Through the Head Coach's Eyes: Sam Darnold to Justin Jefferson

Breaking Down the Vikings' Game-Winning 39-Yard TD Pass vs. the Seahawks

While it initially may have looked like a broken play or a mistake by the Seahawks defense when Sam Darnold hit Justin Jefferson for a 39-yard touchdown pass with 4 minutes remaining, there was nothing accidental about it.

As Vikings Head Coach Kevin O’Connell said afterwards:

“It was a route adjustment there [and] those guys were on the same page.”

Going back to the start of the play, you can see that the Vikings came out in a 1x3 formation before shifting to a 3x1 with Justin Jefferson as the X-receiver to the backside:

The Vikings would run a version of “Dagger” to the front side on what O’Connell called:

“a pretty standard concept just with a little window dressing or kind of sauce to it.”

The “window dressing” and “sauce” he was referring to were the pre-snap motion, formation, and personnel distribution. The Vikings used this particular concept just two plays earlier, which is why O’Connell felt the need to dress it up differently and keep the defense off the scent. Below you can see what that prior play looked like:

Notice that Minnesota was in a stack to the 3-receiver side and Jordan Addison was the X-receiver to the backside instead of Jefferson.

The Seahawks would rotate to single-high on that play, so Addison ran a skinny post up the left seam:

Pressure led to an incompletion, but O’Connell wanted to get back to this play.

On the game-winner, the Vikings wouldn’t get single-high, though. Instead, the Seahawks would make sure to have safety help over top of Jefferson to the backside. They predictably played cover-2 and pretty much declared pre-snap that Darnold should look elsewhere:

“We had talked a little bit about that sequence. [Jefferson would] be on the back side, and if they wanted to […] shove coverage over to him, we thought […] J.A. or T.J. may be [open] on the front side.”

“But how it played out is [Jefferson] got such a clean good release on the inside release.”

“He felt the vertical grass and took it.”

This meant that instead of running some kind of in-breaker as was likely called (perhaps a post attacking the deep middle?), Jefferson could see that the safety was too far inside and taking it away. So he made an adjustment, got back out to the sideline where there was lots of space, and went vertical:

He was able to do this because his release was so clean and his route wasn’t disrupted at the line.

Darnold then did a great job of adjusting to Jefferson’s route before delivering an absolutely perfect ball to his outside shoulder:

That’s all the more impressive when you factor in the play-action, which made Darnold turn his back to the defense initially, as well as the immediate pressure that made Darnold have to climb the pocket. He was able to react to Jefferson on the fly while navigating the instant pressure. Here’s that end zone angle again:

Just an outstanding football play.

“I want those guys to have some freedom in those moments. Especially, we do a lot of things with Justin and Sam seeing the coverage and then with some route opportunities to get to at the line of scrimmage. And I think those guys have just gotten so comfortable with that stuff that they’re able to execute it like they did, which was […] absolutely the play of the game.”

Being on the same page has led the Vikings to a stunning 13-2 record. Their final two games are against the Packers and Lions and will play a huge role in defining their season. Darnold and Jefferson will need to continue seeing the field the same way for the Vikings to have a shot of getting the #1 seed in the NFC.