The 10 best Vikings games of the last five years
Celebrating the fifth anniversary of Purple Insider by looking back at the top 10 games between 2020 and 2024
By Matthew Coller
Back in May 2020, my job as a Vikings reporter and talk host for 1500ESPN/SKOR North/Hubbard Broadcasting was eliminated and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next with my career. I decided since the pandemic was in full swing that I might as well try to keep doing the same job. Because of the Vikings organization allowing me to remain on the beat and the incredible support from Vikings fans, Purple Insider is going strong five years later.
To celebrate the fifth anniversary, this week I will have articles looking back at the last five years and looking ahead to the next five years.
We begin with a look back at the best games of the Purple Insider era between 2020 and 2024. (I’d love to see other nominations in the comments).
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Week 3, 2020: Justin Jefferson’s debut vs. Titans
With rookies, we never really know how they are going to play until they actually get out onto the field but normally there are a lot of hints during training camp. With Justin Jefferson, it was almost impossible to get any sense for what he was going to be because he had missed the start of training camp with COVID and camp was shortened that year. Not to mention that reporters were placed much farther away from the action due to protocols and it was tough to make heads or tails of the practice performances.
Every so often it will come up that Bisi Johnson started over Jefferson as a rookie and it leaves that context out of it. For the first two games of the 2020 season, Jefferson was a slot receiver only. In the pre-draft process, one of the biggest criticisms of the LSU star as a prospect was that the Tigers had kept him in the slot the majority of the time, making teams wonder if he could beat press coverage. The Vikings’ brass laughed hysterically when the Eagles took Jalen Reagor over Jefferson in the draft but it was clear they felt like the slot was going to be the right place for him to start his career. But after losing to Green Bay in the opener and struggling horrendously in Indianapolis in Week 2, it was a desperate-times/desperate-measures situation.
The Vikings started off the afternoon in an empty US Bank Stadium in command of the game. Dalvin Cook ripped off a 39-yard touchdown early. It’s been a long, long time since the Vikings had anyone in the backfield like early 2020 Cook. At halftime they were up 17-9 and then after a Titans field goal it was 17-12. That’s when Jefferson arrived.
If you have ever been to an NFL game, you know that one of the coolest things about being in the building is the crescendo of noise when the ball is thrown deep. It builds with the ball up in the air and then explodes when Jefferson catches it. But on the first eye-popping play of his career, there was silence. The Titans sent the house after Kirk Cousins, who was under pressure on 60% of his drop-backs that day per PFF, so he had to rush a little and float the ball up rather than firing it to the open Jefferson. It was one of Kirk’s best talents that he could drop the football out of the sky to guys running full speed.
The part about that play that is so unique is that one move by Jefferson made it crystal freaking clear that the guy was going to be a superstar. Any wide receiver can catch an open deep cross and create an explosive play but Jefferson slamming on the breaks as he sensed another Titans tackler coming his way and cutting back inside was a Randy Moss’ian move. Like, folks, this guy is different. Even beyond that, we have now seen Jefferson do the Griddy so many times that it’s old hat but doing that in a completely silent arena before reaching the end zone reaches a level of self confidence that is comprehendible to most humans. Jefferson didn’t surprise himself in the least with that 71-yard touchdown. That’s who he already was in his head.
The star receiver had several other great catches that day, including a 50-50 ball down the sideline and a ball that dropped out of the sky on a slot fade. But the reason he needed 175 yards receiving was that the Vikings’ defense had zero answers for the Titans offense. Through the first two games of the season, it was pretty reasonable to say that Aaron Rodgers destroys a lot of people and Indy’s offense wasn’t that good against the Vikings defense. It was Week 3 where it became clear that the 2015-2019 version of Mike Zimmer’s D was not walking through that door.
Derrick Henry steamrolled them for two touchdowns and mixed it was a 61-yard catch by Kalif Raymond, certified Viking killer, and the Titans took the lead 25-24.
According to the box score, Kirk mixed in a 14-yard run. I can only imagine what our reactions were to that happening. And then Alex Mattison — a once very good running back — had an explosive run that led to a touchdown.
