By Matthew Coller
Happy Friday, everyone. The Vikings are 3-0 and there’s a lot to talk about so let’s dive in…
Chuck A… Can we give Kyler Murray more than 1 full start before we decide it’s completely over? If not that’s ok, I just need to know. TIA!
How dare you!
It’s very fair for people to see that Murray game and start trying to look for answers. That was a shockingly bad performance by the standards of his career. It shouldn’t ever look like it did in the second half.
That said, I remember people tweeting that the Vikings needed to cut or bench Sam Darnold and sign Ryan Tannehill when Darnold was in the middle of a bad game in 2024 vs. Jacksonville.
It’s so hard not to treat the last football game that we saw as the whole truth and nothing but the truth… but it almost never is.
Nicholas D… Do you agree that the head coach deserves more of the blame for the offensive struggles than the QBs? He seems to be way too rigid. It took him four years to admit that you actually need a viable running game and do something about it. But he seems to insist that the QB conform to his offense no matter the environment, injuries, defensive adjustments. Coaches that refuse to revise their plan to account for conditions lose their jobs. I like him and his winning record, but greater offensive minds than him have fallen from grace for rigidity (e.g., Mike Martz). Do you agree?
I’m not exactly with you here. Cousins and Darnold played really, really well in this offense and it wasn’t like that was 50 years ago. You’ll never hear me thinking that scheme and play calling are more to blame than the actual person with the football out there because, as Pat Shurmur told me one time, “it’s the players, not the plays.” A quarterback who was on point last week would have easily thrown for 250 against the Bucs.
I think we’ve seen adjustments to the offense, whether it was the early part of Darnold’s 2024 or going from Kirk Year 1 to Kirk Year 2 or last year where they pared things down for McCarthy and flipped to a run-first approach.
There’s shades of truth in what you’re talking about. I might describe it as KOC having more belief than he should in his quarterbacks. Leaning on Nick Mullens and Josh Dobbs in 2023 or Carson Wentz last year or dialing up a bunch of downfield passes for Murray in his first game — it seems like he always thinks that if the play is dialed up perfectly against the defensive look, then the QB should be able to get it there. Sometimes the QB can’t make that play that day.
I look at the way Sean Payton has managed Bo Nix or Kellen Moore worked with Jalen Hurts or what Drew Petzing did with Murray in 2024 as examples of coaches who seemed to narrow things down to focus on only the things their QBs were capable of doing. An example of that might be Kevin Stefanski with Cousins in 2019.
It’s not that it can’t be done. That’s exactly what he eventually, begrudgingly, did with McCarthy. He may have to do it with Murray as well.
But here’s an important point: Murray has played one full game with KOC. The first few weeks are always a fact-finding mission. KOC doesn’t yet know what parts of his offense work and don’t work for Murray so it would be silly to assume that the entire season is going to look like this. We should give O’Connell more grace than that, even if it feels like it’s been forever since they had a great passing game.
So it’s not that there aren’t reasonable trends of his tenure to really wonder about going forward, it’s just that we don’t have a sample size yet to make the statements we’re making about his offense. In a month, the tune could be very different.
Kyle… It’s interesting how Ben Johnson’s offense is able to be successful with plug and play QBs but KOCs is not. Seems our biggest issue may be playing calling and offensive scheme rather than QB…
It was hard not to watch Keenum play and gesture at the open wide receivers and underneath stuff that was right there for him. On the other side of the coin, you might put a “One Night Only” sign on that gameplan. I don’t know that you can do that over and over again before the limitations of the QB are exposed. We’ve seen in many times, including when Josh Dobbs was “plug and play” with the Vikings. NFL teams are pretty good at figuring out answers and they would pretty quickly if Keenum had to play 10 games in a row.
My thing is that it seems like some of these offenses aren’t asking for much in terms of heroics from the QB position. Jared Goff has 55% of his passes traveling from 0-9 yards. Last year JJ McCarthy was 38% (42nd of 43) and in 2024 Sam Darnold was 40% (36th of 43).
That doesn’t mean the issue wasn’t McCarthy. It was. He did not succeed throwing in any area of the field. He was 41st in completion percentage on 0-9 yard throws. But Kyler Murray was 9th in 2024.
I’ll just keep saying it: Kirk and Sam thrived in this offense and Justin Jefferson was Offensive Player of the Year. Now we’re talking about KOC like he couldn’t design a play if his life depended on it. That’s just way too reactionary to me.
