sure and shout it from the rooftops. In my last breakdown, I predicted they would go 2-2 with losses to the Chiefs and 49ers. Half right! The main thing I wanted to talk about though was that I hit 2 bold predictions right, and I would not have been shocked if my final one hit if JJ was healthy and played at GB. I said Addison would be the leading Vikings WR against the Chiefs and that Fields would be sacked 4+ times. Yes, I was way way way off on my prediction for the 49ers game, but that game was a pleasant surprise and a win like that is never going to make me upset. So without further ado, here is how I see the next 4 weeks going for your Minnesota Vikings.





At Atlanta | 11/5/2023 | 12:00pm


This is a tough one to predict without know how Jaren Hall will look. If he comes out and plays even just okay, the Vikings will win this game. If he comes out and throws 2 picks in the first half and is benched for Dobbs, watch out, it could get ugly. I am going to say Hall is a decent QB on Sunday and the Viking squeak out a win against Heinicke and the Missing Bijans/Pitts.


BOLD PREDICTION: Hall throws for at least 225 yards and accounts for 2+ TDs including at least 1 rushing TD.


WIN MIN 20 – ATL 17


Home Against New Orleans | 11/12/2023 | 12:00pm


Hall, or even Dobbs, going up against this defense scares me. I don’t think they will be able to play clean enough to give the defense a chance. In fact, the only real way I see the Vikings winning this game is if the defense puts on a master class against Carr and forces 2+ turnovers. That or Jaren Hall is the next Tom Brady, but let’s not plan on that. I do think JJ has a really good game against NO, but it just isn’t enough to overcome 0 running game and some mistakes by Hall/Dobbs.


BOLD PREDICTION: The Vikings lose by double digits for the first time this season.


LOSS NO 23 – MIN 10


At Denver | 11/19/2023 | 7:20pm


Now this could be a good game. Something about it just screams nail bitter and it coming down to the final play of the game. If this was in Minnesota, I easily mark it as a win. With it being in Denver, the unknown at QB right now, and the Denver defense playing better the last couple weeks, I am going to say the Vikings lose by 3 after Joseph misses at least 1 field goal in the game.


BOLD PREDICTION: Spoiled this one, but Joseph misses a game tying/winning kick in the 4th quarter.


LOSS DEN 24 – MIN 21


Home Against Chicago | 11/27/2023 | 7:15pm


I do not care who is playing at QB for the Bears or the Vikings. This is a game this team has to win, and should win. Chicago has a not very good head coach, an offense that has no idea what it is doing, and an inability for its GM to sign an extension for any player. I just don’t see a way (barring another major injury) that this Vikings team loses to this Bears team.


BOLD PREDICTION: Danielle Hunter gets 2+ sacks giving him 15+ for the season and on pace to hit at least 20 by the end of the season.


WIN MIN 23 – CHI 13




This has the Vikings at 6-6 after 12 weeks going into their BYE. Not only would you have taken that after starting 0-3, but with the Kirk and JJ injuries that is a great performance. Enough that KOC should be in the Coach of the Year conversation. Hopefully you enjoyed this breakdown, and as always share your thoughts below and let me know if there is something else you would like me to dig into on the next breakdown. TF


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