It wouldn’t be a Zimmer-era meltdown loss without a random struggling player suddenly finding it against the Vikings. Kicker Stephen Gostkowski opened the 2020 season by missing three field goals and then missed an extra point the following week. Everybody thought he was cooked but somehow he landed field goals of 54 and 55 yards to give the Titans a late lead.
With under two minutes left, another Zimmer-era classic meltdown with a chance to win the game. There was a botched snap, and then an attempted checkdown and then a wild fourth-and-24 heave that got picked off.
Something I think about often with Kevin O’Connell is how calm and in command his quarterbacks have been (not Nick Mullens as much) in clutch situations. There has to be something psychological with a team and the demeanor of their coach. How many games could the Vikings have won between 2020 and 2021 if they just didn’t freak out in big moments?
Anyway, I’ll always remember this one as the game that Jefferson introduced himself as the next great Vikings wide receiver but there are a few other things that have stayed with me through the years…
1 — This was an oh-no loss. Having torn down a lot of the roster in the previous offseason and traded Stefon Diggs, we figured there was a chance at regression but it was previously really hard to see a Zimmer team being straight up horrific. That day it became a reality and shined a light on the franchise-altering decision to extend Cousins when they were nowhere close to winning anything.
2 — Those home games were a little nerve wracking because the entire world was shut down and the press box was really the only time that any of us were around other humans. At the same time, it brought the beat crew closer because we leaned on each other through that experience. It was easy during lockdowns to feel like the world was coming to an end but having a normal(ish) experience with colleagues helped sustain the hope that we would soon be back to normal.
Week 2, 2021: Greg Joseph’s miss vs. Arizona
I didn’t intentionally pick two losses to start out but this game was absolutely nuts. Before the folks in Glendale even reached their seats, KJ Osborn caught a 64-yard touchdown. The previous week against the Bengals he had seven catches for 76 yards and it seemed like the Vikings had somehow found another great receiver.
The interesting thing about that was receivers coach Keenan McCardell identified Osborn as a guy who could take a huge step. During minicamp, the Vikings intentionally pushed the ball his way at McCardell’s request (he told me that in 2023). We spent a lot of the offseason saying, “is this Osborn thing really happening?” because he had done absolutely zilch as a rookie in 2020 outside of trying to put the ball through his legs on a punt return. Him catching the touchdown against Arizona was a this-is-really-happening moment. It also speaks to McCardell, who is the most underappreciated (by the outside world) coach in the organization. He was so important to Justin Jefferson that Jefferson asked KOC to keep him on staff as the entire rest of the staff was being overhauled. Smart decision to keep him, KOC.
Back to the game. At the end of the first quarter, it looked like it was going to be a blowout. Cousins was on fire, throwing three touchdowns in the first 30 minutes, and the Vikings were up 20-7. It should have been 21 but Greg Joseph missed an extra point. That would become a thing in his career, even if he was generally a good kicker. It would also prove very costly in the end.
It wasn’t until the second half that we started to get the same feeling about the defense that we had in 2020. Kyler Murray was doing crazy fun stuff, scrambling around like a madman and making plays all over the field. He looked like he was finally taking the leap from mid-QB to MVP candidate as he scrambled in for a touchdown and then followed that with a 77-yard touchdown pass to Rondale Moore in which the secondary had a bad miscommunication. That was not something we saw very often in the years of elite Zimmer defenses.
At half time, it was another classic Viking-killer moment as Matt Prater kicked a 62-yard bomb field goal to make it 24-23 Cards.
The give-and-take-away of Murray showed up in the second half when he threw a pick-six to the most random Viking player ever Nick Vigil. But Murray came back in the fourth quarter with a fourth-and-5 conversion that he just launched up into the air and Christian Kirk caught it. Oh, speaking of random, AJ Green couldn’t bring in two straight passes at the goal line. When do your daily Immaculate Grid and the Cardinals/Bengals combo comes up, AJ Green is your answer.
