If the Minnesota Vikings scored as often as their opponents did in the final two minutes of halves – or if those minutes were wiped out of existence with nothing to replace them – the Vikings would be 9-2-1, second-best in the NFL just behind the New England Patriots (11-1-1 in this imagining). It is an utterly baffling conundrum that a team that could be good enough to be one of the top squads in the NFL for 56 minutes of a game feels like a failure.
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Even more confusing, they essentially are one.
At 5-7, the Vikings are both “in the hunt” for a wild card spot and on the verge of letting go of their seven-year head coach. While that alone is a pretty good indictment of the 14-team playoff system and the strength of the league, it also happens to be a great metaphor for the 2021 Vikings.
Shackled by their own late-half ineptitude, the Vikings are simultaneously good and bad. They rank 9th in point differential against teams with a winning record and 22nd against teams with a record of .500 or worse. Is it possible for the Vikings to fix their end-of-half woes, and why is it such a distinct problem, anyway?
The Vikings are worse at the end of the first half than they are in the second, enough that their end-of-half defense is the worst that the NFL has seen in the past 21 years, per Trumedia. Giving up six points per game in the game’s 29th and 30th minutes, the Vikings’ defense in that situation has managed to outdo the 2018 Bengals, the second-worst, by an extraordinary margin.
That Bengals team gave up 4.75 points per game in such situations, beating out the third-place 2012 Jaguars by 0.06 points. The distance between the 2021 Vikings and the 2018 Bengals is the same as the distance between that Bengals team and 2013 Cleveland Browns, in 40th place. That also happens to be the point difference between the 2013 Browns and the 2003 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in 311th place.
All of that is to say this year’s Vikings have the worst mark by an almost inconceivable amount.
It’s not as if the Vikings are bad defensively outside those two minutes, either. In the first 28 minutes of the game, they’ve given up the third-fewest points in the NFL and rank 7th for the 56 minutes outside of the final two minutes of each half.
It should also be noted that none of these happen in a world where the opposing team doesn’t have so many possessions in the final moments. It would be ideal to run out the clock in the final moments and gain a possession advantage heading into the second half, denying opposing teams that opportunity. One element of the Vikings giving up more points in the final moments of the first half is that they’ve defended the second-most plays in that timespan. Cut that down, and they might cut down on the number of points they allow.
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Still, the limitations of the end of the half can overwhelm a team like the Vikings. There are a number of things that make end-of-half drives distinct from drives over the rest of the game, some more obvious than others. The shape of the defense and the types of routes the offense will run are different because of a desire to stop the clock – that means more routes and defenders between the sideline and the numbers and fewer routes or defenders over the middle.
Defenses typically are tasked with defending all 53 1/3 yards of horizontal space on the field and generally feel more comfortable cheating away from the sideline rather than toward it, because the sideline is another defender — as the ball arrives, forcing a receiver out of bounds counts as an incompletion, while a ballcarrier gets tackled by the sideline.
Because defenses know that offenses will be throwing the ball, they can pin their ears back and rush the passer without worrying too much about overpursuing a run. This is one reason why sack rates on third-and-long have, year over year, been twice that of sack rates on other downs. In 2021, they’re even higher – 12.1 percent, compared to 5.0 percent.
The other reason sack rates are higher in those situations is the predefined depth of target. Quarterbacks aren’t helped too much by a two-yard pass on third-and-12, and so they have to wait a bit longer to get rid of the ball on those downs. This year, those passes have been a half-second longer.
That also happens to apply to end-of-half situations, where time pressure forces quarterbacks to seek deeper targets. It’s hard to drive 75 yards in a minute with only eight-yard gains.
Having that knowledge seems like an advantage for the defense, but the offense has some stuff in their favor too. Quarterbacks get into their hurry-up, no-huddle offense, which keeps defenders on the field and is more likely to tire them out, especially the defensive linemen, who often rotate. Not only that, the offense gets to choose which personnel are on the field; defenses respond to offensive personnel and if they know they have a tight end-safety or receiver-slot corner matchup they can exploit, they can force that mismatch.
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If that seems slanted toward the defense, it is. Defenses typically allow minus-0.09 expected points per play at the end of the half and otherwise allow plus-0.06 expected points per play in the first half – even though teams are much less likely to run the ball (a negative EPA play) in the two-minute drill than they are over the rest of the half.
Quarterbacks average 6.06 net passing yards per attempt at the end of halves and 6.86 otherwise. That may not seem like a lot, but that’s the difference between Ben Roethlisberger and Justin Herbert this year.
Curiously, this additional defensive capability doesn’t necessarily come directly from pressure but from dropping additional defenders into coverage. Teams rush four defensive linemen less often in these situations, trusting their additional coverage and the advantages an individual pass-rusher has in these situations to create uncomfortable situations for quarterbacks.
