During the beginning of Sunday Night Football’s broadcast between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills, Cris Collinsworth relayed a quote that Giants head coach Brian Daboll told him earlier in the week.
They pay us to solve problems.
Coming off a debut season where his Giants shocked the football world by winning a playoff game after inheriting a team that won five or fewer games in four of the previous five seasons, New York has tasked Daboll with solving countless problems this year. Almost his entire starting offensive line is injured, Pro Bowl running back Saquon Barkley has missed three games, and starting quarterback Daniel Jones missed Week 6 with a neck injury. The Giants’ offense hasn’t been pretty by any stretch of the imagination, yet they still came one yard away from stealing a victory from the three-time defending AFC East champion Buffalo Bills on Sunday night.
After hearing Daboll’s quote on the NBC broadcast, I couldn’t help but think of what’s currently on Kevin O’Connell‘s plate. One of the biggest reasons why the Minnesota Vikings hired him in February 2022 was to win games by maximizing their best player, Justin Jefferson. O’Connell set out to do so in the 11-personnel offense that he picked up after spending two years working under Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay. But how does this work when Jefferson is wearing a hoodie and sweatpants on Sundays?
If Sunday’s narrow 19-13 victory over the 1-5 Chicago Bears is any indication, it doesn’t.
Much was expected of first-round rookie wide receiver Jordan Addison, who steps into a more prominent role in Jefferson’s absence. But Kirk Cousins targeted the former USC and Pittsburgh wide receiver only five times for three receptions and 28 yards. Addison salvaged the minimal workload by coming down with Minnesota’s only offensive touchdown of the day, hauling in a 10-yard pass in the final seconds of the first half to put the Vikings up 12-6. But despite playing a season-high 86% of snaps in Week 6, Addison’s five targets were tied for the second-fewest he’s seen all year.
Jefferson makes this 11-personnel scheme come to life, yet they still used 11-personnel without him on over 60% of their plays. The results left a lot to be desired. Minnesota’s running game was an uphill battle seemingly from the opening kickoff, totaling only 2.1 yards per carry on 22 attempts. And the passing game predictably experienced a season-low 5.8 yards per attempt. It’s worth mentioning that the Bears defense currently ranks 31st by allowing 7.4 net yards per attempt this season.
O’Connell, Wes Phillips, and the offensive staff need to channel the scene in Apollo 13 when mission control dumps onto a table all of the parts that are currently on board and determine a way to safely get their astronauts home. The Vikings are way past the point of “Houston, we have a problem.” But as Daboll told Collinsworth last week, it’s their job to assess the existing parts and solve the problem that Jefferson’s absence presents.
The first order of business is taking a proper roll call of the offense’s most impactful players, and then determining how you can put them in the best position possible to help impact winning. Granted, the original plan for newcomer tight end Josh Oliver has changed. Moonlighting as an ass-kicker in the run game while also serving as a coverage manipulator for Jefferson has since gone out the window with the 2022 NFL Offensive Player of the Year landing on injured reserve. But Oliver is still arguably one of Minnesota’s most impactful players at his particular skillset, and the Vikings need to activate it more consistently.
The question that O’Connell and his staff have to ask themselves is simply, “Does having Brandon Powell on the field at a considerably higher rate than Oliver help us win?”
Despite Jefferson’s absence, Powell played 60% of Minnesota’s offensive snaps at Soldier Field, compared to Oliver’s 39%. Oliver’s role didn’t change on Sunday. He’s played anywhere from 33% to 47% of the Vikings’ snaps through six weeks. But with an offense that is trying to feature a rookie wide receiver, mixed with a disappearing act of a running game, the offense could stand to benefit from giving Oliver a bigger role.
At this point, Minnesota can no longer pretend to be a team that is willing to run the ball effectively to create more favorable coverages. They have to run the ball effectively to stay on schedule and avoid third-and-longs. The easiest way to do that is by significantly reducing the 11-personnel frequency with Powell, and instead getting Oliver on the field with T.J. Hockenson with considerably more 12-personnel. That would allow the Vikings to play a mini-form of positionless offensive football. With this personnel, the Vikings have the flexibility to get under center with both Hockenson and Oliver at the line of scrimmage to help in the run game, while also having the option to stick Cousins in the gun with Hockenson in the slot as their de facto third receiver alongside Addison and K.J. Osborn.
O’Connell first linked up with McVay as the Rams’ offensive coordinator in 2020. Which is worth mentioning because Los Angeles had the fourth-highest 12-personnel rate in the league that season. Their 11-personnel frequency ranked 14th. That same 2020 Rams team finished the year top-10 in rushing attempts, rushing yards, and rushing touchdowns — while also winning 10 regular season games and a road Wild Card playoff game.
Maximizing two tight ends with a strong running game isn’t exactly foreign to O’Connell. Jefferson’s absence has forced KOC and his offense to get comfortable being uncomfortable with less 11-personnel. But how uncomfortable does it have to be for O’Connell since he’s had success by recently implementing this exact philosophy with McVay and the Rams? Not to mention that 2020 Rams team never had the luxury of unleashing an ass-kicker like Oliver in their fourth-highest 12-personnel frequency, top-10 rushing offense.
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah made Oliver a priority signing on the opening day of free agency for a reason. And as a consequence of circumstance, the Vikings would be best served by giving Oliver a noticeably bigger opportunity to demonstrate why.
