What led to the Vikings' whopping eight false starts in Sunday's loss?

One number stands out above the rest after the Vikings' loss to the Ravens on Sunday: Eight. That's how many false starts Minnesota committed on a day where self-inflicted wounds were too much to overcome in a winnable game.

According to ESPN's Ben Solak, it's the first time an NFL team has committed eight false starts in a home game since 2009, when J.J. McCarthy was six years old.

Vikings right tackle Brian O'Neill, who had never been called for more than two penalties in a game before this one, had three of the false starts. Blake Brandel, Ben Yurosek, Christian Darrisaw, Justin Jefferson, and J.J. McCarthy were the five other offenders.

"Whatever was going on with the cadence or whatever it may be, just not acceptable in any way," head coach Kevin O'Connell said. "We've gotta get it fixed, and we will."

The Vikings found ways to move the ball in Sunday's game. They ran for 120 yards as a team. Accuracy was an issue for McCarthy, but a high volume of attempts helped him throw for a career-high 248 yards. On the day, their offense averaged six yards per play, which is a good number. Usually, that leads to points and success. The issues were the sheer number of penalties, three turnovers — two McCarthy interceptions and a special teams fumble — and three turnovers on downs.

"It's all for naught if you're going to be giving back so many of those yards in different capacities," O'Connell said of the Vikings' successful yards per play mark.

Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason combined for 72 rushing yards on 13 carries, an efficient average of over 5.5 yards per rush. But because the Vikings kept putting themselves in less-than-ideal down and distance situations, then trailed for almost all of the second half, they had a hard time sticking with the run game, and McCarthy finished with nearly 50 dropbacks.

"We would hit a good run, and then it'd be first and 10 and we'd be in first and 15," O'Neill said. "That's on us to not screw it up and give ourselves more opportunities to hit 'em."

"Some of those things, after a positive run, we were hoping to maybe stack some runs on a drive and then you go right back to a get-back-on-track situation via your own doing," O'Connell said. "Those are the ones that are very unfortunate, especially then when you end up with more third and longs than you ever should when you're averaging six yards a play."

So, what was the issue? The Vikings were at U.S. Bank Stadium, where noise wouldn't seem to be a major factor when their offense has the ball. Was there a particular trend that led to all of the penalties? Does fault belong to McCarthy or to the players, like O'Neill, who committed the infractions?

Asked about it after the game, no one really seemed to have a clear answer.

"We've gotta find a way to, first and foremost, correct whatever the issue was," O'Connell said. "Normally, we can do that in-game if there's an issue, but there just seemed to be a flinch here and there way, way, way too much. So if there was any uncertainty of what we were doing, that obviously is something we've gotta get corrected, no matter who's in the game."

McCarthy said he takes "full responsibility" for the issue. But he didn't identify a specific cause for the penalties.

"To be honest with you, I have no idea," he said. "I just feel like there's little things that show up that you don't prepare for, and we just gotta do a better job responding when things go that way. But it's all on me. ... As a quarterback, you're the orchestrator of the orchestra. I take full responsibility for anything that happens on that field. I take full responsibility every single time something goes wrong."

There were some theories, at least.

"A couple of them came when we were motioning from one side to another," O'Connell said. "Maybe there was a little bit more of a hard count emphasis by J.J. at certain times. We have multiple cadences and guys have really had not a very large issue with the cadence this year. Whatever was unearthed today needs to get fixed immediately."

J.J. McCarthy — Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images

Jones mentioned that the Ravens' defensive front was making calls of their own, which might've led to confusion for the Vikings at the line of scrimmage.

"Sometimes it's hard to hear," Jones said. "They're making move calls up front, so sometimes it sounds like it could be J.J. saying 'hut!' but they're making move calls and you'll see them stem. They're trying to get (us) to jump as well. They're playing a little game there, too. That's what they get paid to do, and we just gotta lock in a little more."

O'Connell said he asked his players if the Ravens were simulating snaps, which is prohibited in the NFL, but he "did not get any indication from our guys they were doing that."

O'Neill didn't want to go down that route and use something the Ravens may or may not have been doing as an excuse.

"I'm not really gonna get into anything they were doing," he said. "I can really only look inward, in terms of what I needed to do better. There was a lot going on out there, so for me to say 'they were doing this,' that would just be grasping for straws."

If there was something specific that happened to lead to all of the false starts, it's not entirely clear what that might've been. Regardless of how it happened, it was bizarre to witness. The Vikings had two false starts in the second quarter, two in the third quarter, and four in the fourth quarter. O'Connell said he tried to simplify the cadence during the game, but whatever he tried clearly didn't work, because the issue only got worse over the course of the afternoon.

Moving forward, the Vikings have to figure out exactly went wrong and take steps to prevent it. False starts are only five yards at a time, but they can ruin drives by putting teams behind the sticks and forcing them into uncomfortable situations. That's what happened on Sunday in Minnesota.

"We gotta have a conversation as a group, 'What transpired?' It doesn't feel like all eight of those were the same scenario, the same sequence," O'Connell said. "We've gotta understand what was different today than what had been something we felt like we eliminated from maybe early on in the season."

"We just gotta lock in a little bit more," Jefferson said. "Understand the play call, understand the cadence, and just go out there and play relaxed and go and do what we normally do. The snap count is not really something that should be a big, big focus."

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