Friday Mailbag: Overreaction season

Vikings fans have a lot of questions about the Vikings bad game against the Ravens

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By Matthew Coller

Happy Friday, everyone! It’s been a long week, so let’s see what’s on everybody’s minds…

Hunter S… If I’m remembering correctly, Darnold was having a mediocre season last year through the Jaguars game. Then he turned it around. What do you think caused that turnaround and how likely is it we could see a similar improvement from McCarthy?

Through 9 games last year, Darnold had a 99.9 QB rating, which was the 11th best in the NFL. You are right that he had a hot stretch after that with 18 TD and 2 INT the rest of the way but I don’t think we can downplay the quality of his play through the first half of 2024.

It’s really not apples to apples anyway because Darnold had 56 career starts before 2024. However, there are a couple answers to the question of what caused the turnaround. The No. 1 thing was Darnold not trying to do too much. He and KOC talked about going through the tape after the Jags game and showing how the negative plays almost exclusively came from him trying to play hero.

I understand that KOC telling QBs to play safe and keep it simple is like handing someone matches and gasoline and telling them not to start fires but the weeks following the loss to the Jags featured a lot of “playing point guard” rather than forcing the ball into places. In Darnold’s great start versus Tennessee, he targeted 10 different receivers.

If McCarthy gets to the right places with the ball, this thing will work because McCarthy can pull off the highlight stuff.

Dermo Man…. Two questions if that’s ok:

I always enjoy Maggie’s contributions to the show. You were looking for a name for her slot before. Given she looks across the whole league, how about M R’s Eye Scan ?

How do the Bears and Vikings compare at O-Line and D-Line . . . . . Which QB are you expecting to have a cleaner pocket on Sunday ?

To your first point, Maggie Robinson has been an amazing contributor to the podcast. Listeners probably don’t fully understand that she’s grinding hard on a master’s degree from Syracuse while also putting together a lot of work into our segments. She’s a grinder. I love what she’s brought to the table. As far as your name for the segment… uhh… let’s keep brainstorming.

Chicago’s offensive line is dangerous in the run game. They are graded as the fifth best run blocking defense in the NFL and they’ve been building everything for Caleb off the run recently (see my piece about him under center). Their pass blocking is still grading well (8th), probably because they are keeping extra blockers in and not having Caleb sit in the shotgun all day like last year.

That said, the Vikings’ defense is better at getting after the passer than Chicago’s. The Bears are 22nd in pass rush grade and their third highest pressure guy is a safety. Last week they tried to send sim pressures and blitzes at Jaxon Dart (38% blitz percentage per PFF) and he absolutely smoked them.

The Vikings O-line has the potential to demolish Chicago in the trenches without Dayo Odeyingbo in there (he gave them some problems in the opener). But the biggest factor will be whether Jonathan Greenard plays and if they can contain Williams.

Both QBs and run games should have their chances. Most of Chicago’s games seem to be shootouts.

Bradley P… Andrew Krammer thought last week fell a lot on McCarthy and not KOC. What has your film review told you about the pie chart of blame?

Here’s the trouble with trying to blame KOC: I liked a lot of McCarthy’s decisions. Looking at the defense and the receivers that he was trying to target, the throws were there to be made and he was trying to make them. He just did not make them.

When you hear KOC say “it’s a rhythm and timing” offense, he’s not lying. Those things were off last week. And there were a number of times where McCarthy just made bad throws or got the ball knocked down. JT O’Sullivan has a breakdown as well on his Patreon page that dives deep into some of this stuff but I felt like the bottom line was that McCarthy was playing really good early on and then tried to press in order to win the game by himself and overshot a bunch of targets and threw a bunch of 99 mph fastballs.

Here’s my plea: We can look at individual games and say: “Here is what went wrong versus the Ravens” without making it a total conclusion on what McCarthy is going to be. It was a really, really rough game for him on tape. That doesn’t mean that he can’t identify the issues and improve on them.

The first question about Darnold vs. Jacksonville — remember when people were calling for Darnold to be benched during that game? The overreactions have gone so far over the top that we can’t see these games as one small part of the bigger picture.

For me, it’s all about how he bounces back. This week is a great week to do it because Chicago’s defense is banged up and very mediocre talent wise.

