Daily Norseman
The Ravens game is getting analyzed to death. It was an awful performance with some bright spots. The biggest issue for me is the accuracy of JJ McCarthy. That is the one area that needs to improve as soon as possible. He is still young and does not have many snaps under his belt but you want to hope he would be more accurate. He does have some really great throws though. This gives hope for the future. I suspect he will continue to get better and better every game even if he is inaccurate or throws picks. Every experience is necessary. It is worth noting that Jaxon Smith-Njigba is leading the NFL in yards playing with Sam Darnold who is having another great regular season. Justin Jefferson no doubt sees this. It is good to have the rookie scale QB but also good to have JJ’s contract pay dividends too. There is the rub no?
This week’s game is a must win if the Vikings want to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. I suspect they will have a pretty dang good performance offensively after the last game.
Note: Beware! The links provided below have not been put through any filter or an approvals process (if it even exists).
Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell gives firm answer about play-calling concerns with necessary context outside of looking at stats
There has been a lot of discussion surrounding the Minnesota Vikings’ offense, and a lot of that boils down to head coach Kevin O’Connell’s play-calling.
One of the biggest issues for the Vikings has been their short-yardage play-calling. With J.J. McCarthy under center, they have yet to convert a third and short through the air with a completion on 14 attempts. That’s a crazy number when you think about it, but there is a difference between looking at the stats from a macro perspective and looking at the micro of each individual play call.
…
When discussing play-calling, many focus solely on a results-based approach. It’s still way more complicated than whether or not it was a run or a pass.
“I think you have to establish what we are talking about from a standpoint of third and ones, third and twos, third and threes, third and two to five,” said O’Connell. “How defenses are going to align, based upon the front structures that they want to kind of get in.”
…
“We’ve had multiple runs called in those situations where parameters take us out of those looks, or we have a run-pass solution on them, and we’ve converted,” said O’Connell. “We’ve had multiple run plays called on early downs where we’ve thrown the ball and got an 11-yard completion, got a nine-yard completion, and we look at those as statistically part of the run game. I know that doesn’t necessarily fall under that category as a whole, but there’s no question, we’ve had success, specifically this year, in the short yardage situations.”
This...
