Luke Braun's Film Room: Jaren Hall's Bad Game Wasn't All His Fault, Just Most of It

Luke Braun digs into Jaren Hall's disastrous game against the Packers and finds that Hall played badly. But on top of self-induced errors, Hall was set up to fail.

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

There is plenty of blame to go around for Minnesota’s 33-10 messy diaper of a game against the Green Bay Packers. The story heading into Sunday night was about Jaren Hall getting his second start after his first against the Atlanta Falcons was cut short by a concussion. In that game, Hall drove the team down the field to point-blank scoring range before suffering a concussion. 

There was reason to be at least intrigued, if not excited, at the prospect of a bigger sample for Hall. I certainly loved the idea. But come game time, it was a disaster. Hall didn’t complete a pass to a Viking until the second quarter. He turned the ball over twice in the first half and got pulled by halftime.

So what happened? As it always turns out with extreme results, it was a mix of several things: Hall’s deficiencies, a poor gameplan and failures elsewhere on the offense.

O’Connell Used A Different Gameplan Against The Packers

Kevin O’Connell hasn’t wavered in his desire to push the ball downfield no matter who is in at quarterback. That doesn’t mean that he can’t be expected to tailor his gameplans to that game’s signal-caller, however. The offense won’t get conservative. Rather, it will find different ways to unlock aggression with each quarterback’s skill set. 

In the Shanahan/McVay offense, there are two different kinds of play-action pass. There is a “Play Pass” package and a “Movement” package. Play passes are standard dropbacks with a run fake added on. They are designed to look like more north-south rushing concepts like Power or Duo. 

Movement, also known as rollouts or bootlegs, probably better match what you imagine when you think of play-action. These are hard run fakes to one side with the quarterback rolling out to the other, often with routes flooding that side of the field. They are a unique piece of the playbook that relate more to the outside zone running game.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both designs, of course. With the Movement package, the quarterback is insulated from pressure and his reads are limited to one half of the field. The Play Pass package utilizes full-field reads, which are harder to execute but also harder to defend in the secondary. Shanahan/McVay offenses use plenty of both, depending on their opponent’s weaknesses.

Play Passes Aren’t Jaren Hall’s Game

Hall made his living at BYU in the Movement side of the playbook, and that continued with the Vikings. The Movement package helps quarterbacks in a way that lines up well with Hall’s strengths and weaknesses.

When Kirk Cousins tore his Achilles at Lambeau Field, Hall had to go in. O’Connell’s first passing call for him was from the Movement package. 

In fact, Hall didn’t execute a single play from the Play Pass package until New Year’s Eve. In that game, O’Connell dialed up three plays from the Play Pass package and two from the Movement package. It’s only a 14-dropback sample, but it’s enough to infer that O’Connell intended to deploy a more diverse array of play-action passes.

Here, Hall doesn’t have to worry about the protection at all, and the Vikings don’t have to bother blocking Rashan Gary. 

Even if Josh Oliver didn’t break that tackle, it would have still been a sensible four or five-yard gain on first down. Those easy passes can play the same role as quick 3-step drop passes do for a quarterback like Joe Burrow who is more comfortable with quick reads and tight execution. They are easy plays that set up manageable 2nd and 3rd downs.

Compare this to the Play Pass package.