It's one of those years?
The Vikings have suffered a ridiculous run of injuries, putting their season in peril early on
By Matthew Coller
After a game like that, there is a pretty natural tendency to look around for people to blame. It wouldn’t be the NFL if it didn’t work like that.
Was it the play calling? Is it the scheme? Is it roster construction? Was it the draft strategy? Should they have kept Sam Darnold? Why didn’t they get a better backup QB/C/G/T/LB/OLB etc.?
There’s truth to a lot of criticisms — and we’ll get to those — but the biggest culprit of the Minnesota Vikings 24-21 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Dublin was injuries.
You can say that every squad has them or that injuries aren’t an excuse but they explain a lot about the 2-2 start to the season in which the Vikings have only led for five of 16 quarters.
By the end of Sunday’s game, they were missing: JJ McCarthy, Ryan Kelly, Brian O’Neill, Donovan Jackson, Aaron Jones, Andrew Van Ginkel and Blake Cashman.
That’s two recent first-round picks, four Pro Bowlers and a Pro Bowl-caliber player in Cashman.
Per NFL Next Gen stats: The Vikings have five different unique combinations of offensive linemen that have already logged at least 10 snaps together, tied for the most in the NFL with three other teams. It’s very tough to play like that when there are All-Pro players on the other side.
Unfortunately, Vikings fans have seen this movie before.
Following a 2015 season in which they won the NFC North, Minnesota saw its up-and-coming QB Teddy Bridgewater go down with an injury in 2016 and then the team suffered a rash of injuries on the offensive line. They went from 5-0 to missing the playoffs.
The 2018, 2020 and 2023 seasons were also filled with regression after double-digit win totals in the previous year. Each version had its own reason for decline, whether it was the head-butting between Mike Zimmer and offensive coordinator John DeFilippo in ‘18 or the loss of key players in the offseason and Danielle Hunter in ‘20 or Kirk Cousins’ Achilles tear in ‘23.
Last year the Vikings won 14 games and had nearly their entire team remain healthy for the entire season except for losing Christian Darrisaw to an ACL injury. The pendulum was swung back the other way again.
The signs of injuries impacting results were everywhere against Pittsburgh. A third quarter drive when they were only trailing by eight, for example, was ruined with back-to-back sacks. And when the Vikings somehow still had a chance to tie the game with under one minute remaining down by three points, Wentz was flagged for intentional grounding as he tried to toss the ball away while he was getting taken to the ground. In total, he was clobbered six times for 48 yards lost.
Per Next Gen stats: Wentz was pressured 16 times, with four different Steelers defenders registering 2+ total pressures. Yes, some of the sacks and pressures were Wentz’s own doing.
If the Vikings were going to win with Wentz at the helm, they were going to have to do it with great pass protection and a run game like they had against Cincinnati. Instead the Steelers owned the line of scrimmage and Jordan Mason gained 3.6 yards per carry.
On the defensive side, we saw Van Ginkel pick off Aaron Rodgers last year in London and run it back for a touchdown. The pick-six came when he fooled the veteran QB on a quick pass. This Sunday, Rodgers did not look fooled in the slightest as he went 18-for-22 passing — mostly with quick passes — and the Vikings didn’t take the ball away from him at all.
The Vikings’ run defense gave up 99 yards on 19 carries to backup RB Kenneth Gainwell. Last year Cashman ranked in the top 20 among linebackers in run defense and Van Ginkel is effective against the run as well.
Where the lack of a run stopper on the second level showed up most was following an interception in the third quarter by Wentz when the Steelers started on the Minnesota 35-yard line. They needed the defense to shut the door. Instead Pittsburgh completed a short pass and then went 7-yard run, 6-yard run, 10-yard run, 4-yard touchdown run.
Then with 7:50 left in the game and the Vikings down by 10, the Steelers killed 3:41 off the clock on a drive that ultimately ended with a failed fourth down attempt. Had the Vikings gotten a stop immediately, they may have had time to complete the comeback.
It’s not only the players who are currently injured but also players coming back from injury. Darrisaw was playing his first full game since midway through 2024. That showed at times in more than 50 total pass protection snaps against a super-talented D-line. Harrison Smith is also returning after missing the first two games of the year.
