Minnesota Vikings 2025 analytical preview with Warren Sharp

Minnesota Vikings 2025 analytical preview with Warren Sharp

Purple Daily is daily Vikings entertainment. We just want the Vikings to win a Super Bowl before we die. I will ride with this group. Seriously, man. Please. And away we go. Football. All right. Little bonus episode of Purple Daily here today. And if you’re watching on YouTube, you’re seeing you’re seeing a glorious mustache duel between our executive producer Declan Goff and the Warren Sharp from Sharp Footballanalysis.com. A fivetime Amazon bestseller in football and gambling categories. Uh he provides at least in our opinion, we’ve been following you on social media for a number of years. I I think just some of the best analytical football content on the market and his 2025 football preview book is out now. Sharpootanalysis.com. Warren Sharp Football, welcome to Purple Daily, dude. Thanks for having me. Uh, appreciate the uh the kind words and um yeah, the the 2025 football preview is out and we’re doing two things. Number one, you can get it on Amazon because it is 585 pages, which is this is what it looks like in print. That’s like a phone book of football analysis. We’re going to dig into the 2025 Vikings obviously for most of this show, but there are 32 teams covered here. But if you want this the PDF version for just $1 because I can’t give you the printed book for a dollar, but I can give you the PDF version for a dollar. If you go to sharp.foot, it’ll redirect you to the purchase page. Enter the code Vikings. You’ll get this thing, 585 pages for just $1. And I promise you won’t get a better bang for your buck this summer to help get you prepared for the season than with that book. So, I love that. Can Jud get one of those Hawaiianesque shirts to go with it for like a couple extra dollars or That is these these Hawaiian shirts are actually cheaper than you would think. And so many different spots make these and they’re great for uh the off season in particular. Once it’s regular season time, you know, that’s when it’s like dark shirt, a more focused type of type of atmosphere. But right now, it’s uh it’s uh you know, the tan is getting better, the book is done, the tan is getting better, and the Hawaiian shirts are out. Love it. What’s the relief like when the book is done? It’s immense because it’s more stressful than you might think because what my goal is with the book is not simply just to try to create a preview of each team season. I’m trying to uncover things that aren’t being reported elsewhere that other people aren’t discussing that are storylines that exist that help describe why a team had success or failed the prior year because I think that’s important to understand as we enter the upcoming year. I definitely don’t agree with the John Maddenism. You are what your record says you are. Um, I think that so many things factor into why a team won or lost the number of games they did the prior year that aren’t just reflective of that’s a good team, that’s a bad team, whether they had a good or bad record. And so I’m trying to uncover things that, you know, intelligent audiences like yours would find interesting, um, that the casual football fan would find interesting, that coaches or, uh, analysts working inside of front offices or inside different NFL teams would find interesting because a lot of these people read the book as well. And so I’m constantly trying to find things that are a little bit more groundbreaking. So, it’s a lot of stress coming uh and a lot of time that goes into the book as well. Obviously, takes months to write the book. I have a fantasy guy who provides some fantasy analysis. You’ve got an injury guy who provides injury analysis, a penalty analyst, if you can believe that, who analyzes the team’s penalty situations, all 32, and ranks and grades them. Um, we’ve got uh we we’ve got a a college draft analyst who comes in and analyzes the prospects that were taken by the team and how he thinks that they could fit in. So, there’s other people that are contributing to the book as well, but I’m the one who’s writing all the narratives for all 32 teams. Um, I take pride in trying to do that because that allows me to better gauge and compare one team to the next. if I was only writing about a couple of teams um then and then other people were writing about the rest, I couldn’t accurately gauge whether I felt good or bad about this team because I don’t know how I feel about the other teams. So, I take it upon myself to write about all 32 teams. So, it’s a big undertaking and as a result, it’s a massive weight off my shoulders when this thing is done. And I love talking about my results with uh shows like yourself, you know, over the next couple of weeks here as we approach the heart of training camp. Yeah. So, there’s a a million angles here and we and Jud’s camp notes have been a daily fixture for the last week and then OTA’s mini camp. So, we’ve