On Sunday, the Vikings will play a rookie quarterback for the third time in five weeks. They’ve also played a quarterback with only eight starts under his belt in Jimmy Garoppolo and two other quarterbacks with fewer than 32 starts in Jared Goff and Carson Wentz.
This is pretty remarkable. Through six weeks, only one other team has played against inexperienced quarterbacks that often — the Los Angeles Chargers, who have played Patrick Mahomes, C.J. Beathard, Baker Mayfield, Goff and Josh Allen. The Vikings are the only team that will play six such quarterbacks — those with fewer than 32 starts at the time they played — through seven weeks.
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No teams through seven weeks of 2017 played that many inexperienced quarterbacks, nor in 2016.
It’s a unique situation that should have put the Vikings at an advantage defensively. Instead, it’s seemingly led to surprise and disorientation — the Vikings defense ranks 29th in adjusted net yards per passing attempt and 30th in passer rating.
While the past few weeks have seen a return to something resembling “normal,” Minnesota should remain alert to the kinds of ways that Jets rookie quarterback Sam Darnold can win and force him away from those.
Damning Darnold
Of the incoming rookies, Sam Darnold was praised by draft experts as being the most “pro-ready” of the group, with some concerns about his release time to throw and his turnover total.
Much of the initial scouting report has materialized on the field, with aggressive but understandable decision-making that has nevertheless resulted in a high turnover rate. Darnold leads all quarterbacks in interception rate this year (of those with at least 120 attempts).
Most of the seven interceptions he’s thrown are his fault — which is to say, he had poor ball placement or didn’t see an underneath defender; not many of his interceptions feature a remarkable play from the intercepting defender or a receiver tipping the ball.
It should be said, however, that Darnold’s interceptions throughout the season have become easier and easier to dismiss or excuse. In Week 3 against the Browns, one of his two picks came with 19 seconds on the clock down four points with a tough sideline throw to make. In Week 5 against the Broncos, his only pick came from a tipped pass at the line of scrimmage. Last week’s Colts game featured a pick where a poorly placed ball materialized out of pressure where he was hit as he was thrown.
That’s not to say he didn’t benefit from dropped picks either, however. Two in quick succession against the Broncos, as well as another one against the Jaguars in Week 4, should remind us that Darnold will still be ready to turn the ball over.
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On the vast majority of his plays, he happens to make the right decision. Against Cover-2, he’ll go right to the smash concept — a route combination specifically designed to beat that coverage. Against Cover-1, he’ll target the switch routes that create rubs against the man coverage defenders and trust his receivers to win deep downfield.
The Jets have run a lot of corner routes and deep outs, especially against defenses that deploy a Cover-2, and Darnold seems to love throwing them — in his last three games, 20 percent of his aimed passes have been deep and to the sideline.
To pair with that, the Jets run a lot of “divide” concepts, where two stacked receivers start off their routes going vertical and split at the last second, with one streaking downfield and the other one going to the corner.
Against man coverage, they like to run a lot of switch-style concepts, where receivers will cross paths in order to create difficult rub routes.
The Jets have even combined the concepts together to create concepts that should — in theory — work against both man and zone coverages.
So the Vikings will likely want to find ways to trick Darnold into reading the wrong defense and making the wrong throw. Luckily for the Vikings, they do that already as a matter of course.
They forced an intentional grounding penalty against the Eagles, almost earned a safety on a sack against the Cardinals and forced Garoppolo into interceptions by disguising coverage.
Their constant safety rotation, mixed coverages (man on one side, zone on the other) and matchup defense (playing man within zones) should be able to strike at the heart of what has made the Jets’ offense go.
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That does mean they’ll have to abandon some of the simple concepts that they were comfortable with against the Cardinals, opting not to run easy-to-read Cover-2 and Cover-3 defenses, but some tougher-to-diagnose looks that confuse the Jets into the wrong reads.
It should help that the Vikings don’t have to worry about the receiver matchup, with their best receiver — Quincy Enunwa — out. Joining him will be big-play threat Terrelle Pryor and possibly Robby Anderson, who was a full participant in the most recent Jets practice but is coming off of his own injuries.
Jermaine Kearse will be big for them, as will the Jets’ affinity for tight ends. Just like the Philadelphia Eagles, the Jets heavily favor a tight-end rotation that sees two or three of Chris Herndon, Eric Tomlinson, Jordan Leggett or Neal Sterling on the field.
One should expect tight-end usage to ramp up even more in light of their injuries. Though it may feel as if the Vikings are no longer being carved apart by tight ends, it’s well worth keeping an eye on the Jets’ corps.
Unlike the Eagles, the Jets don’t play matchup games where they decide to run or pass the ball based on the personnel they see, but it would still be wise to deploy a third safety, especially in light of the Mike Hughes injury.
The Jets run the ball 71 percent of the time they’re in in two- or three-tight-end sets, and they’ve claimed some big plays coming out of those sets, especially on the ground. The Vikings might be tempted to put Ben Gedeon on the field as a result, but if Jayron Kearse or George Iloka can stand up to the run-blocking potential of a tight end, then they should put that third safety in just to prevent big plays from coming through the air — a bigger issue for the Vikings than their current run defense.
