Friday Mailbag: 9-2 Vikings vs. historic 9-2 teams

Vikings fans want to know if the Vikings are smoke and mirrors or a strong 9-2 team

Photo courtesy Minnesota Vikings

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Hope you had a good holiday. Luckily Purple Insider readers never sleep, so here’s what we have for this week’s mailbag…

Eldon…. Weird question but I have heard some of the more cynical Vikings fans saying this is the worst 9-2 team in NFL history and frankly I don't understand why because the previous Vikings teams would have lost in Chicago and Jacksonville for sure but I'm curious which team was the worst 9-2 team in NFL history and could we just have a rerun of their games instead of giants cowboys tomorrow?

What I don’t understand is why a fan of the team would ever say that? Is that just people on social media trying to get attention? It’s truly fascinating because there’s no evidence to suggest this team isn’t anything other than very good.

Luckily for these engagement-desperate folks who are saying stuff like that, the worst 9-2 team in NFL history by point differential was…. your 2022 Minnesota Vikings (+5).

The current Vikings are +77 point differential, which makes them a better 9-2 team than four Super Bowl champions that started 9-2.

Where your rage-filled fans might have a point is that this Vikings team is not one of the best 9-2 teams by point differential. They are 79th out of 107 teams ever that started 9-2.

By another metric, they’re 37th among all-time 9-2 teams by yards per play.

Definitively NOT the worst 9-2 team ever. Not even close.

The best 9-2 team of all time was the 1999 St. Louis Rams at +219. Something stood out as I was looking through the best of the best: Very few are recent. The 2019 Ravens are the only team since 2015 to rank in the top 25 in differential. Only 5 of the top 25 are from 2000 and on. Closer games, more parity etc.

Who are the most comparable recent 9-2 teams to the Vikings by point differential? The 2017 Vikings, for starters. They had a +76 differential at this point. Others include the 2010 Jets that went to the AFC Championship with Rex Ryan, the ‘05 Seahawks that went to the Super Bowl with Matt Hasselbeck, and the 2022 Chiefs that beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl. The 2012 Super Bowl Ravens were at +64.

I also ran across this from Ben Baldwin’s EPA website. If you take out the garbage time numbers where the Vikings already have a 90% chance to win or better, here’s where they compare to the rest of the league in EPA:

Right there in the mix with the best teams.

Some good news: Only one team since the 70s started 9-2 missed the playoffs: The ‘93 Dolphins. I believe Dan Marino got hurt that year. All but eight of the 9-2 club won at least 11 games.

Rob… Daniel Jones, other than the (potential) comp pick I don’t see what he adds to the QB room.

The biggest thing that Jones brings them is a better option if Sam Darnold were to get hurt, particularly in a playoff scenario. I’m not sold that he really would give them a better shot than Nick Mullens considering he’s 3-13 with 10 TD, 13 INT, 5.9 yards per pass attempt and 76.6 rating over the last two years and Mullens is 5-15 with 34 TD, 31 INT, 7.8 YPA and 88.3 rating for his career. I know, different circumstances. I know, Jones did have a decent year in 2022 but he’s suffered a lot of injuries since then and he doesn’t know the offense. Maybe the KOC boost would make him that much better, I’m not sure.

Anyway, as a 2025 backup QB, he’s a good option. I think that’s what they really want him for. Acquire him now, get him in the building, hope he likes it and wants to stay when he’s mentoring JJ McCarthy. If Sam Darnold ends up playing so well they keep him next year, then we’ll always remember the two days we talked about Daniel Jones.

Ben…. Do you think the silliest arguments against KOC and Kwesi are one is a bad play caller and the other isn’t a good drafter??

There’s nuance to everything. There are times where we can critique the play calling. For example, when they were up 28-7 against the Packers and tried to throw to Aaron Jones and Darnold got picked off… I think you can look at that and say it was questionable to push it there when a field goal essentially ends the game. Some of the short yardage stuff deserves some criticism. The commitment to aggressiveness has sometimes bordered on mismanagement.

But this is all nit picking that any fan base or media could do with any of the best teams. It wouldn’t be football if we couldn’t go: WHY DID YOU CALL THAT PLAY????? when it didn’t work.

The bigger picture is that the Vikings offense since KOC took over has been borderline elite when they have their starting QB playing. And even if we just take the entire sample of KOC in Minnesota, the Vikings have the 10th most points and 8th most total yards. They are 9th in team passer rating, No. 2 in passing yards.

If there’s one thing that I think could be a lot better is the turnovers. They are No. 1 in the NFL in turnovers since KOC took over. You’re not going to win in the playoffs doing that.

