Two is a crowd when it comes to disgruntled Vikings pass-catchers

Kyle Rudolph broke down his frustrations with lack of targets in interview with former Viking

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Stefon Diggs showed his frustration over the Minnesota Vikings’ offensive philosophy in 2019 by missing a practice and tweeting all sorts of bizarre limericks. Last offseason he essentially forced a trade that sent him to Buffalo, where he led the NFL in receptions and yards and played last week in the AFC Championship.

Diggs, who revealed in an ESPN interview earlier this season that his source of frustration was his role in the offense, was the lone Viking playmaker to voice such issue publicly until this week.

Tight end Kyle Rudolph told former Viking Ben Leber in a KFAN interview that he too was left wondering where his targets went.

"Early [in the 2019] season, the writing was on the wall," Rudolph said via KFAN. "I had like seven or eight catches through the first six games, it was absurd. I was literally blocking all the time."

Rudolph has long played the role of security blanket for quarterbacks, catching 74% of passes thrown his way over his career and ranging between 50-83 catches every year from 2015-2018 but over the last two seasons his usage has fallen off significantly, dropping to 45 catches in 2019 and 28 receptions in 2020.

That’s not for lack of efficiency. When Kirk Cousins targeted Rudolph in 2019, he had a 136.7 QB rating (and threw a game-winning touchdown in the playoffs). This year Cousins completed 80% of throws to Rudolph and had a 116.0 rating when targeting the veteran tight end. It’s hard to find any area where Rudolph’s game fell off from previous years. His PFF grades of 71.0 in 2019 and 67.6 in 2020 weren’t a far cry from his peak seasons of 2015 (71.4) and 2016 (73.2).

Rudolph did not say there was “truth to all rumors” that he could be cut this offseason due to a possible $5.1 million savings on the cap for the Vikings but he did indicate that the situation has become untenable.

“I’m realistic,” Rudolph said. “I see both sides. I’m looking at this situation like hey we’re paying this guy a lot of money and you’re not using him so why are we paying him a lot of money? . . . I think I’m worth every dime of my contract, that doesn’t mean that I’m used to my potential and I’m used to do what I do well.”

One can’t help but wonder if reaction to Rudolph’s frustration will be viewed differently from Diggs’s locally. But I digress.

We have figured since 2019 when the Vikings drafted Irv Smith Jr. that the Vikings were thinking about the future at the position but they also signed Rudolph to a four-year, $36 million contract extension through 2023 prior to the 2019 season. That type of move would not have indicated to the Pro Bowl tight end that his targets and receptions would go poof.

That probably applies to Diggs as well. He signed a long-term contract before the 2018 season.

Here’s where the target issue directly ties into the offensive philosophy. In 2018, Rudolph got 12.5% of Cousins’s passes thrown his way. In 2019, he got 9.9% and 2020, he saw 8.8% (factoring for his three missed games). That isn’t a crazy percentage drop from 2018. If the Vikings had thrown a league average 563 times, that works out to 50 targets and 40 catches for Rudolph. But they ranked 27th in attempts (516).

It works this way for Diggs too. The 2020 Bills threw the ball 150 more times than the 2019 Vikings. Diggs ended up with 166 targets this year but even if he had the same percentage of targets in Buffalo as he had in 2019 with Minnesota, that would have equated to 119 targets (he got 96).

The Vikings just don’t throw that much. And that can work as a winning strategy. The Tennessee Titans were 30th in pass attempts. They ran, hit on big plays and scored the fourth most points in the NFL. But Tennessee’s top receiver or tight end is set to be their 17th highest paid player next year.

“I think I’m more than capable as a pass-catcher and I don’t get to do it anymore,” Rudolph said.

With Diggs’s situation, it was easy to focus on “winning” the trade. With Rudolph, there may end up being shrugs because of his age, cap hit and the emergence of younger tight ends in Smith Jr. and Tyler Conklin.

But this makes two of the Vikings’ most efficient and successful players from the 2017 team that went to the NFC Championship both wanting out because they felt the ball wasn’t coming their way. It wasn’t that long ago that everyone from the 2017 team wanted to stay.

And if you read between the lines of a Kirk Cousins quote about Justin Jefferson at the end of the year, it makes you wonder if this is the last time someone will be upset with their target share.

“In this offense we’re going to run the football, so that’s going to open up a lot of explosive plays for Justin but he also has to stay patient because (there’s) going to be times where we’re running the ball well and we’re not throwing it to him every play,” Cousins said.

There are certainly football fans who will scoff at Diggs and Rudolph and tell them to do their jobs and stop whining. Honestly, in a world with a lot of things going sideways, that’s fair. But from a purely football perspective, the question the Vikings should be asking is how to avoid this type of frustration from good players happening again.

Does it mean the next offensive coordinator finds ways to keep everyone involved in the offense? Does it mean not investing more in weapons? Or being more open to dialogue with players about their jobs?

Whichever way they choose to avoid this issue in the future, it’s clear that having Pro Bowl pass-catchers telling the public they are unhappy isn’t a great model to follow.

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