For a meaningless game, Week 17 was kind of vintage

The Vikings played an extremely 2020 Vikings-y game against the Lions to wrap up the season

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We should really save Dennis Green’s “they are who we thought they were” for special occasions but his words were bouncing around my head during the Minnesota Vikings’ Week 17 matchup against the Detroit Lions.

There wasn’t anything on the line Sunday except a small change in the Vikings’ draft status based on a win or loss. But the difference isn’t even enough to be a storyline. And as we’ve learned from previous years’ Week 17 games, there aren’t too many conclusions that can be drawn, even from individual performances by unproven players.

So what we saw on Sunday was more or less a caricature of the Vikings’ season. It was like a carnival artist was asked to draw a cartoon version of the 2020 team.

The game opened with a miserable possession. Kirk Cousins fell down on the opening play and then left guard Dakota Dozier stepped on his foot on the second snap. Dozier committed a penalty, the Vikings ran on first-and-20 and then they punted on fourth-and-15.

The following two drives stalled quickly too. Cousins threw a quick pass to Ameer Abdullah on third down and he came up one yard short of the sticks. In meaningless games, you definitely punt on fourth-and-1, so the Vikings gave the ball back to the Lions.

Detroit’s offense started slowly too but that didn’t make much difference in the first quarter as Cousins took a sack on second down and the Vikings punted again.

Finally Matt Stafford attacked the broken down Vikings secondary, driving 90 yards and finishing Detroit’s first touchdown drive with a 43-yard touchdown pass to Marvin Jones.

The Lions’ receiver, who has been a Vikings killer in recent years, smoked Anthony Harris en route to the score. Last offseason the Vikings elected to franchise tag Harris with hopes that he would help the team overcome a young group of cornerbacks. That didn’t happen in Weeks 1-16 or Week 17.

As per usual, when the Vikings got behind, the offense started cooking.

Cousins overcame a sack (as he’s so often been asked to do this year) on the following drive to find Alexander Mattison on a 28-yard touchdown pass on fourth-and-1.

Oh hey, Alexander Mattison.

Now there’s a difference between the rest of the season and Week 17. The other running backs reminded their coaching staff that they are capable of playing effectively in place of Dalvin Cook occasionally.

Mattison was averaging 5.0 yards per carry at halftime and Ameer Abdullah caught a touchdown pass on the next drive.

But not before Detroit went the length of the field in 2:15 to take a 13-7 lead. That particular drive was capped by another long touchdown pass in which nobody pressured or covered.

As often was the case in 2020, the teams kept exchanging scores like we were watching the Duke’s Mayo Bowl and the Vikings were set up deep in Detroit territory with a chance to take the lead late in the second quarter.

But Cousins got sacked again on third-and-long and Dan Bailey missed a field goal. It was like listening to the season on record or tape cassette.

The Vikings did deviate from their 2020 tendencies on the final drive of the half — sort of.

They got the ball with 0:55 left in the half at their own 21 and 51 seconds later they had only moved to Detroit’s 40. Failed end-of-half drives have been a weekly staple. And if the Lions were anybody but the Lions, that would have been the case again. But Detroit left Chad Beebe wide open and failed to tackle him before half’s end and the Vikings scored a 40-yard touchdown. It was their first TD on a final drive since the last time they played the Lions.

Oh yeah, and Everson Griffen jumped offside on the final drive just to really make it feel like home.

The second half opened with a concerning level of deja vu as the Lions returned a kickoff to the Minnesota 33-yard line. It wouldn’t be a 2020 Vikings game without multiple special teams miscues. Detroit scored two plays later.

The Vikings shot back with another touchdown to re-take the lead 28-23. This time their score was driven by a 38-yard catch by Justin Jefferson, who broke Randy Moss’s record for receiving yards by a rookie. From Week 3 to Week 17, Jefferson has been the reason to watch and the reason the offense has often been able to go score-for-score with opponents.

Up by five, the only player not named Eric Kendricks to rise to the occasion this year on defense Harrison Smith picked off Stafford. At that point, the Vikings had the opportunity to put away the Lions but in 2020 fashion, they did not. Cousins was pressured on third down from the Detroit 4-yard line and threw the ball away.

The Vikings settled for 23-yard field goal because Mike Zimmer settles for 23-yard field goals.

By now you might be weary of the sheer number of classic things that happened in this game but it didn’t end there. The Vikings’ defense made sure to keep Detroit in the game, giving up passes of 31 and 18 yards on the next drive — one that ended with an Adrian Peterson touchdown.

With a two point lead, Cousins had his Cousins turnover play that leaves you scratching your head in disbelief. Except the Lions defender dropped the ball when Cousins checked it down right into his hands.

Jefferson then broke the all-time rookie receiving record, passing Anquan Boldin. We can only imagine his numbers if the Vikings started him in the first two weeks and hadn’t ranked 27th in pass attempts.

The Vikings got another shot inside Detroit’s territory and in 2020 style they failed on fourth-and-1 but the referees decided they were going to call an outragedly silly penalty on the Lions’ defender who sacked Cousins. The Vikings could have used that call against Dallas earlier this year.

Cousins finished off the drive with a QB sneak touchdown and Bailey missed the extra point, as you might have expected.

On the following possession, Peterson converted a fourth-and-1 because opponents converted every single fourth down against the Vikings this year. The refs decided they were in extreme Week 17 mode by taking a touchdown to Jones off the board despite there being no visible reason to negate the score.

Not that it mattered. The Lions kept the drive alive with several Stafford completions and scored from the goal line. The bend-don’t-break defense never really worked anyway.

Unlike most of the year, the Vikings put the game away when they had a chance. An outside pitch to Mattison resulted in a big gain and a first down at the two-minute warning. That put the game on ice and brought to season to its conclusion with a high-scoring victory.

In the end, Vikings-Lions was entertaining. As much fun as you’ll ever have in Week 17 with nothing on the like. Most Vikings games this year were pretty fun.

But Week 17 was more or less a reminder of the way this season went for the purple — right down to a win over a bad team resulting in losing ground in the draft.

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