TJ Hockenson, JJ McCarthy, and the Reinvention of the Minnesota Vikings
Despite a lot of success, the Vikings offense needs a rebrand, their Tight Ends are the key to making it work.
If there’s one thing we know about the current regime in Minnesota, it’s that they are unwilling to make the good the enemy of the great. After a breakout 2022 season that saw 13 wins, they entered a soft rebuild, knowing they did not have the juice to contend for real. After a 2023 half-season where QB Kirk Cousins looked as good as he ever had in his career, they were unwilling to rest on his record, getting younger and moving forward with first-rounder JJ McCarthy and FA reclamation Sam Darnold. Unwilling again to settle, the Vikings let Sam Darnold walk after another breakout season in which he put up terrific numbers and the team won 14 games, turning the fleet forward into strange seas with McCarthy. The point is that Minnesota, unlike so many front offices and coaching staffs, is not afraid to turn away from success if needed. With their latest transition, a pivot may be needed in how this offense is built.
The McVay Way
Kevin O’Connell has not fallen far from the tree. While the McVay offenses of yore with Jared Goff were heavily under-center and PA based, the new ones have adjusted to modern defenses by asking a bit more of the QB. The backbone of his offense, like McVay’s since acquiring Stafford, has been built around the dropback pass game. This means they’re in the gun a fair bit and asking the QB to consistently get through progressions and manage shifting pockets. While he is indeed a master of it, he’s mostly had veteran QBs to do it.
Despite overall success with Darnold, cracks began to form with mismanagement of pressure and issues making reads on time. Despite the favorable surroundings with good concept answers and great pass-catchers, it’s still a lot to handle for the QB even in a pure progression world wherein he isn’t required to digest any additional layers beyond what is and is not open in sequence. It still can be all hard to see if you have a lot of options, set timing, and few extra protectors.
McCarthy
JJ McCarthy was a perfect fit for the Michigan offenses he ran, but they ran a certain way. They were pure Harbaugh, heavy, downhill-oriented, and diverse in the run game.
I think this is true for almost any young QB, but it’s important for the Vikings to keep JJ McCarthy insulated. Luckily the offense that would necessitate fits him well. Many of us had him pegged as more of a point-and-shoot “game manager” with the potential to grow into more with time. He does remind me, and I think a lot of us, of guys like Jared Goff and Kirk Cousins who maximize systems where things are structured and reads are simple/defined. Heavy on the run game, heavy on PA, stuff that doesn’t ask them necessarily to spread the field, navigate the rush, and process too much. The more he can be in situations where he has a lot in protection, run-action, and just 2-3 routes to sort through, the better, especially early in his career.
Managing Hockenson
While TJ Hockenson is, in general, competent enough to function when asked to block in-line at the Y, the Vikings took him off the field quite often when they wanted to run the football out of 11 personnel this past year. It’s never been a *strength* of his, again he’s only been good enough to function at the position which is all he needs, but his every-down role diminished despite the fact he is probably their 3rd best overall route-runner and receiver regardless of position.
This is due in part to management of injury and an attempt to minimize his exposure, ultimately you don’t want a guy with his history to keep getting too beat up, but due in larger part to the emergence of Josh Oliver as potentially the best in-line blocker in the NFL. His presence at the Y was too important to the run game to sacrifice.
Both out of general desire and as a way to get Hockenson on the field, the Vikings increased their use of 12 personnel, something that, when you look at the roster as a whole, needs to expand dramatically.
Hockenson is one of the most detailed, deceptive route-runners the position has to offer, and while he doesn’t have the quickness that Mark Andrews and Travis Kelce have to be elite underneath receivers in the slot, he’s able to separate on DBs and stretch the middle of the field. The clues layered in the roster lead us uniformly in the same direction. Between additions on the IOL like Will Fries, the strengths of Hockenson, the development of a young QB, particularly this one, the lack of a good 3rd WR, and the presence of multiple TEs who demand significant snaps, there’s really only one way to build this ship.
