By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — If you are older than a teenager and you have watched a football game within the last three years, you have probably noticed that teams go for fourth downs much more often than they did even a decade ago.
By the numbers, 30 teams in 2025 had more than 20 fourth-down attempts and 23 teams ran an offensive play on fourth down at least 24 times. The league leaders were over 40 attempts. Back in 2015, the most aggressive team on fourth down had 24 attempts.
Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores was asked this week why teams go for it so much more often.
“The analytics,” he said.
Indeed. Teams have invested in game management heavily to make better decisions and it’s working. Analytics expert Ben Baldwin tweeted after the season that teams are nailing the obvious go-for-it situations these days.
As the Vikings prepare for the 2026 season, they are keeping the league’s newfound aggressiveness on fourth down in mind.
“It’s something we talk about, the situational football and those critical, critical downs, third down, fourth down, red zone, two-minute,” Flores said. “Those are critical situations where if you play well in those situations, you give yourself a chance to really to win the game.”
How does that work in terms of application for the defense?
Flores said that he has to have more options for potential play calls because there is likely to be more of those criticial situations that his team is going to face.
“You have to have more on your menu for those calls,” Flores said. “You feel good about your third down call. You made it. That used to be the way we did it. Now you got another down.”
On the offensive side, offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said that as soon as the team crosses the 50-yard line, they are ready to potentially roll the dice on fourth down, especially with Flores’ defense having O’Connell’s trust to get a stop if it doesn’t work out.
“It does play into how many plays we have on some of those third down breakdowns,” Phillips said. “We separate all those third downs into little blocks. So it plays into how many plays we have in those areas, much like it changed in the low red zone and how many plays you have in that area once you started having two-point conversions years back.”
As the Vikings get into the preseason games, some of the players who will be out there for the exhibition will end up playing during the regular season on special teams. For those guys, the dress rehearsals are vital because there is a ton of communication that happens on the sideline once the team approaches an area where they might go for it.
“Communication on the sideline on game days is huge,” Daniels said. “With the head coach, with our game management coordinator, [Ryan] Cordell. If we’re on plus 40 and it’s third-and-3, we could have three different situations here where we can punt it, we can hit a long field goal, or we can end up going for it. So all of these things, we have to have three different phases ready at the same time. The communication from player to coach, coach to coach has to be at a premium on the sideline. Things are happening fast. Bullets are flying. And so it’s really more from an organizational, operational, and communication standpoint that you really have to be locked in.”
Last year the Vikings went for fourth down 24 times and converted on 15 of those attempts. Their 62.5% was the eighth best in the NFL. Baldwin’s metrics suggested that they could have gone for it more often.
However, there were some mitigating factors. They were struggling at the quarterback position, which would impact the confidence in converting first downs and the Vikings have an All-Pro kicker in Will Reichard.
It wouldn’t be a surprise to see them attempt more fourth downs with a scrambling quarterback. Kyler Murray has attempted 15 fourth down runs in his career and gained a first down on 12 of them.
If the Vikings’ offense is dynamic, opposing teams might also be pressured into attempting more fourth downs against them.
“That’s what I love about the coaching, the kind of the schematics, the strategy,” Flores said. “It’s a big down. It’s a momentum down. We talk about it that way. They pick it up. They keep the momentum. We stop them. We take the momentum. It’s something we practice and talk about as a team. KO does a great job of going through that weekly. We want to be good in that area as well.”
Agreed that the context is important.
The hope is that a coaching staff incorporates overall data/information, and considers game-specific circumstances, e.g. "well, Brandel is only in there because Kelly got hurt again, and he's a little shaky with his snaps, Wentz has been here less than a month, we're playing the freaking Browns DL, so a more risk-averse approach makes sense here."
Murray warmth would kick it away on third down because he had a great defense.