The Minnesota Vikings got curb stomped by an otherwise unremarkable Los Angeles Chargers team in prime time, a game in which the Vikings looked entirely unprepared and appeared to have checked out early. It was a complete embarrassment for the franchise and the type of performance that casts a shadow over the future of the regime. Yes, it’s only one game and every team has bad games, but this seems more like a culmination of a season of unpreparedness and poor performance than a one-off anomaly.
It’s Not Just the Injuries
It’s certainly true that the Vikings have been hit relatively hard by injuries so far this season, but most teams have to deal with that at some point during the season, and the Vikings haven’t dealt with it well. At quarterback, the Vikings got it wrong with Sam Howell in the offseason and so picked up Carson Wentz off the couch in late August to fill the void, rather than maybe giving Max Brosmer- who exceeded all expectations- a shot. Wentz has started five games and has generally gotten worse in every game. Moreover, he compounds the offensive line injury problems by holding the ball too long consistently while having increasing accuracy issues that have proven costly.
But even more to the point this season, the Vikings don’t appear motivated and have gotten off to a poor start in six of seven games. In every game except the Bengals game the Vikings have been unable to execute early and have dug a hole they spend the rest of the game trying to dig out from. That’s not winning football and that’s not having a superior game plan. The first fifteen or so plays are scripted and are the ones the team has practiced the most. And yet many times the Vikings are unable to get off to a good start. A day in practice each week is devoted to third downs and redzone, and yet the Vikings are unable to execute consistently in either area all season. The Vikings are near the bottom of the league in third down conversions and have increasingly struggled in the redzone. The Vikings have plenty of talent on offense but can’t do anything with it.
Defensively, it’s been a similar story. Brian Flores has done a better job overall and isn’t down a quarterback, but too many times he’s been exposed either against the run with heavy formations or giving up explosives in the pass game or allowing too many third-and-long conversions or redzone touchdowns. It’s true the defense has been asked to carry the team at times as the offense has struggled, and it has in each of the Vikings’ wins, but the inconsistency and giving up some big plays has been brutal at times as well, particularly in the Vikings’ four losses.
Overall, this is a Vikings team that has underperformed its talent level and a coaching staff that has been outcoached too many times already this season.
Why the Change From Last Season?
Last season the Vikings started the season with a 6.5 over/under win total. Sam Darnold was suspect at best after McCarthy was placed on IR. But the Vikings dominated the early part of the season, going undefeated before their bye week. This season, all but the Bengals game has been a struggle, and the team is lucky to be 3-4 at this point. One key difference from last season to this season was Kevin O’Connell’s approach to the offseason.
Last season Kevin O’Connell used the predictions that the Vikings would only win six games as motivation that put a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. They responded by winning their first five games- most in dominant fashion- and 14 overall.
This season O’Connell was a lot more casual in training camp- wisping around, cracking jokes, tossing a ball around with Justin Jefferson in shorts and t-shirts, fresh off his Coach of the Year award, 14-win season and reputation as the Quarterback Whisperer. And yet his message was that, “more is required” for the Vikings to get further into the playoffs this season. What was left out was the motivation and intensity to prepare for a tough regular season schedule- tougher than the previous season- to get to the playoffs in the first place.
O’Connell praised Justin Jefferson’s leadership during training camp, as he offered advice to some players as he strolled around the field with a mild hamstring injury, effectively skipping three weeks of training camp. That leadership example seems to have filtered down throughout the roster as a lot of guys seem to be a bit slow coming back from injuries this season. Nobody doubts Jefferson’s talent, or his competitive fire, but the optics of a team captain and best player skipping three weeks of training camp with what appeared to be a very mild hamstring issue appeared at odds with, “more is required.” The absence of another captain in Harrison Smith during training camp probably didn’t help either from a leadership standpoint.
Shades of 2023
In any case, the Vikings started the season very sloppy. They’re tied for the most giveaways per game after eight weeks and are near the bottom of the league in penalties and penalty yards per game too. Beyond that, there have been numerous missed assignments that have resulted in big plays given up defensively, missed opportunities offensively, and in some cases costly turnovers like the pick-six given up against the Bears week one because Justin Jefferson ran the wrong route.
