When T.J. Hockenson caught J.J. McCarthy’s touchdown pass to give the Vikings a 14-7 lead in the first quarter Sunday, he put his former head coach in an unfamiliar position and his current head coach in a new one.
It meant Dan Campbell was coaching behind the Vikings at Ford Field for the first time since Dec. 5, 2021, when Jared Goff hit Amon-Ra St. Brown for a TD as time expired that gave Campbell his first victory as Lions coach. And it meant Kevin O’Connell was calling plays with a lead for the first time at Detroit.
Vikings General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah talked this offseason about building a team that could win multiple types of fights, from dropback passing games that turned into shootouts to low-scoring slugfests in bad weather. So far this season, though, the Vikings had spent most of their time trying to win games that required a comeback.
According to Sports Info Solutions, the Vikings had played only 64 snaps with a lead this season before Sunday, tied with the two-win Browns for the fourth-fewest in the league. Of the three teams with fewer, none of those had won more than one game. The Vikings, before Sunday, hadn’t possessed the ball with a lead since their 48-10 blowout of the Bengals on Sept. 21.
Against the Lions, though, that all changed. Their defense gave up a touchdown on the first series of the game for the third week in a row, but the Vikings answered with TDs on back-to-back drives to take the lead. They ran 43 offensive plays with the lead, while their defense, which had played only 26 snaps with a lead since the Bengals game, got 55.
For J.J. McCarthy in his first game since Week 2, the lead created a buffer that slowed things down for the young quarterback. For the defense, the lead became an accelerant; the Vikings harangued Goff with linebacker blitzes, sacking him a season-high five times and pressuring him on 18 snaps while effectively detaining running back Jahmyr Gibbs in the backfield as an extra pass protector.
O’Connell learned Monday that this was the first time he had coached the Vikings in Detroit with a lead. He was grateful to finally feel the complexion of the game change.
“What it’s always felt like, especially at Ford Field, is when they get momentum at different times, it normally stacks and kind of feels like an avalanche at times,” O’Connell said. “Unless you make a significant explosive play or an individual effort play in any of the three phases, you kind of always feel like you are playing catch-up — even though we actually were, in most cases, playing catch-up.”