Adam Thielen on Vikings' New Offense: 'It's the Most Learning I've Ever Had to Do'
Somehow, this is the seventh consecutive year the Vikings will enter the season with a new offensive play-caller.
Norv Turner, who held the job from 2014 to '16, was the last person to do it multiple years in a row. He was followed by Pat Shurmur, John DeFilippo, Kevin Stefanski, Gary Kubiak, and Klint Kubiak as the offensive coordinators under head coach Mike Zimmer.
It's safe to say that streak will come to an end next year. With Kevin O'Connell in town, the Vikings have an offensive head coach for the first time since Brad Childress was fired a dozen years ago. That will allow for a level of stability on the offensive side of the ball that the Vikings haven't had in a while.
Step one for the players, which is still in progress right now, is learning it all. The Vikings have had mostly the same scheme for the past few years under both of the Kubiaks and Stefanski, but O'Connell's offense — while it may share some similar ideas — is an entirely different animal.
"It's wild," Adam Thielen said on The Pat McAfee Show. "It's the most learning I've ever had to do. I'm swimming a little bit, but it's fun. That's part of the rejuvenation, right? I'm excited to come to work because I'm excited to learn a new offense, I'm excited to learn what we're going to install today. This system makes sense. Everything we're doing makes sense. Everything looks alike, acts alike, feels alike. The terminology makes sense. It's a lot, though. There's a ton. The formations alone, there's so many different ways they can line us up and so many different words, lots of code words, things like that, where they say one thing and everybody's gotta know what to do."
Thielen has experienced the Vikings' offensive rollercoaster more than anyone else. He's the longest-tenured player on Minnesota's offense and the second-longest overall, behind only Harrison Smith. He was around for the entire Zimmer era. So to hear him excited about this new offense and everything it entails is significant.
As for how he's learning the plays, Thielen says the app Quizlet has been a huge help.
"We got access to Quizlet, which basically is flash cards on your phone," he said. "Any time I got like time on a plane or whatever, I'll just pull up Quizlet. It'll say the play name and then I can be like 'OK, I'm the Z (receiver), I've got this route,' and then I can click on it and it'll flip and it'll show me the play."
He's not the only one utilizing that approach. Last week, Kirk Cousins said he's been using physical flash cards to help learn O'Connell's offense.
"Just trying to memorize plays and terms and formations and protections and just the rules around all those things so it becomes instinctual," he said. "You feel like an eighth grader studying for a quiz in school the next day the way you go home each night and study, but that is really what it does take to come out here on the practice field and be able to just play instinctually."
Cousins said much of the focus has been on learning the terminology and the language of this offense, but that some of the overarching concepts are similar. He's learning it from scratch, but that's mostly because everything has a different name.
"There's always that evolution," Cousins said. "Certainly there are elements that are different. But there's only so much you can change. At the end of the day you do have these staple foundational pieces that are pretty consistent across the league."
Perhaps just as important as the actual Xs and Os on both sides of the ball — the Vikings have a new defense as well, with Ed Donatell replacing Mike Zimmer — is the different vibe around the team this year. Things were clearly getting stale with Rick Spielman and Zimmer at the helm, so the Vikings' new regime has brought change and excitement to the practice field.
For someone like Thielen, who is entering his tenth NFL season, that's a good thing.
"I feel fresh, I feel energetic, I think the culture that's been created here is just a breath of fresh air," he told FOX 9's Hobie Artigue. "It just makes it exciting to be here and work."
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