The Minnesota Vikings trounced the New York Giants, 28-6, in New York on Sunday, starting their 2024 season on the right foot. It was a dominant performance on both sides of the ball. However, the most striking difference from the 2023 squad was in the run game, where Aaron Jones went for 94 yards and a TD on just 14 carries.
Jones’ 6.7 yards/attempt would have been second when looking at individual games (with more than five carries) from Minnesota’s RBs last year. Ty Chandler averaged 7.1 yards/attempt against the Denver Broncos, but he got 31 rushing yards on a fake punt. If you remove that carry, he averaged just 4.7 yards/attempt on nine traditional rushing attempts.
Jones’s performance was also great from an advanced stat perspective. Per NextGenStats, he gained 39 rush yards over expected, second in the NFL, and was also second with 5.8 yards after contact/attempt. His rush EPA of plus-3.5 was seventh among all players in Week 1, with three QBs ahead of him.
After reviewing the film, Jones had a great game, but he didn’t do it alone. The diverse play calling and the blocking in the run game helped him out. Let’s break down what made the run game so successful.
Variety Leads to Spicy Runs
Under Kevin O’Connell, the Vikings have historically been a zone-rushing team, although they dabbled in more gap scheme last year. That trend continued into this game, where they showed a wide variety of runs. Their first run of the game was counter, and they ran a bunch of duo in addition to their traditional zone running game. They still majored in zone, with 15 called zone run plays compared to 10 gap scheme runs, but the balance was nice and caught New York’s defense off guard.
Let’s dig in to some of the variety.
On the first play of the game, the Vikings came out and ran Counter, a gap scheme run. Counter features a pulling guard, in this case RG Ed Ingram, and a second puller, usually a TE but in this case FB C.J. Ham, lead blocking while the rest of the offensive line “down blocks” away from the direction of the run. In this case, the run is to the left, so everyone else blocks to their right. Look at the wall the combination of Brandel-Bradbury-O’Neill is able to create to the right side of the line.
Aaron Jones takes a counter step to his right for timing and then goes for the hole. In this case, Josh Oliver is unable to control DT No. 93 Rakeem Nunez-Roches, and it kills the play. Still, it was good to see the fight after contact by Jones and a gap run from the Vikings on the first play of the game.
The next play we’ll look at is an outside zone, which is a staple for the Vikings. Outside zone is easy to spot. Every lineman takes a hard stop to his left on this play, and their goal is to “reach” block the player to their outside shoulder. If they don’t have a player there, they put a hand on the player inside of them to help the guy to their right before climbing to the LB. Darrisaw-Brandel and Bradbury-Ingram have nice combo blocks on this play, although neither Darrisaw nor Bradbury can get up to the LBs, who read this play pretty well.
The player Josh Oliver is supposed to block, Kayvon Thibodeaux, backdoors him. However, that’s fine from Oliver’s perspective because Jones is supposed to beat any player who does that to the outside, which he does. You’d like to see Oliver get a little more of a push on Thibodeaux, but it’s not a terrible rep. Jones should probably cut back a step or two sooner as the LB got over the top of Darrisaw, but he had a nice finish on this run.
Minnesota’s coaching staff did a great job adjusting and attacking the aggressive play from the Giants’ LBs on the outside zone runs. They ran a number of plays like the one below, which I classified as inside zone. On an outside zone play, you have the RB flow with the offensive line and lead blockers to the right. In this case, have Ham at FB, and you can see that as the entire OL flows right, Ham goes left.
Instead of trying to reach the player on their shoulder, Minnesota’s OL is essentially down-blocking them. Because the LB to the left, Bobby Okereke, sees Blake Brandel start out with a big step to his right he thinks this is outside zone. That makes Ham’s block on Okereke an easy task, and Trent Sherfield does a great job at the second level. Jones is quickly in space against a DB, who he beats en route to a 19-yard gain.
Pin and pull is another play you can run to deal with aggressive LB play against outside zone. Officially, I believe it’s charted as a gap play, but it’s basically an outside zone adjustment. In this case, most of the OL makes the normal outside zone reach/combo blocks, but the TE and OT to the play side pull out in front of the run, while a WR blocks down or “pins” the DE.
Where on the play above, Oliver had to reach Thibodeaux, in this case Brandon Powell pins him so Johnny Mundt can pull. Thibodeaux is not expecting a block from Powell, so it’s an easy win for the WR. Sherfield also blocks down against a DB who is functionally a linebacker, who would be Darrisaw’s responsibility on traditional outside zone.
