For new Vikings OC Klint Kubiak, efficiency is there for the taking
There are some simple ways the Vikings' new OC can take the offense farther this year
By Matthew Coller
One of the mysteries that we’ve been trying to unravel this offseason is just how much different the Minnesota Vikings’ offense will be now that Klink Kubiak has taken over offensive coordinator duties from his father Gary Kubiak.
So far, what we’ve been able to ascertain is that the degree of difference really depends on who you ask.
“I think we know our identity as an offense and I think things haven't changed as much,” running back Dalvin Cook said.
“It’s his playbook, it’s his plays,” receiver Adam Thielen said. “He’s made slight adjustments and tried to implement his offense. It’s not his dad’s or last year’s offense. This is the 2021 Vikings offense.”
“Schematically it's been pretty close to the same, I haven't really noticed any difference,” guard Ezra Cleveland said. “Been doing wide zone and the passing has pretty much been the same.”
At least we know this: The offense isn’t going to be vastly different. We can safely say that Kubiak won’t be switching to an all-out air attack that reminds you of the 1994 or 2003 Vikings.
Kirk Cousins provided a little more detail about what it means to carry over the basics of a scheme with a new OC.
“You have wrinkles and you see how the league evolves because defenses are smart,” Cousins said. “They are going to go back and watch and take things away. If you get too comfortable in saying, ‘well we run this system and it always works,’ I think that’s where defenses can get caught up to you. There just has to be this constant minor evolution each year to provide wrinkles and have a plan to adjust to how defenses choose to attack you.”
In explaining the “wrinkles” to an established offense, Cousins said Gary Kubiak implemented a new red zone play last season that resulted in a handful of touchdowns. Without being inside the meetings or having a copy of the gameplan each week, it would be very difficult to be able to spot micro-level changes like that, even when watching back the All-22 tape.
We do, however, have the tools to spot more broad philosophical tendencies that might be different from the previous offense.
The simplest of those is looking at play-calling decisions in certain circumstances. Something as basic as run/pass ratio versus down-and-distance can give us a window into the thought process of an offense.
Player usages that change from year to year also provide useful insight. Back in 2017, for example, OC Pat Shurmur decided that Adam Thielen would be more effective if he frequently lined up in the slot. His slot usage jumped from 29% in 2016 to 49% in 2017 and his career took off.
While the Vikings’ offense was strong last year overall, there are noticeable areas in both situational play calling and player usage in which Klint Kubiak will have an opportunity to improve the team’s efficiency.
Last year the Vikings finished 11th in points, 18th on percentage of drives in which they produced points and ninth in offensive EPA.
Those numbers are solid but if you grouped offenses into tiers by those key categories, the first tier would be Green Bay, Kansas City, Tampa Bay, Buffalo, Tennessee. The second tier: New Orleans, Indy, Cleveland, Baltimore, Seattle. The Vikings would be grouped with clubs like Vegas, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Arizona.
When you think of the offense in those terms, it’s clear that the Vikings need to improve their efficiency on offense in order to move their name onto the list of true contenders.
The Vikings did not make any personnel changes this offseason that have the potential to push them up into the next tier (unless rookie Wyatt Davis is a game-changing guard), so Kubiak will need to improve situational performance and maximize player usage in order to take the offense to the next level.
Second down
There has been much made of the Vikings continually running on second-and-long, setting themselves up for difficult third downs rather than taking the “risk” of pushing the ball through the air — and rightfully so. On second downs with at least seven yards to go, the Vikings passed the fewest times in the NFL (109 of 183). They picked up first downs on 25.1% of plays, which was 17th in the NFL despite Cousins averaging 7.9 yards per attempt in those situations.
One of the results of regularly running on second-and-long was the Vikings averaging 7.1 yards to go on third downs, the seventh longest in the league.
It may fall under the category of the over-arching philosophy that the Vikings want to run on second-and-long with hopes of taking advantage of lighter boxes or lighter personnel along the D-line, but even a small adjustment would provide a bump toward being more efficient.
