How the Vikings Offense Picked Apart the Texans

The Vikings put 34 points on the board against a good Texans defense just one week after Houston had smothered the Bears with their pass rush. That’s what can happen when your quarterback plays with good timing and gets the ball out of his hands, which is what Sam Darnold has been able to do frequently through the first three weeks of the season.

It’s also the result of Kevin O’Connell finding ways to break down Houston’s coverages and keep the Texans on their heels. Minnesota’s second touchdown of the game was a perfect example of this.

First, notice how the Vikings broke the huddle and raced up to the line before snapping the ball quickly:

There was a precise reason for this tactic. O’Connell didn’t want to give Houston time to easily adjust to where their personnel was aligned. That’s because they had wide receiver Justin Jefferson in the backfield and running back Aaron Jones on the perimeter. The Vikings were hoping to get a mismatch:

Houston’s defenders saw this at the last second and began scrambling before the snap to match up to the personnel and formation:

The route concept O’Connell had called was “Mesh Rail.” Here’s what it looked like with the reads numbered:

The alignment and quick snap got Justin Jefferson matched up on a linebacker (Azeez Al-Shaair), just as O’Connell had hoped:

But Al-Shaair actually did a decent job of fighting through traffic and getting over top of Jefferson. So Darnold would move to his second read, Aaron Jones.

Because the Texans were on their heels due to the Vikings racing up to the line, linebacker Henry To'oTo'o was left sprinting out to the perimeter to match up to Jones just as the ball was snapped. That not only made him late to start chasing Jones inside, but it also gave him little time to read the route concept and see the pick coming his way. And that resulted in a wide-open Jones for the touchdown:

That’s an excellent approach to a common route concept that caught the defense completely off guard.

O’Connell found plenty of other ways to put the Texans on their heels and take advantage of their tendencies. In general, Houston likes to match up to the offense’s alignment, whether they play man or zone. Meaning they generally don’t have their cornerbacks follow specific receivers around the field.

In this game, they were particularly zone heavy. So O’Connell attacked by getting Justin Jefferson working the middle of the field off of play-action on early downs.

This next example was a 1st-and-10 on the Vikings’ second drive. Tight end Josh Oliver aligned outside of Justin Jefferson initially. The Texans matched up with cornerback Kamari Lassiter over him: