Film review: Were the Vikings trying to be aggressive?

Mike Zimmer indicated that his team was trying to push the ball downfield and the tape backs that up but... it's complicated

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By Matthew Coller

When the final gun sounded on Sunday night, Kirk Cousins threw 35 passes and only gained 184 yards in a 20-16 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. His 5.3 yards per attempt was the lowest since a 28-11 loss in Week 2 of the 2020 season but it was the 10th time since joining the Vikings in which he’s gained fewer than six yards per attempt in a game.

One of the most common criticisms during Cousins’ time in Minnesota has been that the Vikings are not aggressive enough with their quarterback and do not look to push the ball downfield enough. In 2019 and 2020, they did throw downfield, ranking fifth and seventh in net yards per pass attempt but didn’t throw all that often in comparison to their peers. The Vikings finished 30th and 27th in attempts.

This year those numbers have flipped. They have thrown the ball 12th most and rank 14th in net yards per attempt.

You can see from Cousins’s NextGen chart that his throws rarely went downfield versus the Cowboys with only three throws clearing 15 yards.

Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer said on Monday that all those quick passes were not exactly planned.

“The first play of the game, we tried to take a shot,” Zimmer said. “We tried to hit a double move that we didn’t connect on. We had another, the one with pass interference to Jefferson, when he got hurt, was a deep over route. So it’s not like we don’t have those things that we’re planning on doing. It’s just something they’re not working.” 

So what is really happening? Let’s see what we can determine looking through the All-22 tape…

Our first clip comes early in the game when we get our first hint that Cousins is looking to get rid of the ball early in the face of pressure. On this play, defensive end Randy Gregory loops into the middle and gets in Cousins’s grill, which causes the Vikings’ quarterback to get rid of the ball quickly.

After Cousins stepped away from the pressure, he instantly threw to his checkdown without getting his feet set and overthrew Tyler Conklin. Meanwhile, KJ Osborn was breaking open while the Dallas defense followed Justin Jefferson deep.

It’s always much easier to look back at the tape and point out open receivers in hindsight but in this case, Cousins appeared to speed up his decision after the pressure got near him rather than stepping into a decent pocket and finding Osborn open.

We can also mark down our next play in the category of one that looked like it was designed to go downfield.

The Vikings line up in a bunch formation and two of the three receivers, Thielen and Jefferson, take off on deep routes. Thielen looks like he’s running a go route (possibly fading to the back pylon but we can’t see it on the tape) and Jefferson is breaking outside at about 15 yards.

Cousins went underneath to Osborn, who got clobbered by the Dallas cornerback.

The fact that the Dallas defense seemed discombobulated before the play makes it tougher to justify the short throw, especially since it came out a tick late and allowed the Dallas defender to put his foot in the ground and drive hard into Osborn.

Our next play is classic Kubiak offense. Out of the I-formation, Cousins bootlegs out to his right and has no defenders within his zip code. Thielen is running the deep route while Jefferson comes all the way across the field at the intermediate level.

Again Cousins seemed to make up his mind a hair early. Jefferson was guarded underneath by a linebacker, who he was starting to gain ground on and the deep safety stayed the middle of the field on Thielen’s double move, which would have left him one-on-one had the throw gone deep.

Throwing back underneath to the tight end on this play can sometimes result in a big gain. Like many of Sunday night’s plays, it wasn’t anywhere near a terrible decision, but it was an example of a play designed to push the ball downfield that didn’t happen because the quarterback didn’t take the risk.