A Prater short field goal made it 34-33 with just over four minutes to go. Rather than go for a fourth-and-6 with 2:52 remaining, Zimmer punted back to the Cardinals. Down by just one point and with the defense bumbling, it was an insane decision because even a Cards quick score would have still allowed for a chance to win the game and giving it back risked never seeing it again.
I did a story a few weeks after this game where I interviewed the best Madden player in the world about game management and it was clear he understood it better than most coaches in the NFL. I also talked to a guy from a company that worked with the Eagles and he told me that the Arizona game was the single worst managed game from an expected points perspective. Zimmer actually flipped his strategy from punting on fourth down with less than three yards to go four times in the game to getting much more aggressive as the season went along.
In this instance it actually worked though. They stopped Murray and got the ball back with 2:09 to go and down one point. I wonder what percentage of Kirk Cousins games in Minnesota finished with somebody getting a final drive to win. It felt like 95%. Kirk was great on this one. Underneath to Mattison for 17 yards. A third-and-10 conversion to Thielen followed by back-to-back throws to Osborn to set up a winning field goal from 37 yards.
How about this: In Greg Joseph’s career, he has taken 28 field goals between 30-40 yards. He has made 27. The only miss was on this day to lose the game and start 0-2 with two devastating L’s.
Sometimes I think about what would have happened if they won in Cincinnati Week 1 and then against Arizona. If everything else played out exactly the same, they would have gone 10-7 and probably missed the playoffs due to a tiebreaker with San Fran. Would they still have fired Zimmer?
Dalvin Cook also got hurt in this game and was never the same after that even though he had a big day. He only have five more 100-yard games the rest of his career following that game. There were spurts of greatness still but that injury seemed to linger.
All said and done, it was an unfortunate result for the Vikings but the entertainment value was through the roof. The total yardage was 419 to 470 and there were 11 total scoring drives.
Week 11, 2021: Shootout with the Packers
The 2021 season was a yo-yo between the Vikings looking like a legitimately good/dangerous team and what-the-bleep? They had a WTB 14-7 loss to the Browns and a horrendous meltdown against the Cooper Rush-led Cowboys followed by a WTB win over Carolina in overtime and then a loss to Baltimore in OT and win over the Chargers that made them look like a legit team. That set up a chance to get back to .500 against Green Bay at home amidst Aaron Rodgers’s unbelievable MVP season.
A lot of these games are related to Justin Jefferson breathtaking performances and this one is no different. Late in the first quarter he had a 56-yard catch where the Packers miscommunicated on low-high combo route with Adam Thielen. It was bizarre that year how often Klint Kubiak was able to create explosive plays but they couldn’t seem to put teams away offensively or play with consistency.
Coming out of halftime the Vikings got a Jefferson touchdown to put them up 23-10 and then Rodgers responded with a touchdown drive that featured three passes to Davante Adams (all-time Viking killer). With the clock running low on the third quarter, one more touchdown would have made life really tough for the Packers, even if the Vikings defense was struggling and they had a drive stall out due to a Cousins sack.
That was all Rodgers needed. Bang, fourth-quarter touchdown drive to make it 24-23 Packers.
But Cousins replied with a five-and-a-half minute drive and 23-yard touchdown to Jefferson and two-point conversion to take a 31-24 lead.
The Packers needed one play to tie it. Zimmer sent a blitz at Rodgers because it seemed that he had gotten tired of watching the Packers pick them apart underneath and Rodgers zoomed a rocket to Marquez Valdez-Scantling for a 75-yard touchdown. That was when it really started to feel like Zim was just pushing buttons to see if anything worked with that broken-down defense. Guys like Eddie Yarbrough, Blake Lynch and Ryan Connelly all got defensive snaps that day.
With the scored knotted at 31, Cousins had one of his best drives as a Vikings QB. He hit back-to-back-to-back passes, highlighted by a 26-yard throw into a tight window to Adam Thielen that set up the game-winning field goal.
In total, the two quarterbacks threw for 726 yards and seven touchdowns. Adams and Jefferson went back and forth like two great tennis players returning each other’s serves. And it was the first time for fans being back in the stands for a Vikings/Packers game, which had a ton of energy in the biggest moments.
