If you haven't gotten your hands on a copy by now, the 2015 Football Outsiders Almanac is available for your reading pleasure. You can get yourself a copy from their website and download it immediately. . .or, if you like the paper version, you can have it delivered. Either way, it's a pretty good piece of reading to get you ready for the 2015 NFL season from both a real and fantasy football perspective.
We were fortunate enough to be able to send some questions in to the folks from Football Outsiders about their thoughts on the team for this season. Answering the questions was Sterling Xie, who wrote the section on the Minnesota Vikings in this year's version of the FOA. We got the chance to submit five questions, and those questions and the answers are below. I'll put the questions in bold, the answers in a block quote, and any additional commentary I might have on the responses in the standard text.
With that, here we go!
1. In the Vikings' piece for the FOA, it was noted that the uptick in Teddy Bridgewater's deep ball accuracy coincided with the emergence of Charles Johnson, who replaced the struggling Cordarrelle Patterson in Minnesota's lineup about halfway through the season. The team also acquired Mike Wallace in a trade with Miami, and he has a reputation as a field-stretcher. Of those two receivers, who do you think will emerge as Minnesota's #1 guy in 2015 and why?
I guess that depends on what you mean by No. 1 guy. Apart from the Week 12 game against Green Bay, Johnson was much more efficient in 2014 than Wallace has ever been in his career. Johnson also runs a more varied route tree, so I could see him leading the Vikings in targets next year. However, with all the focus on his albatross of a contract, it seems people have forgotten how dangerous Wallace can be. He was a poor fit in Miami's quick-hitting passing game, yet still compiled 10 touchdowns and a solid DVOA figure (11.8%, 19th among WRs last year). He's a much better fit in Norv Turner's vertically oriented passing game, especially when Turner opened up the offense for Bridgewater at the end of last season. So to make a long-winded answer short, I think Johnson leads the team in targets and receptions, but Wallace leads the team in receiving yards, yards per catch and big plays in general.
Well, after a couple of years where the team has had issues at the wide receiver position, it's nice to see that there's even a debate as to who will be the team's #1 receiver, even if the definition of "#1 receiver" can mean different things to different people. In a Vikings context, I think that Johnson is going to end up playing the Cris Carter to Wallace's Randy Moss. . .as Xie says, Johnson will probably get more targets than Wallace will, but Wallace will be bringing the bigger plays to Minnesota's offense.
(And no, I did not in any way, shape, or form suggest that Charles Johnson and Mike Wallace are on the same level as Cris Carter and Randy Moss. Just that Johnson will be more of the "possession" type of guy while Wallace is more of a deep threat. Just wanted to clarify.)
2. A two-parter regarding the return of Adrian Peterson. Obviously, as one of the game's more dynamic players, his absence in 2014 was huge. How do you quantify exactly what his return does for Minnesota's offense? Also, FOA notes that, in Peterson's last full season of 2013, the Vikings were the best team in the NFL at running out of the shotgun in terms of DVOA. Why do you feel that Peterson is so successful running out of the shotgun formation?
Answering the second question first, Peterson's shotgun success is partly a byproduct of small sample size. He was very good when Minnesota asked him to run out of the gun instead of an I formation, but that was more the exception than the rule. However, that tidbit does illustrate a larger point: At his peak, Peterson was a transcendent player capable of wreaking havoc out of any alignment. We can see how defenses changed their game plans with Peterson gone: Last year, teams played nickel against Minnesota on 51 percent of snaps, compared to just 38 percent in 2013, when they had to load the box against Peterson. If he's close to the player he's been, Peterson's return can only have a positive domino effect on the rest of the offense.
In Norv Turner's offense, the Vikings have played a lot more out of the shotgun than they have in past years. In 2013, the final year under Bill Musgrave, 65% of the carries by all Minnesota running backs came out of a two-back set. In the first year of the Norv Turner era, that figure dropped to 34%. Now that Jerome Felton isn't going to be paving the way and the Vikings are much deeper at the wide receiver position, I'd expect that the trend towards more shotgun/pistol sets is going to continue, and that Peterson will have more opportunities to run against more nickel-type of defensive sets. Sounds good to me.
3. Now that the insane brow-beating he took in the pre-draft process is in the past and we can all see how ridiculous it really was, what's the ceiling for Teddy Bridgewater, in your opinion?