Robert S… A little dime store psychoanalysis, but with Brian Flores’s defense being so innovative, sophisticated and successful over the past few years, I think it’s maybe gotten into KOC’s head a little bit, and it’s helped make him reluctant to let go of his tendency to galaxy brain the offense, even when his qb is visibly feeling under duress before a play even begins. What do you think?
I like that you’re trying to be creative here Robert but KOC’s philosophy from Day 1 is that he wanted to create explosive plays. The reason he hired Flores was because his blitz-first mentality matched up with KOC’s aggressive passing game.
We absolutely adored that whole thing when Kirk and Darnold were playing great and we all said, “see Mike Zimmer, that’s how it’s done!” And now you guys want KOC to be Zim and run the ball 60% of the time and throw play-actions and screens all day so the quarterbacks can’t hurt you.
I’ve put a lot into trying to understand this with the All-22 tape and the data and my conclusion is that there’s data evidence that KOC’s quarterbacks are making harder-difficulty throws than many other quarterbacks. There’s also evidence that it has paid off when it’s gone the right way.
Last week Murray went 6-for-8 and hit three deep shots to start the game. My guess is that KOC assumed that he would continue to hit those downfield passes and kept going back to the looks he liked and it didn’t work out.
Let’s see a little more football with a real quarterback and not let this stretch break our brains.
JB… Just curious why we don’t see Bredeson as a potential ball carrier with the state of the RB room. I’m old enough to remember the days of Mike Alstott and Warrick Dunn, and it’s not clear why Bredeson as a potential ball carrier isn’t even in the conversation.
Well, let’s compare them.
Mike Alstott in college ran the ball 644 times for 3,635 yards and scored 39 rushing touchdowns while catching 93 passes for 1,075 yards and three TDs.
Max Bredeson carried the ball 0 times for 0 yards with 0 touchdowns and caught 12 passes for 132 yards and 0 touchdowns.
I don’t think that leaves much mystery as to why Bredeson isn’t a potential ball carrier.
Also Mike Alstott played 25 years ago and there’s never been another… for a reason.
Walleyepike… It’s clear that Will Fries has been struggling, while the left side is on point. But I’ve heard less about Brandel. Is that a good thing? How’s he doing in your opinion?
The Vikings have the No. 2 graded pass blocking unit in the NFL by PFF at the moment. Fries had a tough first game but the last two games were alright.
Brandel has been the same as last year. He’s above average in terms of PFF pass blocking grade (actually 5th right now) and below average run blocking. My small issue is that there have been too many times where somebody is unblocked and it doesn’t feel like everyone is on the same page. They clearly have the talent to be a really good O-line but the center is the guy who gets everyone on the right call and reads.
Overall though, the O-line has held up their end of the bargain.
Paul… Sorry I am a week late on this, but where did you go for deep dish when you were in Chicago? Do you have a favorite?
Gotta apologize but I truly don’t remember the name of the place in downtown Chicago. I’m not really a foodie guy, so I’ll just go wherever anybody wants to go and eat the pizza. I can only do it once a year though. Deep dish more often than that would probably kill me.
Kendall W… Long time follower, new subscriber. Josh Metellus has given up the most Yards per Reception of any Safety and is ranked 86th out of 89 graded Safeties in Coverage. Theo Jackson is 5th and 61st in those same categories. Aside from Smith ramping up faster, where is the help coming from for the weakest Position Group on the Defense?
Thanks for following along, Kendall. I will say that using PFF grades at safety after three weeks is probably not advisable. Metellus has had a couple plays pinned on him that were explosives because of communication issues but I don’t think that really tells a story. Heck, full season grades at safety (remember Anthony Harris, 2019?) aren’t particularly telling because there are so few plays that involve them that one or two plays shift their grades a ton.
That said, it’s the one concerning thing about the defense. Metellus talked about it on Thursday that they need to make sure, especially at home, that they communicate properly because that’s been the cause of every explosive play.
I’m going to be patient with this situation because it is pretty new and we know how difficult the defense can be when it comes to communication.
My guess is that they are going to stick with this plan with Smith only working in situationally for a while. They are planning on having a top defense all year and playing in the playoffs, so they don’t want to overwork Smith and let him be healthy/spry during the back stretch.
Hunter S… Can you recap how Darnolds season progression went? If I remember correctly he started okay with some good games and some shaky ones, but really came alive late in the season. Do you think it’s likely Kyler follows a similar growth as he gets more comfortable with the offense and timing down with receivers?
