Fixing the Vikings Offense

I run this blog with a focus on the league as a whole, but in my heart I will always be a fan of the Minnesota Vikings. I watch them play far more often than any other team in the league, and I know much more about their players, their schemes, and their coaches than any other team in the league. My readership is also heavily Vikings oriented, and so every year I try least once to dedicate a post to the team.

Things are going to get a bit pessimistic as I go along, so I just want to get this out of the way. Regardless of how things finish, the Vikings have had a fantastic season, exceeding the expectations of most reasonable analysts. Currently they are 8-5, sitting a game behind the Packers for the division lead and two games ahead of the Buccaneers and Falcons for the final Wild Card spot. This team was supposed to take a step forward this season, but what they have done is beyond the normal development curve.

It’s difficult to retain this perspective at this moment, as the Vikings are coming off of two consecutive losses that were both heartbreaking in their own way. After being humiliated on their own turf by the Seahawks, the Vikings nearly pulled off a major upset in Arizona, only to fall short after a fumble cost them a chance at a game tying field goal. These losses haven’t hurt their playoff chances, but they have revealed plenty of flaws for pessimistic fans and commentators to pick at.

The Vikings overachieved to get to 8-3, and some regression was due to occur. This team’s defense is fantastic, but their offense has been flawed from the start of the season, and now that they are starting to match up against stiffer competition their shortcomings are being exposed. Their defense had a few bumps against Seattle, but for the most part they’ve been as stellar as ever, their only failings attributable to the absences of Harrison Smith, Anthony Barr, and Linval Joseph.

The offense has been a different story. During the middle part of the season it seemed to be humming along with efficient brutality, trusting Teddy Bridgewater to protect the ball while Adrian Peterson gashed the opposing defense. They weren’t putting up a lot of points, but they didn’t need to, not while they were keeping the clock moving and trusting their defense to hold down the opposition.

There was plenty of reason to be uneasy about their offense, and the past few weeks have shown us the true costs of their limitations. The Vikings are almost completely one dimensional, overly reliant on Adrian Peterson and incapable of attacking down the field. Their biggest problem is on the offensive line, a unit that is inconsistently mediocre at run blocking and consistently terrible at pass blocking.

The Vikings are still in the hunt for a championship, but it is never a bad time to start looking forward. The goals for this year and the goals for the long term future are very different things, and in order to achieve the latter they will need to fix the problems on their offense. Thirteen weeks into the season is too late to do much about the roster or the lineup, but there are still changes that can be made to help them over the final three weeks and into the postseason, before more drastic moves are made during the offseason.

How to Fix the Offense: This Year

This part is fairly straightforward, and it is honestly something that should have happened long before now. Minnesota’s personnel limitations have hurt their offense, but not nearly as much as the coaching staff’s inability to recognize these limitations. The schemes they are running constantly expose their weaknesses and only occasionally highlight their strengths, and they are responsible for many of the problems the Vikings have had moving the ball.

Bridgewater is a very talented and very intelligent passer, and he has shown flashes of being a top notch NFL quarterback over his first two seasons in the league. Occasional mechanical issues have troubled him this year, but when he’s on he is one of the most accurate passers of the football in the league. Concerns about his arm strength are ill informed, and he has all the physical ability he needs to run an NFL offense.

He does have his flaws, and they reveal themselves mostly when he is asked to attack down the field. His throwing motion is a bit unorthodox, and his elbow will occasionally drop too low so his entire arm ends up underneath the ball. This causes some passes to sail high when he tries to throw on a line, but the biggest problems it presents come when he tries to attack downfield.

Much has been made about Bridgewater’s problems throwing the deep ball, but very few people have zeroed in on the true issue. If you want to understand how to throw a ball down the field, spend some time watching Carson Palmer or Ben Roethlisberger play this year. Watch the trajectory the ball comes out of their hands with, then compare it to Bridgewater’s. The best deep passers in the league throw the ball incredibly high, giving their receivers time to identify and adjust to the pass while in flight. No quarterback can place the ball within a foot of a spot forty yards down the field, but if receivers are given time to respond they can move beneath the ball, making a pass look far more accurate than it actually is.

The problems the Vikings have are twofold. First of all, Bridgewater’s balls come out with a very flat trajectory, in a large part due to his mechanics. He doesn’t give the receivers a great deal of time to adjust to the ball, and he isn’t helped by a mediocre corps of pass catchers. Throw all this behind a bad offensive line, and it isn’t a surprise that the Vikings are incapable of stretching the field when they are on offense.

