Matt Kalil off to Another Slow Start for the Minnesota Vikings

The Minnesota Vikings are now two games deep in their 2014 season, and left tackle Matt Kalil has become one of the team’s biggest question marks with his poor start.

General manager Rick Spielman and the Minnesota brass prioritized Kalil in the 2012 NFL draft enough to make him the No. 4 overall selection. Selecting a player in the top five of the draft usually means staking your reputation to him as a decision-maker. At the very least, it means projecting that player to be a cornerstone player for your team.

That brings us back to Kalil. After a stellar rookie season from the left tackle out of USC, it appeared Minnesota had hit on its evaluation. He only allowed two sacks over the course of the 2012 season, behind only Jeff Backus, Ryan Clady and Russell Okung for starting tackles, per Pro Football Focus premium stats (subscription required).

Then his play fell off during a disappointing sophomore campaign. A pneumonia contraction, as reported by Pro Football Talk, that resulted in him dropping 20 pounds at the tail end of his rookie year and leading into the offseason, probably didn’t help.

So Kalil and the Vikings came into this season with hopes of a rebound. It only made sense considering his promising rookie season and valuable physical traits as a left tackle.

His 2014 preseason performance was like a scoop of ice cream falling right off the cone. Pro Football Focus laid into Kalil’s failings, which drew the ire of Minnesota head coach Mike Zimmer and offensive coordinator Norv Turner. The two held back very little in their quotes (via ESPN’s Ben Goessling):

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Coach Mike Zimmer gave an unprompted critique of the analytics website the following Monday, saying fans and writers needed to treat the site's postgame grades with a grain of salt, since no one outside the team knew exactly what a player's responsibilities were on a given play.

Zimmer didn't mention Kalil specifically, but when offensive coordinator Norv Turner was asked about Kalil last week, he said "people who are trying to evaluate our tape and not knowing what we're doing, it just doesn't make any sense." 

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The idea made enough sense to put off the Kalil concerns for the time being. Goessling’s article also mentioned experiments the Vikings were putting Kalil through in terms of his technique, so he would surely be back to his old self once the regular season began.

Week 2 is now in the books, and Kalil has been a turnstile on the left side of the offensive line. No matter how difficult the competition, Kalil was drafted with a premium draft pick to be the type of left tackle who could match up with anything. Something is up.

To look deeper into it, I went back to Pro Football Focus for more information, despite what Zimmer and Turner may think. The analytics site does intensive grading of each play, which it details on its website. While there are numbers involved, remembering that this is still an opinion-based procedure is a must.

A simple line graph showing his grades over his 35 career starts has a worrying trend, which the black line measures.

Credit: Darren Page screenshot; data via Pro Football Focus premium (subscription required)

Kalil hasn’t had a grade over plus-two since his rookie season. His low points are also lower than ever recently. PFF analyst Sam Monson certainly agrees with what the trends show:

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I know the Vikings coaches disagree on this but I think Matt Kalil hasn't been at his best since his rookie year, which is a while ago now..

— Sam Monson (@PFF_Sam) September 14, 2014"

To get an idea of just how inconsistent the grades were over the course of the first 35 games, I compared his data to that of Dallas Cowboys left tackle Tyron Smith and New England Patriots left tackle Nate Solder over their first 35 games.

With a standard deviation measurement, which simply relates the outcomes to the average, Kalil has actually been a more consistent performer than the other two, at least according to Pro Football Focus. He’s just been consistently worse. As long as the site grades a player using the same methods every time, consistency measures like this should be relatively accurate.

Even for those who disagree with Pro Football Focus' grading methods, Kalil’s performance ills go beyond numbers. He just isn’t getting it done on the field right now, no matter what plays Turner is calling.

Let’s dig into what ails Kalil based on the performances he’s put in against New England and St. Louis. This example comes from a sack he gave up to Patriots linebacker Dont’a Hightower.

Credit: NFL Game Rewind

Kalil’s footwork, balance and base are all adequate in the first frame. The problem is that his hands aren’t ready to engage the rusher. When Hightower bulls his way into Kalil, he’s unable to absorb any of that power with his hands, taking it all under the chin instead. His left foot sinks back to balance himself. That allows Hightower to win around the corner and take down Matt Cassel.

When Kalil has done better work with his hands, he hasn’t been synced up with his feet to stay balanced. Talented rushers such as Chandler Jones and Robert Quinn have taken him to the woodshed by integrating power into their athletic rush moves. There's been a multitude of issues for Kalil.

Even his run blocking has been somewhat problematic. He does his best work as a perimeter blocker where his mobility comes into play. The results have been less spectacular on more difficult blocks in the trenches.

Jim Mone/Associated Press

Kalil could be described as passive, unaggressive and unsure. Everything happens so fast between the snap and an offensive lineman’s first three steps, so playing fast is a must. Lack of confidence seems to have Kalil playing slower right now.

Vikings fans can expect better performances in the near future, however. While the quality of rushers is a constant wave for any left tackle in the NFL, Quinn and Jones are on another level.

Some of the blame should also fall on the veteran quarterback Cassel too. Kalil’s blatant gaffes aren’t excused, but the relationship between an offensive line and its quarterback goes back and forth. Cassel is struggling to maneuver into space and help out his line with quick decisions, which is exposing the mistakes.

This relationship must come together for the Vikings offense quickly. In order to begin producing more points through the air, Kalil and the entire offensive line have to pick it up.

For Kalil, specifically, the job simply isn’t getting done. Minnesota invested far too much in him to now limit its passing attack because of its distrust in him. When the Vikings roll into New Orleans in Week 3, Kalil will be all out of excuses. Improvement is needed, even if it comes slow and steady.