been just hammering the audience with the intricate details of of training camp. But from where from analytically speaking, I guess from where you sit and all the work and research you’ve done, what are two or three of the most important themes for the 2025 Vikings? One key is going to be can you guys jump out to leads like you did in 2024. Um, I think that that was so vital because it allowed Brian Flores and that defense to play that they wanted to with that aggressive reckless style to continue to generate turnovers and pressures on quarterbacks by putting those opposing quarterbacks in more obvious passing situations in the second half of games uh by building a lead early. And so if I look at some of the uh I’ll pull up some of the stats that you guys had from a uh early down lead building perspective. Um, you ranked number two last year in first quarter points per game after ranking 28 the year before. You scored 109 points in the first quarter instead of 40 the year before. You led by a total of 62 points at the end of the first quarter last year across your 17 games compared to trailing by 29 points in 2023. And that swing of 91 points allowed your offense to stay patient. You had a pretty high run rate on early downs and you were able to work the play action game off of that. Um, you were able to connect on a lot of, you know, we could talk about whether or not some of these big plays are going to be repeatable. That’s one of the themes in my uh chapter on the Vikings is that I don’t think you’re going to have nearly the level of success on these 20 yard downfield passes like Sam Darnold was having last season. Um, but when you’re able to build those quick leads in the first quarter, it makes life easy on your quarterback, which is going to be vital for a young quarterback in JJ McCarthy. It makes things a lot easier on a play caller because he can be more patient and creative with his calls in the second and third quarters. And it also helps your defensive coordinator. So, I think that’s one of the key themes is um can you guys figure out a way to still stay aggressive enough with a young quarterback to build those leads? Maybe there was a uh a tendency from uh you know Kevin Oonnell to get a little bit more aggressive with a more veteran quarterback and do some more things with Sam Darnold. They still have to be semi-aggressive in my opinion with JJ McCarthy even though he’s younger because you want those leads and those leads those early leads are so valuable. Another one I guess that I would say is you know whether or not you can overcome this schedule. this this schedule, you’ve got rest and you’ve got opponents. And the NFL decides your rest, but they don’t decide your opponents. And from a strength of opponent perspective, you guys play the fifth toughest schedule based upon opponent win totals this year. That’s going to be something that is going to be more challenging to overcome. But you also play a schedule that’s going to have decidedly worse rest edges than last year’s schedule did. You had the number two best rest schedule in 2024. This year it ranks number 21. Um, you ranked number one in a couple of my rest and prep rankings that I look at because I spent a lot of time looking at NFL schedule and rest aspects. Uh, last year you ranked number one. This year you ranked number 25 in rest ranking and number 22 in prep ranking. Um, you play four games with a rest disadvantage this year and only one game with a rest advantage. Last year you played one game with a rest disadvantage and five games with a rest advantage. So things turn a little bit more in that regard as well. So can you navigate the difficult schedule and the difficult rest in 2025? Those I think were two things that are going to carry a lot of water to determine how successful your season is this year. How much does McCarthy taking the starting reigns impact your analysis as well? Because when you’re looking at the 2025 team versus the 2024 team, and I know the expectations going into 24 were pretty low for Sam and he far exceeded them. But going with what essentially is a rookie quarterback with a roster that is pretty good and has been in some cases remade, how do you end up sort of viewing the McCarthy aspect of this? The good thing about McCarthy and and any lesser experienced or let’s say uh below average quarterback, which I did definitely viewed Sam Darnold as, uh is you’re working with Kevin Okonnell and Kevin Oonnell instantly h raises the floor of any young quarterback because of the cheats and the hacks that he gives this player, you know, on every single down. And and so he uses the number six highest rate of pre- snap motion on first down last year is what he was doing for Sam Darnold, which gives Darnold the answers to the test before the test, right? With the pre-nap motion identifying coverages. Um then he had the number three highest rate of play action on first downs, which is obviously