It’s amazing how quickly the vibes can change after just one game.
This Minnesota Vikings fanbase was deep in the pits of despair before the kickoff in Detroit last Sunday. The defense had been completely discombobulated. The offense was the worst it had been in Kevin O’Connell’s tenure. The quarterback of the future had his career short-circuited by a combination of injuries and poor play. The sky was falling, and the vibes were terrible.
Then they went into Ford Field and beat the Detroit Lions on the road for the first time since 2020, snapping the four-game winning streak the Lions had held over their heads the past few seasons. Suddenly, the season feels completely different.
J.J. McCarthy was far from perfect, but he showed tangible proof of concept for what he could be as the franchise quarterback. Minnesota’s tandem of tackles managed to gut it out the whole game, and the offensive line performed admirably against Detroit’s front, holding superstar pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson to a quiet game by his standards.
Kevin O’Connell seemed to find his groove for calls that best fit McCarthy’s skillset, and the second-year quarterback delivered with several nice throws to Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and finally Jalen Nailor to ice the game at the end.
On the other side of the ball, the performance was also a drastic improvement from their Thursday night debacle in Los Angeles. Andrew Van Ginkel‘s return completely reinvigorated the defense after he made plays as a rusher and in space.
The team tackled well, stymying the dynamic rushing tandem of Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, holding the Lions to only 65 yards rushing. Brian Flores called his best game of the season against the Lions, doubling down on the dangerous gambit of blitzing right into the teeth of Detroit’s offense. But instead of being picked apart like recent seasons, Goff succumbed to the pressure, and the Lions’ running backs found themselves exhausted by the likes of Eric Wilson repeatedly screaming up the A-Gap.
So that’s it, right? Is the team back to being the playoff contender we expected in the preseason? Maybe not. We might want to turn down the heat on expectations.
In Minnesota’s eight games this season, we’ve seen roughly 2.5 games worth of actual good football. Their win over the Lions is the best one on their schedule by a wide margin, but it doesn’t erase the mistakes that landed them at .500.
The Vikings are far from a bottom-feeder. Still, they are last in the NFC North standings for a reason, even though they are 2-0 in the division. We haven’t seen the kind of week-to-week consistency from any segment of this football team that should make us feel confident they can rattle off the wins needed to be seen in any “in the hunt” graphics later this season.
It all starts this Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens.
If there’s anyone more disappointed by their record relative to preseason expectations than Minnesota, the Ravens are your most likely candidate. Lamar Jackson‘s injury, coupled with multiple disaster games by Baltimore’s defense, has resulted in a 3-5 record. And yet, despite finishing November below .500, the Ravens are -145 to win the division. That should tell you something about how Vegas views this Baltimore team when they’re fully healthy.
And the Ravens aren’t the only daunting threat left on Minnesota’s schedule. Of their final nine games of the season, six of those teams are above .500. The Vikings are going to need to contend weekly with teams like the Seattle Seahawks, Green Bay Packers, and home rematches against the Lions and the Chicago Bears. This tough stretch of the schedule began last week on the road at Detroit, and this team passed that test nicely, but it continues again this week when Lamar Jackson comes to town.
It’s not as though the season hinges on this singular matchup, but this team has shown some mental fragility. If we’re going to believe the Vikings’ performances against the Chargers or Atlanta Falcons are a thing of the past, they need to show that they can stack performances against quality teams like they’re going to face this Sunday.
More important than the win, they need to prove that these individual performances weren’t just a blip on the radar. Can they actually count on this offensive line to play together again, with the same combination of five starters, two weeks in a row? Can they count on McCarthy to progress as a starter and build on what he flashed against the Lions? Will the defense manage to defend the run so well again, this time with a mobile quarterback to change the math in the rushing attack?
The Vikings need to focus internally first. They need to focus on their own performance. We’d all like to think that their big losses are the exceptions, but their resume this season suggests that this Lions performance is the true outlier. Coming out and competing against Baltimore would go a long way to change that narrative.
Minnesota would love to compete for more than moral victories this season. Now it’s up to them to prove that they deserve to.