That creates a theoretically advantageous matchup on the outside, with Mundt blocking a CB and Darrisaw blocking a safety instead of the traditional outside zone where WRs would block those DBs. In this case, Mundt is unable to execute his block on Deonte Banks, and Ty Chandler gets taken down for a loss.
It may not have worked out in this case, but it was cool to see more variety from Minnesota’s run game.
Offensive Line Dominance
Heading into the season, Minnesota’s offense’s biggest concern was its interior offensive line. The team did little to address it in the offseason, although it made a conscious decision to get bigger at LG with Brandel over Dalton Risner, and Garrett Bradbury worked to put on weight.
Those updates paid early dividends. You can see good blocking across the OL on the plays above, but one play in particular stood out to me. On the play below, the Vikings are running Duo. Duo is a straight forward run against a four-man front. Darrisaw-Brandel and Bradbury-Ingram combo the players in front of them, up to the LB level. The run opens towards the TE, with the backside tackle (O’Neill) kicking out the DE.
This run succeeds because Minnesota’s OL gets a fantastic push. The ball is on the 48, and by the time Jones gets back to the LOS, the Vikings offensive line has pushed the DTs all the way back to the 50. Another bad read by the LB leads to Jones having a massive hole, and he gets an easy 10-yard gain.
Jones Ties it all together
The play calling and blocking put the team in a good position, but an honest review of Minnesota’s tape from 2023 shows plenty of examples where that was also the case. The difference this time was Jones, whose dynamic athleticism, vision, and tenacity immediately set him apart from the Vikings RB room last year. Alexander Mattison did not have the athleticism to generate significant production beyond what his blockers created for him, and Chandler didn’t have the vision for consistent success.
Jones has everything you want in an RB, and that skillset led to a ridiculous 78.6% rushing success rate on the ground. That’s obviously high variance from a single game, but it’s notable that Jones also led all RBs in success rate last year at a crazy 62%. In 2023, Jones outperformed other players in the top 10 in success rate with incredible run scheme designs (Kyren Williams, Raheem Mostert, De’Von Achane, David Montgomery, Christian McCaffrey) or assistance from the threat of a mobile QB (James Cook, D’Andre Swift, Gus Edwards, D’Onta Foreman). The Vikings had just a 44.8% rushing success rate as a team.
It starts with explosiveness. Despite being 29, Jones clearly still has impressive speed. The play below is another duo run, and Jones makes a quick decision to bounce it based on the LBs inside. He’s running into a CB with outside leverage on Powell’s block, but it doesn’t matter because Jones is too fast. He outruns the CB to the corner and gets in for the TD.
That athleticism showed up in the open field, like on a few of the plays above, but it also enabled Jones to be what I’ll call a very creative runner. Usually, you want to run between the backs of your blockers. In the case of the play below, that would likely mean go between Ham and Brandel or maybe even try to push the run up between Brandel and Bradbury. A player like Mattison might choose this, get a few yards because of the push of the offensive line, and call it a good run.
However, Jones saw beyond the structure of the play. He cut two gaps, and the entirety of the space between the hashes, back across the field because he saw that he could manipulate the defender Darrisaw was blocking. He cut upfield between Darrisaw and Oliver, and ended by falling forward. Jones turned a two- to three-yard gain into a nine-yard gain. That type of decision-making doesn’t work for everyone, but Jones is savvy enough to know exactly when to push the buttons to maximize his yardage.
Jones isn’t just a finesse back. He has the ability to fight through tight creases and get extra yardage. On the play below, the Vikings run power, which features down blocks from most of the OL, a kickout by Oliver, and a pull by the LG Brandel. The Giants wad this run up pretty nicely, but Jones finds a tiny crease between the backs of Brandel and Oliver. He’s able to work through multiple ankle tackles by Giants defenders and finishes the run with his pads lowered.
You could consistently see the tenacity with which Jones ran. I put together a compilation of his tough runs after contact here, including a conversion where he was hit behind the line on third-and-short and a pair of nice gains after the game was well in hand late in the fourth quarter. He never took his foot off the gas.
Aaron Jones, the offensive line, and Minnesota’s play calling in the run game got off to a fantastic start on Sunday. Let’s hope that continues this week against the San Francisco 49ers and throughout the season.