The only thing more insane than fussing over preseason is fussing over pro days. Anyways, we can look at Bridgewater from both a numbers and scouting perspective. FO's Andrew Healy came up with a system from projecting college QBs to the NFL called QBASE, and his projections have Bridgewater falling roughly between the likes of Jay Cutler, Eli Manning and Daunte Culpepper. QBASE isn't perfect (otherwise Bridgewater wouldn't have fallen so far in the first place), but I think that it's about right here: Bridgewater's median outcome is a second-tier quarterback capable of leading his team to relatively consistent postseason appearances. If he wants to raise his ceiling, he'll need to show more consistent accuracy at passes of all depths, in my opinion. Bridgewater may not ever be John Elway with the deep ball given his lack of plus arm strength, but he needs to hit the short and intermediate throws at a higher rate to make up for that. If the quarterback from the last six games is here to stay, I think Bridgewater's ceiling becomes a top-10 quarterback by the time he reaches his prime.
Obviously, not everybody is as high on Teddy Bridgewater as we are. I'm not sure if anyone is as high on Teddy Bridgewater as we are. But I think his ceiling is slightly higher than Xie gives him credit for. He's added muscle this offseason, and appears to have better arm strength than he did last season. It wouldn't surprise me to see those trends continue for the next couple of years. . .after all, Bridgewater still has plenty of room for physical development, and the mental part of his game appears to already be at an advanced level. We'll see.
4. The Vikings have young, talented players at each level of the defense. Of all the players that have started to emerge, which one player is the biggest key to Minnesota's defense continuing to make strides?
This is a good question that gives me lots of options to choose from, but I'll go with Anthony Barr. I think Everson Griffen and Harrison Smith are already true foundational pieces on the line and secondary, and Barr is easily Minnesota's best hope for a linebacker to reach that same status. Even as a rookie, Barr was the most versatile player on the Vikings' front seven, whether it was rushing off a wide-9 technique on the edge, dropping into coverage, or setting the edge as the SAM linebacker. It wasn't perfect—our charting stats portrayed him as solid in coverage but below-average against the run—but he certainly didn't look like someone who had only been playing defense for two years before the NFL. Barr reminds me a bit of Jamie Collins in New England, and if he becomes the same kind of Swiss Army knife as Collins, that gives Mike Zimmer so many more options when game planning on defense.
Barr might be the most exciting player the Vikings have on the defensive side. . .and, given that they have players like Griffen, Smith, and Xavier Rhodes, that's some pretty high praise. I was surprised that they thought so highly of Barr in coverage, as that was supposed to be one of the weaker parts of his game coming out of UCLA. Hopefully he's fully recovered from the knee issues that slowed him early in camp, and we'll be able to see the true power of this fully operational Death Star young linebacker.
5. Your article on the Vikings states that, per the grading done by Football Outsiders, Rick Spielman has garnered a top-five grade in each of the past three drafts. Do you think he's getting enough credit for what he's done since being given the reins as the team's GM, or do you feel that past indiscretions may have people hesitant to give him that sort of credit?
Quick correction: It's actually a compilation of grades from sites like SI, ESPN, etc. So the article is meant to illustrate the "mainstream consensus" that has formed in the days after the draft. And by that consensus, Spielman has certainly gotten at least some credit from draftniks, even if his name doesn't usually come up in the best GMs discussion (Sporting News recently ranked him 19th). The reason Spielman hasn't gotten as much credit as, say, John Schneider, is because all that young talent has yet to translate into playoff or Super Bowl appearances. That's understandable, since the members of his first draft class are just entering their fourth seasons. If and when the winning comes, mainstream recognition for Spielman will follow in short order.
That's understandable, I suppose. . .hopefully Spielman will start getting that credit this year. Still, given the state of the Vikings' roster when Spielman took over compared to what it is now, there's been some pretty impressive turnover since he was given the reins as the full time, "final answer" football guy in the front office. No more Triangle of Authority or Rhombus of Reason or what have you with the originator of Rickspeak in charge.
So, that was our opportunity to pick the brains of the folks from Football Outsiders. Thanks to Sterling Xie for taking the time to sit down and answer our questions, and really. . .get yourself a copy of the 2015 FOA.