Minnesota opened its season with two Kirk Cousins pass plays resulting in a touchdown. The Vikings third offensive play of the season was a pass play, as was the team’s fifth.

Opening the season with 4 passing plays on the first 5 plays from scrimmage is hardly unusual.  What is unusual is what happened next.   On the Vikings final 44 plays of the day, Minnesota finished with 7 passing plays and 37 rushing plays!  On a drive against the Saints last season, Kirk Cousins went 8-for-10 with 1 sack and 1 touchdown; for the entire game on Sunday, Kirk Cousins went 8-for-10 with 1 sack and 1 touchdown!

The team ran 49 plays on Sunday in a 28-12 win over the Falcons.  Here are the results of those plays, in order, with pass plays in blue and rushing plays in red.  Also, because plays of 0 yards would otherwise not show up on the graph, I’ve noted them separately as 1-yard plays with diagonal shading.

The Vikings did not attempt a pass in the 4th quarter of the game, which is the sort of thing you can do when you lead 28-0 after three quarters.  Still, this was remarkable: the Vikings passed on just 22% of all plays.

How rare is that?  This was the lowest pass ratio by any team in a game since this Tim Tebow-led performance by the Broncos against a Chiefs offense quarterbacked by Matt Cassel and Tyler Palko in 2011.  There are occasionally run-heavy game plans later in the year due to weather and/or a backup quarterback, but you simply never see this sort of ratio in a game in September with no weather effects.

This was just the 6th game since 1980 where a team, in September, rushed on at least 77% of their offensive plays, and the first since 2008.

This was the first time in any game played in a dome at any point in the season where a team rushed on at least 77% of their offensive plays since a game featuring replacement players in 1987!

So how in the world did Cousins — a franchise quarterback, in salary at least — wind up throwing just 10 pass attempts?

Part of this was the Game Script, of course: the Vikings led 14-0 very early, 21-0 in the 2nd quarter, and 28-0 in the third quarter.

Part of it was a low number of overall plays: Minnesota finished with only 9 real drives (excluding kneel downs), and two of them were touchdown drives that began in Falcons territory and totaled just 6 plays.  A blocked punt and an interception set up those two short scoring drives, which limited the number of overall drives for the Vikings.

The Vikings also had three pass plays wiped off the game book by penalties, including a key third down defensive holding call that extended a scoring drive.

Finally, a big part of it was due to the success Dalvin Cook and Alexander Mattison had on the ground, rushing 30 times for 160 yards and two touchdowns.

Minnesota faced 10 third down attempts, and somehow had just two pass attempts on those plays!  How is that possible, you ask? In order, these were:

• A 3rd-and-1, where Cook rushed for 2 yards.
• A 3rd-and-26, where the Vikings just ran the ball.
• 3rd-and-9 pass.
• 3rd-and-10, up 21-0 near the end of the half at Minnesota’s own 10-yard line, where the Vikings just called a running play to avoid an interception.
• A 3rd-and-8 pass.
• A 3rd-and-2 run up 21-0 at midfield, where Cook picked up just 1 yard.  Minnesota punted.
• A 3rd-and-1 play where Cousins ran up the middle for two yards.
• A 3rd-and-8 run in the 4th quarter, up 28-0.
• A 3rd-and-1 run up the middle by Cousins for the first down.
• A 3rd-and-10 run in the final minutes of the game.

And, as noted by Pat Thorman, Minnesota had the slowest-paced offense of any team in week 1.

And that is how, in the year 2019, the Vikings finished a game with just 10 pass attempts and 1 sack.