Film study: Screens, shakiness, scheme
Film study: Screens, shakiness, scheme
By Matthew Coller
The Minnesota Vikings put together an impressive overall offensive performance against the Green Bay Packers, walking out of Lambeau Field with 31 points, 374 yards and quarterback Sam Darnold finished with a 123.4 rating. How they got there was…. interesting. The Vikings crushed in the screen pass and deep cross passing game but Darnold had some shaky moments where he wasn’t playing with quite the same timing and vision that he seemed to have in the first three games.
Let’s have a closer look…
Screens
ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky declared the Vikings the best screen team in the NFL and the numbers would agree. Sam Darnold has the highest average yards per attempt on screens in the league.
On Tuesday, offensive coordinator Wes Phillips explained that the Vikings made it a priority to improve on screens from their first two seasons at the helm.
“We wanted screens to be a part of our offense, a weapon,” Phillips said. “Each screen is a little different. The way the rush [is], who's first out and where those defenders are in space… there's a lot of unknown on each screen, each one can be different but we have put in a lot of work to make sure that's at least a part of our offense.”
The first successful screen came on the first drive with Aaron Jones picked up a first down to get the possession rolling. What you will notice is how much the Vikings make this look like a normal play-action play. When Darnold turns around, he looks like he’s about to throw a deep concept and the offensive line is blocking that way too. Bradbury finally starts to take off as Darnold is giving the ball to Jones and then the veteran center finds his man in space as the Packers scramble to recover from dropping back into their deep zones.
Phillips talked about how Jones’s skill set makes the screen game more effective: “His tempo getting out, finding his way out, not drifting too far outside. He's got a good body control where he can turn around, kind of be static. We can get the ball [to him and] get north.”
Phillips added that they try to run screens when they know they are getting zone coverage.
“You don't want man coverage,” Phillips said. “You don't want the guy covering the back right on him…And then you're practicing them against flow and maybe they have a pressure on and there's all kinds of movement up front harder for guys to find their way out to get out in front of the screen.”
The second successful screen came on the Vikings’ second drive as they were moving into scoring position. This one came out of a shotgun formation with a bunch to the QB’s right side and only Jordan Addison to the left. Addison ran an outside route toward the sideline to bring his defender farther away and the safety pays attention to him while everyone else is occupied with the three receivers to the right except one linebacker. Bradbury gets to him and gets Chandler more space for a positive gain.
The third screen of the day put the Vikings at the goal line, where they scored on an Addison end around. From the 19-yard line, they cleared out space for Jones by sending the two outside receivers on vertical routes and Justin Jefferson on the other side to draw the safety as far away from the play as possible.
It also helped that the Packers sent two blitzers. Had Ed Ingram kept blasting forward, Jones probably scores.
It’s not easy to keep up a screen game this effective but last year the 49ers gained 8.8 yards per attempt on 45 attempts for Brock Purdy. It certainly makes a QB’s life a lot easier to get explosive plays without any stress. But you can bet opponents are going to spend a lot of time preparing for these in the coming weeks.
Shakiness
If you say that the win over the Packers was Darnold’s shakiest game, you sound like a crazy person because his box score was so good but there were more moments in which his decision making and/or timing was off. It speaks to how good he’s been and how good the scheme and playmakers have been around him that these were the ugliest moments but they are worth taking a closer look at.
Right off the bat Darnold nearly turned the ball over. This was a classic example of trying to do too much. There is pressure up the middle and Darnold spins out and rolls left but as soon as he avoided the sack he should have thrown the ball in the stands. Instead he tried to hit Jefferson on the move toward the sideline but he forgot about the defender who was guarding Jones down the sideline, who nearly picked off the pass.
Darnold has to keep in mind the game situation when deciding to try to make special plays. There is no reason to press here and Jefferson wasn’t even open.
However, there were times later in the game where Jefferson was open and Darnold didn’t find him. One in particular, when the Vikings had a chance to go into full blowout mode, his throw into traffic got Brandon Powell briefly knocked out of the game.
Darnold got into his drop and pulled the ball back like he was going to let it rip to Powell and then hesitated. By the time he reset and fired the ball, it was too late and Powell got whacked by the linebacker. It’s hard to tell whether he was looking for Jefferson and then was concerned the defender on Powell could break off underneath the Jefferson route or if he just couldn’t get the ball out but right after he released the ball Jefferson broke wide open off one-on-one coverage.
There was another flinch that was tough to figure out later in the game when the Vikings went for a deep shot. From inside their own 20, four receivers ran vertical routes and two of them were wide open but Darnold did a strange tuck as if he thought he was going to get hit and then flung the ball up toward Jefferson despite having Powell and Josh Oliver down the seams with nobody around.
As always, this stuff is way easier to see on All-22 tape in slow motion after the game than in real time but we can confidently say something was off on this one. After he didn’t feel comfortable, Darnold could have checked it to CJ Ham for a 5-yard gain and moved on.
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