Vikings

With New Coordinator, Vikings Are Searching for Offensive Identity

The Vikings will be entering their second year with Pat Shurmur on their staff, but this will be the first offseason where he’ll have had full control of the offense from day one.

Even with time to tinker with the offense last year during the regular season, the Vikings haven’t settled on an offensive identity yet. “We spent a lot of time in the spring deciding what we wanted the offense to look like from the foundation and the roots,” Shumur said in Monday’s presser.

“We spent a lot of time together going over what we are going to call things and what are going to do,” he explained. “It’s a matter of going out doing it and trying to find out who exactly the final offensive players will be as you go through training camp.”

At the moment, the Vikings aren’t even sure they’ll be rostering a fullback. C.J. Ham switched to fullback full-time this year, as opposed to occasionally taking walkthrough reps there last year. When asked about the fullback position, Shurmur said, “[C.J. Ham] might be a candidate for that. We also can use extra tight ends if that be the case or line-of-scrimmage type players that can function in the backfield. We will just figure that out as we go. Ultimately what you try to do is put together the best offensive roster that you can put together and then use the players in a way where you maximize their strengths, skills, and abilities.”

That extends to determining the roles of the running backs; the Vikings aren’t entering camp with a clear number one back or a clear division of labor. Instead, according to Shurmur, they’ll be mixing and matching the backs to see who does what well, and how that should play out into the regular season. “At this point, he said, “it’s pretty early in the game to start lining them all up. They’re two very good players and they deserve to touch the ball.”

The Vikings are figuring all of this out while their offensive line has been retooled and has a center position in flux — with Pat Elflein battling out for a starting spot with Nick Easton.

The Vikings had the fewest rushing first downs in the NFL last year, and ran the ball less often in 2016 than they have in a decade — even less than they did in the Adrian Peterson-less 2014 campaign.

It’s easy to understand why that’s the case, but knowing that Shurmur and Bradford have been together for unusually pass-heavy offenses (with the Rams) as well as unusually run-heavy offenses (with the Eagles) tells us that they really might be flexible to whatever works.

One might be tempted to dismiss the idea of an “offensive identity,” but it will be good for the Vikings to develop a roster of base plays that revolve around a central theme of “things they are good at.” Right now, the Vikings are figuring out what they’re good at.


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