There’s another second down situation where much of the league is missing opportunities and the Vikings could get an edge.
In studying teams’ decisions based on down and distance, Kevin Cole of Pro Football Focus noticed that there has been a decline over the last 15 years of teams taking shots on second-and-short.
For a team that lives to take play-action shots downfield, second-and-short plays offer an opportunity for huge gains.
Last year on second down with three or fewer yards to go, Cousins went 12-for-15 with 135 yards and two touchdowns for a 120.7 QB rating, yet 17 quarterbacks threw more second-and-short passes than Cousins. Overall the Vikings ran 62 times and dropped back to pass just 16 times.
On those same plays, opponents seemed to know what was coming as Dalvin Cook gained just 2.8 yards per attempt.
Here is the chart Cole created to demonstrate how teams have been pushing the ball downfield more on third downs and less on second down in recent years:
Another interesting element of second-and-short passes is that the entire league took just 22 sacks on 624 dropbacks in those spots.
That seems to suggest that defenses are not “pinning their ears back” or running stunts/twists/blitzes for fear of getting burned by explosive runs.
With Cook regularly busting off runs of 6-8 yards on first down, the Vikings should have all sorts of opportunities to aim for big plays downfield to Adam Thielen, Justin Jefferson and Irv Smith Jr. when teams are gearing up for an extra dose of Cook.
The reason teams are running so much might be to guarantee a fresh set of downs but the rate of gaining first downs isn’t huge between passing and rushing on second-and-short plays. Runs produced first downs 67% of the time, and passing got first downs on 60% of plays league wide.
On the Purple Insider Podcast, Cole said that running in these spots repeatedly can end up requiring the quarterback to convert third downs, which is a high variance play.
“People think these running offenses are low risk in a way or low variance in a way but I actually think it’s a little bit different than that,” Cole said. “There’s an argument that you’re making it a little bit higher variance…what you’re doing is relying on the quarterback to convert…a handful of third downs and a handful of explosive first downs off play-action. You can do really, really well or you can do really, really poorly in those situations.”
“You give yourself two or three plays in a game where if you hit those two or three plays you win but over a long enough timeline the wheels are going to fall off.”
Mike Zimmer said that he set up OTAs and minicamp to simulate situations and give Kubiak plenty of chances to hone his craft under different circumstances.
“For all the new or young coordinators, I think it is important that they get a chance to kind of practice their game-like situations, certain calls and understanding the game, whether it’s we’re winning or losing or two-minute,” Zimmer said.
We’ll see whether that results in moving the needle toward efficiency.
Another stat worth noting when it comes to situational play calling is the Vikings’ lack of early-game passing. Only the New England Patriots threw fewer passes in the first quarter, yet Cousins had a 108.4 rating on 97 passes. Like second-and-short, the first quarter represents an opportunity for aggressive throws.
Overall quarterbacks had a 95.3 rating in the first quarter last year, which was a tick higher than the 93.1 rating in the second, third and fourth quarters.
Jefferson and the short passing game
One of the benefits of handing OC duties off to the QBs coach is that he doesn’t have to learn about his players during the offseason.
“I think he has a really good feel for what the players do best, which is really important,” Zimmer said of Kubiak.
Last year the Vikings waited until Week 3 to start Justin Jefferson because of the truncated offseason and then he quickly became one of the league’s most dangerous receivers. It’s hard to believe the Vikings left anything on the table with a player who broke the rookie record for receiving but there’s one area where they might have been table to take more advantage: The quick passing game.
Last year on throws that traveled between 0-9 yards, Jefferson was graded 95.4 out of 100 by Pro Football Focus and gained 8.0 yards per target. Yet quick throws only made up 45.5% of his total targets.
Here’s how the other overall top five PFF graded receivers fared on targets that traveled 0-9 yards:
Davante Adams: 54.1% of total targets, 6.9 yards per target
Stefon Diggs: 50.6% / 7.6
DeAndre Hopkins: 50.5% / 6.9
Allen Robinson: 50.3% / 6.3
AJ Brown: 47.7% / 9.2
The other elite receivers got the ball on quick passes more often and everyone except AJ Brown produced fewer yards per target than Jefferson. Cousins also completed 80% of 0-9 throws toward Jefferson.