As far as Kwesi and drafting, they’ve drafted 23 players since 2022. We have no idea what 7 of them from 2024 are going to be. We only have answers on 16 players and the 2nd rounder they traded for Hockenson. They have netted Hock, Jordan Addison, an awesome kicker, a bunch of unimpressive starts from Ed Ingram, small contributions from Jalen Nailor and Ty Chandler and one good season from Mekhi Blackmon.

I think we can conclude that the return has not been good enough to lean on going forward. We can also admit that is a TINY sample size and isn’t anywhere close to being able to draw a conclusion. And we can say that the McCarthy pick is what the franchise hinges on and we’ll forget about the others if he works out.

One more thing: They’re 9-2. If they were 2-9, this would be a much bigger discussion but they have made up for missing picks with nailing free agency signings, which is not a guarantee.

Also, if the team is 9-2 and you have people talking about the draft…. like, do they like football or do they like being mad?

Thomas… Let’s talk about comp picks, Matthew. Just kidding. Any word on when Will the Thrill is due to resume kicking duties? (Thank goodness Romo has been excellent.)

We haven’t had any definitive update on Reichard. Overall the Vikings are 22-for-24 on field goals this season (92%) and the only two happened when Reichard was banged up. There are 8 teams below 8% field goal percentage this year. That’s pretty impressive. Gotta give the Vikings and Matt Daniels credit, there aren’t many great kickers in the world and they were able to identify two of them.

Kyle S… Are you lobbying your analytics friends to create a stat that includes interference yards into yardage for quarterbacks and receivers?

You can find the numbers on NFLpenalties.com. The Vikings are second in pass interference yards gained this year, which is a Justin Jefferson stat. I’m sure he is getting frustrated but he’s still No. 2 in the NFL in receiving yards and the Vikings just made it very clear that trying to sit back and cover him with 3 dudes is going to result in Addison and Hockenson ripping up the defense. I’m guessing in the coming weeks we see teams trying to blitz Darnold more and JJ getting some 1-on-1 opportunities.

His seasons have always kinda gone this way. Even in 2022 he had five games that were under 50 yards. Every time we had a bunch of discussions about what the other team did to slow him down and then he came back and shredded people again. Jefferson does a good job of never letting a slow day cause him to loaf around as the game goes along. That 20-yard catch in OT was massive, as were some of his blocks in the run game.

Brad L… Do we really want JJ as a long term starter when we’ve done so well taking one year flyers?

Yes sir, you do. There are way too many examples of the rookie QB contract thing working to ignore. Chiefs with Mahomes, Bills with Allen, Rams with Goff, Eagles with Hurts, 49ers with Purdy, the Bengals with Burrow, Ravens with Lamar, Cowboys with Dak. I would even include the Browns being one drive away from the AFCC game with Baker, what Houston should be able to do in the next couple years, the Dolphins with Tua last year, the Eagles for at least one year with Wentz.

If you can keep the same guy in place year after year with the QB, they can grow the offense with each other and try to create an Andy Reid/Mahomes type relationship. If the guy is good, you go into every single year knowing that the QB isn’t going to be the reason a season fails. The randomness is reduced by so much when you’re set at that position.

It’s pretty rare to make it work the way they did with Darnold. He happened to be a freakishly talented QB who was screwed over early in his career by about the worst rosters and coaching you’ll ever see. It’s not easy to find another version of him as a free agent for $10M.

Also, aren’t you tired of the one-year wonders and pop-up seasons? That’s the Vikings history of the last 35 years.

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Jon D… Plenty of chat over how KOC is the great developer of QBs. But as head coach he’s a busy lad. How much is it his coaching, the culture/leadership/environment he brings to the QB room, or the McCown coaching that’s helped the development of JJ and Sam?

I would describe it as a melting pot of a bunch of different things that go into getting the most out of quarterbacks. No. 1 on the list for me is Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and TJ Hockenson. It’s a lot easier to be a QB whisperer with the best group of weapons in the league.

No. 2 is that he has an undying positive attitude that permeates the entire building. Everyone who works under him adopts it and the quarterbacks feel it most. I think he’s an unbelievably good communicator so every QB knows exactly what their coach wants from them.

Him playing the position matters. He can explain from a QB’s perspective how every single play works down to the finest detail. Adding McCown was big for this. He can’t be working with Sam/JJ 24/7, but McCown sees the same stuff that he sees.

Put it all together and you have the best QB environment in the league.

Allen… We all know about average depth of target. But, I can’t find average depth of interception. With some intercepts are deep like punts, does anyone have analytics of pick 6 interceptions versus long toss interceptions. For example Sam’s interceptions seem better than Levis pick 6s…or picks in the red zone.

Yeah, all interceptions are not built equally. I would guess if we were looking at the Expected Points Added lost to interceptions, Darnold would probably be pretty high though because so many of them have come in the red zone. His picks have not been arm punts on third-and-20 or something like that.

