Vikings article on O’Connell that’s really about the Rams offense

After a long wait, the Vikings introduced former Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell as their head coach Thursday. With a successful Super Bowl run under his belt, hopes are high for the new head coach, though that’s not always a formula for future success.

Some of the more important elements of success will be difficult to divine early on. Good head coaches manage delegation, hands-on coaching, game planning, schedule management, clock management and general leadership in different ways, and almost none of those roles are easy to grasp until you become a head coach. While O’Connell mentioned the importance of those tasks in his introductory news conference, the execution of them can be another matter.

What we do know about O’Connell is that despite not holding official play-calling duties, he played a significant role in designing and developing the Rams offense. He also played a big role in the play-calling process on game days — at times calling plays in head coach Sean McVay’s stead. He and McVay were in a state of constant consultation that meant O’Connell contributed in a big way to the game-day decision-making. The Rams offense kept to the broad principles of what the franchise has done over the years, especially its emphasis on wide-zone running and a one-back personnel group with three receivers. But more important is the philosophy of establishing the “illusion of complexity,” a phrase that McVay, Matt LeFleur and Kyle Shanahan have all used.

“We’re doing a lot of things that are simple for us, but maybe a little bit more difficult for a defense to defend,” O’Connell explained Thursday. “That illusion of complexity where teams think that there’s a lot of offense that they’re defending. But really we’re only doing small details here and there just to change the picture, change angles, give ourselves an advantage wherever we see fit, both in the run game and in the pass game.”

On the field, that has meant running plays that can look identical to each other until the last moment. In that way, the offense can run plays that work off the previous play, and those can counter the best defensive response to the last play that was run. That’s one reason the Rams have built the run identity that they have.

The Rams offense — as pass-heavy as it can be — has been designed around a specific type of run, the outside zone. In the previous offensive regime, the Vikings were a zone-running team but were a bit more diverse in their deployment of the principal. The Vikings would more often be comfortable running variations of inside zone and split zone as well as non-zone plays like duo. The Rams focus primarily on the outside zone play.

While every team has outside zone in its playbook, the Rams’ reliance on it has been remarkable. Sports Info Solutions found that the Rams ran what they called “outside zone” on 44 percent of their running plays last year. The Bears were next highest at 33.3 percent. The NFL average was 21.3 percent, and the Vikings ran it 18 percent of the time.

That undersells the frequency of the concept, however. Other plays are functionally in the outside-zone family, and some offensive line coaches distinguish between “outside zone” and “wide zone” on plays that look pretty similar. If we look at all plays with zone footwork to the outside, the Rams led the league with 63.3 percent of their running plays using that approach. The Vikings ranked sixth in this metric but were still below 50 percent.

While this is complicated by the choices the running back makes, the underlying message is clear: outside zone matters. It’s the base play of every Mike Shanahan disciple, from the Kubiaks to Shanahan’s son and the McVay coaching tree. Because it forces defenders to start tracking to the sideline, it creates more space than other running plays when the running back cuts back with the ball, the quarterback pulls the ball on play action or the offense switches it up and runs a different play.

The difference between how the Vikings ran it with the Kubiaks and how McVay and his coaching tree have run it is one of intent. It’s about building a team around a run instead of building a team through the run. The Rams set up their runs in order to counter off of them, either with running plays with slight variations or with the passing game.

These layers can get the defense’s head spinning. On one play, they can run a standard outside zone, then run a similar-looking play with different techniques for the offensive linemen and different aiming point for a running back, then run a quarterback keeper the next play, run a screen off of that, run a play-action screen off of that, then run a fake play-action screen to a deep shot off of that.

The Vikings, by contrast, created offense through the running game and designed their runs around the principle of manufacturing explosive plays. That means a more diverse running game as they needed to keep opponents off guard in their run sets. They even incorporated college versions of split-zone running into their scheme. The Vikings’ passing game still built off what their running game did, but the focus of their design was to prioritize effective runs first and create successful passing plays second.

The core of the play hasn’t changed in the decades since it has gained popularity. Mike Shanahan’s 2004 playbook has a weak-side outside zone, which the Rams favor, that looks a lot like plays we saw in the Super Bowl.

