The Vikings offense starts with Bradbury and Darnold's dialogue
Bradbury talked with Purple Insider about his larger role in protections and how he's worked closely with Darnold
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — Every time the Minnesota Vikings walk up to the line of scrimmage on third down, they know that the opposing defense is frothing at the mouth. More than ever in the NFL, defensive players are skulking around before the snap, ready to unleash whatever crazed form of deception that their defensive coordinator has cooked up in the lab that week.
“These defenses nowadays, these coaches are trying to do everything they can to throw people off,” veteran guard Dalton Risner said. “They want you to have missed assignments and bad IDs so someone comes free. They’re standing up defensive linemen and walking linebackers up and bringing safeties down.”
Try as they might to throw off the Vikings offense, opponents have not been able to slow them down in key passing downs. The Vikings are converting 40.3% of their third downs, good for 12th in the NFL and quarterback Sam Darnold is 33-for-54 passing for 403 yards (7.5 YPA) on third downs with at least seven yards to go. He’s only been sacked four times in those situations. Last week against the Chicago Bears when they needed it most, Darnold converted a third-and-12 to put the Vikings up 11 points and then he found Jordan Addison for a 13-yard gain on third-and-10 in overtime.
Those plays would not be possible if the Vikings weren’t able to get the pass rush blocked up to give Darnold enough time to make downfield throws. Pro Football Focus ranks the Vikings as the fifth best pass blocking unit in the NFL despite losing star Christian Darrisaw and Darnold holding onto the ball for the fourth longest in terms of snap-to-release as he waits for long-developing routes to play out in front of him.
One of the major keys to the pass protection’s success has been the chemistry between center Garrett Bradbury and his quarterback. Bradbury, who PFF ranks as the 9th best overall center, has taken on a much greater role in setting protections and making changes at the line of scrimmage since Darnold arrived.
“Being with Kirk [Cousins] every year before this, I had one model to look at,” Bradbury told Purple Insider on Friday. “[Cousins] had seen so much football and he knew the offense so well that he made the call and we lived with the call and he knew what he was doing. When Sam came in he didn’t know the system. He’s been in a bunch of different systems where centers sometimes make all the calls, sometimes they make no calls.”
Rather than putting all the calls on Darnold as he was learning an entirely new offense, the QB and veteran center landed on their own system of solving the puzzles that defenses present together.
“I think it’s been awesome for us this year,” Bradbury said. “There will be some things in protections where he’s like, ‘I’d love it if you just pull the trigger and make these calls...’ It’s been fun to work through that relationship and figure out what he needs from me and I need from him.”
Bradbury said that Kevin O’Connell’s system asks a lot of the quarterback and the more time they work together on offensive adjustments the more comfortable Darnold becomes with the scheme. The head coach said that their work together has been ultra valuable toward Darnold gaining command of the offense.
“I think it’s important because that dialogue between the center and the quarterback, regardless of how you put together your system, who’s responsible for what at the line of scrimmage… that collaboration between the center and the quarterback with the play clock going down, on the road, crowd noise, all those things, those two positions provide such poise and clarity for the other nine guys in the huddle,” O’Connell said.
Sorting through protection calls is just part of the dynamic. Bradbury mentioned switching up cadences when it seems the opposition has a beat on what they are doing with snap counts. O’Connell talked about “canning” plays, which happens when they get to the line of scrimmage with one play called and switch to another based on the defense.
“Making sure we’re getting the best play we can… if there’s any uncertainty, those guys and their dialogue have to resolve that in a very short amount of time,” O’Connell said. “Garrett being the high-level player between the ears that he is, I think it does help Sam. I think it’s helped him numerous times this year, make it about Sam doing his job within our offense and Garrett’s huge for that.”
Bradbury leading the way along the O-line with identifying defenses and working with Darnold to get the right calls is a matter of preparation, according to Risner.
“You don’t want to go into a game feeling like you have a guy who is inexperienced or not prepared for the fronts that you’re going to get or the movement of the defensive line,” Risner said. “You want to go into a game knowing that the guy to your left knows what he’s doing. Garrett goes into every game prepared.”
While Bradbury spent the formative years of his career with Cousins calling the shots, the former first-round pick from NC State was able to learn a detailed approach to his weekly prep from the veteran quarterback.
“Kirk better than anyone understands how important each play of the game is because the margin of error is so small,” Bradbury said. “Seeing how much he stressed it made us realize how much we need to stress it. Coming from a broad perspective of how important your job is each play, Kirk took that so seriously. From his Wednesday preparation, Thursday preparation. In the O-line room on Thursday… it would be like, this is third-down day guys, this is money down.”
Throughout the season it has become a calling card of Darnold’s to stay calm on money downs and money situations. In overtime against the Bears, he went 6-for-6 en route to a game-winning field goal. He also led game-sealing drives against the 49ers and Packers, bounced back from interceptions against the Colts and Jaguars and handled extra heat from the Titans defensive line two weeks ago.
Bradbury thinks that trust in his teammates is at the center of his ability to continue flying the plane even-handedly this year rather than turning the Vikings offense into a roller coaster.
“I feel his confidence not only in himself but in us,” Bradbury said. “He hypes up the O-line. I think we have a great relationship with him. He trusts us to give him the time he needs and on the outside the weapons he has, I think he has total confidence that these guys are going to get open and he has confidence in himself that he’s going to get it to them and he’s delivering some throws when we’re watching film we’re like, ‘dude, this is unbelievable.’”
With six games to go and four of them at home, Darnold will get a reprieve from the road environments in the coming weeks but he will still play some quality defenses that will be dialing up blitzes in the biggest spots and some star quarterbacks who will be putting up points on the other side. They will need Darnold and Bradbury to be on point in order to roll into the playoffs.
Of course, they wouldn’t be in position to roll into the playoffs if they weren’t on point all year.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
— S Jay Ward and TE Josh Oliver are out vs. the Cardinals. LT Cam Robinson is questionable.
— Daniel Jones arrived at TCO Performance Center for practice on Friday.
“Trying to make the best decision I can right now and I felt like this was here with coach O’Connell,” he said.