The Minnesota Vikings are 5-0 heading into the bye week and the offense has seen its fair share of both successes and struggles.
Quarterback Sam Darnold won the NFC Offensive Player of the Month award for September after throwing a league-leading 11 touchdowns and bringing the Vikings to 20-point leads in three of their first four games.
The offense itself has shown the ability to generate explosives in the passing game and has thrived in the running game when they run duo. However, if they want to truly make a run, they will need to address these things on offense.
Sam Darnold needs to be more calculated
The Vikings do a really good job throwing 20+ yards down the field. This season, Darnold is 11-21 for 270 yards, three touchdowns and 2 interceptions. From 0-20 yards, Darnold is 59-84 for 616 yards, eight touchdowns and two interceptions.
The Vikings love to attack down the field and it's worked for the most part. They are sixth in the NFL in scoring averaging 27.8 points per game. One area they can do a better job at is attacking the shallow areas of the field. They have been trying a little too hard to drive the football down the field but the return of T.J. Hockenson could end up spiking that rapidly.
Mitigate offensive line issues
The Vikings have allowed 53 pressures per Pro Football Focus this season but 30 of them have been allowed by right guard Ed Ingram (17) and center Garrett Bradbury (13). One of the interesting elements with the Vikings' offensive line is they have the fifth-highest pressure percentage allowed per Next Gen stats but the ninth-best pass block win rate, which is measured over 2.5 seconds.
The Vikings could try and trade for an offensive lineman before the trade deadline but you would have to find someone worth trading for and also agree to the correct trade compensation. That is tough to do so the Vikings might have to look at different ways to mitigate the issues. One of them is throwing the ball shorter. Darnold has the second-highest time to throw per Next Gen Stats at 3.14 seconds because head coach Kevin O'Connell loves to attack down the field. If you shrink the time to throw by 0.25 seconds, that will make an impact and mesh with the above element to fix.
Establish the run
The Vikings offense has done a good job of sustaining points and staying relatively balanced. The running game is up to league average, ranking 17th in the NFL at 115.4 yards per game. Aaron Jones has been very successful with a 60.6 success rate and Ty Chandler has generated some gashing runs.
One of the things that the Vikings have done well is run duo. Despite the issues on the interior with pass blocking, they do a great job moving defenders to open gaps for the running back. Doing so with consistency will help elevate the Vikings' offense. The biggest question is if Chandler can be just as effective as Jones?
