KO's Offense Discussion 2024

6 points after the 1st Quarter against the Rams. 6. And you think the Offense hasn't been figured out?

It IS on KOC, not Darnold. Sam stays locked on his primary read too long, not the deep Receiver or Route. The problem has been that the primary is also the deep Route far too often. When Jefferson is the primary on a quick out or a slant Sam throws him the ball.

What Ragatz didn't do in his SI article is break down how many of those quick/short throws happened on the mostly successful Scripted Plays versus how happened on the mostly unsuccessful drives after that.

We've all seen Kevin masterfully call Quick Game. He did for several drives last year against the Chargers. The problem is that he doesn't stick with it. Which is fine if he continues to sprinkle it in here and there. But he doesn't do that. He largely abandons it in favor of his beloved long-developing routes.

That's been his M.O. for two and a half years. His talk has become cheap. Don't say you're going to stick with something, Kevin. Show us.

Last year Flores imported the inverted Zone system that Pat Narduzzi runs in Pitt that had never been tried in the NFL before. It took so long to figure out because it was new. But like any Zone there were holes in it. And those holes got bigger when Murphy went out and Evans and Booth had to play a lot of snaps.

Brian isn't doing anything novel this year that suddenly got figured out. The Puckers, Texans and Jets found holes in the traditional Zone looks Brian is leaning on this year. They were just too far behind, forced to be 1 dimensional because of it, and they didn't have good enough pass blocking to prevent pressure, be it from 4 Man Rushes or Blitzes. And the Defense was generating a lot of turnovers.

The turnover generating was never going to be sustainable. The 3rd Edge (Jones and occasionally Ward) was consistently getting pressure and now isn't. The last two opponents didn't have to abandon the running game.

But mostly what happened is Detroit is a terrible matchup for every Team in the League save maybe Kansas City because of Chris Jones and Cashman being out opens up the intermediate middle of the field. That, and Thursday night road games suck for the traveling Team.

Blake coming back will be huge. Another aspect is that the Defense has played nearly the most (or maybe the most) snaps this year so far. Kevin needs to get his head out of his ass and keep the Offense at least on the field longer. And get more TDs instead of FGs.

The Defense should be fine once Cashman is back. The Offense? Not very confident anything changes there.

If what we've witnessed is "Dialing it down", then I think KOC's choice is clear.

Ironically the offense was 11th in top per drive these past two weeks. There have been times over the years the offense struggling to maintain possession, and it has impacted how much the defense has given up, but the past two defensive collapses are 100% on the D.

Still boggles my mind that KOC gets so much heat for his play calling. When you actually watch the games back it is very rare when you see a play where no one is open on pass plays and often you see multiple guys open. Run plays are a little more difficult to see what went wrong or right outside of the oline failing to open holes or the RB failing to see holes, but we are seeing what KOC can do with a quality RB this season.

Is he perfect? Absolutely not. He has his flaws just like Reed, McVay and Shanahan have theirs. Some criticism is fair, but listening to some of you it is like we have the second coming of Matthew Hacket out there.

The first 5 games the Vikings averaged being ahead 10.9 points every time they got the ball on offense. That is the 2nd highest amount a team has had through 5 games in 10+ years and I think that skewed how we perceived how the offense was playing. After their initial couple of drives, they didn't need to do a whole lot to maintain a lead, and when they didn't do a whole lot, we assumed it was because they dialed it back a bit. Turns out even when that dial is cranked all the way up, Darnold is struggling to find open receivers he is not scripted to find prior to the game.

He is still doing really well for him, and has a passer rating of over 100 in 6 of his 7 games. Something that I believe is a first in Viking's history. For a QB who had the 11th worst passer rating of ANY QB to start a game since 2018, KOC is doing a great job, but a coach and scheme can only do so much.