Vikings OC Wes Phillips has taken notice to multitude of presnap penalties

There are a lot of things that you cannot control during the course of a football game. One of the things that is firmly in your control is not committing presnap penalties.

This season, there have been 238 false start penalties through six weeks, on pace to shatter the 640 that were called in 2023 (including the playoffs). Of those 238 false starts, the Vikings have nine of them with only three of them being true road games. Four have come at home and two in London against the New York Jets. Why are there so many false start penalties this year?

Wes Phillips comments on false start penalties

The Vikings have five different players with false start penalties this season with five of them coming from Blake Brandel. Offensive coordinator Wes Phillips was asked about that and had a thoughtful answer.

"Cadence, there is a little bit with Sam and the group, getting together, and by now it should be cleaned up. That's not any excuse or anything. But I think there is kind of a feeling out of how he goes about using the cadence through the game. We mix the cadence in practice constantly. We don't want him going on one all the time. I mean, that's kind of the easy out. When someone jumps or something, it just the quarterback starts going on one all practice. We don't want to do that. We want to be able to use cadence as a weapon and use it. You know, the first guys that are going to be asking for it, if the D (defensive) line is really coming off the ball, is the offensive line. So that's something we always want to mix up some of the procedural stuff, you know, making sure guys are getting set, making sure before someone goes in motion, all those types of things. And then, of course, we've had too many delay of game penalties, so we have to be in and out of the huddle faster. We've got to be aware of the play clock and make sure that we're we're not having those penalties. But we have refs at practice. They give me a sheet after practice every day, you know, we've been a lot cleaner throughout practice. We just have to have that carry over to the game."

The Vikings are doing the right things in trying to stop the presnap penalties and Phillips' explanation of the cadence with Darnold is a good one. Continuity isn't just with the offensive line or chemistry with receivers. They need to know how he goes about the cadence. Hopefully one more week in practice will be an impact in a positive way.

Phillips was also asked about why the penalty is happening more league wide and related it back to the lack of practice time they have.

"They don't want any off-season at all, so, but I would argue that it's all important. I would like to see some of the numbers on that as well. But it does feel like there's a lot of flags. I know the game last night was indicative of that. So you know whether, whether they're just throwing them more, or there's that many more infractions or combination, I don't know, but we're worried about our guys. We need to clean some of that up."

If this is the biggest problem the Vikings have, they are in good shape.

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