10 Fuckups That Explain The Problems In Kevin O'Connell's Offense

On Sunday against the Dolphins, the Vikings, favored by 10.5 points, fucked up. They constantly fucked up. They fucked up so much that it’s hard to find the plays where they didn’t fuck up.

They’re fucking up at historically unprecedented levels. Breaking fuckup barriers. Disrupting the status quo of the fuckup industry.

Did the Vikings just fuck up, or are they perpetual fuckups? Where is that line? How many fuckups can a fuckup fuck up before they, themselves, get fucked up?

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If I tried to catalog every mistake of the Vikings offense in Week 4, we’d be here forever. I have to narrow my scope to something more manageable. So I’ll choose to focus more on operational mistakes, like miscommunications, misalignments, and procedural penalties.

As such, I have an insultingly simple goal for the Vikings. Call a play, communicate that play’s instructions to all eleven players, then have everyone at least attempt the correct assignment. If the snap happens and a play of some sort happens, whether good or bad, I’ll hold my tongue.

The bar is on the floor.

Let’s see who still tripped over it.

When someone false starts, whose fault is it? That may be a silly question, but there are many ways for a false start to manifest. The most common is this kind, from Brian O’Neill. Kyler Murray executes a hard count, and O’Neill flinches.

Assigning blame here is pretty cut and dry. Zeek Biggers flinched a little on Murray’s hard count, and O’Neill reacted. That’s five yards.

There are two other false starts — from Caleb Tiernan and Joe Huber — that are similarly matters of discipline, and not organizational chaos. They do not crack the top ten of fuckups on the day, to give you a sense for the adventure we’re about to brave together. But I figure all three warranted a spot on the list.

More on false starts later.

The Vikings peppered in a 6th OL on Sunday, likely in an effort to prey on smaller edge defenders Chop Robinson (265lb) and Josh Uche (252lb). A perfectly sensible gameplan, but it means a rookie has to go out there and get lined up.

So every time he goes out there, someone has to report that the guy wearing 78 is eligible so the ref can announce it to the stadium (thanks, Belichick). Then, he has the same rules as, say, a tight end. 

Tiernan lines up “on the ball”, which referees determine by the center’s belt. If your helmet is past his belt, that’s about within a yard of the ball, so you’re on the ball. You may have seen this used to determine tackles who are too far off. 

This is a twofold problem: Now, there is an eighth player within a yard of the line of scrimmage (maximum seven) and Tiernan is “covered”, meaning he’s on the ball and there’s another player on the ball outside of him (Jauan Jennings).

According to O’Connell, a receiver (likely Jennings) instructed Tiernan to line up on the ball incorrectly. So Tiernan is the one in the wrong, but Jennings shouldn’t be trying to manage this at all. If it’s not your job, shut the fuck up.

At any rate, five yards, repeat the down. But who fucked up, Tiernan or Jennings? Getting either one off the ball would fix the issue. Let’s look at another, similar formati- Jesus Christ, Tiernan almost fucked up again.

As a rookie, it’s understandable that he hasn’t perfectly memorized the dozens of formations in his playbook. But with that understanding, it’s irresponsible to center a major wrinkle of your gameplan around him. The best play in the world still won’t count if there is an illegal formation.

This is circumstantial evidence, but strong evidence, that Caleb Tiernan did not know the playbook sufficiently, and his teammates knew that. Caleb Tiernan, you fucked up. Jauan Jennings, you also fucked up. At least you fixed him the second time.

We’re to the second quarter, and we’ve now managed to get a snap off. But when Kyler Murray dropped back to pass, he found two guys running the same route.

The Vikings are running some kind of Dagger here, with both Jennings and Tai Felton both running clearout routes on top of each other. That can’t be what we want.

I could guess what else was supposed to be run here. It could be some underneath arrow, or a deep over to occupy help from the other side. But it’s more productive to try and suss out who was wrong between Jennings and Felton, whatever the right route was supposed to be.

I think the culprit is the motion here. When Addison runs a “Cheat” motion to the outside, it changes the order everyone is in. Look at how formations are organized in a similar playbook:

These formations all look the same, but with the players in a different order. Then when you add a play call on to that, you determine who runs what route, like so: 

The play would have looked approximately like this, where the outermost receiver runs the dig, the next receiver runs the clearout route, and so on (the Y was on the backside, and X was split out, but you get the general idea).

When Addison motions, it changes who is who, and therefore who runs which route. This causes confusion. 

I won’t speculate any further on what Felton or Jennings were supposed to run instead. One of them fucked up. Everyone in the huddle knows what happened, and that’s who needs to know. I’ll give them each half of a fuckup as an approximation.

With the Vikings adding a ton of new variety to their motion package, like I predicted this offseason, there’s bound to be some kinks to work out. Here, Jordan Addison commits an infraction by motioning in a way that goes forward and not getting set before the snap.

Note how little he actually goes forward. His foot crosses the 24 yard-line. That’s enough for his motion to now count as a forward shift, CFL-style. By rule, he has to be set for one second, and then he can continue any motion as intended.

But that’s not an option here. As you’ll also note, the play clock is down to 2 seconds. Murray waves Addison over early in an attempt to get the play off, but since he didn’t have time to get set, the motion is illegal.

More on these play clock issues later.

So to find who fucked up, we’d have to know why the pre-snap process was so behind, but again, we can’t really know that if we’re not in the coaching headsets. 

But Addison also didn’t need to motion forward here. To me, this looks like a sloppy track that went forward, and properly run motion wouldn’t run this risk at all. So one way or another, Jordan Addison, you fucked up.