MINNEAPOLIS — This doesn’t happen. Midway through a season, playing at home, NFL teams typically don’t struggle this much to time up the snap. Flinching a couple of times? Sure. False starts are part of the game. But this many? Eight times?
“No excuse,” superstar receiver Justin Jefferson said.
He was disgusted. All of the Minnesota Vikings were — and understandably so. Mainly as a byproduct of their own doing, the Vikings squandered a chance to establish some momentum amid a season that can be best described as a grind.
The Baltimore Ravens beat them 27-19. And the final score doesn’t really do justice to the mess.
Veteran right tackle Brian O’Neill was whistled for three false starts, while fellow offensive linemen Christian Darrisaw and Blake Brandel, tight end Ben Yurosek, Jefferson and quarterback J.J. McCarthy were called for one apiece.
In the last 25 years, only once has a team committed more false starts in a home game. It happened in 2009. The Bills, quarterbacked by Trent Edwards, lost to a lowly Browns team. They were flagged for nine false starts. The last time a home team was penalized for eight of them? In 2005, the Rams, still playing in St. Louis, blew a lead against a lackluster Eagles team.
“Whatever was going on with the cadence, or whatever it may be,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said, “just not acceptable in any way.”
Perhaps as disconcerting as anything is the lack of circumstances that would create such confusion. The U.S. Bank Stadium crowd was mostly subdued. If there was a sound, it was fairly close to white noise.
The offensive line had continuity. All five men on the front played together last week, and four of the starters are veterans. McCarthy was making his fourth career start. Sunday wasn’t his first showing. The Ravens weren’t even doing anything diabolical at the line of scrimmage. The Vikings weren’t yo-yo motioning any differently than they have since O’Connell became the head coach nearly four years ago.
What, then, was the culprit? How could an experienced unit have this much trouble? Nobody had a definitive answer.
“I haven’t been a part of something like that before,” O’Neill said.
It’s not exactly an answer, but Sunday’s performance can be what happens when you pair a young quarterback with a team that isn’t firing on all cylinders.
So much of the Vikings’ season has been defined by this dynamic. Earlier this fall, the Vikings weren’t protecting well enough, and their defense wasn’t the dominant group it needed to be. Their Week 9 victory over the Lions offered a glimpse at the correct formula. But the snapshot was fleeting.
“As a quarterback,” McCarthy said, “you’re the orchestrator of the orchestra. I take full responsibility for anything that happens on that field.”
Still, penalties weren’t the only problem against the Ravens. The Vikings turned the ball over three times, the most pivotal of them being a third-and-1 deep-ball attempt on their first possession in the third quarter. At the time, Minnesota led 10-9. The team had botched an end-of-half sequence with McCarthy throwing the ball away for an incompletion, rather than taking the sack to run the clock. It gave Baltimore a chance to hit a late field goal.
In this situation, however, having ripped off two runs for a total of 22 yards, O’Connell chose to take a downfield shot to Jefferson. He said afterward that he planned to run the football on what would have been the ensuing fourth down.
But the Vikings didn’t get there. McCarthy’s pass hung in the air, Jefferson tripped and Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey intercepted it like he was hauling in a punt.
Giveaways have been a problem all season long. Only the Dolphins (17) have turned the ball over more times than the Vikings (16). And unlike last season, they aren’t evening out their margin by taking the ball away from opponents. They have forced 11 fewer turnovers than at this point last season.
The lack of extra possessions is compounded by Minnesota’s inability to use the run game as its primary offensive plan. The franchise signed two interior offensive linemen in free agency (guard Will Fries and injured center Ryan Kelly), drafted a left guard in the first round (Donovan Jackson), re-signed running back Aaron Jones and traded for running back Jordan Mason. Yet the team’s run rate has decreased year over year.
On Sunday, the Vikings averaged 6.7 yards per carry. Yet when trailing, they threw on almost 80 percent of their snaps.
“I thought we got it going a bit,” O’Neill said. “I thought there was some more out there for us. But we would hit a good run, and it would be first-and-10, and then it’d be first-and-15. That’s on us — to not screw it up.”
The shame in this particular loss is that the Vikings defense did its job, especially in the first half. Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson can only be kept quiet for so long. Eventually, both he and running back Derrick Henry, working behind a load of a fullback in Patrick Ricard, began to mow over the Minnesota front.
That’s how McCarthy found himself in catch-up mode. His play was far from floor-lifting. He held the ball too long in spurts. A handful of his passes were tipped at the line of scrimmage. His accuracy was up and down. McCarthy completed only 20 of his 42 pass attempts for 248 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions. According to Next Gen Stats, his completion percentage was 12 percent lower than expected.
These inconsistencies aren’t entirely surprising. They’re why the Vikings sought to re-sign Daniel Jones as insurance. They’re why O’Connell spent ample time during the course of McCarthy’s rehab from a high-ankle sprain talking about his mechanics.
The instability of a young and inexperienced quarterback is also why the Vikings spent as much as they did on this roster. The goal was to lessen the impact McCarthy’s play would have on the final result.
“Every snap right now,” O’Connell said, “there is major growth and learning and teaching going on. For a guy who was really making his fourth start.”
As much as McCarthy owned the pre-snap debacle, O’Connell didn’t pin the chaos solely on his quarterback. A few of the false starts came on motions, with Jefferson tilting his head with a level of frustration he does not typically show.
Aaron Jones insinuated the Ravens’ defensive movement may have played a role. O’Connell said the team tried to simplify the cadence in real time. Five of the false starts moved the Vikings behind the sticks on first down, causing O’Connell to revert to his list of “get back on track” plays.
Both the coach and O’Neill suggested a forthcoming all-offense meeting to review the penalties as a path forward. That will be essential if they hope to do what they’ve done only once this season against a formidable foe — insulate their work-in-progress quarterback with quality everywhere else.
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