When outside zone is run to the strong side (the side of the play with the tight end), Shanahan’s instructions told the running back to “set track at butt of tight end, get ball downhill, run stretch course.” But in this play, where the back is running away from the strength of the formation, the ball carrier is instructed to “set track at imaginary butt of play-side tight end.”

Otherwise, the instructions for this play are the same for every lineman: They all take a lateral step in the direction of the play and then block according to a set of simple rules. That lateral step is a distinguishing factor in zone schemes. While other running plays will have individual linemen step laterally on occasion, zone runs tend to feature all linemen stepping play side at once and in sync. Different offensive line coaches will ask for different approaches — some keep that step parallel to the line of scrimmage, while others have them take that step backward to some degree — but in either instance, it gets the line moving to the sideline in an effort to win some gaps.

The rule system for zone blocking is meant to be somewhat universal for players on the line. Those lined up closer to the direction of the play (i.e., those left of the center on a run going to the left) will evaluate whether or not they are “covered” or “uncovered” by an opposing defender. A covered offensive lineman will have a player head-up over them or shaded to their play-side gap (for a run going to the left, that means a player in the gap to their left). If covered, that player is their assignment; they will attempt to get to that player’s outside shoulder and prevent him from going in the direction of the play. So for defenders in their play-side gap, they have to cross that defender’s face and wall them off.

For uncovered linemen, they first check if there is a defender in the back-side (away from the direction of the play) gap. If not, they move up to the second level in the direction of the play and take on the defender fitted to the blocker’s nearest play-side gap. If there is a defender in their back-side gap, they will attempt to execute a “slip” block, which is when they combo block with their partnered offensive linemen before slipping off and getting to the second level.

Different zone schemes will ask different things of blockers on the back side of plays. For some, they want the back-side defenders to cut block and bring defensive linemen down, which is harder now with modern NFL rules. Others, like the Rams’, will have those back-side blockers follow the same rules as the play-side blockers. In effect, this often results in the tackle and the guard teaming up to wall off a defensive tackle to create a big back-side gap.

These can change depending on particular details. They might have different initial lateral steps for covered and uncovered linemen, or they might want someone to chip a back-side defender if they are farther away and so on. But the setup gives them an easy-to-follow set of rules that gets the whole line moving in one direction and can create a number of gaps in the running game for the back to use.

Depending on the running backs coach and the offense, the back will have different reads. They can’t be too complicated because of how fast running plays develop, so they often use shortcuts like “reading color,” or seeing if the opponents’ helmet or jersey flashes in a gap. If they see color, they might immediately read the next back-side gap and move on down the line.

These can be characterized as bounce, bang, bend. If the play-side edge defender is not in the outside gap, the running back “bounces” to the perimeter, though that just means maintaining his track to the outside. If there is a defender in that gap, he will read one gap down. No defender in that gap means a “bang” read one gap back from the first read. In the above example of a weak-side outside zone, that means the “bounce” is outside of the tackle while the “bang” is between the tackle and the guard. On a different play, the bounce might be outside the tight end while the bang is between the tight end and tackle.

The “bend” read at that point is to find one more gap down, in this case between the center and the guard. Running plays are never this clean, however, and the third read is usually just an attempt to find space anywhere on the back side of runs.

There are even more wrinkles one can dive into here. Some coaches believe there’s a difference between “outside zone” and “wide zone,” and will instruct their outermost blocker on the play side to block differently, with the running back moving his read one gap down and primarily attacking the inside shoulder of the tackle instead of the outside. Others will call that second play “mid zone” instead of wide zone, and so on.

In any case, the running game is built around this race to the sideline and a set of running back reads. A well-executed outside zone can look fantastic.

The Rams, like the Vikings, craft much of their running game from under center rather than shotgun, a near-universal feature of these offenses. Of the top seven offenses in percentage of runs to come from under center, five come from the Shanahan-McVay tree: Atlanta, Tennessee, Minnesota, Cleveland and the Rams.

Though Kyle Shanahan himself has decreased the number of under-center runs in his offense, he did give a good explanation of why it was important to run from under center instead of shotgun in 2017.

“Every time you’re under center,” he said, “you’ve got a lot more run options and a lot more play-action options and a lot more movement options off of your runs.

“Your play choices are endless,” he continued. “You can do everything. Once you get into the gun, certain things are cut in half. Play action is not as good because it happens quicker. You can’t hold the ball out there for as long … it just eliminates it being balanced.”