This is the same type of first half of the season that the Vikings had in 2023 under Kevin O’Connell, where they struggled with turnovers, sloppy play and missed assignments prior to Kirk Cousins suffering his season-ending Achilles tear. They started that season 3-4 as well, with disappointing losses to the Eagles and Chargers and a narrow win over the Bears. But after a brief rally mostly with Josh Dobbs at quarterback, the Vikings faded away to end the season with four straight losses and a 7-10 record. At the moment, that seems like the direction the Vikings are headed this season.
Hitting the Nadir of the KOC Era
While you could argue that the 2023 season marked the bottom of the KOC era with the Vikings, or last season’s one-and-done meltdown in the playoffs, this loss against the Chargers seems at least as bad in part because it seems to mark a culmination of a poorly prepared and motivated team that has characterized the Vikings all season. And it came against a struggling Chargers team who nevertheless contrasted sharply with the Vikings in both motivation and execution. Both teams were in a similar spot needing to rebound to jump-start their season, but only one team played with that type of urgency and motivation. It was truly a humiliating performance for the Vikings’ franchise in prime time.
What’s Going on at Quarterback?
The Vikings poor start to the season and getting curb stomped on Thursday night has led to a cascade of criticism and questions – mostly around the quarterback position. Why didn’t the Vikings sign Sam Darnold/Daniel Jones/Aaron Rodgers? Why did they play Carson Wentz so long when he was obviously injured and ineffective? Why aren’t the playing McCarthy? Is his ankle injury really a “soft benching”?
The answers to those questions are pretty well known, they just don’t look so good given how the season has unfolded so far. The Vikings did try to sign Darnold and later Jones and considered Rodgers, but were committed to McCarthy becoming the starter- as pretty much every team that drafts a quarterback high in the first round is. They gave Darnold another short-term offer, but he got a better one from the Seahawks that didn’t make sense if the Vikings were committed to McCarthy and his rookie contract allowing them to spend more elsewhere. The Vikings also offered Jones a contract- very similar and reportedly a bit more money than the one he signed in Indianapolis, which he chose because he felt he had a better chance to become the starter there- which of course proved to be true. The Vikings decided against Rodgers because they didn’t want to postpone McCarthy’s development another year and Rodgers wasn’t going to sign to be the backup. All of that is logical and makes perfect sense, but still looks bad given that McCarthy hasn’t done much while Darnold and Jones are vying for the top QB in the league at the moment and Rodgers is enjoying a revival now that he’s with a competent team at the tail end of his career.
Hindsight is always 20/20. But extending and committing to Darnold and auctioning off McCarthy would’ve also drawn criticism- why did the Vikings draft McCarthy – and even more so if Darnold continued to stall in key games while McCarthy flourished.
I don’t fault the Vikings and O’Connell for staying the course with McCarthy. If you draft a quarterback #10 overall, you’re making at least a three-year commitment to develop him. That limits the interest other starting-caliber quarterbacks have in signing with the Vikings. But where I fault O’Connell is in trading for Sam Howell, who apparently was too deaf to hear his whispering. That led to a last-ditch signing of Carson Wentz off the couch, who also hasn’t improved under O’Connell’s tutuledge. O’Connell by-passed the only backup who has impressed in Max Brosmer, arguing that he wanted an experienced backup despite having an inexperienced starter. And Brosmer started a lot more games in college than McCarthy did. We’ll never know, but I doubt Brosmer would’ve done any worse than Wentz over five games as a starter.
Be that is it may, Alec Lewis with The Athletic reports that there was some tension within the Vikings about the decisions made at quarterback during the off-season, although he doesn’t say who was involved or what the particular decision(s) or grievence(s) were, only that it may have contributed to the team underperforming so far this season.
Will the Vikings Rebound?