Sometimes it just isn’t your year when it comes to injuries. Remember when the Vikings had to put Willie Beavers in at right tackle on Thanksgiving Day 2016? Or Danielle Hunter’s neck “tweak?” Or the time they played Tashawn Bower and TJ Smith significant snaps in San Francisco in 2021? It’s really hard to win consistently with half your lineup.
But the explanation for the Vikings’ mediocre performance during the first quarter of the season just be totally explained by bad breaks.
There were calculated risks that have gone the way of the worst-case scenario. They started a young QB who was going to need a complete supporting cast to repeat the types of performances we’ve seen from 2018 Jared Goff or 2022 Jalen Hurts or 2023 Brock Purdy or 2024 Jayden Daniels.
They brought in Wentz at the last minute rather than having an answer at backup quarterback in the building all summer.
They decided this offseason that their medical team was superhuman and signed a bunch of players with serious injury histories.
They signed two older defensive tackles to massive contracts who had struggled in their latter years to play against the run. The answer looked like it was going to be Harrison Phillips rotating with younger DTs Jalen Redmond and Levi Drake Rodriguez but the Vikings traded Phillips to the Jets at the end of training camp.
Injuries also didn’t cause the eight penalties for 82 yards or the missed tackles. They didn’t change the fact that Rodgers wasn’t fooled much by the complex defensive looks in the same way that Jake Browning was last week. Rodgers looked more like Jared Goff or Matthew Stafford have against this defense.
So what are we supposed to make of a 2-2 football team that looks a lot more like a team that will have to battle to make the postseason than the Super Bowl-contending club that they were aiming to be?
For starters, the quarterback situation makes everything murkier.
If they decide to go back to JJ McCarthy after the bye week, are they going to be healthy enough to support him up front? Is the defense going to give him extra chances when they play teams that can run the ball? Are they going to be patient enough to stick with him if he doesn’t perform well right away?
Usually when a team is crumbling with injuries, the quarterback has to take his own game to another level. There is no other level for Wentz and asking McCarthy — who held the ball longer than almost every other QB over the first two weeks of the season — to not only master NFL speed but face down NFL hyper speed seems like it’s asking for another injury.
Whether it’s Wentz or JJ McCarthy under center, the Vikings are going to have to win games with strong offensive line play, strong running and exceptional defense. Those things are all suspect right now. The question is whether these things are fixable.
Let’s be clear: The Vikings season is not over at 2-2. Some of the teams that make up the vaunted schedule ahead (Chargers, Ravens) looked vulnerable on Sunday.
In 2017, they were 2-2 and had just lost Dalvin Cook for the year and then things turned in their favor. But they were also 2-2-1 in 2018 and 3-3 in 2021 and 4-4 in 2023 and yet all the signs were there that trouble was ahead.
In the coming weeks, Kevin O’Connell and Brian Flores will be facing some of their most challenging moments of their tenure. In 2023, they had the QB injury and transitioning roster. In 2024, they were outpacing expectations by miles and miles with Sam Darnold. This year, they were supposed to be really good. No excuses.
We don’t know yet which direction it will go. Next week the Vikings face the bumbling Cleveland Browns, who have a defensive line capable of stealing a game but overall have an argument for being the league’s worst team. After that they play the Eagles and Chargers in four days and then take on the Detroit Lions. The next stretch will tell us everything about whether this team can still become what we expected them to be or another one of those years.
Even taking all the sacks, Wentz did everything they needed to win. Two tipped ball INTs to end good drives seems pretty random. I see more long term success in the offense as is (maybe with McCarthy too, when healthy); but the all or nothing defense is most concerning to me.
It’s going to be a rough season. I’ll keep saying it because there isn’t anything else to do at this point but complain, but I never liked them pushing all their chips in for this season instead of reloading with younger players that could help you in a year or two from now. You didn’t even know McCarthy was going to be good, yet you decided to sign Kelly, Allen, Hargrave, Jones, and probably somebody else I’m missing. Even if McCarthy was good, and I know he still can be despite what we’ve seen so far, the window for him to be good enough was never realistically going to be this season. So why sign all those guys who are going to have even more tread in years 3-4 of McCarthy’s rookie deal, which is what you should be shooting for. Just feels like they either got impatient, or were overly confident after playing the AFC South last year.