By Matthew Coller
MINNEAPOLIS — Be honest: How many of you had to log back into your social media accounts and delete a bunch of messages that you sent out midway through the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers’ opening game at US Bank Stadium? I’m going to guess a very high percentage of you.
That’s not to be blamed. The first 40 minutes saw the Vikings lose their starting quarterback, struggle to move the ball, give up huge explosive plays to the Packers offense and come within a whisker of a special teams penalty ruining the last chance that the Vikings had to come back.
Instead they turned the game on its head with a go-ahead drive orchestrated by Carson Wentz (and the Packers) and caused turnovers that turned a close game into a blowout. Here’s how it happened from the players in the locker room.
Let’s start with Murray going down.
On the third drive of the game, the Vikings’ starting quarterback rolled out looking to convert a first down with his legs but as he slid down he was clubbed in the back of the head. Immediately players knew it was a bad situation.
“Frustration,” Jefferson said. “I hate to see one of my brothers go down, especially with that type of injury.”
Wentz went into the huddle with some anxiousness. This is new territory for him. He’s never had to come into a game when the starter gets hurt and pick things up immediately, especially when he hasn’t taken any reps with any of these players all summer.
“It was a different process [during camp], I’m not going to lie,” Wentz said. “Stay as ready as I could with mental reps, all the things, reps after practice, whatever that looks like. At the end of the day, leaving it in God’s hands. I know that’s for me coming here. I know there’s a lot of other things that could happen and transpire. And for me, I’m confident in what I bring to the table, what I can do, and if my number gets called, that I can step up when needed.”
Jefferson said that Wentz was calm and in command of the huddle, even if his head was spinning a bit internally.
“He just came in with poise,” Jefferson said. “Managed the offense and led us down [the field] to a great team win and some great scores.”
For head coach Kevin O’Connell, he wanted Wentz to play the way he needed to play to win and not worry about how he was entering the game.
“I just kept telling him, I want you to be aggressive and I trust you, I know you’re going to be able to make the next play,” O’Connell said.
Of course he spent all offseason preaching a new commitment to the run game and wanting to win games by any means necessary but now he would need to lean heavily into both thought processes. They weren’t likely to win a passing shootout with one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks.
“We learned late last year of just how to just keep playing and make them snap it one more time, make a play in the kicking game and get the turnover situation…we were able to win the turnover margin, which I thought was part of the avalanche there at the end,” O’Connell said.
Things weren’t going their way for the majority of the game as Jordan Love hit shots downfield that pushed the Vikings to the brink. An explosive play and Vikings penalty on a made field goal led to the Packers going for fourth down in attempt to put the game away. But rookie defensive tackle Domonique Orange knew when they trotted the offense out, they were going to QB sneak. He took that personally.
“It was disrespectful,” Orange said, emphatically. “So mindset was, ya’ll are going to go take that? Alright, cool. Turnover on downs.”
Orange anticipated that they were going to run the QB sneak and was ready to jump into action as soon as they took the snap.
“Absolutely I knew it was going to be [a sneak],” Orange said. “Fourth-and-1 and you have a rookie in front of you? If I was a quarterback, I’d try that too. But they don’t know about Big Citrus yet.”
From there, Wentz nearly threw the game away with a sack on third down that was negated by penalty and then an interception in the end zone that was also negated by penalty.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Wentz said. “We had a couple flags that kept our drive alive. I threw one to their safety right in the chest, and that was a flag too, so praise God for that. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but the momentum was in our favor and we capitalized whenever we had those breaks. And I was proud of the guys for doing that.”
Nonetheless, the Vikings were able to get an explosive run from Jordan Mason and then run the ball into the end zone with Aaron Jones and convert the 2-point conversion to take the lead. It’s worth going in reverse for a moment and pointing out that the Vikings were still in the game at all because of one particular huge play where Wentz got the Packers to jump offside with two minutes left in the half and hit Jefferson for a bomb touchdown when the Packers jumped offside.
“You want the quarterback to throw it up there,” Jefferson said of the touchdown. “That’s more of a 70-30, not as much a 50-50 ball. We work on that play all the time…free play, throw it up to Justin.”
Back to the fourth quarter… After the Vikings took the lead, Andrew Van Ginkel got a strip sack and took the ball to the 1-yard line. AVG on strip sack.
“I knew the ball was out and I knew I had to get it but I thought I was down by contact,” Van Ginkel said. “I got up and started celebrating and wish I ran to the end zone right away and then ended up with 300 pounds landing on me.”
Circling back again to the reasons the game was still close, the Packers missed opportunities earlier to put the Vikings too far out, in part because the Vikings stuffed their Josh Jacobs-less run game.
“It was very important to shut down the run,” outside linebacker Dallas Turner said. “Knowing how they played last year, we knew we were going to get a lot of downhill runs and stretches and stuff like that. All 11 of us were at the ball.”
After the Vikings went up by two scores, there was still enough time with Love’s arm to make things interesting. Instead, James Pierre picked off a pass that was batted by Harrison Smith. Welcome back, Harry.
“I’m still mad at myself,” Smith said laughing.
Smith said that he felt the power of the crowd start to take over the game as things unraveled for the Packers.
“The fans are such a weapon for us defensively,” Smith said. “Even after the play, you can feel the momentum. It’s real. The energy — I really noticed it in 2020 when the crowd was gone and big games happened but the energy wasn’t the same… I don’t know how you quantify it but it’s real.”
Just like that, it was a 17-point game and the rest was academic.
Now what? The Vikings head to Chicago to face the Bears, who blew out Carolina with a crazy offensive outburst on Sunday. They will very likely have Wentz back under center. If anything, they proved on Sunday that losing Murray doesn’t have to wreck the season, even if it put a road block and made the journey harder.
“That’s a really good team over there and today will be a special one,” O’Connell said. “And it’s not because of a statistical explosion. It’s not because we were. you know we did anything other than just be a football team that’s been built a certain kind of way from a standpoint of the people who are in that room that locker room the way this team stayed together even when it there was some unique hard circumstances losing your quarterback.”
“This one will stick with me for a long time.”
I wonder if all the runs (offense) and blitzes (defense) had kind of a cumulative effect such that at first they were pretty useless but by the third quarter wore down the Packers. I mean Love was hit something like 15 times... Even if you are not sacked, getting hit hard 10 times might make things a lot harder.
That was certainly a festival of emotions. Will be an interesting week getting ready for the Bears. Hope they can get the run game going right away.