There is some prospect that the Vikings may be closer to full-strength on both sides of the ball next week as they have all season. J.J. McCarthy should be back starting at quarterback. Brian O’Neill should be back at right tackle. And compared to McCarthy’s first two starts, the Vikings should also have Christian Darrisaw back at left tackle and Jordan Addison is back at wide receiver. I expect Blake Brandel to continue to start at center- he played better against the Chargers and it appears the Vikings want him to take over that role with Ryan Kelly on IR perhaps for the season. The Vikings also have Aaron Jones back and hopefully Josh Oliver will be able to play as well. Defensively, the Vikings got Blake Cashman back and he played better against the Chargers after a slow start back against the Eagles. They may even get Andrew Van Ginkel back although that situation remains murky. Harrison Smith ramped up to 60 (of 72) snaps defensively so it appears he is back as a starter as well.
All that bodes well, as does the return of a few team captains and key veterans whose absence was likely missed from a leadership standpoint. Four of the Vikings’ eight captains have missed time in recent games.
But beyond getting starters back, there is the overall question of simply playing better. So far this season, the Vikings have just one game when the team had an overall PFF grade over 66.5. Last season, the Vikings had just one game when the graded under 66.5 until week 18. Overall, last season the Vikings average PFF grade per game was 72.1 through 17 weeks. So far this season the average is just 65.3. And without the Bengals game (89.9), the average drops to 61.3. Last season the Vikings ranked 10th in overall team PFF grade at 86.2. So far this season they rank 23rd at 69.4.
In DVOA terms, the drop is similar. This season the Vikings rank 22nd in Total DVOA at -7.8% while last season they ranked 7th at +16.1%. The percentage numbers are meant to be relative to the average NFL team. Breaking that down further, there was only one game last season where the Vikings had a Total DVOA worse than -8%: week 18 at Detroit (-36.1%). So far this season, they’ve had four games with a Total DVOA of -57.5% (Falcons), -59.5% (Steelers), -32.0% (Eagles), and certainly another very negative number against the Chargers which isn’t available yet. In other words, when the Vikings have been bad, they’ve been very bad- as bad or worse than the game at Detroit to end last season. Even in the 2023 season the Vikings had only four games with a Total DVOA below -30%. They’ve already matched that total in seven games this season. The only two games that were substantially above average for the Vikings after seven games were against the Bears (+19.9%) and Bengals (+84.0%). The Browns game was near average at +0.3%. Breaking it down even further, the offense and defense are similar in having only two games in the first seven that were above average from a DVOA perspective. They have also played way below average against teams with .500 or better records in their last four opportunities. Only against the Bears in week one did they perform above average from a DVOA perspective.
So, the challenge is clear and substantial. They need to play a lot better across the board than they have so far this season, particularly against teams with a .500 or better record- which they play a lot the rest of the season. With only marginal improvement the Vikings will likely slide to that six win team they were predicted to be a year ago.
Darkest Before the Dawn?
The Chargers game was the worst performance for the Vikings this season, all things considered. Carson Wentz is who we thought he is. Nothing has changed since he left Philadelphia. But the prospect of J.J. McCarthy returning next week, along with a better offensive line and receiver group than he had in his first two starts, provides some hope for an improved offensive performance. Defensively, they’ve played well most of the time, the key is eliminating the explosives they’ve been giving up in the passing game and tightening up run defense against heavy formations.
The difficulty is that their next game is on the road in Detroit, which may be the most difficult game on their schedule. But while the Vikings have historically had some surprisingly bad performances against mediocre opponents like they just did against the Chargers, they’ve also had a few surprisingly good performances when they’ve been heavy underdogs, as they most surely will be at Detroit. Coming out of the Motor City with a victory would certainly change the trendline and narrative on the season so far.
But should the Vikings fall short against the Lions, they could only suffer two more losses the rest of the season and still have a decent shot to make the playoffs. And if/when the postseason looks out of reach, things could go south quickly for this Vikings team, given how the season has started.
It looks like the Vikings may have nearly all hands on deck for the Lions game, and clearly there should be some sort of pride and urgency among players after the humiliating loss they suffered on Thursday night combined with their 3-4 record. Not to mention the added intensity of it being a divisional game. Still, it’s a long shot for the Vikings to beat the Lions, who will be coming off their bye week, at home given how each team has been playing so far this season. The Lions had a couple stinkers this season against the Packers and Chiefs on the road, but have yet to play a close game at home, let alone lose.
Still, for the Vikings to change course, they’ll need to deliver at least a few upsets (as things stand now) to make that happen given how badly they’ve started.
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