The Vikings have a run game problem. The run offense itself isn’t problematic; a Dalvin Cook Pro Bowl nod can speak to that. They have a balance problem. Their commitment to the run ushered Stefon Diggs out of town. Target share is already a talking point in Justin Jefferson‘s young career. In 2018, the Vikings fired John DeFilippo, in part, citing a lack of rushing balance. They responded by bringing in Gary Kubiak to ensure that Kevin Stefanski wouldn’t make the same decision. The Vikings of today are committed to running the ball, even if it doesn’t work. Establishing it, some may say. In April of 2019, Zimmer commented on this philosophy:
“We want to be great running the football … but it’s not always about running for 200 yards,” Zimmer said. “The defense was on the field four minutes more a game [in 2018], I think that’s what it was. It’s time of possession, it’s controlling the game, it’s the mentality, the physicality of all that. If you look at the teams that played really good on offense this year, or the final four teams or whatever you want to call them, they ran the ball.”
There is a lot to unpack here. In this quote, Zimmer outlines a lot of the perceived benefits of forcing run plays into a team’s game plan. Run plays, on average, get fewer yards than passing plays. Most of the analytical argument against establishing the run leans on this. It’s simply less productive. Despite this, many teams run incessantly, talk about running incessantly, and insist on establishing the run incessantly. The Vikings are no exception.
The Vikings ran about 5% more than “expectation” in 2020, per Ben Baldwin’s setup. Expectation is built with down, distance, score, etc. in mind. Since Week 12, they’ve been about on expectation in terms of run-pass ratio. To get back to expectation, on the season, you’d have to change around 50 of their runs into passes, or about three or four plays per game. Much of this is driven by the Vikings’ insistence on running on 2nd and short, which Sam Ekstrom broke down in more detail.
Zimmer’s main contention is clock control. We’ve talked about this before, but in short, most clock-control metrics do a poor job of actually measuring game tempo. The only valid clock control strategy revolves around shortening the game, and even that only helps if you’re the underdog or already leading.
Physicality is also difficult to nail down. Plenty of players speak to their fatigue at the end of a grinding, run-heavy game, but their play doesn’t seem to decline. That linked study looked at 38,000 drives and found very little evidence that fatigue affects a defense. It’s not too surprising to learn that it is difficult to wear down the superhuman athletes that comprise NFL defenses. It could also be that offenses get just as tired as defenses, so the effect is a wash. It’s more useful to examine the effect, or lack thereof, that running the ball has on this.
In much broader terms, teams that have rushed more times over a game don’t necessarily see more success. This could also be influenced by game script. Leading teams will often run into heavy boxes just to run clock late in the game. Most coaches wouldn’t put much into the finding that those runs tend to gain fewer yards. But whether a team has run 10 times or 30, a fourth-quarter run into a nine-man box is still a difficult ask.
In fact, box counts explain a ton of rushing outcomes. One of the older justifications for committing to the run centered around this. If a team ran a lot, the defense would respond by stacking the box. Once it has stacked the box, you’ll have a one-on-one matchup on the outside with your favorite receiver. Again, however, teams don’t need to run to achieve this effect. Most teams have alignment rules that will stack the box if the offense does. An offense in a jumbo package (1 RB, 3 TE) will invite 10 men into the box. A more classic 3×1 setup, with wide receivers and/or tight ends spread across the field, will generate lighter boxes. Running into those is a lot different.
This brings up a facet of run-pass decision making that is oft forgotten: the quarterback. Most teams give their quarterbacks leeway to check out of a play if they don’t like the defensive setup. If they have Paper called, and the defense looks set up to play Scissors, the quarterback can yell “Kill, Kill” or some other code word that tells the whole offense to run Rock instead. Sometimes, Rock is a run play.
We should move beyond the myth that coaches are sitting on the sideline, flipping a coin between run and pass. Tape study, personnel and long-term planning go into the decision. They’re choosing whether to attack a backup linebacker with outside zone, curl-flat or bootleg flood, not Run, Pass or Play-Action Pass. To reduce those decisions to run and pass sorts away a large portion of the decision-making process.
Setting up play action, however, has little to do with generalized rushing volume. Rushing volume doesn’t correlate much to play-action success. That is to say, teams that run a lot are just as good at play-action as teams that haven’t. If the goal of establishing the run is to prevent defenses from ignoring that threat, then the run has been established since Rutgers-New Jersey first kicked off in 1869. But offenses aren’t trying to convince defenses to respect the run in general. They’re trying to convince defenses to respect very specific setups and looks. Here’s an example.
[videopress 7Ily44w5]So on the whole, more rushing volume doesn’t mean play-action will work more. But running outside zone and then faking outside zone into a naked bootleg is something the best offensive minds in the league use every game. These tendencies stretch across games, too. Coaches will put one look on tape, then two weeks later fake that look and go for a play-action shot play. Is that worth three or four suboptimal play calls a game? The Vikings, and most NFL teams, seem to think so. This is especially true of wide zone teams like the San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns and Tennessee Titans. Wide zone teams, for what it’s worth, have been very successful on the whole.
The Vikings seem to push a lot of flawed reasons for wanting to establish the run. Clock control, fatigue, and to some degree even play-action setups don’t require pounding the ball into the A-gap every other first down. But to call for a change in run-pass ratio, we should understand exactly what the intention is. Then we can decide if we agree or disagree.
