Vikings

The Vikings Need to Be More Aggressive On Second Down

Credit: Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

In Week 14, the Minnesota Vikings garnered the unfortunate distinction of losing for a second time in 2020 despite possessing the ball for over 39 minutes. They are the only team this season to accomplish that even once.

A club doesn’t run into that problem unless it, well, runs into the problem. Minnesota’s run-heavy approach has produced scrutiny in recent weeks as the Vikings have lost two straight games, Dalvin Cook has had the weathered look of the most heavily-utilized back in the league, and Justin Jefferson seems underutilized considering his uber-efficient totals in the passing game. The Vikings are sixth in rushing attempts this year, but four of five teams in front of them are likely playoff teams in the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans and Arizona Cardinals that have held a lot of late leads. Minnesota, on the other hand, has just one win by more than a possession. The adage, ‘You run when you win but don’t win when you run’ rings true.

It’s hard to argue that Cook shouldn’t be getting a fair share of looks considering his talent. He’ll likely surpass 2,000 all-purpose yards this year despite missing a full game in Week 6 and part of two other games, and he’s on track to carry at 5.0 yards per clip for the first time in his career. But situationally, the Vikings have shown a pair of odd tendencies that are neither efficient nor progressive in their thinking. They run it constantly on second and short. And they run it constantly on second and long.

These two trends may be the best way to quantify why the Vikings seem to be perpetually toeing the line between a good offense and a great offense, one that frequently scores in the mid-to-upper 20s but only scored 30 points in a game three times this year (and lost two of them). When the Vikings were 1-5 at the bye week, Kirk Cousins said the offense was hitting triples and home runs but needed to focus on hitting more singles. Minnesota actually delivered better results following this remark with a 5-1 stretch, even though it would make any modern baseball manager faint. But as the Vikings struggled to beat the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars, then lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears, it felt like Gary Kubiak and Mike Zimmer were calling for bunts when trailing by four in the eighth inning. The singles approach may have a place, but there’s reason to question its long-term sustainability.

Second-and-short

On Sunday, the Vikings faced eight situations where they had a second down and short (1-3 yards), considered to be an opportunity where offenses can take deeper shots without fear of setting up a third and long. Teams in 2020 run it, on average, 66% of the time in these situations, or two out of three. The Vikings chose to run it with Cook seven out of eight, or 88%. They only opted to throw in the final minute when they needed to drive the field in less than a minute with no timeouts. It seems like an unbalanced tendency, but that’s how the Vikings have handled it throughout the year.

Minnesota runs on second-and-short 82% of the time, the third-most in football. If this were a foolproof method that led to the most first downs in the league — like Tom Brady and his famous QB sneak — it might be an understandable tendency. But the Vikings are only average at converting: 65.2%, 16th in the NFL. You can’t really use the small sample size argument here either, since the Vikings have had more second-and-short opportunities than any team in the NFL (66). That’s another way of complimenting them for their work on first down, where they are also No. 1, averaging a robust 6.8 yards per play. So many second-and-shorts… so little productivity.

2020 STATS
2ND & SHORT
TOTAL ATTEMPTS (RANK) RUSHES/
RUSH% (RANK)
PASSES YARDS PER PLAY (RANK) FIRST-DOWN % (RANK)
BAL 36 (T-29th) 31 / 86% (1st) 5 5.6 (5th) 63.9% (18th)
LAC 47 (T-17th) 39 / 83% (2nd) 8 3.6 (26th) 61.7% (22nd)
MIN 66 (1st) 54 / 82% (3rd) 12 3.5 (27th) 65.2% (16th)

The Vikings’ approach prioritizes moving the chains but limits their explosive potential with two of the league’s top receivers. Again, if this were a team with a best-in-the-league bottom line on offense, it may not be an issue. But Minnesota is merely 20th in scoring percentage (drives ending in points) and were 13th in DVOA heading into Week 15. They are in line with the league average at moving the chains on second-and-short, but their yardage on those plays is minimal: 2.9 yards per carry, or 27th in football. When the Vikings choose to pass, Cousins does well. He is 9-for-11 in those situations with nine first downs, 7.8 yards per attempt, two touchdowns, and a 138.8 passer rating. Those pass attempts, however, tend to only come when the Vikings are trailing late.

