Vikings offense is flailing behind bad clock management and stone hands

Cam Akers, the Vikings' new running back, was pacing the sideline, gesturing to his teammates, spinning his white-gloved hands like a basketball coach urging referees to call traveling. He was begging his teammates to pick up the pace.

As he flailed, in the fourth quarter, the Vikings faced fourth-and-7 with less than five minutes remaining against the Kansas City Chiefs at U.S. Bank Stadium on Sunday. They didn't even get a play off. They were penalized 5 yards for delay of game, and then their pass on fourth-and-12 fell incomplete.

The Vikings would get the ball back once more to try to tie the game, but their lack of offensive precision and clock management would leave them with another failed drive, a 27-20 loss and a 1-4 record.

This was the day that Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell should have been displaying his offensive prowess to the legend on the other sideline, future Hall of Famer Andy Reid.

Instead, O'Connell's team fumbled on its first two offensive plays, too often wasted time with the play clock running and squandered timeouts in the second half, forcing the Vikings to run desperation plays on their last drive.

When they did run plays properly, they too often acted as if the football was coated in bacon grease.

"Very, very much a disappointed locker room right now," O'Connell said. "We felt like we could come out today and compete with the defending world champs and find a way to get a win here at home, and we didn't get off to a very good start, putting the ball on the ground there on the first play.''

As the Vikings kept reminding us after the game, yes, the Chiefs are the defending Super Bowl champions, and, yes, quarterback Patrick Mahomes is one of the best to ever play the game. That doesn't mean the Vikings shouldn't have won on Sunday.

They should have, and may have, had they not wasted their last two timeouts in the second half.

In the third quarter, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce made a contested catch as Vikings safety Josh Metellus guarded him. Kelce held the ball firmly as he went to the ground and began to roll, then Metellus yanked the ball free.

O'Connell challenged the call. If it had been ruled incomplete, the Chiefs would have punted. If Metellus had been given possession, the Vikings would have had good field position. But Kelce clearly had possession while he was on the ground, as the whistle blew. The officials upheld the original call, and the Vikings were down to one timeout.

They used their last timeout as the Chiefs faced a fourth-and-1 with about nine minutes left in the fourth quarter. Reid had his offense lined up. The Vikings couldn't get lined up properly in time and called their last timeout. The Chiefs punted.

With the Vikings out of timeouts, the Chiefs ran the clock down and punted the ball back to the Vikings with 1:07 remaining. Five plays and two clock-stopping spikes left them with the ball at the Kansas City 38 with five seconds left. Cousins dropped back, tried to find room to allow him to heave the ball into the end zone and was sacked.

The weeklong story line regarding Taylor Swift attending the game to see her friend Kelce play did not amount to much. Instead, U.S. Bank Stadium too often felt like a Prince concert. There were lots of people wearing purple waving at one another and screaming.

O'Connell has joked about ordering devices off the internet to train his players not to fumble. He might want to switch from generic products to brand names.

He is an offensive head coach running a team that has most of its assets invested in its offense, and it is averaging just 22 points per game, even with the benefit of a long defensive touchdown last week at Carolina.

The Vikings' offense hasn't started fast, or produced in the clutch enough, and on Sunday, with a chance to offset previous failings, they had trouble holding onto the ball, preserving timeouts and calling plays on time.

Those things shouldn't happen to a good offensive team, and a good offensive coach.