The inability to go deep is definitely not a good thing, but plenty of teams are able to craft functional offenses without it. Look at Kansas City, or New England before all their receivers went down. The personnel on these teams is remarkably similar to Minnesota’s. An accurate quarterback who avoids turnovers but can’t stretch the field, receivers who struggle to make plays on the deep ball, and offensive lines that work like turnstiles.

Kansas City and New England have found success with a quick passing attack, getting the ball out of their quarterbacks’ hands as quickly as possible to cover for their other shortcomings. Ideally Minnesota would do the same, but offensive coordinator Norv Turner has resisted so far. He has always favored a scheme that attacks down the field, and his stubbornness has prevented him from changing this despite the clear needs of his personnel. The Vikings have one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL, and they also lead the league in seven step drops. That is the sort of thing that simply should not happen.

We saw a glimpse of what this offense could be in the second half of the game against Arizona. The Cardinals defense is built around the blitz, and on Thursday they sent wave after wave of linebackers and defensive backs at the quarterback. This constant pressure forced Minnesota’s hands, and Bridgewater responded with his best game of the season, completing 25 of 36 passes for 335 yards and a touchdown. He did this primarily on quick passes, reading the defense before the snap and finding the open receiver in the face of pressure. The game only ended when they went away from this, calling for Bridgewater to drop back five steps and asking for him to wait for his receivers to cross the field to reach the sideline.

The Vikings screwed up the final play, but that shouldn’t negate everything that happened before it. The offense we saw on Thursday is the offense the Vikings should be running the rest of the season, and if they stick to what they had success with they should have no trouble beating Chicago and New York. But so much of this depends on Turner, one of the finest offensive coordinators in NFL history but also someone who struggles to change with the times. He needs to get over his stubbornness and make the changes to their offense, otherwise their passing game will continue to struggle.

How to Fix the Offense: Next Year

You will notice a very prominent name missing from the section above. When discussing what the Vikings had to do to improve their offense, surely I had to find a way to mention Adrian Peterson, their best offensive player and the NFL’s leading rusher. He’s been the heart of their offense all year, and when he’s been working, this team looks almost unbeatable. But there’s another way of phrasing that, one most Vikings fans don’t want to admit. When Peterson isn’t running well, their offense doesn’t work.

There are plenty of problems with Minnesota’s offense, and it seems strange to point the blame at their best player. Their offensive line is a mess, but it should get better next year with the return of John Sullivan and Phil Loadholt. Matt Kalil has actually been decent this year, and it will probably be worthwhile to sign him to a cheap two or three year deal at the end of the season. If we are addressing the offense in free agency or the draft, I think it would be much better to go after a receiver than a lineman.

But even if they upgrade the talent on their offense, they will still have major issues. Right now they are struggling not just because the players are failing but also because the scheme isn’t working. They are constantly finding themselves in bad situations, facing third and long situations their passing game cannot handle. And while there is a solution to this, it’s one most Vikings fans won’t want to hear. This offseason, the Minnesota Vikings should trade away Adrian Peterson.

The fundamental problem with the Vikings offense is that they are actually running two offenses. There is the Adrian Peterson offense, and there is the Teddy Bridgewater offense. The Peterson offense is what you’d traditionally see in the NFL, a quarterback under center and a running back hitting a hole from seven yards back. The passing game is built off the running game, utilizing play action to attack down the field as the defenders move up to deal with the run. It’s the sort of offense Norv Turner loves to run, and it’s come to be the dominant scheme for the Vikings this season.

The other offense looks far more like the offenses you see having success in the NFL in recent years. This offense spreads the field with three receiver sets and a tight end in the slot, simplifying the reads for the quarterback and providing multiple targets to pick from. The quarterback starts in the shotgun, and the running game is built on the back of the passing game, quick hitting zone runs that force the running back to play slower and read the defense.

The differences are often complicated and subtle, but they can be crudely simplified to under center versus shotgun. And for the Vikings, the differences between the two are staggering. Teddy Bridgewater has thrown nine touchdown passes this season, of which seven have come from the shotgun. Adrian Peterson has run for nine touchdowns, and all nine have come on plays that started with the quarterback under center.

This dichotomy has severely hurt the Minnesota’s ability to function as a consistent offense. Adrian Peterson has always been a boom or bust runner and this season has only made things more extreme (partially due to the issues on the offensive line). Peterson has been stuffed at or behind the line 63 times this year, sixteen times more than the next most stuffed runner in the league. When this happens, the Vikings are stuck into a second and long or third and long play, forcing their passing game into situations it isn’t comfortable with.