Consider this: If you isolate second-and-short situations to the first three quarters, the Vikings become the most extreme team in the NFL. Their rush percentage shoots up to 91.5%, but their first-down percentage regresses to 18th in the league. This isn’t just about running vs. passing. This is about predictability. There are few, if any, play-calls that should be made over 90% of the time in a certain situation. If the data showed Minnesota was passing it 90% of the time in those situations, that would also be grounds for criticism.

Let’s look at it another way. How do teams with the most second-and-short success call plays? In terms of yards per play, seven of the 10 most efficient teams pass the ball more than the league average of 34%, led by Tampa Bay at 7.4 yards per play and a 36% pass percentage. The Houston Texans (second-best YPP) and Pittsburgh Steelers (fourth-best) both pass it over 50% of the time, and they both sit in the top 10 in first-down percentage. Hmm.

What about recent Vikings teams under different play-callers? Kevin Stefanski was a bit better calibrated in 2019 with a 72% run percentage on second-and-short, though the total normalizes to 68% when removing the fourth quarter, where the Vikings were sitting on a lot of leads. More interesting is John DeFilippo’s balance in 2018, which leaned heavier on the pass and eventually got him fired. DeFilippo was 50/50 however you splice it, first three quarters, whole game — perfectly split. If the Vikings had done better in those situations, maybe DeFilippo would have survived the season. Minnesota was only 25th in first-down percentage, dealing a costly-blow to the passing-over-rushing advocates out there.

SECOND-AND-LONG

The Vikings are hyper-conservative on second-and-short, and to compound matters, they don’t make up for it with a lot of hyper-aggression elsewhere. Take second-and-long as an example (10 yards or more), where the Vikings distance themselves even further from their peers in run-pass ratio.

Ironically, the Vikings are closer to achieving balance here than they are on second-and-short, but balance is not a good thing in this case. Facing 2nd and 10 or longer, Minnesota has run it 43 out of 93 times, or 46%. Only the Denver Broncos have a higher percentage (47%), and the Broncos have a much worse passing game. Isolated to the first three quarters, the Vikings are No. 1 in the NFL at a 45% run rate.

It’s worth asking again: Have the Vikings found a market inefficiency here? Is running the ball actually producing good results, and that’s why they continue doing it? The answer is no. The Vikings convert first downs 11.6% running the ball in second-and-long, 17th in the NFL. They’re averaging 4.7 yards per carry, which is actually worse than their overall team average, so basically, they are aspiring for a 3rd and 5. They haven’t been great passing out of these situations either, but still more effective at 6.0 yards per attempt. Overall, run and pass, the Vikings are converting first downs 14% of the time on second-and-long when the league’s best team, the New England Patriots, is more than double that.

What’s jarring is the discrepancy between the Vikings’ run-pass ratio and the rest of the league. Sure, there are outliers like Denver and former Vikings play-caller Pat Shurmur that do things similarly, but the league average is 31% for rushing on second-and-long. Five out of the top seven most efficient teams in those situations (by yards per play) pass it more than the league average (Dallas, Arizona, Miami, San Francisco and Tampa Bay). The Vikings, on the other hand, are 15% more conservative than average in those situations yet aren’t enjoying success.

As we did above, let’s compare the data this year to what we’ve seen with past Vikings’ play-callers. Believe it or not, they were actually more extreme in 2019. They were the only team remotely close to a 50/50 run-pass split on second-and-long with 48% running plays, but again, that team had more reason to run because it held more leads. DeFilippo, predictably, was closer to league average, calling runs just 33% of the time.

The current Vikings offensive brain trust prides itself on an atypical scheme that uses the fewest three-receiver-sets in football in the name of keeping tight ends on the field as run blockers. This worked well for the 2019 Vikings, who had a better defense that kept games lower scoring. It hasn’t worked as well for the 2020 team with its young defense, and the play-calling hasn’t done much to adjust. They are predictable on second-and-short when they should be unpredictable. They are unpredictable on second-and-long when the predictable thing would actually be more effective.

The Vikings are getting their money’s worth out of Cook, but they aren’t exactly swinging for the fences.

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