Now-fired OC John DeFilippo is the scapegoat for the Vikings’ unwatchable offense

Is this going to fix Kirk Cousins and crew in enough time for the Vikings to sneak into the playoffs?

Kirk Cousins wasn’t supposed to be the quarterback of a .500 team in 2018. He was supposed to be the power-up that boosted a good team to greatness and fought off the demons that have been haunting the Vikings since (checks notes) the inception of their franchise.

Instead, the quarterback who stared down a list of suitors and hand picked his fully guaranteed $84 million landing spot in Minnesota has been unable to step out of Case Keenum’s shadow. On Monday, his offense managed just seven points, all of which came after the Seahawks had already decided the outcome of a contest between two potential playoff teams.

In the past three weeks, Minnesota has humbly bowed out of the NFC North race behind an offense that’s scored just 13.7 points per game — more than only the lowly Jaguars and Cardinals in that span. And while Jacksonville can turn to its never-ceasing quarterback instability and Arizona can point at a rookie quarterback and an ongoing rebuild to explain away their problems, the Vikings haven’t had any easy answers when it comes to why they’ve been borderline unwatchable one season after an NFC title game run.

So on Tuesday, they settled for a hard one — by firing offensive coordinator John DeFilippo.

DeFilippo’s product as an offensive coordinator never matched his hype

Over the past two years, DeFilippo’s name has been a constant presenceon lists touting the next waveof NFL head coaching prospects. After building Carson Wentz from an FCS standout to an MVP favorite in fewer than two years as the Philadelphia Eagles’ quarterback coach, the former FCS QB he was supposed to be the man to turn Cousins into the next great Vikings quarterback. Minneapolis, after all, was the franchise that developed Teddy Bridgewater into a Pro Bowler, played backdrop to the most efficient season of Sam Bradford’s career, and turned Case Keenum into a $16 million per year starter in the past three seasons alone.

But Cousins never found that extra gear. In fact, the longer he spent with DeFilippo, the worse he got.

The Vikings have gotten more conservative as the season has worn on. Despite completing more of his passes over the latter half of his season, Cousins is throwing for fewer yards per attempt and 0.7 fewer yards per completion. That may not seem like much, but that’s roughly the difference between Mitchell Trubisky and Blake Bortles this fall.

These issues bled through the insufficient bandages of the league’s 30th-ranked rushing offense and made Minnesota easy to figure out. Adam Thielen, who began his season with eight-straight 100+ receiving yard performances, has just one in the Vikings’ last five games. Stefon Diggs, who averaged 13.3 yards per catch last season with Keenum launching him passes downfield, is down to a career-low 10.4-yard mark this fall. And both players are outwardly frustrated about their recent depreciation in the Minnesota offense.

In Minnesota’s past five games, the Vikings have gained more than 285 yards of offense only once. They gained 20 or more first downs only once. And while the club is still in line for the final NFC Wild Card slot — a berth no other team in the conference is apparently all that interested in — it’s clear that the Viking defense, as good as it has been, wasn’t a strong enough air freshener to cover up the smell of Cousins’ rotting offense come playoff time.

Will firing DeFilippo solve anything?

DeFilippo’s fall from rising offensive mind to midseason firing is still surprising, even after the Vikings’ mid-season slump. Before Monday night’s egg laying, he’d been considered a viable head coaching candidate for vacancies in Green Bay and Cleveland — two jobs with a major emphasis in keeping a high octane passer happy.

But DeFilippo couldn’t corral the magic that Norv Turner and Pat Shurmur harnessed to glean above average quarterback play from a wide range of questionable passers. Instead, he was given the keys to the most sought-after free agent passer since Peyton Manning moved to Denver and turned a high-octane depth chart into the Honda Civic of NFL offenses.

Quarterbacks coach Kevin Stefanski will be tasked with leading Minnesota into the playoffs, but it won’t be easy. The Vikings have failed to develop any semblance of consistency on the ground as Dalvin Cook’s recovery from last season’s torn ACL has left him struggling to be the runner who looked like a natural successor to Adrian Peterson as a rookie. He and Latavius Murray have been woefully inconsistent this season; the latter has both a 155-yard game on his resume for 2018 and also four games where he gained five yards or fewer.

Their struggles, along with the increased pass rush pressure that’s limited Cousins’ downfield throws as the season has worn down, can be traced back to an offensive line that’s fallen off 2017’s high standard. Cousins is getting sacked more than Bradford and Keenum were in Minneapolis as injuries and uneven play from young starters like Pat Elflein and Brian O’Neill have prevented the Minnesota offense from finding its rhythm as the season wears on. In his last two games, against the not-prolific pass rushes of the Patriots and Seahawks, Cousins still managed to get sacked or hit 17 times.

That pressure in the pocket is going to make it difficult for Stefanski to reverse a two-year trend that’s seen Cousins’ average target downfield decrease each season. Cousins was a dangerous deep passer in 2016, averaging 9.4 air yards for each pass attempt. Only 14 percent of those targets were thrown into tight windows of heavy coverage. This fall, his average pass has traveled just 7.2 yards through the air, and 13 percent of those passes are going into coverage. Despite a roster with Pro Bowl talent like Thielen, Diggs, and Kyle Rudolph, Cousins has dialed back his gunslinging ways in favor of low-risk, low-reward plays that have left Minnesota stuck in neutral.

Stefanski is now tasked with bringing back that big arm and the dad-swagger that once had Cousins asking cameramen and staffers whether or not they did, in fact, like that.

There’s no panacea for the Vikings offense. Head coach Mike Zimmer is entirely aware of that. He ran out of answers sometime around the time his team blew up its fourth attempt to score from inside the Seattle four-yard line last night.

But Minnesota’s talented roster has the capacity for a rebound, and the death spiral of the NFC’s middle class means the Vikings still have time to meet the lofty standard set by last year’s conference championship game appearance. Back in September and October we were wondering what the hell was wrongwith the Vikes’ defense, and they’ve rebounded in time to allow fewer yards per game than all but four other teams in the NFL.

Fixing a boring offense will take more than a revamped focus on blocking technique and a green light for Cousins to launch passes to his increasingly-frustrated receivers. After Monday night’s snooze fest, though? That certainly seems like a fun start.