MINNEAPOLIS — An early intended pass in the Vikings-Bills game felt almost predictive of Minnesota's offensive struggles on Monday Night Football.
On the Vikings first play of their second possession, Carson Wentz threw what was initially ruled an incompletion to Justin Jefferson. Officials reviewed the play, however, and ruled it traveled behind the line of scrimmage — and therefore a fumble recovered by Buffalo's Greg Rousseau.
Things simply got worse from there.
Minnesota possessed the ball for just 17:28 and did not convert a single third down (on eight attempts), eventually falling 23-6 to Buffalo.
"Told the team it starts with me," Vikings Head Coach Kevin O'Connell said postgame. "One hundred percent, the defense was on the field too much. Thought they battled, thought we made some plays in the kicking game, just not even close offensively to what we want to be. Thought there were some opportunities to kind of flip the game a little bit at multiple times, but we just never got Carson in a rhythm and tried a bunch of tools to see if we could help that happen; I didn't do a good enough job doing that.
"Put tonight 100% on me," he added. "It's not about any one particular player, but we've got to improve offensively — and at a rapid pace with a divisional game on a short week."
Wentz was just 8-of-25 passing for 81 yards. He was intercepted twice and finished with a passer rating of 8.9.
T.J. Hockenson led the team in catches with four for 33 yards. Justin Jefferson had three catches for 58 yards.
Hockenson spoke with media members and expressed utter frustration and, frankly, disbelief with the offense's performance.
"Honestly, I don't know," he responded when asked to pinpoint a specific issue. "I feel like we click during the week. … I don't know how to explain it. It's not fun for us to be out there and going three-and-out or whatever.
"It's like you feel like you make a couple plays, and when we just hurt ourselves or we stall or whatever it is," Hockenson added. "You just can't go three-and-out. I don't know how many plays we had on offense, but it probably wasn't many. And that's never a good sign."
O'Connell acknowledged he should have run the ball more than the 11 combined rushes by Jordan Mason (six for 35 yards) and Aaron Jones, Sr. (five for 16).
"When we did get first downs, it was trying to see if we could get some completions, move the football and then get a good mixture going," he said. "Just not good enough by me."
O'Connell echoed Hockenson's sentiments that things are not translating offensively from practice to game day.
"Our preparation is not coming to the stadium with us," he said.
The feeling is especially deflating when paired with a Vikings defense playing at an incredibly high level.
"The defense is playing their tails off, and we've just got to hold up our end," Christian Darrisaw said. "We've got to start taking it [from] practice to Sundays, Mondays, whenever that may be.
"It's not where we want to be," Darrisaw continued. "We know what we're capable of and we just … we fall short. It's like, we know what we've got in this [group] — as a unit, we know what we've got. We've got to start picking it up and scoring points."
Darrisaw and Hockenson both expressed confidence in the Vikings quarterbacks and what they're capable of. As to why it's not clicking? They wish they knew.
"I believe in our quarterbacks room. I believe in who those guys are," Hockenson said. "I'm with them every single day. I know how good, how talented that room is and who those guys are. We've got to make some things shake on Sundays. That's really all it is."
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