vital as well because you’re able to get linebackers and other defenders out of position expecting a run and then it’s actually a pass. And so it provides a little bit of added separation for your receiver. The other thing that they were doing that was really unique in my uh opinion was they had a longer time to throw. Sam Darnold actually on these first down passes had the third highest average time to throw. But normally you would think third highest average time to throw that means he’s pushing the ball deeper down the field. He still averaged only 7.9 airs per pass attempt. Um which was definitely closer to the league average. uh and that allowed him to complete more passes. They his completion rating ranked eighth out of 46 quarterbacks on these playaction passes. And so when you have a situation where you’re using a little bit more play action and then you’re still not asking your quarterback to challenge vertically too much, but complete higher percentage throws over the middle of the field. I think that plays into the strengths of what JJ McCarthy could be asked to do as opposed to ask him to do something that he’s maybe less capable of or uh gives him a little bit more consternation trying to attempt. So, I think your play caller is going to provide some relief for a young quarterback. Naturally, it’s a big deal to have a new quarterback um and and replacing a guy like a Sam Darnold who’s not elite, but more of a veteran and understands how to run offense in the NFL. So, u it’s a it’s definitely a consideration. The main key though is and I think Sam Darnold would struggle in these areas too, the main key is how do we keep how do we ensure that this quarterback is passing into situations where the defense doesn’t have an upper hand? And in order to do that, it’s passing the ball on early, not being afraid to pass the ball on early downs because the defense might be expecting runs on those plays, trying to keep them out of third downs. And you guys had one of the most efficient early down offenses on early downs, you ranked fourth in efficiency last year. So having having an efficient early down offense to stay out of third downs, building those quicker leads to stay out of, you know, negative game states in the second half of games, all of these things will help a quarterback as well. So, it’s going to be a team effort and it’s going to be an effort from the coaching staff, but I certainly feel very confident that a a young player like JJ McCarthy could settle in into this offense uh and conduct it efficiently based upon where he is and what he’s being surrounded with. Warren, I I know there’s been a lot of talk, at least among Vikings fans, that the eight and a half number, the win total number is a little bit of a disrespect because the roster is so good. But I and I I know you probably have data on this that it’s pretty hard to put like a nine and a half 10 and a half win total on a quarterback that hasn’t even played a regular season snap. I guess what are your kind of thoughts on that 8 and a half number? And does it feel pretty likely that the Vikings could they might regress a little bit from where they won last year, but are probably still a double-digit win team even with a quarterback who hasn’t played a snap yet in the regular season. I think part of their win total definitely factors in that Ben Johnson is now with the Chicago Bears and you play them twice a year and so they are going to be a better team. So what is the worst team in your in your division? The floor of that worst team is higher than what it was previously. Um your roster I mean we on one of the pages here we do our positional unit rankings and obviously there’s unknowns surrounding your quarterback. So, we have your quarterback room ranked 25th, which you guys might find to be disrespectful and hopefully they exceed that expectation this year. But other than your running backs ranking 17th, every single other position group ranks 10th or better, many of them fifth or better. We have you guys, and you might be surprised, the fifth best offensive line. A lot depends upon how that interior three players do this year because they’re all new with Ryan Kelly, Wilfries, and Donovan Jackson. But that that group could be um viewed as a lateral move. And last year you had your best success running in the interior. So your interior offensive line needs to still perform really well this year. Third best receivers, number one best front seven in the NFL. You might have seen me share that stat the other day on social. And then eighth best secondary, and seventh best head coach. So you are in a good position a apart from that unknown at the quarterback. The question just becomes you’ve got a tough schedule. It’s tough on rest and the Bears have gotten better. The Lions might be a tad bit worse. They’re probably not going to win as me as many games in their team, you know, whereas I think like it’s easy to say the