Part 1: Sam Bradford, Pat Shurmur and The Evolution of the Vikings Offense

As I’m sure you are aware, the Vikings offense looked incredibly different last year than the previous two seasons under Mike Zimmer. Far different than the past decade of Adrian Peterson’s dominance for that matter. First the Vikings lost their starting QB to a nasty knee injury just days before the season started. This forced the Vikings to trade for Sam Bradford. Oh and going off of that, this entire article assumes either A.) Teddy will be on IR for the 2017 season once again or B.) He is NOT the starter. A risky assumption perhaps, but that is that. After two dreadful games Adrian Peterson also went down with a meniscus injury and would have just 6 more carries the rest of the season. Additionally the Vikings lost two starting offensive linemen within the first four games.

How do you recover from all that? You can’t really. So while the Vikings 8-8 record last year was a disappointment, I would not pin a large part of the blame on Bradford or even Mike Zimmer. Over the course of the season the Vikings continued to adapt to the offense they didn’t originally plan for. The team ranked higher in pass attempts (12th) than rush attempts (25th) for the first time since Adrian Peterson was drafted in 2007. Interestingly, midway through the season Norv Turner stepped down (or was forced out) despite a 5-2 record at the time and Sam Bradford rocking an 8 to 1 TD:INT ratio.

Enter Pat Shurmur. It’s clear why the Vikings wanted Shurmur in charge of the Sam Bradford-led offense. When Sam Bradford was taken 1st overall by the Rams in 2010, Shurmur was the offensive coordinator. They had a promising season together but Shurmur left for his first and forgettable run as HC of the Browns. Shurmur then returned to an OC position with the Chip Kelly Eagles. In 2015, the Eagles traded for Bradford and he was reunited with Shurmur once more. The Eagles cleared house after 2015 and Shurmur found himself with a new team and relegated to a lesser role as tight ends coach. When Teddy Bridgewater went down, Pat Shurmur was instrumental in helping push for a deal to get Bradford. Perhaps he knew it would help him get a promotion to OC, perhaps not. Either way, he was full of good things to say about the QB.

When Shurmur first took over, the effect he had on the offense was significant right away, but probably not exactly what he wanted. You can’t simply change an offense from one playbook to another overnight. So let’s break down Bradford’s stats this way: Games 2-7 under Norv Turner, the first 4 games under Pat Shurmur and the final 5 games under Pat Shurmur: (Note that the first game of the season was started by Shaun Hill)

Games	Pass Att/G	Comp %	TD%	Int %	Y/A	Y/C
2-7	33.8	66.5	3.9	0.4	7.1	10.7
8-12	38	76.3	2.6	1.1	6.4	8.4
13-16	39.8	72.3	4.4	1.3	7.6	10.6

As you can see, there are major differences between the games under Norv Turner and the rest of the games. Right away it is easy to see that for the first five games under Shurmur, the passing game was conservative to the extreme. I chose to include yards per completion to highlight that. Given that Bradford set the record for comp %, his yards per attempt are naturally going to look at least respectable. To give you an idea of what good and bad yards per completion are, Matt Ryan led the league at 13.3, Tom Brady was at 12.2. Those are extremely good numbers - basically averaging a first down and then some per completion! Among the very worst were Brock Osweiler and Jared Goff at 9.8 and 9.7. Goff was especially bad considering he was also among the worst in completion %. Anyway, as you can see, Bradford’s Y/C during the first few games with Shurmur as O/C was well below even the worst QBs. but it was countered by a league high 76.3% completion rate during that span. It would be very accurate to say the Vikings dinked and dunked their way down the field.

Then something weird happened. Shurmur let go of the reigns to an extent and let Bradford throw downfield more often. This resulted in a yards per completion that was back to where it was at with Norv Turner, but also with an exceptional comp % AND an increased touchdown rate. Bradford was suddenly more than just a fantasy afterthought.

While most of the rest of this article will focus on the pass game, I wanted to briefly show the effect all of this had on the run game as well.

