It’s gotten so bad for the Vikings lately that head coach Kevin O’Connell can no longer deny the reality.
O’Connell has been forced to look himself in the mirror over the past couple of weeks and come to terms with a simple fact — Minnesota has a bad offense in its current form.
After seemingly hitting rock bottom in a 23-6 loss to the Green Bay Packers, the Vikings somehow found a way to keep digging deeper in a 26-0 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. The only points the Vikings have scored in that span have come via a pair of lengthy field goals from kicker Will Reichard. They haven’t found the end zone since quarterback J.J. McCarthy threw a touchdown pass in the final minute of a 19-17 loss to the Chicago Bears three games ago.
The inability to push the ball down the field has been the biggest issue, whether it’s been McCarthy, veteran quarterback Carson Wentz, or rookie quarterback Max Brosmer starting under center.
“Obviously, our pass game has never really existed in a place where it wasn’t a Top-10 caliber in the league kind of pass game,” O’Connell said. “We are not that right now in any way, shape, or form.”
That has become very clear over the past couple of weeks, in particular, as the losses to the Packers and the Seahawks featured virtually no takeaways for the Vikings to feel good about as they walked off the field.
A deep dive into the numbers helps contextualize how historically bad this recent stretch has been for the Vikings from an offensive perspective. It’s as ugly as its ever been with O’Connell as the play caller.
The stats are damning in and of themselves, as the Vikings only gained 145 yards of total offense and 10 first downs in the loss the Packers, then followed it up by only gaining 162 yards of total offense and 11 first downs against the Seahawks.
The analytics are even worse, as the Vikings were abysmal in expected points added per play (EPA/play), which takes into account how much each play increased or decreased a team’s probability of scoring.
The data is incredibly jarring as the Vikings had an EPA/play of -0.43 in the loss to the Packers, and an EPA/play of -0.66 in the loss to the Seahawks.
To put that perspective, the Vikings had an EPA/play of -0.36 in last season’s playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams, when veteran quarterback Sam Darnold was pressured on almost every dropback, and an EPA/play added of -0.34 in the unforgettable 33-10 loss to the Packers in late 2023, when young quarterback Jaren Hall started before being mercifully benched at halftime.
Some of the comically bad performances from the recent memory were only marginally worse than what the Vikings put on tape against the Seahawks, as the Denver Broncos had an EPA/play of -0.72 when they started undrafted receiver Kendall Hinton at quarterback for an entire game, and the Cleveland Browns had an EPA/play of -0.72 during a game in which they only gained 26 yards of total offense.
More context on the offensive struggles were added by popular NFL analytics expert Aaron Schatz, who created an advanced metric called DVOA, which analyzes a team’s efficiency by comparing its performance on every play to the league average for similar situations. In a post that has since gone viral on social media, Schatz illuminated that the Vikings legitimately played the worst offensive game in franchise history against the Seahawks.
“We just did not have the type of an offensive performance that is ever going to be acceptable,” O’Connell said after the game. “It’s a collective group thing right now, where we are just not good enough to overcome some of the things that we’re doing.”
If it looks similar against the Washington Commanders on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium, the Vikings will almost certainly hear from the home crowd. The frustration is slowly starting to reach a boiling point within the fan base.
“You want to provide them with reasons to cheer and reasons to be excited about their team,” O’Connell said. “Not always the easiest thing to do when we’re kind of having to transform what we are in our current state as an offense.”
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