On the path going forward...
Vikings must win the next two games to have a competitive season but what does it mean that they're here already
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — When Kirk Cousins’s throw into the end zone fell short and Cleveland walked out of US Bank Stadium with a 14-7 victory, you may have felt the same way as when you hear a song that reminds you of something from years ago.
That’s because the same notes that were played on Sunday afternoon were struck in Chicago in 2018 when the Vikings found themselves in a Sunday Night Football prove-it game against the mighty Bears defense and finished with 268 yards and plenty of regrets. Or when they lost back-to-back games against New England and Seattle that year and totaled 17 points in losses that sunk them to 6-6-1. Did you recognize the melody from Week 17 of 2018 when the Bears’ D-line again dominated in a game that would have put the Vikings in the postseason with a win?
In 2019 they had a chance to fight it out for the division late in the season but Green Bay’s defense smothered the Vikings at US Bank Stadium and the Packers went onto the NFC Championship while Minnesota’s hopes were crushed by Nick Bosa and DeForest Buckner.
Of course not all of the games that the Vikings needed to show they could contend were of the exact same genre. They took L’s in shootouts against Green Bay, Tennessee and Seattle to open last season. And we heard a similar refrain as this year about the club being better than its record. Actually, the exact same. Mike Zimmer’s we-have-a-good-team rant from after the loss to the Browns was no different from when the Vikings were 1-4 in 2020.
This quote is from Adam Thielen following the 27-26 loss to Seattle last year:
“The message in the locker room is 'we can be a dang-good football team,’” Thielen said. “We saw it tonight, we saw it the last couple of weeks. We just have to finish. One more play… you can go back and look on situations and you wish you woulda-coulda-shoulda, but one more play, one more yard, one more stop, things like that.”
You already have the sheet music for the next two weeks, right? The Vikings face off with the Detroit Lions — who are 0-6 against the Vikings since 2018 (the Vikings are 20-25-1 against everyone else, by the way). They will either trounce the lowly 0-4 Lions or they’ll be stunned at home i.e. the Falcons 2020 game or Bills 2018 game or 2016 Colts game.
If they win, it’ll be onto Carolina, where they will have a chance to get to .500. Not exactly the crescendo everyone was looking for going into the bye week.
If they don’t win those games, prepare the funeral music. Zimmer might not like factoids about the odds of teams making the playoffs with certain records, but I’ll give them to you anyway: Out of 61 teams to start the season 2-4 since 2010, six of them made the playoffs. The best record was 10-6. If you go 1-5, the numbers sink to 3-of-41 reaching the postseason.
The history of 3-3 isn’t all that special either. Only 25 of 94 teams that started 3-3 made the playoffs. You’ll never guess the average record of teams that went 3-3 to open the year since 2010. Yep, it’s 8-8.
The teams that did overcome 3-3 starts to have 11-plus win seasons are: The Bears in 2018 and teams quarterbacked by Peyton Manning, Russell Wilson, Cam Newton, Tom Brady, DeShaun Watson, Eli Manning, Andrew Luck, Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers.
It may still feel early but starting 1-3 leaves the Vikings with three potential paths:
1) They fall apart in the next two weeks, everything is lost and ownership is left with some very tough decisions.
2) They get back to .500 at the bye week and give themselves a chance to make the playoffs but end up on the “in the hunt” graphic
3) They overcome the slow start and put their name among the outliers from the lists above.
The first option is hardly impossible. The Lions aren’t good by any stretch but they were in the ballpark against three of their four opponents. Carolina is 3-1, ranks third in points allowed and made a late push against Dallas. The Vikings’ 1-3 start has left no room for bad breaks or bad bounces against the Cats or other Cats.
If either one of those games goes sideways, the bye week will give the Wilfs time to assess the totality of the seasons that followed 2017 and whether they want to keep going forward with this regime. In 2019 there were questions after the Vikings’ Week 16 loss to Green Bay about whether it was the right path to stick with the same QB/HC/GM combination. It might have a Dan Quinn/2020 Falcons-ish feel at that point.
The sell job for any type of turnaround would become extremely difficult at 1-5 or 2-4. Last year the Vikings won five of six games out of the bye but after a win over the Packers, they beat Detroit, Chicago, Carolina and Jacksonville. There’s no stretch in this year’s slate like that.
This time around they’ll see Dallas, Baltimore, LAC, Green Bay and San Francisco. Those clubs have a combined current record of 14-5.
Winning three out of five of those games would be a pretty impressive accomplishment. There are winnable contests in the middle of the schedule against Detroit and Pittsburgh but the final four games are Chicago, LAR, Green Bay, Chicago. Quick math: Post-bye the only times the Vikings play teams that aren’t either in their division or currently over .500 is against the 49ers and Steelers.
Here’s what that means: For a team that has repeatedly suffered the same types of losses over the last three seasons and four weeks of 2021, it’s not easy to argue that they’ll conjure up a magic carpet ride through the NFC in the second half of the season.
But if they get to 3-3, at least it gives everyone another shot to make it happen — to prove Zimmer right about being good. There would be nothing cheap about a post-bye rampage in which the Vikings put the 1-3 start behind them and come up big in the biggest moments week after week.
They’d be bucking quite a trend in that case. They’re 0-3 against teams with winning records currently and went 3-16 between 2018 and 2020 against teams that finished the year above .500. If you are wondering if all teams struggle against winning teams, they do, but the Vikings’ winning percentage vs. winning teams from ‘18-’20 ranks 26th.
Again, not impossible though. While 2017 feels far off in the distance, it did happen. They looked up and down to start the year and then hit rocket boosters after a Week 5 win over a division opponent. Of course, they’ll need two more wins to even get a chance to do something like that.
So thing about the three paths is this: They all lead to a reckoning. If they come up short against Detroit or Carolina, it solidifies the fate of the 2021 season.
If they make things interesting and get to 3-3 and ultimately play the old .500 jam, it’ll confirm that over a big sample of games that it is who they are fundamentally and something will have to change. What exactly…well, that’s a song for another day.
And if they take the road rarely traveled from 1-3 to a terrific season full of memorable wins, we’ll know that they were right all along and that the current direction is one that can take them deep into the playoffs.
But the fact that the route they expected to take following the 2017 season has become the one that’s least statistically likely says something about the tune Vikings fans have been forced to hum along with in recent years. And why it’s hard not to tune out pleas for patience.
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Well reasoned throughout, Matthew. The eternal challenge in the NFL is making decisions based upon such a tiny data sample, but it's the only one available and, e.g., we don't need to see Patricia coach 10 seasons to determine that he's incompetent.
The biggest problem with having a successful defensive HC is the ensuing revolving door at OC. If the Vikings make the playoffs, Kubiak the Younger will be the new HC in Jacksonville or Chicago next year. That's not Zimmer's fault and there isn't anything he can do about it, but if I were the Wilfs, that would be the key issue to wrestle with.