Just like with second down situations, a dramatic shift isn’t necessary but an adjustment could increase efficiency enough to make a difference and stave off some potential regression. Last season Cousins completed 14 of 24 throws over 20 yards to Jefferson for 467 yards. That’s going to be tough to repeat with the amount of attention Jefferson draws this season.
Dalvin Cook
As great as Dalvin Cook has been since joining the Vikings as a second-round pick in 2017, in the quest to move up to a Tier 1 or 2 offense, pacing usage with Cook could improve his efficiency.
Over the last three years, there has been a noticeable gap in performance between the first and second half of the season. Since 2018 in games 1-8, Cook has routinely been mentioned as an MVP candidate, gaining 5.3 yards per carry with 21 touchdowns on 336 total rushes. In games 9-17, his average rush is 4.3 yards and he’s produced 10 touchdowns on 359 carries.
It isn’t just injuries the Vikings should be concerned about when it comes to his workload but the possibility of wearing him down in the second half of the year.
Kubiak could also make gains in the screen passing game, where Cook averaged 7.0 yards per target behind the LOS last year, down from 9.6 in 2019. We haven’t seen a creative layer to the passing game with Cook at any point during his career and it seemed opponents may have caught up to some of the screens last year.
The bottom line
It may not be clear until we’re midway through the season exactly how much different Klint Kubiak’s offense is than previous iterations but Zimmer’s comments suggest that young Kubiak will have his own spin on an offense that has influenced many coordinators around the NFL.
“Klint, he’s a lot like how Kevin (Stefanski) was when he [became OC],” Zimmer said. “He’s very detailed. He brings up the subject that they want to discuss. He’ll have his opinions. He’ll listen to the other guys’ opinions in the room and then kind of go from there. He’s done a good job. Everybody’s going to wonder what it’s going to be like when you’re a first-time play caller but at the end of the day every one of us was always a first-time play caller at one point.’’
The Vikings’ offense will need Kubiak to make adaptations if they want to make gains on the league’s best offenses — the ones that usually end up playing on championship weekend.
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Very interesting stuff.. I saw somewhere that stated the gain that offenses get from going to a bad OL to an average OL is much bigger than going from an average OL to a good OL... Obviously it is not obvious that the youth movement will pay huge dividends this year (though maybe by 2022) but according to PFF the Vikings were #26 last year....Even a jump to 18-20 would be pretty helpful....
I think that Klint is an underdiscussed variable when it comes to how this season plays out. We all know that how well our OL performs, whether Dalvin stays healthy, how often GoodKirk comes out to play, and how often BadKirk stays banished to the netherworld will have substantial impacts on how this season goes. That said, as Matthew suggests, each of these may be notably impacted by how Klint manages playcalling. The more that our playcalling is nuanced and keeps our offense out of third and long situations, the better our OL should look. The more we have a light touch with Dalvin, the healthier he should be. The more we use Jefferson short and give Kirk unpredictable playcalling, the better (and more consistently) he should perform. I think that Klint could legit be the difference between, say, so bad as 7 wins this season (if he is a noticeably worse version of his old man that further strains our young OL) or as good as 13 wins this season (if he is a significantly better version of Stefanski), to give the absolute outlier projections. Probably more likely that his playcalling is the difference between 9 and 11 wins, all things equal, but the variance could be even greater.
Also, I'm pretty sure that you have discussed this before (or it might have been a different podcast), but one reason why offenses might run more on 2nd and short is just to give their OL a breather. Teams are passing more than ever before, and every offensive lineman will tell you that it is harder and more taxing and less fun to pass block than it is to run block. If a team has been passing their way down the field, an OC may take the occasion of a 2nd and 2 or whatever to run just to give their OL a break. After all, it makes sense to take advantage of a greater chance to convert (which your stats seemed to show exist) when that playcall also has the advantage of making your OL happy and, potentially, better over the course of the full drive (and/or full game) by giving them a bit of a break amidst a historically-unprecedented passing game.
