Last Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings’ first team laid an egg against the San Francisco 49ers. While the team’s star safety has enough to say on the performance of the defense, there are a number of key offensive storylines we should check in on to see if the offense is meeting the expectations it set for itself this offseason.
Sam Bradford
The overriding question regarding Sam Bradford hasn’t been whether or not he’s generally good; it’s largely about whether or not he can perform specific tasks with consistency and reliability. In this case, it means creating explosive plays, converting third-and-long and operating a two-minute drill efficiently.
There are a number of ways to measure the capacity and willingness of a player to create explosive plays. By many of those measures, Bradford, in the preseason, was not a particularly aggressive quarterback.
A quarterback’s average depth of target offers a reasonable proxy for how aggressive a passer is over the course of several games. That measure, ADoT for short, looks at how far the ball travels from the line of scrimmage to the intended receiver, regardless of whether that receiver caught it.
Last year, quarterbacks threw at targets between 11.0 yards from the line of scrimmage and 6.9 yards from the line of scrimmage (Cam Newton had the deepest targets, and Alex Smith had the shallowest)… with one exception: Bradford.
Bradford threw only 6.6 yards downfield on an average pass, the second-lowest of any quarterback in any individual season in the last ten years (the first being, of course, Alex Smith in 2014).
The average quarterback throws 8.9 yards downfield on average — essentially what Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan and Philip Rivers did last year. So far in the preseason, Bradford has thrown 7.0 yards downfield on average, which would be the lowest or second-lowest in almost every year we have data for.
Though there are some moments where Bradford has taken shots downfield, those moments are infrequent and not all that deep downfield.
That might be one reason that Bradford had a completion rate of 81 percent in the last game, but only 6.4 yards per attempt, a below average rate. It’s true that two drops from Stefon Diggs hurt Bradford’s overall numbers, but even including them isn’t all that helpful; he gets about 25 yards from that exercise and ends up with 7.6 yards per attempt.
7.6 yards per attempt seems fine — it’s higher than the 2016 average of 7.2 — but it is once again low after considering that every quarterback who gets their drops back would also bounce back to a higher yards per attempt (the average yards per attempt would be about 7.8 in that scenario).
His most successful deep throw was on a blown coverage to Diggs that didn’t take much in terms of decisionmaking or accuracy to complete. That shouldn’t be taken as criticism of the throw — it was a good thing for Bradford to do — but criticism of pointing to the throw as indicative of a larger trend.
Bradford has only had six of his 39 passes go 16 yards or deeper—a rate that, last year, would have been the lowest in the league.
Four of those were more than 20 yards downfield, and a deep-ball passing rate of 10.3 percent would be an improvement over last year’s league-low 8.5 percent, but it would still be near the bottom of the league.
It may also be telling that the Vikings offense only converted one of its eight third-and-long (third down with 7-12 yards to go) opportunities, though one can leave some room for extenuating circumstances — two sacks and an uncharacteristic Diggs drop play a role, though it should be said that Bradford also bears some responsibility for sacks.
Not only that, the Vikings managed the two-minute drill poorly. This is isn’t as significant a criticism of Bradford as it is of the team performance; we saw Bucky Hodges lose sight of the situation and stay in-bounds as the clock ran, while a porous offensive line forced Bradford to fire the ball early to Adam Thielen just short of the goal line.
Hodges may not be representative of the team’s overall situational awareness, but it paints a fairly bleak picture overall of the team’s ability to grow in the passing game beyond what it already achieved in 2016.
None of this is to say that Bradford is a poor passer, only that the signs of improvement that Vikings fans were hoping for in the former first-round pick have not materialized yet.
The Center Battle
Between Nick Easton and Pat Elflein, I logged 39 center snaps. Not only that, Easton logged an additional 23 snaps at guard that I took notes on.
Contrary to last week, where Elflein was praised for more than his play warranted, the Ohio State alum didn’t receive enough attention for a very good game, with only two clear mistakes at center in his 23 snaps at center — one of them somewhat arguable, too.
Elflein had issues with aiming at the second level last week and replicated somewhat similar issues this week, with a big whiff at the beginning of the second half (saved by Jerick McKinnon bouncing out) and a very late peel off of a double team later in the half.
This seems to be a consistent problem that he’ll want to target, but he overall had a very good game.
In 16 snaps at center, Easton wasn’t as successful as Elflein was in his 23. There were two blocking failures I noted as well as a dangerously high snap. As a guard, he was a big problem, with six blocking failures — including three in the passing game and three in the running game.
It really was a poor game all-around for Easton and should put to rest some of the discussion around whether or not Easton should replace Boone. In the GIF above, you can see Easton missing at the second level and below you can see a play that would have resulted in a sack if the defensive tackle (Solomon Thomas) had better bend or was more aware of angles:
Both moments where Bradford was forced to escape the pocket and demonstrate some surprising mobility and improvisation were brought on by blocking failures up front, and both of those times involved Easton losing his block.
I was unsurprised to learn that Pro Football Focus ended up giving Easton the second-lowest grade among Vikings offensive linemen in the game after reviewing how he played.
Easton played himself out of whatever slight advantage he may have had in this game, assuming that the Vikings are using the preseason for most of their decisionmaking calculus.
Rest of the Offensive Line
In better news, Riley Reiff performed well in his limited showing, with only one significant mistake in 16 snaps and one minor one. It would have been nice to see more of him, especially as Rashod Hill had perhaps his worst outing yet.
He gave up immediate pressure on a number of snaps and in the 23 or so snaps he played with the ones and twos, he committed eight blocking failures.
Boone was more consistent as well, though probably will still want to work on his run blocking while on the move, because he did miss some key blocks in those situations.
The best performing first-team player in this game was probably somebody that has had a poor offseason but was the best along the line last year: Joe Berger. If Berger can return to a form much better than he looked like in training camp, that would be a fantastic development for a beleaguered line.
Unfortunately, Mike Remmers continues to demonstrate problems along the line. In pass protection, he’s been a liability. He’s even caused problems in the running game, with a missed block at the second level in his limited run snaps. His performance wouldn’t be that alarming, but a short history of poor preseason play rightly should be cause for concern.
Dalvin Cook
While the most impactful storylines had to do with Sam Bradford’s growth as a passer or how the offensive line is shaping up, one of the most interesting has to be how Dalvin Cook looks as a runner. His 3.4 yards a carry certainly don’t raise eyebrows but he wasn’t bad at toting the rock against the 49ers.
Often, he had to redirect in the backfield beyond what is reasonable to ask a runner to do against interior penetration. Despite that, he still found a way to create yards. He didn’t post a single run for negative yardage, and that’s a pretty significant feat when San Francisco’s three first-round picks along the defensive line are abusing the undrafted free agents in front of them.
We didn’t get to see much of what Cook could do as a runner, but his abilities as a pass protector are certainly to be applauded. With difficult assignments often forcing him to block at awkward angles or against the flow of his movement, Cook did a great job dealing with tough circumstances.
Cook’s statistical performance in the preseason may end up being the least reliable indicator of regular season capability, and watching his individual skills put to work illuminates just how talented he is.
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With significant questions for the Vikings offense entering the regular season, it only made sense to take a look at how they answered some of the biggest over the past couple of days. Unfortunately, some of the positional battles and overall performance profiles of its players don’t bode well for the Vikings. Unless Minnesota can turn on another gear once the regular season starts, there’s certainly reason to worry.
