'More is required' shirts tell a story

A young quarterback muddies the waters but the rest of the team is ready to take another step

© Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

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By Matthew Coller

EAGAN — On Monday, I gave out a homework assignment to my intern Clay: Go find us some power rankings. Not that power rankings mean a whole lot but it’s always interesting to see what the outside world thinks of the Minnesota Vikings. With free agency and the draft in the books, we have nearly the complete picture of every team in the NFL so analysts can stack everybody up.

What Clay found wasn’t all that shocking: The NFL.coms and ESPNs of the world put the Vikings as a fringe contender. That matches up with their over-under marker of 8.5 wins, which unsurprisingly did not move after the picked a left guard.

Of course, being ranked ninth (ESPN) and 10th (NFL.com) is progress from last season. Vegas had them at 6.5 wins and the power rankers barely remembered they existed after Kirk Cousins exited and Sam Darnold took his place. Going into 2024, the Vikings were viewed as a rebuilding team that would be lucky to compete for a playoff spot. Obviously those folks underrated the offseason signings and the impact that Kevin O’Connell, Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison can make on a quarterback.

After whiffing on projections big time in 2024, the rankers are handing out a little more respect. Big offseason spending and the return of nearly the entire core of the roster has the analysis world more impressed. But not quite impressed enough to make them favorite. ESPN gave NFC foes the Eagles, Lions, Commanders, Rams and Packers slots ahead of the Vikings.

While the golden supporting cast in Minnesota has every chance to help JJ McCarthy reach the same heights as Sam Darnold did last year, it’s understandable that it needs to be proven by the first-year starting quarterback before any crowns can be handed out. Every other team in the top 10 except Green Bay has a quarterback who has either A) won the Super Bowl B) lost a Super Bowl C) won an MVP D) taken their team to a conference championship. Jordan Love was one drive away from that two years ago. McCarthy has one preseason game under his belt.

So the Vikings can’t do the disrespect thing like they did last year. O’Connell used the fact that nobody believed in them (for real, not just the cliche) to hammer home his “1-0 each week” messaging. That isn’t the message this year. No matter what happened at quarterback, you can’t win 14, melt down in the playoffs and then cry foul if nobody is willing to put you alongside the Eagles just yet.

Instead the Vikings are embracing the idea of pushing themselves to the next level. Over the first three years of O’Connell’s tenure, they have won 34 games in the regular season, which is the sixth most in the NFL during that span (and even more impressive considering the starting QB list of Cousins, Jaren Hall, Josh Dobbs, Nick Mullens and Sam Darnold). But with no playoff wins, it feels empty to the leaders of the team.

“We have shirts that we wear in our workouts that say ‘More is Required’ and I keep saying that,” outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard said.

Greenard explained that he tweeted that sentence while he was on the bus (or plane, he couldn’t remember) following the Vikings’ playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams.

“All I could think of was, ‘bro, we gotta do more,’” Greenard said. “I don’t know how but we have to dig deep somewhere and find it. But more is required because that’s something everybody can do. You can give more individually.”

The sense of urgency was palpable when the veteran players spoke with the media at TCO Performance Center. One subject that repeatedly came up as a sign that they should be setting the bar at competing for a championship was the return of veteran Harrison Smith, who chose to come back for 2025 rather than retire.

“For [Smith] to come back — he’s seen many, many teams and it’s a selective process — I feel like he wouldn’t have come back if he knew we didn’t have it….We gotta get him one,” Greenard said.

“[Smith] wouldn’t come back if he didn’t think there was a chance,” right tackle Brian O’Neill said. “Clearly he sees a chance and I believe there’s a chance.”

There is plenty of reasons to believe there’s a chance after the Vikings front office took an aggressive approach this offseason. Oftentimes with a team that’s led by a young quarterback, the roster will have plenty of youth and aim to build through the draft. In this case, the Vikings went after veterans in signing DTs Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave along with retaining Aaron Jones in the backfield, adding two veteran interior O-linemen and keeping cornerback Byron Murphy Jr.

Those are not the types of moves that scream out “slow build.” The tenner of the decisions matched up with the feelings of a player like Greenard. More was required of the interior offensive line and defensive lines. More was required of the running game. So they went out and improved those areas.

“You go from a 13-win season the first year to a below-.500 the next year and come back with 14 but the common theme is that we’re not getting over that hump,” safety Josh Metellus said. “It takes a strong man to look in the mirror after a 14-win season and be able to say, ‘we need to figure out a way to get to that next step, we need to revamp here and there and do certain things to get over that hump.’ Shoutout to the front office for being able to look in the mirror and say these are the things we need to get done to get to that championship.”

Vikings core players aren’t just feeling a desperation to prove that they are more than an overachieving regular season team because they haven’t taken advantage of 13 and 14 win seasons, they have also been around long enough to understand that teams only get so many shots at this. Teams are constantly rising and falling and 2025 appears like they are reaching the pinnacle of the roster. This squad is centered around a bunch of players who are either in their primes or on the back half of their careers. There’s no time to waste.

There was no better demonstration of that fact than when O’Neill was asked about whether he would like to see the offense run the ball more this season.

“If you asked me that three years ago, I might have said yes,” O’Neill said. “I want to score 35 points and win every game. At this point, I don’t really care. I want to win. However that happens, I’m good with… If that’s throwing it 75 times, if that’s running it 75 times, let’s go. We gotta make something shake here.”

All of this ties back into the power rankings.

If the Vikings finish as the ninth or 10th best team in the league in 2025, that will basically be like the Packers’ 2024 season. Maybe 11 wins and a first-round out. Drafting 23rd or so.

By the standard of most teams with first-year starting QBs, that’s not bad. Bo Nix and the Broncos were lauded for their 10-win season and drubbing at the hands of the Buffalo Bills in the Wild Card round. But the Vikings’ situation is different. They have been building toward this moment since GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell took over in 2022. The master plan was to land in a two-year window where they could make an argument as a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

If McCarthy plays like a top-15 quarterback, they can make a run at it. Everything else is in place and you could rank the Vikings’ non-QB offense and defense in the top three in the league and not get laughed out of the room. They know it. They also know how much supporting casts and coaching impacts quarterbacks, just ask Jalen Hurts last year or Brock Purdy in 2023. Those are the teams the Vikings have worked to emulate.

But until this perpetually bronze-medaling franchise proves that they can play with those teams in the postseason, they are going to get ranked ninth and 10th by analysts who are basically slapping a “show us” label on the Vikings.

It has been a while since we have been talking about a high bar in May. Last year fans were ready to define success based on when JJ McCarthy got into games and if they had fun along the way. The bar got pushed up. Now the expectations are set the highest they have been since the team signed Kirk Cousins in 2018.

It says a lot about what they have been able to do that the players are talking this way and the power rankings seem low versus where the Vikings see themselves after this offseason.

“I understand what we did last year and still having that fire to want to achieve more,” Greenard said. “Everybody has that same mindset. The newer guys as well, they want to be a part of something great.”

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