Vikings analysis
Why Vikings Quarterbacks Get Sacked So Much
Part of an ongoing analysis of the Vikings offense (project hub).
Data through week 10 of 2026.
Bottom line.
- O’Connell’s offenses add more to sack rate than almost any head coach’s: +0.47 percentage points once the QB, receivers and opponents are accounted for, the 2nd-most of 42 head coaches.
- His QBs don’t turn pressure into sacks any more often than they did elsewhere. They face more pressure.
- About 61% of that extra pressure is the offensive line, a problem Minnesota has had since well before O’Connell. The rest is QBs holding the ball longer.
- The hold follows Minnesota. Cousins, Darnold and Wentz all held the ball longer here than they did on other teams, Darnold and Cousins by a lot.
The Vikings have been sacked on 8.6% of dropbacks this season, the 84th percentile in the league. Kirk Cousins, back in Minnesota, was sacked on 3.3% of his dropbacks in Las Vegas this year. If the pattern below holds, that number goes up here.
1. The tax
Sacks are shared blame: the line, the protection plan, the routes, and the QB. To isolate the coach, I fit a league-wide model on every dropback since 2015 with separate terms for the QB, the head coach, the receivers and the opposing defense. The coach term is what’s left after a QB’s own sack tendency is accounted for.
How much each head coach adds to sack rate
Coach term from a model with QB, receiver and opponent terms, 2015–2026 · each dot is one head coach
O'Connell, 95% interval +0.20 to +0.74 percentage points. Intervals resample games.
Data table
| Coach | Sack rate |
|---|---|
| Brandon Staley | −0.43 (42nd) |
| Matt LaFleur | −0.39 (41st) |
| Sean McVay | −0.37 (40th) |
| Dan Quinn | −0.36 (39th) |
| Todd Bowles | −0.35 (38th) |
| John Harbaugh | −0.32 (37th) |
| Mike Tomlin | −0.30 (36th) |
| Anthony Lynn | −0.26 (35th) |
| Sean Payton | −0.25 (34th) |
| Frank Reich | −0.23 (33rd) |
| Doug Pederson | −0.23 (32nd) |
| Sean McDermott | −0.23 (31st) |
| Shane Steichen | −0.18 (30th) |
| Robert Saleh | −0.17 (29th) |
| Marvin Lewis | −0.11 (28th) |
| Bruce Arians | −0.11 (27th) |
| Dan Campbell | −0.10 (26th) |
| Dirk Koetter | −0.07 (25th) |
| Bill O'Brien | −0.07 (24th) |
| Kliff Kingsbury | −0.07 (23rd) |
| Kyle Shanahan | −0.05 (22nd) |
| Doug Marrone | −0.04 (21st) |
| Matt Nagy | −0.02 (20th) |
| Ron Rivera | −0.02 (19th) |
| DeMeco Ryans | −0.02 (18th) |
| Andy Reid | 0.00 (17th) |
| Pete Carroll | +0.05 (16th) |
| Jason Garrett | +0.06 (15th) |
| Jay Gruden | +0.07 (14th) |
| Zac Taylor | +0.08 (13th) |
| Kevin Stefanski | +0.10 (12th) |
| Mike McDaniel | +0.10 (11th) |
| Mike McCarthy | +0.13 (10th) |
| Nick Sirianni | +0.14 (9th) |
| Mike Zimmer | +0.15 (8th) |
| Adam Gase | +0.17 (7th) |
| Jon Gruden | +0.29 (6th) |
| Bill Belichick | +0.31 (5th) |
| Brian Flores | +0.34 (4th) |
| Brian Daboll | +0.47 (3rd) |
| Kevin O'Connell | +0.47 (2nd) |
| Mike Vrabel | +0.51 (1st) |
That holds up across every variation of the model I tried. It also doesn’t come from his QBs. Over their careers, Cousins, Mullens, Dobbs and Murray all rank in the lower-sack half of the 89 QBs with 500+ dropbacks, so the model expects fewer sacks from them. Darnold and Wentz rank 59th and 67th.