This is a serious blow to any offense, but it isn’t always a fatal one. Some teams are built to absorb poor performance on first down. With the ability to attack down the field, it is possible to keep moving the ball even when a running play is stuffed, or to make enough big plays to compensate for some negative ones. Adrian Peterson is one of the top running backs in the league, and even though he doesn’t fit the versatile mode of the modern running back, he can still be an essential piece of an NFL offense.

The problem is, he can’t be an essential part of the Vikings offense. This is not a team that can recover when they get behind the sticks. They don’t have the pass protection, they don’t have the wide receivers, and they don’t have the quarterback. At the beginning of the season it was a common refrain that the return of Peterson would give a boost to Bridgewater’s development. But as the season has gone along it has become clear that it has actually stunted his growth, forcing him into an offense that doesn’t fit his talents and into situations in which any quarterback would fail.

The simple fact is, Teddy Bridgewater and Adrian Peterson cannot coexist. Peterson’s strengths are in a traditional running attack, a tight formation with multiple tight ends that clutter the box so he can break free once he’s through the mess. Bridgewater’s strengths are reading the field and getting the ball immediately to the open receiver, something he can’t do when dropping back from center or turning his back to the defense to fake a handoff. Play action is good for attacking the defense deep, but it is a disaster for an offense with a shaky line and a quarterback who struggles throwing the ball down the field. Everything that Peterson is good at neutralizes everything Bridgewater is good at, and vice versa.

This is where things get tricky. I’ve watched Peterson since he came into the league. I was at the game his rookie year when he went for 296 yards, and I was at his first game back in 2012 after his torn ACL. His MVP season is still the most fun I have ever had watching football, and I’d be hard pressed to name a player I’ve enjoyed cheering for more than him. For nine years now he’s been the face of the Minnesota Vikings, and it is hard to admit that he has to be cast aside for a second year player who will likely never come anywhere close to the Hall of Fame peak he has been at since he entered the league.

But that’s what has to happen. When it’s a choice between a 30 year old running back and a 23 year old quarterback, it isn’t a choice at all. It is still very much up in the air whether Bridgewater is the future of this franchise, but right now he is the only future the Vikings have. If he doesn’t work out, this team will never take the next step, regardless of who is playing running back. With the offense they are currently running, their ceiling is what we are seeing this year, a fringe playoff team that will never be able to compete with the top teams in the league.

There was a great deal of talk about trading Peterson last offseason, and it should only be easier this year, coming off another 1000 yard season to dismiss any doubts about whether he still had it. There will be plenty of teams willing to take Peterson on this offseason, especially with a contract much friendlier than the one he was carrying last offseason.

Dallas has seen just how fragile their team is, and Peterson would be the perfect short term option to shoot for the brief window left in Tony Romo’s career. Arizona has managed a solid running game with Chris Johnson and David Johnson, but if they had made the trade for Peterson that was so heavily rumored last year, they would likely now be the Super Bowl favorites rather than just another contender. He would certainly be worth more to them than the DJ Humphries, the player they took with their first round pick last year. (In fact, Humphries seems like he’d be a pretty good piece as part of a deal. A player at a position Arizona doesn’t really need, going to a team with a shaky offensive line? It could definitely work.)

These options would make winners of everyone involved. Both Dallas and Arizona have offenses that can make plays down the field in the way Minnesota’s can’t, and both are dealing with brief championship windows with aging quarterbacks. They could use a 30 year old running back more than the Vikings, a team whose championship aim should more realistically be two or three years down the road. Peterson would get a chance to compete for a championship as his career winds down, and Bridgewater would be free to develop in an environment suiting his skills.

It would be a change for Vikings fans who have spent nearly a decade watching an offense built around an elite running back, but it could ultimately prove a change for the better. Jerrick McKinnon is obviously not Adrian Peterson, but he has shown enough to convince me that he is an NFL caliber running back. He would fit perfectly into a more open offense beside Bridgewater, working as both a runner and a receiver in a way that Peterson never could. And with the talent the Vikings could add with the draft picks they own and the assets they would get in return for Peterson, they could develop into a high powered offense.

This is a gamble, and a very big one at that. It is a gamble on the development of Bridgewater, something no one can feel great about after what has been a shaky second season. But the fact of the matter is, the Vikings have already gambled on Bridgewater. They gambled when they moved back into the first round to get him. They gambled when they chose him over Derek Carr. And now they have to ride with it. The ultimate goal of the NFL is to win a championship, and in an all or nothing environment, it doesn’t pay to hedge your bets. The only way to win is by doubling down, and for the Vikings that means parting ways with their best player.