2018 Offense Autopsy Redux - What really went wrong?
Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 10:19 am
For me the past 10 days or so of NFL Free Agency has been painful to a point of making my brain hurt and not because the Vikings didn't do what I, captain arm chair GM thought they should do. They've been bad because I have felt like the majority of fans and all of the local sports media have completely misdiagnosed the main culprits of the 2018 season and it's eventual failure to make the post season. ST, Defense, but above all, Offense all played a role. Here is my assessment of the offense:
What changed on the Vikings 2017 – 2018 on offense
Coaching:
Defense – The Same
ST – The Same
Offense – Shurmer out, JDF in. Sparano out in AUG(!!!!) Barone in
Players:
QB: Keenum out / Cousins in
LG: Easton out in training camp / Compton in
RG: Berger retires / Remmers in
RB: Mckinnon out / get Cook back
First QB: There is no possible scenario where Keenum is not a downgrade from Cousins. I’m sorry, but it just isn’t true. There is a reason Keenum was cut by Denver this offseason.
OL: Guards were obviously downgraded due to injury and retirement.
On a purely player basis it looks like we got worse at OG, but better at QB.
Overall stats:
Stats: 2017 Offense: 382 Points / 1055 plays / 356 Ypg Turnover margin +5 Pts Game 23.9
2018 Offense: 360 Points / 1003 play / 345 Ypg Turnover margin 0 pts Game 22.5
So why was the offense worse? Why fewer plays? Was the downgrade at both guard positions such a massive disaster that it offset any incremental increase from Cousins vs. Keenum? Given that QB is the single most important position in sports I find this argument completely unpersuasive. If we got better at QB, then getting worse at OG should at worse be a push. So what happened?
Answer: Coaching.
Quite simply, JDF was a terrible OC for us. Add in the fact that we lost our OL coach to an untimely death literaly days before training camp started and then a few weeks later we lost our best guard to a neck injury and it adds up to chaos on the OL and chaos on offense in general. That is how the season started. We also saw they he was prone to disasterous game planning errors. The first one was Buffalo, that loss was hideous in that it failed to account for their strength on DL. The next one was NE where BB completely owned him. The last one was SEA, which ultimately cost him his job. JDF couldn’t handle the readjustment phase of his NFL stint as an OC. The likes of BB and Fangio owned him.
So now we get to today and Free Agency. Everyone is mad about the OL. I offer a few salient points:
#1: The biggest issue the team faced going into this season was the offensive coaching staff. IT needed to be better. To that end we made a splash and hired Gary Kubiak. I think this hire has been woefully under-appreciated to this point.
1.5: Do not listen to the local sports media. They are concocting this narrative that Zimmer is protecting his defensive guys to the detriment of the team. This is absurd. This line of reasoning is basically: “We should jettison some of our great core defensive guys to pay some FA OL a ton of money with no guarantee he’ll perform.” If you have a top 5 defense (which we do) why would EVER make that kind of move. IMO, this is the height of idiocy, but it is the media so it is just another day at the office.
#2: The teams cap situation all but guaranteed they wouldn’t make any big signings. The fact they haven’t should be considered at worse par for the course. You can be mad about this, but the cap is what it is. It almost feels like fans are getting mad at a one legged man for not being able to walk on two legs. If there is no cap to spend, then why are you mad they didn’t spend cap they didn’t have?
#3: Look at how NE won the SB. They were able to get competitive play out of a bunch of OL that they picked up late in Free Agency and spent an entire season coaching up so they would be competitive in Decmeber/January. This is the blue print the Vikings must follow. Note I say must because their cap situation demands it. We were never going to build a huge OL in free agency in 2019. So to this point, it circles back to #1: The Coaching hires.
So in conclusion: I feel that the 2018 issues were a combination of three things: JDF was a bad hire, the insurance against JDF being weak died a few days before camp started, and we had injuries concentrated at Guard. I will add that drafting Mike Hughes over Hernandez was probably a mistake, but the timing on that is questionable. When we drafted Tony Sparano was still our OL Coach and Nick Easton was still thought to be our LG.