2. More pressure, same conversion
A sack needs two things: pressure, and a QB who doesn’t escape it. The same QBs turned pressure into sacks at about the same rate in Minnesota as elsewhere (−0.9 points vs league under O’Connell, −0.8 for the same QBs elsewhere). What changed is how often they were pressured.
Pressure rate vs league: same QB, elsewhere → Minnesota
Pressured dropbacks, points above or below the league that season (2016–25 participation data)
Data table
| Row | Elsewhere | Minnesota, O'Connell |
|---|---|---|
| Cousins | −2.3 | +5.9 |
| Darnold | −1.7 | +3.1 |
| Wentz | +1.2 | +5.7 |
Minnesota’s pressure rate was at or above the 74th percentile in every season from 2016 to 2025, under Mike Zimmer too.
3. The line, and the hold
Pressure can come from two places. A line can lose fast, or a QB can hold the ball long enough for any rush to get home. To separate them, I compared each Vikings season with the league at the same time to throw. Extra pressure on throws of the same length is the line (and protection calls). Extra pressure from throwing later is the hold.
Where the Vikings' extra pressure comes from
Pressure rate minus league, percentage points, non-sack dropbacks, split by time to throw (2016–25)
O'Connell 2022–25: +4.6 pts = line +2.8 (95% CI +0.6 to +4.8) + hold +1.8 (+1.1 to +2.5). Zimmer 2016–21: +5.5 = line +4.4 + hold +1.1.
Data table
| Row | Line: more pressure at the same time to throw | Hold: throwing later | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | +5.0 | −1.1 | +3.9 |
| 2017 | +3.2 | +1.1 | +4.3 |
| 2018 | +4.7 | +0.7 | +5.5 |
| 2019 | +3.3 | +3.0 | +6.4 |
| 2020 | +4.7 | +2.7 | +7.4 |
| 2021 | +4.7 | +1.3 | +6.0 |
| 2022 | +5.0 | +2.3 | +7.2 |
| 2023 | +3.1 | +2.4 | +5.5 |
| 2024 | −0.8 | +3.0 | +2.2 |
| 2025 | +2.5 | −0.6 | +1.9 |
The line part has been there for a decade. On quick throws (2.5 seconds or less), where only the line can be the problem, Minnesota’s pressure rate was in the top fifth of the league in 7 of the 8 seasons from 2018 to 2025.
What changed under O’Connell is the hold. Under Zimmer it was about a fifth of the extra pressure. Under O’Connell it’s 39%. 2024, with Darnold, is the clearest case: the line was about league average, and all of the extra pressure came from holding the ball.
4. The hold follows Minnesota
Some of that is the play call. Play action and snaps under center take longer, and O’Connell calls more of both. A league model of time to throw explains about a third of the gap that way. The rest is extra time on plays that look the same on paper.
The cleanest test is first-read and designed throws from the pocket, the most on-schedule plays in any offense, compared with league throws in the same season, to the same read and depth, with the same play action, formation and screen status. On those, Vikings QBs threw +0.14 seconds later than the league (95% CI +0.10 to +0.19).
Extra time on on-schedule throws, same QB
Seconds vs league throws matched on season, read, depth, play action, formation and screen · 2022–25
Murray in Arizona: −0.07 s. McCarthy in Minnesota: +0.08 s.
Data table
| Row | Elsewhere | Minnesota |
|---|---|---|
| Cousins | +0.04 | +0.11 |
| Darnold | −0.02 | +0.21 |
| Wentz | −0.02 | +0.02 |
Darnold was +0.21 seconds late in Minnesota and −0.02 in Seattle the next year. Cousins was +0.11 here and +0.04 in Atlanta. A QB habit would travel with the QB. This one stays in Minnesota.