Kansas City Chiefs won’t win as many games. I think the Chiefs are actually going to be better this year. They’re just not going to win as many games. I think the Lions aren’t going to win as many games, but they’re also going to be a little bit worse this year. So, that’s a bit a bit of a difference um for me in that regard. But I certainly think that you guys and the Packers I think the Packers are a scary team in your division. I think that they are a um strong team in your division. And so your division just has top to bottom is the best in the NFL and that’s going to keep a ceiling on an estimated win total in that regard. And the way they’re coming up with these win totals, just to be clear, is they’re looking at your schedule and they’re looking at the number of games that you I’m trying to pull up here. the number of games that you’re favored in and the number of games that you are an underdog and they’re looking at the expected win share for each one of your games. So, they’re going through and they’re lining every single one of your games. You guys might be surprised to hear that you’re only favored in seven games this year. You’re underdogs in 10 games this year and they look at the win share of every single one of those games. You know, from from this game that you’re favored by x number of points, you might get.7 wins. You’re likely to win this game 70% of the time. and then you go to the next game, you’re likely to win this game 35% of the time. You add those up together and you get close to your forecasted win total. So your win total of eight and a half is more so driven by the fact that you’re underdogs in 10 games this year. And that’s what you might feel a little bit more disrespected by that you’re underdogs in 10 games this year. Yeah, this is uh you kind of said it with uh was it the Chiefs that that it’s possible that they win fewer game the Chiefs were in one score games the entire season and the Vikings under Kevin Okonnell in the first year and the third year are I think it’s they have one loss in like 25 one-score games or something crazy in in those two years when they’ve had healthy Sam Darnold, healthy Kirk Cousins. So like some regression in one score games has to be factored in. Is it fair to say that uh the Vikings may come nowhere near 14 wins again? Maybe it is. Maybe they do hit the over and they win 10 or 11, but that they do profile as a potentially better team even if their record isn’t. Or is that is that a bridge too far? I don’t I don’t I wouldn’t say that that’s a bridge too far. Um you guys are just going to have to overcome some of the things that were unnatural last year and that are unlikely to occur again this year. One of the biggest things that I think you guys are going to have to figure out a way to either replicate, which is unlikely, or make up for, which is where I think is more likely, otherwise you’re going to get a little bit worse, is the explosive plays out of the passing game. Um, defense, as you guys probably know, they’re playing the two high shells more frequently. You have to have more plays per drive to work the ball down the field. It’s harder to score touchdowns. you’re more it’s more important to score touchdowns closer to the end zone because you’re not going to score them from as deep on the field and explosives are down across the NFL. Last year, Sam Darnold on passes of 20 plus yards, ranked number one in success rate, number one in yards per attempt, number one in completion rate, number four in EPA per attempt. It not only was Darnold’s best year ever throwing the ball 20 plus yards down the field, it was the seventh best season for any quarterback in the last 10 years. So that is unlikely to reoccur in 2025 with a young quarterback like JJ McCarthy. So as a result, you need to figure out other ways to offset that explosiveness that most teams don’t have because it’s harder to be explosive. you guys had it last year and it provided a lot of uh ability to score more points. What are you going to do to make up for that this year? And so, um I think that’s one of the things that I would be most concerned with in terms of being able to to put up points, which obviously leads to winning games and being a being a good team. Um, I think you can be as good on um, let’s say early downs and efficiency because I think your roster is fine. I think your coaching staff is going to put McCarthy in positions to excel there, but it’s still going to be hard to beat fourth best on early downs. Like that’s a really high mark for you guys to have set last year. Is going to be hard to beat that. So again, it’s going to have to be it’s going to be difficult and challenging to say that like maybe on paper from a roster perspective, I think you guys are better, but can you perform? And we know it’s more important to be great offensively than it is defensively. Offense drives wins more than defense. Can you exceed some of those expectations on