1 Way the Vikings Offense Can Directly Help the Defense to Improve
If we simply looked at Minnesota’s total time of possession on offense, we’d find a team in the middle of the NFL. When we break things down to a per-drive average, though, we’ll see a team that’s near the bottom. Indeed, the Vikings offense generally didn’t stay on the field for very long.
As 2023 continues to unravel, Kevin O’Connell should be wondering how he can fix this problem. Doing so may be one way of helping the defense climb back into respectability.
Maintaining Possession for The Vikings Offense
For a long time, Mike Zimmer preached about the importance of possessing the football. Unless a team is giving up an insane amount of safeties, there’s no way to allow the other squad to score when one’s own team is holding onto the football.
Even at lower levels of football defensive coaches will teach their players that it’s all about the football. “The offense has it and we want it back,” the defensive coach will say, imploring his young defenders to be covetous of the pigskin. Getting the ball back into the offense’s hands is a top priority.
Once the offense has is, though, the defense is largely helpless.
Nothing frustrates defenders more than needing to bring their weary legs and lungs back on the field shortly after coming off. For a while, a defense can battle through, but it’s not the most sustainable strategy. Eventually, defenders will cave to exhaustion as the opposing offense marches the ball down the field.
During the 2022 season, the Vikings offense came in at 29th in the NFL in average time of possession on a per-drive basis. On average, the Vikings’ offensive drives went for 2 minutes and 34 seconds. The best offense in the NFL for this category was actually Green Bay, averaging a bit more than 3 minutes. Clearly, holding onto the ball isn’t the only way of measuring a team’s effectiveness, but it’s an important stat nonetheless.
The only 3 teams that were worse than the Vikings were the Broncos, Jets, and Texans. Frankly, that’s a stunning reality given that we’re looking at 3 of the most inept offenses alongside a Vikings offense that was top 10 in scoring with 24.9 points per game.
If we step back and look at the whole game, we’ll get a bit more of an optimistic view. Minnesota averaged almost a perfect 30 minutes of holding onto the football in 2022. In that sense, the Vikings offense seemed to be perfectly average.
However, we know that their per-drive time of possession wasn’t good, pointing us to a few different possibilities. Minnesota had a lot of offensive drives, largely because their defense leaked like a sieve. When they got the ball back, they had the capacity to score in a hurry or hand the ball back through a turnover. Both results lead to lower time of possession.
Given that Minnesota averaged 2.04 points per drive – the 12th-best mark in the NFL – we can see that a common outcome was for scoring drives. At times, though, their efficiency may have worked against them.
It’s easy to forget, but football is an interconnected game. What an offense does directly impacts how a defense plays (and vice versa). Asking the defense to totally reinvent itself in one offseason is a tall task, so part of the plan must involve venturing into the offense and special teams for defensive improvement. When the offense has great time of possession and the special teams contributes to great field position, the defense will be in a better position to thrive.
Helping the Defense
The search for a new defensive coordinator is ongoing. There are theories about the reasons for the holdup, some of which make sense, but I don’t want to stray too far down the speculation path. At the end of the day, I’m not in the building, so I can’t say for certain why Kevin O’Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah haven’t hired a new DC.
What I can say with some certainty is that the new DC is going to be tasked with radically improving the defense. Making that task more challenging is that the salary cap situation isn’t pristine.
Recently, Dustin Baker discussed how the Vikings’ run game didn’t meet expectations in 2022. Finding a way to reignite the run game is a surefire way of improving the time of possession in the upcoming season. Churning out first downs – especially with a lot coming via the RB’s legs – can make a massive difference in this regard.
If Minnesota’s offense is successful, then Minnesota’s defense will have an easier time rebounding.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference and StatMuse helped with this piece.