If we’re looking for a comparison to Murray that might be apt, it’s probably Cousins more than it is Darnold. In Darnold’s first four games, he came out blazing hot with a 118.9 passer rating in the first four games and an 11:3 TD:INT ratio. He went 19-for-24 passing in the first game vs. NY.
I remember them playing it pretty safe and getting him easy completions in that game, which made it even more surprising that they didn’t do that in the Tampa Bay game.
Kirk only had an 84.1 passer rating through the first four games of 2022 and 63.1% completion with 6 TD to 4 INTs.
We have to see Kyler get a full game with Justin Jefferson to really have a feel of how this is going to go but it wouldn’t be the least bit shocking if Murray needed a few weeks before things started to click because he’s never played in an offense like this.
What might be comparable to Darnold is when he had the tough stretch and the terrible game vs. Jacksonville and then came out of it with some new ideas and corrections to the offense that really sparked him going forward.
We are a long way from knowing that this thing is really going to be. Probably not until mid-season that it will be clear but it needs to show progress.
scampinaround… How much ownership over the offense and gameplan is assigned to Wes Phillips? Is the offensive coordinator under an offensive-minded play-calling coach just an advisory role?
Every time the Vikings struggle, fans (understandably) start pointing at everything and everyone involved and going, “is it this?” I get that. But I prefer to keep the focus on O’Connell because he’s the guy who signs off on the gameplan and calls the plays at the end of the day.
My understanding is that Phillips leads the entire staff in bringing a gameplan together every week. The O-line coach and RB coach get the run plays together, then someone else does the third downs, then they do the play-actions and so forth. It’s a total staff process that ultimately falls on O’Connell’s shoulders to execute.
Jake J… I love KOC. I’m so glad we have him and he clearly is a phenomenal head coach. It also seems that he has a lot of respect around the league as an elite offensive mind. With all that being said, is it possible that he is just not a good play caller during the games?
This might just be recency bias, but our offense always just seems so constipated and there is never a good flow to it. We always hear about how elite our weapons are and yet they never seem productive. We talk about how we really don’t have any stars on defense but clearly Flores makes up for that with amazing scheme and play calling. You see Ben Johnson go out there with 38 year old Case Keenum and not skip a beat with offensive production. I love Case but he’s a third string QB. I just can’t help but wonder if the team would be better off if they had someone else calling the offensive plays and KOC took more of a ceo role like the Harbaughs.
I also realize we are 3-0 and I’m thrilled for that, but the offense is a constant disappointment and Flores constantly carries the team. Curious to get your thoughts.
My thought is that everyone is really exhausted of the excuses/explanations and it’s time to see results with Murray in the game. The rants are justified. The finger pointing is justified. The second guessing is justified.
But there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that KOC is a good play caller. It’s just that that evidence isn’t recent. There’s a ton of evidence to suggest the weapons are great but it isn’t recent either. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.
If I was guessing based on the bigger sample, I would lean much more toward this thing turning around before we decide that everyone sucks. But they have to prove that.
Jack R… Fans (me) always assume practice squad signings of players from upcoming opponents are to “gather intel”. Have you ever had a coach or player confirm that actually happens or are we (me) reading into it too much?
I’ve been told by players that the teams asked them for any information that they could give, so I’m sure that the former Saints guys will be asked. But I have a funny story for this one.
We used to do conference calls with the opposing coach every week and in 2020 the Vikings signed some random linebacker from the Titans right before they were about to play them.
A reporter asked Mike Vrabel if he was concerned that the linebacker would give up the goods on the Tennessee defense. Vrabel said (paraphrased): “That guy doesn’t know the defense well enough to help the Vikings.”
I can’t remember many examples of it being meaningful.
Rob… Is it time to “dumb down the offence” so the Vikings get some actual production? Special teams and the defense can’t be counted on to win games every week or in the playoffs.
One more. If the Vikings are one and done in playoffs is KOC gone? Teasley didn’t hire him and they have a potential HC in Flores already on staff.
It’s not time to do anything rash. It’s time to figure out what Murray is comfortable with within the offense. However, if the “simplification” issue hadn’t come up with Cousins and Darnold too, then I’d be more apt to dismiss it. But it’s been a thing before.
At the same time, after four days of non-stop discussion about whether O’Connell is a clueless dope face and Murray is the next Spergon Wynn, I’m ready to scream “IT IS ONE FREAKING GAME.”
I’m really not ready to talk about firing Kevin O’Connell when the Vikings are 3-0. Let’s see how the season plays out. I will clarify for you though that Nolan Teasley does not fire the coach. The Wilfs are the only ones who have the power to make that decision.
