Minnesota Vikings fans should enjoy their team’s surprising offensive success while they can.
The coach responsible for overseeing it may not be there much longer.
If the NFL’s recent hiring trend continues, most teams making a head-coaching change in the offseason will be seeking replacements whose expertise is on that side of the football.
WEEK 14 NFL PICKS: Straight up | Against the spread
There also isn’t a strong list of “whiz kids” like in the past seasons where 30-something assistants like Sean McVay (Los Angeles Rams), Kyle Shanahan (San Francisco) and Adam Gase (Miami) were given a shot.
Combine these factors and there’s a good chance Vikings offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur will be given an opportunity to run his own club once again in 2018.
The 52-year-old Shurmur not only is believed to have learned from the mistakes he made as a first-time head coach with Cleveland in 2011 and 2012 — a tenure cut short based more upon an ownership change rather than a 9-21 record while trying to resuscitate a moribund franchise. He not only gained valuable knowledge from spending the next three years working in Philadelphia as offensive coordinator under Chip Kelly, whose innovative concepts continue to have shelf life in the NFL even though he was a head-coaching failure with the Eagles and 49ers.
It’s the results Shurmur has experienced with the Vikings under trying circumstances that show why he should be given another shot.
Minnesota (10-2) enters Sunday’s game at Carolina with the inside track for the NFC’s No. 1 seed and its postseason advantages. The Vikings have accomplished this despite being the only one of the 12 teams currently atop the playoff scramble that isn’t starting the same quarterback from the season opener.
NFL PLAYOFF PICTURE: Vikings jump Eagles in NFC
Include the loss of prized rookie running back Dalvin Cook to a season-ending knee injury in Week 4, and what Shurmur’s changes have achieved can be considered miraculous by NFL standards.
The Vikings have averaged 26 points during their eight-game winning streak and gained at least 300 yards in all of those contests. Minnesota’s offense ranks No. 5 overall, putting the club on pace for its best finish since Brett Favre led the unit in 2009.
And the Vikings are doing this with a quarterback who isn’t exactly Pro Football Hall of Fame material himself.
Case Keenum would have met expectations had he simply served as an efficient game-manager when replacing the injured Sam Bradford full-time in Week 6. There was little Keenum had accomplished during his three previous NFL seasons with Houston and the Rams that would lead outsiders to believe he could be anything more than that.
If there was, Keenum would have scored a much bigger contract in 2017 free agency than the modest one-year, $2 million deal he inked with the Vikings.
But Keenum continues to put himself in line for a far more lucrative payday this offseason while keeping ex-Vikings starter Teddy Bridgewater on the bench.
MORE: NFL Power Rankings
Keenum ranks seventh among all quarterbacks in passer rating (98.6) and sixth in completion percentage (67.5). Adam Thielen has thrived with Keenum under center, already having registered a career-high 74 receptions for 1,056 yards with four games remaining.
Keenum’s ability to avoid big mistakes has complemented a fierce defense that doesn’t need heavy offensive support for Minnesota to win. Keenum has no fumbles and only five interceptions in 360 pass attempts. He also has gotten sacked just nine times behind a much-improved offensive line.
Shurmur admits that he didn’t know Keenum could play (italics) this (close italics) well until having the chance to work with him in practice.
“What you see is what you get on game day,” Shurmur recently told co-host Bill Polian and me on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “He’s super competitive, extremely accurate and he throws a real friendly ball, one that our receivers can catch consistently. He goes into the game really, really prepared and he’s got a real awareness of what we want to do on offense.
“I’ll give him credit — he goes out there and he just lets it rip. The players around him are playing hard so we don’t want to mess with that.”
Keenum also hasn’t had to carry the offensive load himself thanks to Jerrick McKinnon and Latavius Murray stepping up to fill the void in the running game created by Cook’s absence. The Vikings are averaging more rushing yards in the past eight games (130.2) than when Cook was in the backfield (108).
“We’ve added some good pieces up front and our offensive line is playing extremely well,” Shurmur said. “We are much more physical and able to run the ball a lot better than we were a year ago. The play-action now means a lot more, and the screen game and all the other elements of playing offensive football can come to the front burner.”
Shurmur’s name will be there on the NFL’s short list of head coaching candidates soon enough — especially if the Vikings offense remains on fire.