Defenses average 5.3 defensive backs on the field in two-minute situations, otherwise averaging 4.8 per play. They go from nickel (five DBs) to dime (six DBs) on a regular basis, and rarely trust a defense with just four defensive backs. Dime defenses only see the field on 9.2 percent of snaps in the first 28 minutes of the game, but that rockets up to 37.2 percent.
The additional penalty to taking a sack – lost time – does encourage quarterbacks to throw the ball away under pressure. So, even though pressure increases in these situations, sack rate remains about the same. Defenses are less likely to send five-plus rushers on a blitz and are concurrently less likely to send four linemen.
The coverage shells are a little different, too. Mixed coverages drop dramatically and zone coverages make up the differences. Defenses inclined toward man coverage will still use man coverage at the same rates, but those defenses committed to a mixture or combination coverages will lean on zone shells.
Basically, defenses look very little like their standard-down counterparts. They rarely have just four defensive backs and won’t use their complicated rush plans. Not only that, boutique and designer coverages drop off, leading to basic defensive shells.
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So, if the rest of the NFL gets better in the final two minutes of the first half, why do the Vikings get worse? And what are they doing differently than they normally do?
Like other teams, they abandon mixed coverages and rely on zone quite a bit more. Like other teams, they blitz a little less. And like other teams, they get more pressure in two-minute than they do regularly.
At a basic level, very little stands out. The Vikings increase their rate of three-deep and four-deep coverages, even supplementing their two-deep looks with Tampa 2-style coverages, with a linebacker covering the seam between the two safeties.
But they do change things schematically; the Vikings play with a less complex defense in the final two minutes – like most teams do – than they do in the first 28. The issue is that it seems like that’s what they’ve been thriving on. When the defense does such a great job creating confusing looks, dropping linebackers and cornerbacks in unusual places and forcing creative blitz looks and tough protection calls, abandoning that approach can seem like relief for opposing quarterbacks.
On top of that, a “fundamentals” vs “fundamentals” approach in football, which moves on from the chess match between opposing coordinators, can force differences in talent to come to the fore. If one team is simply more skilled in some areas, they can exploit that again and again without the coordinators able to pick up the slack.
The Vikings are limited in what they can do in this area. Part of the schematic confusion the Vikings create comes from their ability to line up six, seven, eight or even nine players up at the line of scrimmage and drop back an unknown number of players into coverage, many of them occupying short zones.
If they did that during the two-minute drill, they’d get burned deep constantly, as backpedaling safeties and linebackers would get torched by tight ends with acres of space and slot receivers with speed to spare.
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That’s not to say the Vikings are fundamentally doomed to fail in these situations. If they were, they’d probably lose in the same way every time. Instead, the loss to Detroit was a combination of poor execution and baffling playcalling. Against the Cardinals, it was a single blown coverage. Against the 49ers, they allowed a 19-play drive lasting eight minutes and 20 seconds, often getting out-leveraged at the point of attack. Against the Bengals, they simply didn’t have the speed.
Still, the disconnect between how the Vikings succeed on defense on most plays and how they need to play in the final two minutes is glaring. Minnesota doesn’t tend to play to give players space and close down and they don’t operate well in easily defined coverages.
The Vikings have been fantastic when blitzing in the final two minutes, and even though those blitz packages can’t look the same, they should try it again. They nearly earned a pick off of a blitz against the Lions and have a pressure rate of over 60 percent in those situations. They also had a pick against the Cowboys on a blitz in the final two minutes, though that was overruled on review. Their biggest play allowed was the Kyler Murray 77-yard touchdown, but that was a combination of an incredibly long play clock and a blown coverage.
Not only that, they shouldn’t be afraid to find ways to disguise. Allowing Harrison Smith to freelance and keeping a three-deep shell might be a better solution than simply setting up a picket fence of safeties in the end zone. It also leverages the fact that quarterbacks have become comfortable attacking a simple Vikings defense. It’s clear the Vikings don’t have the horses to always compete in one-on-one fundamental football scenarios, so it’s time to use their ability to disguise.
The Vikings are riding a weird razor’s edge between being a good team and a bad team. They certainly aren’t a normal team but if they can find a way to be consistent, they have an opportunity to gut out a run to the playoffs.
(Photo:Rey Del Rio/Getty Images)
Arif Hasan has been writing about the Vikings and the NFL for more than a decade, specializing in deep-dive analysis using both film and analytics to break down the most pressing questions surrounding the team. His work has appeared locally and nationally, featuring in publications like the Star Tribune, the LA Times, the International Business Times, Forbes, MSNBC and Bleacher Report. Prior to joining The Athletic, Arif wrote for Zone Coverage. Follow Arif on Twitter @ArifHasanNFL
