MINNEAPOLIS — If you just glanced at the box score, you would have expected the Minnesota Vikings to have won by two scores in their opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday afternoon.
The Vikings gained 369 yards to Tampa’s 242. Kirk Cousins averaged nearly eight yards per pass attempt to Baker Mayfield’s putrid 5.1 yards per pass. Justin Jefferson did his usual thing, racking up nine catches for 150 yards. On third and fourth down, the Vikings held the Bucs offense to just seven conversions on 18 attempts and Cousins only lost a total of 16 yards to sacks. That’s all sounds like a whoopin’.
So what happened? Well, the Vikings’ roller coaster offense dipped one too many times.
The explanation for producing only 17 points starts with turnovers. In the first half, they gave the ball away three times, including once at the Tampa Bay 26-yard line following a 60-yard drive and another time at the goal line.
The first giveaway was bizarre. After connecting with Jefferson for a 30-yard gain, Cousins took a snap on third-and-2 from center Austin Schlottmann, who replaced injured Garrett Bradbury, and guard Ed Ingram’s arm incidentally knocked the ball out of the QB’s hands. Tampa Bay recovered.
The next turnover came on the subsequent drive when Antoine Winfield Jr. came unblocked and swiped the ball away from Cousins.
“I think they had variety with their pressures, their coverages,” Cousins said. “They were a multiple defense today. We moved the football but turned the ball over, and the game will always be about points. When you move the football, you’re doing good things, but it’s got to end with points… when you got nothing to show for it, then you take away your chance to win the football game.”
The Vikings defense mitigated the impact of the strip sack by holding the Bucs to a field goal.
The next turnover — late in the first half — played more of a role in taking away from their chances to win. Cousins threw a tight-window pass to receiver KJ Osborn with 23 seconds left in the half and the game tied at 10. The ball was a little behind Osborn and ended up getting picked off, ruining an opportunity to force Tampa Bay to play from behind in the second half.
Cousins was visibly upset after the play and explained that he put the ball in that area to avoid running his receiver into an oncoming safety but should have thrown it elsewhere.
“I would have just progressed to the under route to [Jordan Addison]. I tried to knife it in there, was a little too aggressive, and Jordan is there on the under route, kind of just working through the progression and just keep going,” Cousins said.
As ugly as the three turnovers were, ESPN’s win probability calculator still gave the Vikings a 56% chance to win the game when the Bucs received the second-half kickoff.
The Bucs deserve credit for cobbling together a 16-play touchdown drive to open the second half but it was aided by an offside penalty on Jay Ward when Tampa Bay was lining up for a field goal. There was another point where they had to waste a timeout because the personnel wasn’t right on a field goal block.
The Vikings were able to tie the game at 17 by taking advantage of a Bucs fourth-down pass interference penalty but on their final two drives the Minnesota offense gained just six yards. With 5:10 left, trailing by three, they lost four yards to a tight end screen, completed a short pass to Jefferson and had a throw in Addison’s direction knocked away.
All said and done, turnovers were only part of the issue. The Vikings spent a good deal of the offseason focusing on improving their run efficiency, which ranked toward the bottom of the NFL in yards per rush and Expected Points Added last year. But on Sunday they rushed for just 41 yards at 2.4 yards per attempt.
“Our expectation was to compete in the run game, and they’ve historically been a very, very good heavy front to run against that showed up today,” O’Connell said. “There were no surprises there, and I thought we just didn’t execute from a physicality and overall plan the way we had hoped, and that’s on me.”
In the first half, the Vikings handed off six times on first-and-10 and gained a total of 14 yards. They ran a total of nine times for 22 yards on first down for the entire game.
“Up front I just think we got to just get a little bit more movement, a little bit more connectedness on our combinations and try to just get efficient as we possibly can and then have ways of generating explosives in the run game,” O’Connell said.
That’s about as pointed as the Vikings’ head coach gets. Following a training camp filled with questions about the offensive line, Alexander Mattison and Ty Chandler didn’t get much room to run and Cousins was hit nine times. The issues were exacerbated by Bradbury’s absence and left tackle Christian Darrisaw hurting his ankle. Darrisaw returned but seemed to be fighting significant pain.
“Losing Bradbury, a starter on our line is definitely difficult,” Jefferson said. “For CD (Christian Darrisaw) to go down for a little while and be out during that too. It’s tough, but it’s part of the game, injuries come with the game. Next man up, next person that we have as a backup needs to come in and be focused and execute the plays just like the starter would. That’s definitely something that we didn’t want to happen.”
It’s unclear whether Bradbury or Darrisaw will play on Thursday night against the Eagles.
The Vikings’ inconsistency as an offense feels different than last year because they won all the close games rather than coming up short like they did on Sunday but it’s not as different from 2022 as you might think. Last season they scored points on 36% of drives, which ranked 17th in the NFL. They went 3-for-11 (28%) vs. Tampa Bay.
That isn’t to say they can’t improve. One promising development for the offense was Jordan Addison blazing past the Bucs’ defenders for a 39-yard touchdown on a third-and-long.
“Right before that play, I said opportunity was coming so it was kind of all the full circle on him scoring that touchdown,” Jefferson said. “I’m definitely happy for him. I can remember my first touchdown in the league, we didn’t have any fans or anything so to see his excitement, to see him being involved, was definitely something good to see.”
So now it’s off to Philadelphia. Yes, it’s too soon to call it a must-win game but it feels that way with the Chargers and Chiefs visiting US Bank Stadium soon. If the Vikings are boom-or-bust on offense, they will have a tough time matching up with the Eagles, whose defense gave up just 5.9 yards per attempt to Mac Jones on Sunday.
“We just have to have that much more urgency, that much more detail,” O’Connell said. “Everybody’s got to look inward, and we got to persevere together. This is not our first time dealing with adversity, and my hope is we’ll circle back on some of that experience and play our best possible game we can play Thursday night.”