Bigger Vikings, Bigger Longship
Overall, the changes in personnel usage I’m suggesting won’t seem like much, but the margins here are impactful. The Vikings used 12 and 13 personnel a combined 25.62% of the time. That’s relatively high in the league, but it makes more sense for them to be up in the 30s with teams like Detroit and Vegas. I don’t know if they should be as extreme as Baltimore, who spend just 27.77% of their snaps in 11 personnel and a comfortable majority in 2-3 TE (if you include Patric Ricard as a TE which, in their new offense, I do), but with their TE room and CJ Ham at FB, they should be closer to that than their current 3 WR rate of 56.65%. This would be a departure from the McVay version of this offense and closer to that of Shanahan or McDaniel, whose 11 personnel rates sit in the 30s.
Building it out
The Vikings run game needs to be filled out. They major in duo and outside zone like any McVay run game will, but it’s the limit of what they’re good at. That’s enough if your run game functions as a complement to your dropback pass game, but it’s probably not going to work if you’re flipping that dynamic with the run game as the backbone of the whole offense. If you look at units like SF and Detroit, they run a huge variety of schemes at a high-level. It’s not enough to just call things, you have to master them, and these run games have a mastery of everything.
The Lions also hang their hats on OZ and duo, but in addition to more variety in presentations and adjustments wired into their baseline schemes, they’re able to be successful breaking out different things. There are far more layers. The more heavy bodies you have in a formation, the more ways you can configure blocking schemes, and the Lions take full advantage. The Vikings will need those layers if they want to shift the down-to-down load onto the run game.
Again while blocking in-line isn’t his strength, Hockenson is no TE-imposter. Pairing him with Oliver gives them 2 big bodies attached to the OL and forces defenses to deal with much more in the box. He gives you way more than even the best blocking receivers as a move blocker and handler of support defenders.
What this gives Minnesota is overwhelming numbers and force on the LOS, if defenses are going to commit resources to stopping the pass, they should commit their resources away from that.
For the Lions, allow of that allows them to feast on play-action and keep the QB comfortable and in rhythm with easier stuff that is even more explosive and efficient than the hard stuff. For lack of a better term, this holds McCarthy’s hand, but if the run game is good enough and boxes are heavy enough, it’s a consistent means of production in the passing game.
With box conflict, teams lose the ability to specialize in coverage against receivers, particularly Jefferson. If they can get to a point where the run game can be leaned on against 2-high looks, all McCarthy will have to do is turn around and hand the ball off until they give Jefferson and Addison 1v1s outside. At that point, he can sit and rip digs, comebacks, posts, overs, etc for big chunks without being overexposed to “real” quarterbacking. In theory, by sacrificing numbers out-wide, defenses can commit resources to the box with the conflict being diminished, but that’s not the case if you have real 1v1 winners. At that point, the 3rd receiver makes the defense’s life easier by removing the constraints against capping those guys downfield and getting fancy in how they double and take them away with 2 available safeties. Minnesota has to force teams to choose, consistently.
This is where TJ Hockenson is the key. The Vikings don’t need to make sacrifices in any way to build their offense like this, Hockenson is their 3rd best pass-catcher overall and can do a lot of the 3rd WR things. While the idea is to get heavy, they can still access their 11 personnel passing menu whenever they want with Hockenson at the F. While the true 11 personnel rate should drop from the 50s to the 30s in percent, the practical, felt drop is less, while still reaping the same benefits.
Path To Contention
Not only is there a path to overall contention with an offense built this way, there is a path to elite production. The 49ers have gradually taken the reins off of Purdy a bit, but this is how his career started. The Lions have arguably had the NFL’s best offense over the past 3 years doing it this way. The “low-event” conception of run-first offenses with “game managing” QBs is in need of a rethink. If these offenses have good receivers and a great run game, they’re now the most explosive and efficient in the sport. With 2 big TEs that can play at all times, including a 250-pound flex guy, and 2 WRs that can win all over the field, including the best receiver in the world, the Vikings can threaten the top of the league offensively without asking their young QB to do anything particularly difficult. Launching bombs to Justin Jefferson, from clean pockets, without much to sort through or manage, in the grand NFL scheme of things, isn’t all that hard if the environment is right.
Very interesting read, and makes a lot of sense