One of the most common statements I hear people make about the 2025 Minnesota Vikings is that they probably won’t win 14 games again, but they’ll be a better team.
On paper, the Vikings have improved their roster this offseason. Sam Darnold was sacked nine times in Minnesota’s Wild Card loss to the Los Angeles Rams. So Kwesi Adofo-Mensah replaced Blake Brandel, Garrett Bradbury, and Dalton Risner with Donovan Jackson, Ryan Kelly, and Will Fries to fortify the interior offensive line. All season long, the Vikings struggled to generate pressure without blitzing, so they added two formidable pass rushers to the interior defensive line by signing Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave.
While I’m not necessarily trying to argue that the Vikings will be worse off in 2025, suggesting they will be a better team — even if they win fewer games — is a bit of a slippery slope and raises more questions than it answers. You could make the argument that a 12- or 13-win team could be considered better than last year’s team, but what about 10 or 11 wins? If the Vikings lose four more games, are they really better than they were in 2024? Assuming Minnesota wins fewer games this year, at what point would it be considered a disappointing season?
Moreover, is taking a significant step back from 2024 just a part of the natural regression that occurs when you’re transitioning from a veteran signal-caller to a first-year quarterback? Should we place more emphasis on continued progression from certain position groups, such as the offensive and defensive lines, along with exciting young players like J.J. McCarthy and Dallas Turner? Or should we instead judge the Vikings purely off wins and losses?
What constitutes a successful season for the 2025 Vikings?
The Vikings aren’t a win-now team in the traditional sense. They have all the pieces to make a deep playoff run. However, a first-year quarterback has never won the Super Bowl since they started playing the big game 60 years ago, and neither have the Vikings. So, expecting J.J. McCarthy to make history by winning the franchise’s first-ever Lombardi and thus breaking the Ed Thorp curse would be an unrealistic expectation. Therefore, one could make the argument that McCarthy’s development from the beginning to the end of the season is more important than wins and losses.
Given that the Vikings won 14 games last year and led the NFL in 2025 payroll, there’s a certain level of pressure to win now. With pundits saying that McCarthy is entering the perfect situation, it would be even more jarring if the Minnesota Vikings won fewer than their projected 8.5-game win total. Coupled with the fact that Kevin O’Connell is 0-2 in the playoffs entering his fourth year as head coach, there has to be some level of urgency to be in playoff contention at the very least.
Whether or not they make the playoffs could be a determining factor in how the fans and the media view the 2025 Vikings. For example, winning 10 games against the fifth-toughest strength of schedule could make up for the Vikings losing four more games compared to the 2024 season. Minnesota would secure a playoff berth for the third time in four years with three different starting quarterbacks, once again reinforcing the narrative that O’Connell is an offensive guru who can find ways to win with virtually anyone under center.
Making the playoffs is all well and good, but it’s just window dressing if the Vikings can’t make it past the first round. It’s a lot harder for a 10-win team to advance in the playoffs than a 12-win team because of seeding. You don’t want to be the seventh-seeded team that’s stuck traveling to Philadelphia or Detroit to play a Super Bowl contender in the Wild Card round. Case in point, the 2024 Green Bay Packers are the only seven seed to win in the Wild Card round since the NFL expanded to a 14-team postseason.
It’s very difficult to place reasonable expectations for a team if you don’t know what to expect from their starting quarterback. However, we know that the Vikings have had teams that were good enough to be in playoff contention but never good enough to advance past the first round. Therefore, making it past the Wild Card round with a young quarterback, in my opinion, would be considered a success. Losing in the first round would represent stagnation. Anything less than that would be considered regression and borderline disappointing.