Eldon… Hey Matthew I want to preface this with it’s only a game and a drive so it’s not panic time or anything but how long will the Vikings give Kyler to figure out the offense and start looking better? they are 3-0 which is excellent and we should give Kyler some time but is it possible if things don’t get better and say a QB like Geno or Kirk is available at the dead line the Vikings make a move?
Trading for a quarterback midseason is not a viable answer.
In terms of how long it’s going to take, I think it’s fair to look at the next three games as a good barometer. They face three defenses that are suspect and then they will play some really good offenses after that in Detroit, Buffalo and San Francisco that they need to match blow for blow. If they can’t get anything going against Miami, New Orleans and Indianapolis, then the confidence that they can really compete with the best teams isn’t going to be particularly high.
My suggestion is to prepare for the long haul on this one though. There really isn’t any actionable thing. They either figure it out and succeed or don’t figure it out and fail. There aren’t many more… “maybe they could do this!” type answers.
Tom… I’m not yet worried about the state of the offense. I WILL be worried if it looks the same out of the bye. Reasonable?
Yep. That’s the most reasonable way to look at it.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a ton of rationality right now.
KellyJ…I admit I’ve been going thru it as a very long-time fan. I want nothing more than a true franchise QB as that is the only thing holding us back as a good but not great franchise for the last 50 years…
My question that is asking for a show time discussion is whether you think the franchise will attempt to develop another QB or if they are just going to hunt for a veteran to acquire (not excluding Kyler here) a seasoned vet. Personally, I want to see them draft another one, using a veteran bridge QB, but hopefully one that has a lot more experience. I believe KOC will reflect on what happened here and learn from it. Maybe simplify (different than dumb down) the offense a bit as well. I feel as you do that the really great offenses seem to just have easier answers.
There is no reason not to draft a quarterback in the future just because you failed once.
The tough part with KOC is the timeline. With the Wilfs, it always seems year to year. They give Zimmer an extension and he’s fired shortly after. They give Kwesi an extension, fired the next year. If you’re always desperate to win, are they going to be OK with a reset plan that includes a young quarterback?
Maybe it takes two or three years. With McCarthy, one of the biggest errors was throwing him into a 14-win team and demanding that he lead the team to the playoffs right away. I know that wasn’t the original plan but that’s what ended up happening. Are they going to draft a kid and then ask him to win in Year 1? Or are they going to have a multi-year type plan to commit to?
Jimmy B… I have heard at least 4 different sports commentators or journalists say the Vikings defense is the best in the league. At this point I think they are top 3. After 3 games you can’t say who is the best. I my humble opinion the defense is very solid. The nice thing is it can get significant better for a very long time.
What are your thoughts on where they sit and how much better they can be in 3 years?
Most importantly what do you think it will take to get the offense significantly stronger and consistent? I would like to see a big time trade for a younger top 3 RB. I have not done any research on just who comes close to fitting that profile.
In terms of Expected Points Added, they are currently the No. 1 defense in the NFL. They’ve been way beyond “solid” through the first three weeks and going back to the last 8 wins they have only allowed 93 points so there’s more backing to the sustainability. But if your point is that it’s a long season and things can change with injuries that might hurt them and the schedule that might show some of their weaknesses, then I’d agree with you. That’s fair.
Forgive me for struggling to answer the three-year question after three weeks. I have no idea what this team is going to look like when they play the Lions for the first time, much less what’s going to happen in 2029.
What I think it will take for the offense to become more consistent is Jordan Mason coming back and Murray getting on the same page with his receivers. No magic formula.
Nobody is trading elite running backs but it’s possible that they could look for an upgrade at the deadline.
Allen in Delaware… Surprised to see so few roll outs for Kyler. Has he been historically uncomfortable with rolling out or is the offensive who is accustomed to less than mobile QBs not ready for that approach. It has to be hard to pass block for a QB when you don’t know if he’s in or out of the pocket. Kirk and Sam were pretty much in the pocket.
He did some of that in 2024 with bootlegs. I think the issue was that Todd Bowles was blitzing a lot. You don’t want to walk your quarterback into a blitz with a rollout. I didn’t really love what I saw from Murray when he was throwing on the run either. He’s much better when he can set and let it rip.
Murray stayed in the pocket too long during the game. I didn’t think he made it particularly difficult on his O-line. I actually felt like there were times where he could have taken off and was trying to hang in there.
Maybe this week we will see more rollout type plays. I’d just like to see some stuff where the ball comes out of his hands instantly and helps him get in rhythm.