Deep cuts
There’s some chance that the Jets’ defense could be paper tigers. While the Jets aren’t becoming world-beaters on defense, ranking 16th in points allowed, their performance in advanced metrics is worth watching. They boast the fourth-best mark against the pass, only allowing 5.4 adjusted net yards per attempt. They rank seventh in Football Outsiders’ DVOA, and are second in expected points generated by the defense. A big part of that is their incredible turnover rate, which could scare teams — 19.0 percent of defensive drives end in a turnover, which is the fourth-best in the league.
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That said, there are a few reasons to think those numbers may not hold up.
Generally speaking, turnover rate is unstable and can fluctuate from game to game fairly wildly. Anybody that remembers the 2016 Vikings and their 5-0 start knows this, but there are a variety of examples. Many of the leaders in turnover rate in the first nine weeks of the 2017 season found it difficult to repeat their performance in the second half of the season — the Bills dropped from first to 20th, the Packers dropped from sixth to 25th and the Jets dropped from sixth to 30th.
It’s true that teams that can create turnovers — in the long run — able to create more turnovers. But from game to game, it can vary drastically.
That could be true of the Jets specifically, too. Four of their 10 interceptions have come from passes tipped by the intended receiver, and another one comes from miscommunication on the offense’s part. Five of their picks also came in one game — in Week 1 against the Lions — making their unique ability to generate turnovers seem much closer to flukiness than skill.
They’re not bad — they rank well in turnover-neutral measures, like yards per passing attempt (11th) and in third-down conversion rate (11th). They rank ninth in red-zone scoring, too.
On the other hand, they haven’t played against an offense that ranks in the top 12 in points scored. The Colts (13th) and Lions (14th) are their toughest offenses, with the 19th-ranked Broncos, 23rd-ranked Dolphins, 24th-ranked Browns and 29th-ranked Jaguars helping pad their stats. Football Outsiders estimates that their defense has faced the 27th-toughest schedule.
Pro-Football-Reference’s opponent-adjusted defensive ranking puts the Jets below average overall, ranking 20th in opponent-adjusted points allowed — the same spot the Vikings’ offense ranks in points per game.
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So with all that in mind, the Vikings offense may find some big advantages.
The Jets present a look that might be familiar to the Vikings thus far, a single-high safety defense that often goes to Cover-3, just like the 49ers and Packers, and much like a number of defenses around the NFL, like the Seahawks, Bengals, Patriots, Panthers, Falcons and so on.
They will go to some mixed coverages and quarters as well, so they aren’t married to it like the 49ers and Seahawks have been, but it’s worth looking into concepts that regularly beat Cover-3.
The favorite concept to attack Cover-3 is generally four verticals, a concept as straightforward as its name implies. The Jets know this too, and so often check into quarters coverage if they think they’ll see that concept coming. That’s not a huge issue, and it’s worth testing — the Colts and the Browns both made big plays running vertical receivers right into the quarters coverage.
This should be on the Vikings’ mind in particular because of all of the injuries the Jets expect to see coming into the game. Defensive backs Buster Skrine and Marcus Maye have been ruled out, while cornerback Trumaine Johnson has been listed as doubtful.
The Vikings might also want to find ways to take advantage of deep clear-outs. As it is, they have two deep threats that defenses are bound to respect, so running an outside receiver deep downfield only to later attack the intermediate third with a late-arriving receiver is a common response to Cover-3 and one the Vikings can make work for them
The Colts do it effectively here, with Chester Rogers running a “Y-Sail” — essentially an opposite-field corner route — to occupy the space cleared out by Zach Pascal on his deep route.
The Vikings can also choose to pull their own switches, which introduce late-arriving receivers into open throwing windows — it’s the very concept that led to the Vikings’ final touchdown against the Packers in Week 2.
They even did it to great effect specifically against a Cover-3 defense.
The Jets don’t use Cover-3 nearly as often as a team like the 49ers, so becoming dependent on these concepts in the gameplan will get the Vikings burned. But if they use these concepts in conjunction with other passing patterns that can challenge different defensive schemes, they’ll have a good chance to sustain offensive drives. In the play above, the Vikings ran switch/dagger on one side — which allowed them to attack the Cover-3 zone — but also found ways to attack the defense if they presented something else. The underneath drive route should win against man coverage while Cook in the flat should create a great angle against most defenses. Kyle Rudolph’s dig route will stress almost any zone defense and, if they find themselves with a favorable coverage shell, could lead to big yardage.
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The Jets don’t do anything extraordinary on offense or defense that characterizes them as quirky. They pass the ball deep about as often as the average offense. They perform an average rate of play-action passes. They don’t have extreme drop problems or impressive hands. They run simple coverage concepts, but not necessarily outdated ones. They blitz more than most teams, but it’s nothing like the Cardinals.
Overall, it doesn’t seem like a matchup where either the offensive or defensive coordinator has established his identity yet. That can be OK, if the players are skilled enough. With the emergence of new offensive and defensive stars, the Jets might be on that path, but without a way to account for the sheer talent of the Vikings on both sides of the ball with some level of schematic nuance, they should fall behind.
(Top photo of Sam Darnold: Vincent Carchietta / USA TODAY Sports)