The interception stat itself is historically pretty goofy. There’s a lot of luck involved in that number. And sometimes it doesn’t matter as much as we think. Matthew Stafford led the NFL in picks the year he won the Super Bowl.

rutvan15…. What’s the story on Jamin Davis? To me he sounds like an athletic freak like Lewis Cine except he isn’t mentally hampered by a significant injury. The simple question is, why hasn’t he been successful and could spending time in a Brian Flores system give him a miraculous career revival? If you are already planning on writing an article about him, then feel free to just give a light summary :)

1 — I never attributed Cine’s failure to his injury.

2 — Davis has played 2,200 snaps in the NFL, so we can’t compare him to a guy who couldn’t fight his way onto the field.

3 — The best I could come up with in looking around for reporting on his release is that they wanted to make him into an edge rusher because they got Luvu and Wagner on the inside and it just didn’t work. Davis wasn’t a draft pick of the current regime and might not be fit to play they want to play.

4 — From what I can tell from his numbers, he was a pretty successful blitzer. Ivan Pace Jr.’s role included blitzing very often and that’s not exactly Kamu Grugier-Hill’s strength so they might have wanted to give themselves a little more flexibility to mix and match. Flores always says “it’s about what they can do.” Well, this guy can blitz, so he’s probably gonna blitz if he sees the field.

5 — Hopefully we get a chance to talk to Davis so I can do an article about him. I assume we will soon.

B E Phillips… Happy Thanksgiving! Best holiday of the year, hands down. I would be interested in a comparison of how Kwesi and the Vikings are conducting roster construction vs the Patriots in their heyday. I remember how the Pats minimized the draft while focusing on signing productive, low cost FAs to short term deals and taking advantage of multiple comp picks in future years when they left. I know, I know--Brady--but I firmly believe our QB position has also been solidified, one way or the other. PS. Screw COTY, Kevin O'Connell should be submitted for sainthood canonization.

Happy Thanksgiving to you, too — and to all the Purple Insider subscribers who keep this machine rolling along! I wouldn’t be able to do this without all of your support.

The biggest similarities that I see are Flores building his defense around having a ton of really good, really flexible players rather than one or two superstars. The Vikings have invested a lot in their weapons, where the Pats always seemed to try to piecemeal the receiver group together.

The Patriots were big into trading down and picking up more draft capital and they did hit on a heck of a lot of draft picks over the years. In the early 2000s they took guys like Richard Seymour, Matt Light, Vince Wilfork, Deion Branch, Logan Mankins…. and then the later years, Gronk, McCourty, Chandler Jones, Dont’a Hightower.

The Vikings have picked a lot of the key guys that they took. If we go through both sides of the ball: Jefferson, Addison, spent a pick on Hockenson, Darrisaw, O’Neill, Bradbury, Brandel, Metellus, Bynum, Smith, Jones, Pace Jr. (UDFA).

You don’t have to give the wins back if the last GM drafted a lot of these guys. We’ll see what happens in the future to this year’s draft and in the years to come. They’ll absolutely have to draft better than 2022 and some of 2023/2024 if they are going to build something long term. But if we’re talking about the current window, most of the players you expect to be here through 2025 or 2026 are in their primes. It’s not like it’s an empty cupboard with no cap space and no way to fix the roster except recent draft picks. Every situation and team build is different.

Arin J….Matthew, with DJ shouldn't the Vikings trust Mullins for short term I see DJ more as insurance if SD gets injured, and Mullins throws 4 picks. More than he is better than Mullins. Do you agree? H T day

Yeah, for now, Mullens is still the backup. I’m not sure that Jones would be ready to play at any point considering when he’s arriving but I was thinking more along the lines of the playoffs. If Darnold got hurt in the first quarter of the first round, they could have Jones come in and still give them a better shot than Mullens. That has to be part of the thought process.

Bradley P…. Matthew, comparing Cousins first 11 games to Darnold’s as a Viking what’s your assessment?

Darnold has been a lot better. Cousins only had an 88.6 rating through 11 games and only four of his first 11 games featured a 100+ QB rating whereas Darnold is 9 for 11 in 100+ games and a 101.7 rating overall. In terms of PFF grades, Darnold ranks 7th. Kirk ranked 15th through 11 games. Obviously the rushing is much better for Darnold.

Darnold has had the advantage of KOC coaching for 3 years rather than his first time. He also has a run game and Addison/Hockenson vs. Thielen/no run game/nobody at TE before the trade deadline.

Darnold has played like a top 10 quarterback this year. Any way you split it, any stat you use. Leadership, toughness, execution, clutch, playmaking. He’s been nothing short of fantastic. Way less of a roller coaster than I thought — or that Kirk was through the years.

Will it continue the rest of the way? We’ll see.

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