Beyond that, I agree that all of the things you discussed above would help efficiency, but also points scored and % of drives that end with points don't really measure efficiency. These two just measure, well, points, which are basically by definition flukey and not really static or predictive stat over time. For example, it is basically guaranteed that the Vikings would have extremely poor points scored and % of drives that end with points being as they have the worst starting field position in the league when paired with the worst field goal percentage of the league, both of which are not strongly related to their starting 11 on offense, and both of which they did by wide margins. Specifically, the difference between the Vikings and the 31st place team in the league for FG% was bigger than the difference than the 31st place team and the 28th place team, and the difference between the Vikes and the 31st place team for average starting field position was bigger than the 31st place team and the 26th(!!!) place team.
Also, EPA doesn't really measure efficiency either, but rather EPA is (again) tied directly to the actual points of the game, as the total EPA in any given game is always equal to the actual points scored in the game. Put differently, the total EPA of a team within a game will always be the exact same as the actual score between two teams in a game, as at the end of each game they use history to mathematically apportion the relative effect of each play to the final score. EPA is very valuable and interesting and will tell you a lot, and it is fantastically insightful on a micro level (as it divides out how individual plays can contribute to scoring when compared to the history of the game), but it frankly somewhat less valuable on a macro level, as it is explicitly handcuffed to the score.
If anyone wants to discuss efficiency, they should use DVOA. Incidentally, DVOA still supports all of Matthew's conclusions, which makes sense as they are good conclusions. Specifically, each of the teams in the NFC championship game were top 5 in offensive DVOA last year. Over the last 7 years, only 3 teams that have appeared in the championships game were not top 8 in offensive DVOA (Jags in 2017, Denver in 2015, and Colts in 2014, each of which were clear outliers for various reasons), and the superbowl champ was top 6 in each year but with Peyton's Broncos in 2015 (another objective outlier), as well.
To give an example of how DVOA is better than EPA by comparing two actual plays from last year, let's say that one team scores a touchdown on 1st and goal from the 2 against last year's Steelers (arguably the best defense in the league last year, and one of the best against the run) to go up 14-3 in the first quarter as the Texans did last year, and let's say that another team scores a touchdown on 1st and goal from the 3 against last year's Vikings for a Xmas day present (by then the Vikings were easily one of the worst rush defenses in the league, down basically everyone important in their front 7) to go up 52-33 with less than two minutes to go in the game. According to EPA, it is more impressive and more meaningful for Kamara to score his TD to go up 52-33 with 110 second remaining than it is to run in a TD from 2 yards out to go up 11 against the Steelers in the 1st quarter, because the Kamara TD was one yard further away - in other words, EPA completely ignores your competition and it completely ignores game situation. There are a host of other things that EPA ignores that are meaningful, but this is just one very quick way to illustrate how EPA is a very interesting but objectively pretty blunt tool that lacks nuance, especially when compared to something like DVOA.
If I recall, Coller said in a recent podcast that he was ignoring DVOA because it said that the Vikings had a slightly above-average defense last year before injuries really ravaged the team (they got as high as 9th after week 13 when they had a record of 6-6). Which, I mean that's fine, I guess, but to me it seems like dismissing the entirety of a widely respected stat that is purely analytical because it doesn't match up with your eyes in one instance without even trying to understand why it did so is a curiously anti-analytics viewpoint. I would say it is akin to dismissing PFF grades for all time as dumb and irrelevant because they didn't say that Xavier Rhodes was a top 14 cornerback in the 2017 season, as the eye test clearly said that he was, particularly given his competition that year.
I have mainly stopped trying to get Matthew to reject Football Outsiders and to accept PFF as The Ultimate Truth, but I can't help myself now and again from taking a potshot, if only because I want my three football besties (Vikings, Purple Insider, and Football Outsiders) to play nice. Love you, Matthew!