offense that you set last year? That’s going to be the challenge. So what else can you do to make up for that? How do you quantify too the the additions uh that you talked about the interior of the offensive line Jordan Mason comes in the expectation is that they are definitely going to run more now um including in the red zone which is probably a point of emphasis. So, how how do you uh factor all of that in where it seems like McCarthy is not going to be asked to do as much as Sam did, that the run game will improve and that the offense actually might have a little bit different flavor with Okonnell’s play calling this season compared to last? Yeah, it’s going to be vital that you have that success inside the red zone when you’re running the football. I think that there are a couple of times where it’s important to be great running the football. Short yardage and inside the red zone, specifically inside the 10 yard line. I literally just put out a tweet that uh 75% of all rushing touchdowns come from inside the 10 yard line. So, you have to be really good when you do choose decide to run the football. But that is where you actually have an advantage. It’s hard to pass the ball successfully close to the end zone. The field is so compressed. But what you can do is you can spread the defense out using 11 personnel and then run the ball out of that and have better box counts and easier opportunities to run the football with your running backs. And so, um, last year, the numbers that I’m looking at here show on early downs inside the red zone, you were 52% pass, uh, the first three quarters of games, which is what I like to look at to remove the fourth quarter. Uh, and I think that’s like the seventh highest pass rate team in the NFL. So, naturally, you might expect, and as you alluded to, you’re probably going to be running the football more there. Can you get that success? And it starts with the offensive line. You know, backs are a little bit more interchangeable, although we know there are some special backs around the league. You guys don’t happen to have one. That offensive line needs to be able to generate that push, especially in the interior. and your coach has to be able to call good plays with great personnel grouping decisions uh to to have success running the football. But that absolutely can offset a slightly worse passing game close to the end zone is if you have a strong run game that you can rely on down there because you will have uh personnel advantages just based on how the defense has to try to defend the passing game in that area. spreading the field uh from a width perspective, giving you the opportunity to run up the middle a little bit easier. So, um that’s that’s definitely going to be a big factor this year in my opinion. You uh you have a section in uh in the Viking section of the preview book that lists some key statistics that are kind of pillars for wins and losses and season win totals. And uh three of them here are turnover margin, penalty margin, and I I love this one, return touchdown margin, which is that could that be special teams or uh defensive return touchdowns all in one category. So last year the Vikings were plus 12 in turnover margin, which when you have Sam Darnold as a starting quarterback, that’s great when you’re plus 12 and they they curb the turnovers. Also, Brian Flores defenses create some chaos and and and create some panic within quarterbacks. So, not super shocking, I guess, but plus 31 penalty margin, meaning the Vikings took 31 fewer penalties than their opponents. So, like two per game, which that that’s that’s a big number. And then uh thanks to Andrew Van Ginkle, plus two on the return touchdown margin, which could have been plus four because he actually he dropped two of those vintage Andrew Van Ginkle uh pick sixes. But my question to you, Warren, is plus 12 turnover margin, plus 12 31 penalty margin, plus two return turn uh touchdown margin. How repeatable and or on the other side random are those three pillar statistics? First of all, I don’t know how you guys even got Andrew Van Ginkle. I don’t know why Dolphins let him leave. Uh I I’m really impressed by by his game, but um how repeatable is that? Let’s start with the turnover margin. That’s going to be the challenge because I don’t think if you repeated last season, you would be plus 12 in turnover margin. When you look at Sam Darnold, say what you want to about like the statistic of turnover worthy plays, but if you want to acknowledge that statistic, Darnold led the NFL with 27 turnover worthy plays. He ranked second highest with 3.7% of his throws being charted as turnover worthy throws per PFF. So, you know, if Darnold played that season out again, he’s throwing more interceptions than he actually did. Um, and so it’s going to be incumbent upon JJ McCarthy to try to limit, you know, the risk that he puts the the the ball into and those windows and the tight window throws and