Shanahan might have brought back some flexibility with his use of pre-snap motion. On shotgun runs in 2021, the 49ers ranked first in pre-snap motion usage, with 80 percent of their runs from shotgun coming with some sort of pre-snap motion. For Shanahan-style running teams, this is the other option to running from under center. These motions can turn into receiver runs, and the fly sweep has been popular in this school of offense, with the 2018 Rams deploying it at an amazing rate.

The Rams built their passing offense around similar principles in the running game, crafting a few base plays that they like to work with and building off of them. With Matthew Stafford, they decreased their play-action usage fairly substantially but still made the play-fake a big part of their game.

“Running the football and the marriage with the right kind of pass game is what makes an offensive system what it is,” O’Connell explained. “We’ve talked about that term: ‘illusion of complexity.’ You’ve got to be able to do both. You’ve got to have balance because if defenses have to defend both things and they don’t know … we’ve got an advantage right there to go do a lot of things on that particular snap that will help us score points on that drive.”

That play-action usage provides the bulk of the under-center passing offense. Generally speaking, pass attempts only happen on either play-action under center or from the shotgun: 87.5 percent of all of their under-center passes came with some sort of play action incorporated.

Instead, much of their “complexity” came from running similar-looking plays from a few different personnel groupings and formations, only to change a key element to fool defenses. One good example comes from Odell Beckham’s crucial third-down conversion at the top of the second quarter in the Super Bowl, a crossing route that effectively “picked” Bengals cornerback Chidobe Awuzie, who had Beckham in man coverage.

QB1 and @obj are heatin' up! 🔥

📺: #SBLVI on NBC pic.twitter.com/3SKluipMOc

— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) February 14, 2022

The Bengals were in Cover-1 Robber, meaning they had a single-high safety and an underneath middle safety with some freelance capability, with everyone else in man coverage. Normally, crossing routes against this kind of coverage are merely adequate. NFL defenses can avoid rub routes and simply need the speed to keep up with their assigned defender.

But the Rams had shown a propensity to run some deep sideline concepts, like a sail, which puts three receivers to a sideline at three different depths, with one usually coming in on an over route from the other side of the formation. The Rams have run a deeper version of this than most teams, with one receiver running a deep corner and another receiver hitting an even deeper landmark 25 or more yards down the field.

In this play, Beckham — who thrives in offenses that set up his routes like this — fakes a move upfield for a corner or seam route to replicate the sail routes they’ve run before committing to the crosser. That, plus the Bengals’ off coverage, made it much easier to create the collision that broke Beckham open.

The Rams passing game has been built around this in a big way, and they’ve done a good job of sequencing similar-looking plays, sometimes in the same drive, to catch defenses off guard. On top of that, the Rams found ways to scramble and innovate in response to losing Beckham partway through the game. Without Beckham, the Bengals were able to double-team Cooper Kupp and create situations where he was effectively triple-teamed.

By the fourth quarter, the Rams were creating new formations on the sideline that they hadn’t put in their game plan. But they ran the same plays out of these new formations. It was the illusion of complexity: They kept the offense simple for their own players, but it appeared complex to the Bengals defense.

O’Connell made clear that he would be importing a good chunk of the Rams offense into the Vikings offense, but that doesn’t mean dispensing everything that set those two offenses apart. The Rams used quite a bit of 11 personnel, which means three receivers, one tight end and one back. The Vikings use a fullback and often deployed two tight ends as well, leaving room for just two or even one receiver on the field at a time.

This new offense doesn’t signal the end of C.J. Ham in Minnesota. O’Connell thinks Ham is a great player and will find ways to implement him — much like LaFleur and Shanahan have used their fullbacks and blocking tight ends in Green Bay and San Francisco. One element of McVay’s game planning was the ability to isolate a player or schematic wrinkle and exploit that throughout the game, something O’Connell has adopted in his time leading the Rams offense.

Putting a fullback on the field encourages defenses to deploy their third linebacker and keep their nickel corner on the bench. They can then attack that player, one that defenses have been investing less and less in over the past few years. And they can do it running the same plays they always run, with Ham running a route that another player might have run in a different formation.

The Vikings offense will evolve in big ways but will look similar in others. At the core of how they operate, however, is an outside-zone running offense that wants opposing defenses to think it’s bigger than it is.