By Matthew Coller
Happy Friday, everyone! Well, the Vikings are 4-0 and headed to New Orleans. Let’s dive into your questions…
Matt D… This is the week to panic if the offense can’t get going, right? Saints are 30th in defensive EPA and worst in the league in several stats. Assuming Jefferson comes back and plays a full game, the excuses have run out at that point for me.
Well, I’m not really sure if “panic” is the right word if they return to Minnesota as a 5-0 team. Kevin Cole of the Unexpected Points newsletter (formerly of PFF) did a piece showing comparable teams to the Vikings’ offense and defense through four weeks and the two most similar to the defense were the 2015 Broncos and 2013 Seahawks. The Vikings have won nine games in a row this way, so it’s not exactly like they can’t keep getting away with this.
However, a lot of the most comparable teams that struggled to keep up their pace and eventually fell off like the 2016 Vikings did.
The thing is, most of the teams that collapsed from a 4-0 start had really bad quarterbacks. The 2012 Cardinals had Kevin Kolb and John Skelton, the 2008 Bills had Trent Edwards, the 2016 Broncos were quarterbacked by Trevor Siemian.
Say what you will about Kyler Murray, but the quarterback we saw in the second half of the game against Miami is who he’s usually been or better, even in his last 22 games for Arizona.
I really struggle to believe that a QB who completed 68.7% of throws in 2024-2025 with a 49.9% Success Rate (which is usually around top-10) can’t be decent when things come together i.e. getting Jefferson and Mason back in the lineup.
I was in Buffalo when Trent Edwards fell off. He was an unproven, third-round QB whose team didn’t have the defense to sustain through his regression.
The thing about Murray is that he’s always had hot and cold stretches, similar to Kirk Cousins. When they play great, it looks amazing and when they struggle it’s frustrating. Even if he still struggles this week and they win, I’d still lean more toward saying you survived the bumps and an upswing is likely at some point rather than calling it hopeless.
But nobody really knows where it’s headed.
Matt R… Matthew, I’m no film expert like you and your guests. But what I’ve seen on TV is Kyler getting more comfortable with each snap. It seems like he held the ball too long and was hesitant prior to the 2nd half against the Dolphins. My question is, during your study of him in AZ, was he a big distributor (completing passes to 9 different guys during a game) or does he tend to heavily lean on a couple guys throughout a game or season?
He was pretty much forced to lean on one guy in recent years. Trey McBride was the only good target that he had with Marvin Harrison Jr. struggling (I see nothing’s changed there) and the depth being guys like Zay Jones and Greg Dortch. In 2021, he spread it around a lot. Christian Kirk had 77 catches, Zach Ertz 56, AJ Green 54, Rondale Moore 54, Chase Edmonds 43, DeAndre Hopkins 42 (in 10 games).
He’s capable of doing that when he’s really dealing.
What KOC has said is that they adjusted play calling to what the Dolphins defense was doing and started hitting all those open areas in the zone. Most of the passes did go to TJ Hockenson but that’s what the Dolphins were giving up, so they took it. That also happened to play right into Murray’s hands.
I think if people watched back the All-22 for the second half, they would see a ton of passes that were on time, in rhythm and dead-on accurate. He went 16-for-18 and in the postgame reaction it’s like people were so rage-blinded by the first half that they didn’t even notice.
Not that Miami tells us everything but it’s proof of concept that when things are right for Murray and the ball is coming out on time, he can slice up a defense with underneath passes.
Is this a bad thing? Well, it doesn’t have to be. Right now Mahomes and Murray have the same Average Depth of Target. But it can’t all be underneath. He has to trust some of those throws that KOC sets up for him in tighter windows.
Russell S… KM looks uncomfortable to me. He drops way back to pass when, in the past, he’s slipped into gaps in the O-line, looking for targets. Is that a sign of mistrust in that line? It’s early days in the KM era but the offense does not give me a lot of hope. We seem to backing into wins because of the defense and that can’t last and isn’t the way winning franchises work, IMO.
It’s interesting that you have the exact opposite interpretation of the last person’s question.
I’m not sure what exactly “slipped into gaps” in the O-line means but I would agree that there have been plenty of drop-backs where he did not look like he was seeing where the ball was supposed to go and he didn’t have an obvious checkdown. Maybe in the past, he might have ran around like crazy trying to find something but I don’t get the sense that’s what KOC wants him to do because avoiding turnovers has won them nine games in a row.
The thing I saw on tape that really worked was play-actions and moving pockets. Those seemed to get him in rhythm with the play and they’ll probably have to use a lot of that stuff with two offensive linemen down.
That look of looking panicked in the pocket is something that happens to him at times and he’s got a tendency to throw away a lot of passes but last week we did see what it looks like when he locks in. More time will tell us whether it’s a time-on-task thing or a Murray-in-this-offense thing.
As far as winning this way, you’re right that you can’t win as the 32nd best offense but you can win with an OK/safe offense and No. 1 defense. The Broncos should have been in the Super Bowl last year with a QB who played safe, made a few big plays and let the defense dominate.
There’s a baseline though. It has to be much closer to average. It can’t be terrible. I just think there’s a bunch of things that have caused it to be terrible more than it being this bad over 17 games.
Tom… Jauan Jennings doesn’t seem to be working out so far - why do you think this is?
