Film study: Vikings OL progress rests on Garrett Bradbury's shoulders

Taking a closer look at Bradbury's playoff game against the Saints to look at his strengths and areas for improvement

*Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings

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The Minnesota Vikings have poured a lot of assets into the offensive line in recent years, spending big on left tackle Riley Reiff, drafting right tackle Brian O’Neill in the second round in 2018 and picking Garrett Bradbury with the 18th overall selection in 2019.

The overall results: Still not great. PFF ranked them as the 19th best offensive line last year. An improvement from 2018 but only marginally.

While Reiff has been an average player at his position and O’Neill has turned into a budding star, Bradbury’s first season was — to be Minnesota Nice — pretty rocky. PFF graded him the 26th of 30 centers and dead last in pass protection. Allowing 26 pressures on just 490 pass blocking snaps, the former North Carolina State standout had the second worst pressure rate allowed among centers in 2019.

With uncertainty at guard, the Vikings’ success or failure as an offensive line in 2020 likely rests on the shoulders of Bradbury’s progress in Year 2.

One thing we know from recent history is that rookie offensive linemen often have trouble in their first year. Earlier this offseason, Bradbury talked about the value of being able to spend his entire offseason focused on becoming a better NFL player rather than focusing his efforts on the draft first.

“I look back to the calendar year, January and December last year, and for the first three or four months, I’m preparing for the combine, which isn’t football,” Bradbury said. “So I’m practicing 40 starts, versus now I’m practicing pass sets and run blocking. I’m practicing 225 bench, where as now I’m practicing football-specific movements that [strength coach] Uwe has put together, an awesome strength plan… You have so many more questions answered, and you know what you need to work on, and you can just attack it.”

With largely the same system in his sophomore season, the highly-athletic center understands that there are areas he needs to grow in order to better those ugly first-year numbers.

“Consistency is kind of the biggest thing for me,” Bradbury said. “It's such a long season, so you watch a few stretches where you have a few good games and you kind of don't have such a good game, and so with all this time you're able to reflect on what was I doing, what was I not doing that was kind of prohibiting me from having the consistency? And something I pride myself in is being able to get better from year to year, from game to game, and so that's kind of my goal this offseason. My goal for this coming season is just to be better in Year 2 and make the improvements that I want.”

Where does he need to improve the most? What are the odds of taking a leap forward and making the Vikings much better in the middle? Let’s have a look…

Drop-back passing

Frequent Purple Insider guest Sage Rosenfels often says this: The hardest thing to do in football for a quarterback is execute a straight drop-back pass. Sage has explained that because the defense isn’t fooled at all like they would be on play-action or some type of short misdirection throw, the defensive line can come straight up field at the quarterback, the linebackers and safeties can drop back into their zones and corners can lock onto their receivers. There’s no scrambling around by the defense to figure out what’s what.

It’s also the hardest play for an offensive lineman. The term for pass rushers, “pin their ears back,” applies.

Naturally this was the toughest part of Bradbury’s rookie year as an undersized center. Per Mockdraftable, he ranked in the 7th percentile in height, 30th in weight and 6th in wingspan. That is a significant disadvantage when it comes to battling against defensive tackles that are heavier and longer.

In the example below, Bradbury jabs the defensive tackle Malcolm Brown’s hand, throwing off his initial punch but Brown is able to to rip through Bradbury’s left arm and drive him to the quarterback. Kirk Cousins does the right thing checking down to Dalvin Cook for a gain but Brown ended up in his lap, eliminating any ability to look downfield.

In Year 2, Bradbury should have a better idea of how opposing defenders will counterpunch if they do not win the initial battle.

Our next play speaks to the small margin for error when it comes to playing center undersized against a 320-pound behemoth like Brown.

The defensive tackle starts his rush by sliding his feet to his left and then plants, grabs the upright Bradbury and yanks him to the ground. It isn’t just Bradbury’s strength and size disadvantage on display here but his lack of experience. Rather than using his help in right guard Josh Kline, who was “looking for work” in this situation, he leans forward into Brown, making it easy for the massive DT to throw him off balance. Again Cousins does an outstanding job of hanging in the pocket and firing a bullet despite the pressure.