2019 is going to be all about whether or not Stefanski/Kubiak can get back to the level of competency on offense that we saw with Shurmer/Sparano and if Kubiak can help make our OL more competitive through successful coaching. IMO the incremental (if any) improvement of the OL from September to November will be the key thing to watch next season.
What changed on the Vikings 2017 – 2018 on offense
Coaching:
Defense – The Same
ST – The Same
Offense – Shurmer out, JDF in. Sparano out in AUG(!!!!) Barone in
Players:
QB: Keenum out / Cousins in
LG: Easton out in training camp / Compton in
RG: Berger retires / Remmers in
RB: Mckinnon out / get Cook back
First QB: There is no possible scenario where Keenum is not a downgrade from Cousins. I’m sorry, but it just isn’t true. There is a reason Keenum was cut by Denver this offseason.
OL: Guards were obviously downgraded due to injury and retirement.
On a purely player basis it looks like we got worse at OG, but better at QB.
Overall stats:
Stats: 2017 Offense: 382 Points / 1055 plays / 356 Ypg Turnover margin +5 Pts Game 23.9
2018 Offense: 360 Points / 1003 play / 345 Ypg Turnover margin 0 pts Game 22.5
So why was the offense worse? Why fewer plays? Was the downgrade at both guard positions such a massive disaster that it offset any incremental increase from Cousins vs. Keenum? Given that QB is the single most important position in sports I find this argument completely unpersuasive. If we got better at QB, then getting worse at OG should at worse be a push. So what happened?
Answer: Coaching.
Quite simply, JDF was a terrible OC for us. Add in the fact that we lost our OL coach to an untimely death literaly days before training camp started and then a few weeks later we lost our best guard to a neck injury and it adds up to chaos on the OL and chaos on offense in general. That is how the season started. We also saw they he was prone to disasterous game planning errors. The first one was Buffalo, that loss was hideous in that it failed to account for their strength on DL. The next one was NE where BB completely owned him. The last one was SEA, which ultimately cost him his job. JDF couldn’t handle the readjustment phase of his NFL stint as an OC. The likes of BB and Fangio owned him.
So now we get to today and Free Agency. Everyone is mad about the OL. I offer a few salient points:
#1: The biggest issue the team faced going into this season was the offensive coaching staff. IT needed to be better. To that end we made a splash and hired Gary Kubiak. I think this hire has been woefully under-appreciated to this point.
1.5: Do not listen to the local sports media. They are concocting this narrative that Zimmer is protecting his defensive guys to the detriment of the team. This is absurd. This line of reasoning is basically: “We should jettison some of our great core defensive guys to pay some FA OL a ton of money with no guarantee he’ll perform.” If you have a top 5 defense (which we do) why would EVER make that kind of move. IMO, this is the height of idiocy, but it is the media so it is just another day at the office.
#2: The teams cap situation all but guaranteed they wouldn’t make any big signings. The fact they haven’t should be considered at worse par for the course. You can be mad about this, but the cap is what it is. It almost feels like fans are getting mad at a one legged man for not being able to walk on two legs. If there is no cap to spend, then why are you mad they didn’t spend cap they didn’t have?
#3: Look at how NE won the SB. They were able to get competitive play out of a bunch of OL that they picked up late in Free Agency and spent an entire season coaching up so they would be competitive in Decmeber/January. This is the blue print the Vikings must follow. Note I say must because their cap situation demands it. We were never going to build a huge OL in free agency in 2019. So to this point, it circles back to #1: The Coaching hires.
So in conclusion: I feel that the 2018 issues were a combination of three things: JDF was a bad hire, the insurance against JDF being weak died a few days before camp started, and we had injuries concentrated at Guard. I will add that drafting Mike Hughes over Hernandez was probably a mistake, but the timing on that is questionable. When we drafted Tony Sparano was still our OL Coach and Nick Easton was still thought to be our LG.
2019 is going to be all about whether or not Stefanski/Kubiak can get back to the level of competency on offense that we saw with Shurmer/Sparano and if Kubiak can help make our OL more competitive through successful coaching. IMO the incremental (if any) improvement of the OL from September to November will be the key thing to watch next season.