Analysis: Vikings offense vs. Commanders looked like Michigan’s, not Kevin O’Connell’s

We should begin with the necessary caveats: The Vikings had all five of their preferred starting offensive linemen on the field for an entire game for the first time this season. They were playing at home. They had the lead for 56 minutes, 3 seconds after scoring a touchdown on the game’s opening drive. And they were playing a Washington Commanders team that had lost seven in a row, including back-to-back overtime games in different countries, and arrived at U.S. Bank Stadium with little to play for.

The conditions for the Vikings on Sunday were as pristine as they’ve been all season. General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah talked before the season about building a team that could win “any type of fight”; the Vikings’ 31-0 win over the Commanders didn’t demand a great deal of resourcefulness.

But the Vikings, who had lost their last four games and scored six points in their last two before Sunday, weren’t in a position to quibble with how they secured this victory. And while a win over Washington might not earn them many style points, it came in a manner that has been rare for them under Kevin O’Connell but might actually work for them at this point in J.J. McCarthy’s tenure.

The Vikings ran the ball on 55.7% of their offensive plays, the highest single-game rate under O’Connell (according to NFL Next Gen Stats) and just the ninth time in the coach’s 64 regular-season games they have run more than 50% of the time. They made the runs count, gaining 162 yards on the ground and averaging 0.25 expected points per run, which was a higher rate than in any game under O’Connell other than their Week 7 loss to the Detroit Lions last year.

They built it out of heavy personnel groups, using tight ends T.J. Hockenson, Josh Oliver and Ben Sims for a combined 95 snaps while playing C.J. Ham for 26 of their 64 offensive snaps, using the fullback as a pass blocker or receiving option on 10 snaps while making him a run blocker on 16. The Vikings had multiple tight ends or running backs on the field for nine of McCarthy’s 23 pass attempts; McCarthy’s first completion, to Sims, and his first touchdown pass to Oliver, an 18-yarder, came out of three-tight end sets.

On both plays, the Commanders countered with base personnel; on the touchdown, the Vikings ran Oliver and Hockenson up the seams, putting deep safety Will Harris in conflict and allowing McCarthy to pick between throws to Oliver and Hockenson. He started to Oliver’s side, hitting the tight end for a score against cornerback Mike Sainristil’s zone coverage.

Those throws, paired with base concepts like Smash (the hitch route-corner route combination run by most teams in the NFL), allowed McCarthy to play decisively and work fast, letting the ball go in 2.56 seconds, his lowest figure of the season.

Effectively, the Vikings ran something closer to what McCarthy directed at Michigan, whose 563 runs over 15 games during the quarterback’s final year there ranked seventh in the nation, according to Sports Info Solutions.

All of it came at the end of a week in which O’Connell preached a straightforward approach, saying he was done focusing on McCarthy’s mechanics and telling the quarterback he wanted him focused only on his decision-making.

“Part of where I want him now is, after having experience, knowing what it’s felt like in an NFL pocket now, [he] can hopefully take from it that the success comes from the simplicity of doing my job,” O’Connell said Sunday. “If you’re then adding variables to the starting point of, ‘If they do this,’ he very much wants to play the mental game within the snap. Sometimes, he can simplify it for himself within the play that’s called, setting his feet and eyes to number one and progressing with great fundamentals from there.”

The way the Vikings played against Washington works best when they have a lead, which might have been another reason why O’Connell took the ball after they won the coin toss, and while they can pair that offensive style with a defense that’s at its best when pressuring quarterbacks, it’s not as feasible if they’re playing from behind and asking McCarthy to play a dropback game.

They will want the quarterback to grow, and they will need to find ways to get the ball to Justin Jefferson, who again was limited, recording two catches on just four targets Sunday. But as McCarthy hit Jordan Addison for 21 yards on a corner route off the Smash concept the Vikings ran in the second quarter, Jefferson (who was running a short hitch on the play) pointed at the quarterback and clapped.

“I’ve tried to say this as many times as I possibly can. [Justin] has been elite from a leadership standpoint, being one of our captains and guys that drives this organization. That’s no matter what the look on his face has been, that’s no matter what the statistical columns say. I can’t say enough about him. And that’s just another example of it.”

For the Vikings on Sunday, it worked. As lofty a goal as it was to build a team that can win multiple ways en route to a deep playoff run, the Vikings needed to start with a style that was compatible with how McCarthy is playing now. They seemed to realize it last week, and against the Commanders, they put it into action for the quarterback’s best day of the season.

“When you’re trying to make a game plan friendly for the quarterback, there’s a lot of layers to it,” O’Connell said Monday. “The word ‘simplification’ is getting thrown out. If it was that simple, I would probably get a lot more rest throughout the week. But you’re trying to call it in a way where you’re continuing to maintain the principles of how we want to play. So decision-making, execution, no matter what you’re calling, it’s got to be what it was now. It’s just going to be a consistency factor for all of us.”