Matt D… Scale of 1-10, where do you rank KOC on his ability to change the scheme to match his players’ strengths? Also scale of 1-10, how well do you think JJ’s strengths fit this scheme? I know you can’t just flip a switch and go to full Zimmer on it, but it does seem like KOC is less flexible with his scheme than the elite coaches out there. Dobbs is an obvious example, but he was also an off the street backup, so I don’t know how much stock to put in that.

Mark Craig likes to joke that the No. 1 rule in sports analysis is to never say “I don’t know.” But I’m going to say it. I don’t know how to put a 1-10 ranking on it. I can’t say with any degree of certainty that he’s being “inflexible” because the nuances of a scheme and play calls run so deep that it’s hard to put a finger on where he should have changed ….especially after winning against Detroit. Remember that? Remember them winning against Detroit with a good gameplan for JJ?

The whole conversation id freaking mind numbing, to tell you the truth.

KOC looked like a genius fitting the scheme to Kirk and Darnold’s strengths and especially genius fitting the scheme to Jefferson’s strengths while he was playing with those guys and now we’re not sure if he’s any good at it. That’s tough for me to reckon with.

McCarthy’s strength in college, by the way, was throwing intermediate routes, which is the entire foundation of the Vikings scheme.

I don’t think we have anywhere near enough information to pick apart the nuances of the scheme working or not working for JJ McCarthy because he has 108 passes and four NFL starts. Before this year, my friend Bobby Peters wrote a book on KOC’s offense and thought it was a great fit for McCarthy. It still might be.

My theory about why fans really, really, really want this to be KOC’s fault is that if they admit that it was McCarthy struggling then this whole thing feels much more bleak. If it’s just the scheme and he’s still the perfect golden boy, then the possibility stays alive that he still turns into Joe Montana.

But all of this feels really panicky and I just don’t think we’re in a position to be really panicky. That’s what’s so frustrating to me. There were bound to be rough moments because of his inexperience, yet every time they happen, people want the coach to be fired. It’s senseless.

Eldon… McCarthy finally threw for 200+ yds but the Vikes still lost, is there anything about his play that you think can’t be fixed?

Yeah, that’s how yardage totals work sometimes. Most times QBs throw for 400 yards, it’s a loss because they are playing from behind and trying to catch up desperately.

There’s a difference between things that can’t be fixed and things that will take a lot of time to fix. I think it’s going to take a long time to fix the throwing motion. The fact that he reverts back to the baseball pitcher style long stride is concerning. That’s going to require a ton of offseason work and a ton of gameplay to get that out. The same goes for the touch vs. fastball.

Things like being late on throws can be fixed. Not trying to make an off-schedule throw all the time can improve with time. Calming himself down while trying to play hero can get better.

The bones are there but expecting them to be all together in his first four games is unreasonable.

And we don’t really know whether he can get there or not. He has to stay healthy. That’s No. 1. He has to avoid getting too beaten down emotionally/mentally by the meat grinder of the NFL. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

We’re going to find out but we’re not going to find out with any degree of certainty this week.

Brian… Obviously JJ needs to improve, but are we not witnessing an organization failing a young QB in real time? Other play calling issues aside, even if you have a Hall of Fame QB you can’t have a pass to run ratio that skewed on 3rd or 4th and short, it’s just too predictable.

We truly are not witnessing the organization failing a QB.

The run:pass ratio thing is honestly people trying too hard. After they fell down by two scores, they had 19 runs and 1 pass because that’s the only way to get back in a game.

Since when is passing a lot failing a young QB? As a rookie, Joe Burrow averaged 40.4 attempts per game. Josh Allen’s pass attempt numbers over his last five games as a rookie: 32.4 passes per game.

I’m tired.

Ramsey K… If you could create a ~~pie chart~~ for importance of offensive improvements, how would you divvy up the areas:

1) JJ’s mechanical consistency (the leg swing, over-wide base)
2) JJ’s inconsistent club choices (he obviously has the mechanics of how to throw with touch, just not the instinct of when to do so)
3) JJ/KOC losing control of the game flow (e.g. going for the end zone on the failed 4th and 10, end of game clock management, not leaning into the run)
4) drops and other execution errors (misunderstanding of where the run play should go)