things of that nature. And again, that’s also on Kevin Oonnell for designing good offense to get receivers that are a little bit more open so it’s easier for JJ McCarthy. So, he’s not fitting the ball into tight windows. Another thing that obviously helps, I keep I keep pounding the table for this, but if you’re leading early in games, you can pick and choose where you’re throwing the football a little bit easier in the second half. You could decide to throw throw the ball out of bounds. You could decide to throw the ball a guy’s feet if it’s too close. You could decide to check it down to a running back. You don’t have to force the ball. If you’re trailing instead of leading like you were last year, then your quarterback has to push the ball into those tighter winners. Then you have to get throws out of him that you might not otherwise. those are going to be in inherently more turnover worthy for the most part. So that’s going to be important. Um penalties penalties the the the better a team is the fewer penalties you’re going to have. I think that that should carry over from a coaching perspective. So I think that’s one that’s going to be more likely to be repeatable. Uh but again, it comes down to also playing with a lead, having the uh opportunity to to not have to go for that extra mile. Like think about this. you’re third and 10 and you’re trailing by, you know, eight points in the fourth quarter, your offensive lineman might be trying to like ensure he holds that block for an extra half a second or threequarters of a second to give his young quarterback time to complete the ball. Whereas, if you’re leading and it’s just a run play in that situation because you’re up by 10 points, that offensive lineman might be less, you know, likely to get a holding penalty called against him. So, building that lead is also important there. return touchdowns. That is the one that’s like a bigger coin flip. But it to me once again relates to whether you’re playing with a lead or whether you’re not playing with a lead. How aggressive you can uh let those defenders be, how much pressure you get on quarterbacks. We know the more pressure you’re getting on a quarterback, the more likely they are to throw a bad pass, the more likely they are to have a sack fumble or throw an interception. And so you need to be able to continue to continue to get that pressure on them. And it’s easier to do that when you’re playing with a lead than than behind. So, some of these things do relate to just the game state in general, which is going to be hard to repeat from what you were at last season. Um, but they’re obviously all important metrics that helped you guys win the number of games that you did last year. Warren Sharp football. Love it, man. Yeah, you can you can find uh all all sorts more where that came from at sharpootanalysis.com and throw that PDF link out again, Warren, for our audience. Just go to sharp.foot. It’ll redirect you to the page that you can enter the code Vikings and get the 500 uh 86 page 32 team chapter preview for the upcoming season for just $1. I think we need a Jud. Football, too, just for I don’t know what’s going to be on it. It’ll just be far too much work for me. Yeah. No, I’m going to leave it to the experts for that. But, uh, Warren Sharp making his debut on Purple Daily here. Uh, great analytical breakdown of the 2025 Vikings. Warren, thank you, man. Thanks, Warren. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, guys. Uh, you know, best of luck this season. It’s a tough schedule for you guys to overcome, but I think that you guys are in the right pointed in the right direction. I like the future. I kind of lean into that at the tail end of my chapter. I think you guys are headed in the right direction here. Uh, I’m excited for you guys to build around a young quarterback that has a high ceiling that’s on his rookie deal. Um, and I I’m excited to see how he works with his new coaching staff because I certainly think the rest of the roster is a fundamentally sound roster and you guys are building in the right direction. So, it’s a good time to be a a Minnesota Vikings fan. I heard in the intro about uh will they win a Super Bowl before we die. Um, I I certainly hope that to be the case, but I I think you should at least feel good about where you are near term in terms of the direction that you’re headed. Yeah, awesome stuff, man. Thank you again, and hopefully we can talk again sometime. Sounds good. Thanks, guys. Warren Sharp here, Purple Daily, where, as he said, we do just want the Vikings to win a Super Bowl before we die. See you guys.

Minnesota Vikings 2025 preview with Warren Sharp! Key themes for the Vikings this season starting with productive first quarters; Warren’s thoughts on Vikings QB JJ McCarthy; Can the Vikings hit the over on the 8.5 win total; Can the Vikings repeat a turnover margin and more on Purple Daily!

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