Games	Rush Att / G	Rush Yds / G	YPC	Rush TDs
1-7	27	71.9	2.7	3
8-12	21	73.2	3.5	4
13-16	21.5	84	3.9	2

Once again, we see some differences. Turner’s offense was absolutely horrendous running the ball. He had Adrian Peterson for two games and the healthiest offensive line! Just awful. We see immediate improvements in the run game despite running a lot less - a move that seemed logical given the injuries to both the o-line and Peterson. Over the final four games while still running the ball far less than earlier in the season, the run game finally started to look not completely dreadful. It was still not great, but more middle of the pack as the YPC ranked 23rd over those four games. Now that they’ve added Dalvin Cook and Latavius Murray and gotten rid of Peterson and Matt Asiata (about time!) the run game should even improve a little more.

Really what I was most interested in getting to was the Vikings receivers and who was in the best position at the end of this season when the Shurmur and Bradford duo were at their best. Again, broken down by games 8-12 and 13-16.

How cool are those tables? Thanks Pro-Football-Reference! The data is pretty awesome too. Notably in games 8-12, only a single player had a yards per catch of more than 10. Conversely, each of the top 6 receivers on the team all had a catch rate of 60% or better. Step aside Jarvis Landry, there’s a new high floor low ceiling PPR receiver in town! Stefon Diggs’ numbers during this stretch are absolutely fascinating. 40 receptions on 44 targets but a measly 8.5 yards per catch and 0 touchdowns. This was good enough for WR14 in PPG during that stretch. (0.5 PPR, my preferred scoring) Among 63 WRs with at least 25 targets during those 5 games, Diggs was 1st in catch % but 59th in yards per catch. Over a full 16 game slate those numbers would translate to a mind boggling 160-1360-0. Meanwhile Adam Thielen as the “big play receiver” had some pretty nice numbers himself. He wasn’t catching balls left and right but was a respectable WR33 in PPG. Kyle Rudolph was another short yardage option for Bradford. A far lower catch % than Diggs but he did manage to find the end zone a couple times. This translated to TE14 in PPG.

Now moving to the final four games, the numbers and target share look shockingly different! Across the board yards per catch are way up while everyone is still managing a catch % of 60 or better...everyone except for the guy that led the entire league in catch % the previous five games. Possibly due to injury, possibly due to falling out of favor, maybe a little bit of both, Stefon Diggs had far fewer targets and was also far less successful with them.

Adam Thielen was also a very peculiar case over the final four games. He was the WR14 in PPG. However that included two games with a combined 1 catch for 7 yards on 2 targets and the other two a combined 16-303-2 on 20 targets. When a guy is that inconsistent it is really hard to try and project him going forward. I will say in Week 17, Stefon Diggs did not play and that was one of the games where Thielen was shut down - by an underrated Bears defense (7th fewest pass yards allowed last year). So it would seem that perhaps the key to Thielen’s success would be to have Diggs as the #1 because it is clear Thielen is good enough to consistently beat #2 corners. Evidenced by the fact that he had 101 yards against the Jaguars, an even better pass defense than the Bears.

I’m sure you noticed that neither of these two WRs was the top target at the end of the season. That honor belonged to Kyle Rudolph who was nothing short of dominant. While being an absolute target hog, Rudolph managed to increase his catch % while also increasing his yards per catch and maintaining an end zone presence. He was truly elite and the TE2 in PPG. In fact combining all the games Shurmur was OC, Rudolph was TE3 from Week 9 on. More so than the WRs, I am extremely confident that Rudolph’s long awaited breakout season has staying power. He is a top ten TE without a doubt and *should* be able to maintain his top five status.

The last note over the final four games is the major increase in RB receiving usage. In games 8-12 Jerick McKinnon and Matt Asiata combined for 22 targets. Over the final four games, McKinnon succeeded that by himself while Asiata still saw 10 targets. McKinnon is the real forgotten man among all the Vikings. His breakout can actually be traced back a little farther to Week 12 when he put up 86 yards on 12 touches. From that point on he was the RB11 in PPG. I have to say that number actually shocked me! Unfortunately with the additions at RB, McKinnon has a very poor chance of retaining the lead back role despite some promising results. However, he is the clear favorite to be the receiving back on this team. He has something close to Theo Riddick, Giovani Bernard & Duke Johnson potential at a fraction of the cost.

That wraps up the breakdown of what happened in 2016 and how things clearly changed over the course of the season. For fear of this article being way too much research and way too long for the average reader to enjoy, I'll look at what that means for 2017 and projecting forward in Part 2!