Bradbury’s ability to anchor and survive the initial impact of nose tackles when they line up right over top of him will need to improve. While the DT in the play below did not make a difference on Cousins’s throw, it gives us a bird’s eye view of just how far Bradbury can get knocked back by a powerful player lined up in the 0 technique.

Overall against the Saints, Bradbury was not credited with any pressures allowed by PFF. But you can see times in which Cousins, who is not known for his pocket movement, needed just a little more help in order to make his throw. On the play below, Bradbury turns his head for a split second — possibly because he believed Kline was taking the DT — and Shy Tuttle put his hand into Bradbury’s chest (maybe illegal hands to the face), drove him back to the quarterback and tipped the Cousins pass.

There were some good moments for Bradbury in the drop back game, one of which came when he was beaten by the initial move by the Saints’ defensive tackle and found a way to recover his footing and take the defender laterally into the ground. After being knocked back, he got underneath the DT’s pads and drove with his legs all the way to the ground. This would go under the “doesn’t quit” category.

The bottom line on Bradbury’s pass blocking is that he was in his most difficult position when Cousins as either out of the shotgun or dropping straight back. And those are often the biggest situations in the game a la third downs etc.

In Year 2, he will have had time to learn from his mistakes and build strength to handle the weight disadvantage better. It would be a stretch to say that he can ever be above average but if he can be average, the other parts of his game can make Bradbury overall a quality starting center.

Screens and running

In the divisional matchup at the Superdome, Bradbury’s athleticism and quickness was on display. The Vikings threw a screen to Cook in which the play design required Bradbury to beat the Saints’ linebacker to a spot in order to give Cook tons of space for an explosive play.

The young center stayed behind the line of scrimmage until the very last second and then burst forward, turning his hips to reach the linebacker’s outside shoulder and then exploded with his legs pushing the linebacker all the way to the ground. He finished the block in O-line highlight-reel fashion.

Bradbury’s ability to get out on screens helped the Vikings rank as the No. 1 screen team in the NFL in Expected Points Added. Gary Kubiak will very likely use him in this way routinely in his second season. It should be considered a serious weapon for the Vikings’ offense.

Below are three of Bradbury’s best run blocks of the day against the Saints. Notice all three are moving laterally. On a Cook touchdown he dives to stop star linebacker Demario Davis from getting a hand on the running back. The following clip is Bradbury bursting to the second level to reach the linebacker and Clip 3 shows him bursting to reach a defensive tackle’s outside shoulder and turning him to give Cook space.

This is the part of Bradbury’s game that was most attractive to the Vikings in the draft. Since they run an outside zone scheme, the Vikings need to have a center who can execute those reach blocks and angle off the DT in order for the running back to hit the gap.

Bradbury graded by PFF as the 19th (of 30) best run blocker. He has an opportunity to be above average if he can shore up one particular area: Power run blocking.

We did not see him get dominated in the run game against the Saints but two weeks prior versus Green Bay, Kenny Clark blasted the Vikings’ rookie when they attempted to run up the middle. Using his raw strength and long arms, Clark got lower than Bradbury and walked him right back into the running back.

With an offense that will still rely on a robust running attack, Bradbury’s progress in run blocking could have a significant implications — that’s if they can get better guard play.

The interior offensive linemen work together in both drop-back passing and running, meaning that each player’s individual performance is somewhat dependent on the others. Whether it’s Dru Samia, Riley Reiff, Ezra Cleveland, Pat Elflein, Dakota Dozier or O-Lineman X at guard, they will need to be better than in 2019. Of course that comes under difficult circumstances with COVID-19 taking a large portion of the offseason and preseason games.

“Chemistry is everything with offensive line,” he said. “There's a lot of communication involved and when there's chemistry you can have that non-verbal communication where you guys know what's happening, you know the system.”

Bradbury has the talent to become a solid center and the opportunity to learn from the ways in which experience defensive tackles beat him in Year 1. His improvement will have a direct affect on whether the Vikings improve on their mediocre overall offensive play from 2019.

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