A few things seem to be at play. The first is that the Vikings basically haven’t had the offense that they expected to play with at any point to open the season. So he practiced all summer as the No. 3 wide receiver for Kyler Murray and then had a different quarterback who was basically asked to avoid screwing things up. Then he misses Week 2, then Murray comes back and Jefferson gets hurt, which threw the receiver room into disarray. That might be tough for somebody who’s new to this offense.
Every receiver has said that it’s pretty challenging. KOC mentioning “details” multiple times was pretty telling.
It seems like he’s either gotta figure it out pretty soon or OBJ is going to be in there.
Randy S… I appreciate all your work Matthew! What is your take on Jauan Jennings? He missed a game for personal reasons. With Josh Oliver out, the Vikings can use the extra blocking he provides. Is there a disconnect with the team? TJ Hock proved there is a place in the offense for a big receiver on Sunday.
I can only really speculate about what’s happening but it’s obvious at times that there are routes being run or alignments that are going wrong for one reason or another. He’s also more of a yards-after-catch guy and contested-catch guy than he is a pristine route runner. He’s a Mack truck not a Corvette. So maybe Kyler doesn’t trust throwing him contested balls at the moment.
And to be fair to Kyler there, everyone’s saying: “As long as you don’t turn it over, we win.” So why would Murray start flinging the ball into a tight window for Jennings?
The way it looks from my perspective is: They have another guy KOC loves in the building, so Jennings has to get those details locked in soon. Like, now.
Brad L…. How much concern should there be over the O-line?
I’d say pretty serious concern. Donovan Jackson was playing great football to start the season and teams are attacking the interior more than ever these days. I liked what I saw from Joe Huber in terms of his effort and toughness and it didn’t look like he was lost out there but he’s not going to play at the same level as a first-round pick who is a freak athlete. If he can give them average play, it would be a positive.
Left tackle is massively concerning because Darrisaw had concussions before and you don’t want that to become an issue again later in the season and something that could potentially threaten his career.
The only silver lining is that they signed Ryan Van Demark for this situation. He’s played before and has been alright and he gives them a chance to at least battle against edge rushers. That’s not what they had last year with Justin Skule.
I liked the idea of using Caleb Tiernan as a sixth offensive lineman. Putting him in at tight end next to Van Demark seems like a good idea.
Eldon… Will we see OBJ play this week or is he just here as insurance? seeing Addison miss practice yesterday feels a tad concerning
From what O’Connell said, it sounded like they were confident that if they wanted him to play, he could.
It might depend on how confident they are in Jefferson or Addison’s injuries. The logic might be to have a sixth wide receiver elevated even if everyone is active on gameday just in case either player reaggravates their injury or is struggling. In that case, they would have another answer who could come into the game and figure things out because he’s been around the NFL for so long.
Jason…Worst 4-0 start in nfl history? To be clear, tongue in cheek.
I get that you’re kidding but when folks are saying that this team is actually horrible, my question is: What percentage of the games have they been leading? They took the lead back from the Packers at the 6:37 mark of the fourth quarter and they have not trailed for a single second since then.
When I think of teams that are fraudulent, I think of teams that are mediocre and win because of crazy nonsense at the end of games or because their opponents do insanely stupid stuff and they win at total random. Defensive dominance that’s gone on for several years and now appears to be peaking is not totally random.
I’ll go back to the 2008 Bills example since I was there when it happened. They opened with a win over a Seahawks team that went 4-12 barely, then beat a terrible Jaguars team on a last-second field goal, had to come back from down two scores on the eventual 5-win Raiders to win by one point and then beat the eventual 2-14 Rams.
The Packers, Bears, Bucs and Dolphins aren’t exactly a murderer’s row, but they didn’t need to win any of those games at the last moment and two games are in the division.
The other thing was that they got the absolute best version of their quarterback Trent Edwards. We know that Kyler Murray has the capability to be a lot better than this.
But there are no guarantees. Everyone is a few injuries and some bad bounces away from disaster in the NFL. If they don’t get the offense going and the defense has a couple guys go down, things could quickly shift.
CMBoourns… I know we have Mason coming back in two games but Aaron Jones is dinged up and gutting through it already, any reason we are keeping DeeJay Dallas and not trying any of the RB we signed recently? Dallas has 3 carries in 4 games and I know he is here for pass pro, but it seems like a wasted spot.
Yeah, I think they just trust DeeJay. They’re basically using him in the same role that they had for CJ Ham over the last couple years because he’s smart enough to handle it.
Since they cut Jerome Ford and Jaret Patterson, they must have not liked what they saw from those guys in practice. Remember, they were on the market for a reason.
I thought maybe they would find something there with Devin Neal. They kept Audric Estime. Maybe he’ll get a chance?
The reality is, if you want to get someone at this time of year, you have to trade for him. I’ll keep banging the drum for Teasley to find a running back on the market because this situation could happen again and they aren’t going to have a good enough offense to contend in the playoffs if they can’t create any explosive runs.
JB… Are there any player/position matchups that you think will be particularly interesting this week against the Saints?
Chase Young vs. Ryan Van Demark is the biggest one. He lines up exclusively over the left tackle, so that means rep after rep after rep. Young has been legitimately elite for the last two seasons, it’s just that nobody has noticed because the Saints have been bad.
The other is Dallas Turner against Asim Richards, the left tackle for the Saints. He has a 44.2 PFF grade and 16 QB pressures allowed so far this year. We saw last week that Turner can feast on offensive tackles one-on-one when given the opportunity.