Where the extra time goes, by route
Vikings vs matched league throws, seconds, first-read and designed throws 2022–25
Matched on season, read, depth, play action, formation and screen. No intervals by route: the smaller routes have only a few dozen throws a season, so treat single bars as rough.
Data table
| Row | Value |
|---|---|
| Shallow Cross/Drag (2% of Vikings throws) | +0.37 |
| Cross (3% of Vikings throws) | +0.32 |
| In/Dig (9% of Vikings throws) | +0.28 |
| Corner (5% of Vikings throws) | +0.22 |
| Deep Out (9% of Vikings throws) | +0.20 |
| Hitch/Curl (10% of Vikings throws) | +0.17 |
| Slant (5% of Vikings throws) | +0.07 |
| Go (8% of Vikings throws) | −0.12 |
The extra time shows up on almost every route except the go. It’s largest on crossers, digs, corners and deep outs, routes where the ball should come out as the receiver breaks. The charting can’t see drop depth or how a progression is built, so it can’t say exactly what’s slowing these down. Since it shows up for each QB here and shrinks or disappears on his other teams, design is the most likely explanation.
5. This season
Pressure on the Vikings is down in 2026: 22.2% of dropbacks, the 45th percentile. The sack rate is still the 84th percentile, because 39% of pressures have become sacks, the 90th percentile.
| Season | Sack rate | Pressure rate | Pressures → sacks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 6.4% (48th) | 23.2% (71st) | 27.1% (32nd) |
| 2023 | 6.6% (61st) | 27.1% (97th) | 24.0% (10th) |
| 2024 | 7.8% (74th) | 24.4% (90th) | 31.4% (58th) |
| 2025 | 10.4% (97th) | 25.9% (90th) | 40.3% (90th) |
| 2026* | 8.6% (84th) | 22.2% (45th) | 39.0% (90th) |
League percentile in parentheses; higher = more. Pressure from PFR charting, which defines pressure differently from the participation data in sections 2–3. * Partial season.
Kyler Murray has taken 185 of the 266 dropbacks. In his full Arizona seasons (2020–24), 25–33% of his pressures became sacks. In Minnesota it’s 38.5%, on a pressure rate of 21.1% (15–21% in Arizona). The pressure is a little higher and the conversion is a lot higher.
So what
- This is the one place O’Connell’s regime clearly shows up in the numbers, and it shows up as a cost. The previous post found his QBs play about as expected overall.
- The line is a franchise problem, and the hold is the scheme. The line has allowed quick pressure under two head coaches. The hold grew under O’Connell and shows up across his QBs.
- What to watch: Cousins. In Las Vegas he was sacked on 3.3% of dropbacks while pressured on 23.4%, a bit more than Minnesota’s QBs this year (22.2%). Only 14.1% of his pressures became sacks. If his sack rate climbs toward Minnesota’s, the hold is the likely reason.
Takeaway: when each person you put in a role shows the same problem, and it fades after they leave, the problem belongs to the role. Minnesota has changed quarterbacks almost every year under O’Connell, and its QBs faced more pressure than the league in every full season.
What this doesn’t tell us
- Pressure data stops at 2025 for the participation source behind sections 2–3. This season’s pressure comes from PFR, which charts it differently.
- “Line” means more pressure at the same time to throw. That includes protection calls and backs and tight ends in protection, not just the five linemen.
- The charting can’t see drop depth or progressions, so “design” is the leading explanation for the hold, not a measured one.
- Unpressured sacks can’t be measured from this data: it codes nearly every sack as pressured.
Method: every NFL dropback 2015–26. Coach effects from a crossed ridge model with QB, head coach, receiver and defense terms, intervals from resampling games. Pressure and time to throw from nflverse participation data (2016–25) and PFR (2018–26). Full analysis: Q3, Q6, Q10, Q11. Data: nflverse and FTN charting (CC-BY-SA 4.0).