We ended up being quickly proven wrong but at the time it felt like a season-saving win that could propel them to a playoff run.
Week 10, 2022: The Bills Game
To my nerd brain, this is one of my favorite images from the last five years. The absolute madness of the Vikings’ matchup in Buffalo against the mighty Bills.
This game had absolutely everything. It was a Stefon Diggs revenge game and an Ed Donatell Vikings defense special where they melted down time and time again but somehow Patrick Peterson bailed them out at the exact right time with two interceptions in the end zone. It had crazy screw-ups by both teams, including the Bills forgetting to tackle Dalvin Cook as he went for an 81-yard touchdown, a failed fourth down in the red zone by the Bills that kept the Vikings in the game and a failed goal line sneak by the Vikings and subsequent QB sneak fumble that gave the Vikings a go-ahead touchdown. Sheer insanity under the most footbally of football circumstances with snowflakes coming down throughout.
But no matter how much other wild stuff happened in this game, it will always be most remembered for Justin Jefferson’s one-handed Odell Beckham Jr.-esque catch to keep the game alive. The definitive grab of his incredible young career.
If you don’t recall the circumstances, there was 2:00 left on the clock with the Vikings down 27-23. At the two-minute warning and facing fourth-and-18, the message to Cousins was basically: just throw it up to Jefferson. Cousins said after the game “there aren’t too many play calls for fourth-and-18.” He heaved the ball in the air and from the press box view behind Cousins, it looked like the ball was just going to fly out of bounds. It came out of his hands way too high and even having seen Jefferson jump up for contested catches many times there didn’t seem to be any way that he could bring it down. But somehow he got his fingertips on it and kinda hooked the tip of the ball and cradled it as he fell to the ground.
“No f—ing way” was probably said by every single person covering both teams in that chilly press box.
The way Peterson won the game was also pretty darn special. He wasn’t anywhere near the same speed as when he came into the NFL as an instant superstar but his understanding of tendencies was incredible. He said that he knew the outside wide receiver was going to break into the middle of the field based on how they lined up and where the other receiver went. It was something he must have seen them do on tape and he jumped the Josh Allen pass for a game-winning pick.
And we must not forget Duke Shelly. He had several key pass breakups including one at the goal line that led to the win. He’s the type of player that if you say, “remember Duke Shelly?” Everyone will say “loved that guy!”
What a game.
If I was ranking these 1-10, this would be No. 1.
Week 15, 2022: The Comeback
As with any team, there have been plenty of bad games from the Vikings through the years but I don’t think they have ever played worse than in the first half of their December 17, 2022 matchup with the Indianapolis Colts. Factor in that the Colts were 4-8-1 coming into the game and they not only had fired their head coach but hired a guy who never coached before above the high school level. The Vikings entered 10-3 and were looking to get back on track after a rough loss to the Detroit Lions on the road.
After 30 minutes, all the folks who had declared the Vikings “frauds” because of their penchant for one-score wins were feeling really good. The started the game by giving up a punt block for touchdown. What you might not recall is that former Viking Ifeadi Odenigbo was the one who scored. Revenge game!
The Vikings got the ball back and Dalvin Cook fumbled. A few plays later, somehow Matt Ryan was looking pretty good. Touchdown. 17-0 in an eyeblink.
It kept getting worse. A failed fourth-and-1 led to a field goal, then a failed Ryan Wright fake punt pass went incomplete. Both times the Colts got field goals.
As if it wasn’t bad enough, Cousins tried to throw a pass to Jalen Reagor, who ran the wrong route and it turned into a pick-six.
In the locker room down 33-0, Peterson told the offense to just give them five touchdowns. Everybody kinda laughed but he was dead serious. That’s exactly what they did.
My favorite part of that game was my friend Judd Zulgad, who has sat next to me in the press box for every game since 2016, decided to leave in the third quarter. He decided the game was over and figured he would just do his postgame coverage at home. I’ve never seen him leave early before. He was that disgusted.
There was one play in the third quarter that made me think a comeback was possible. Cousins found KJ Osborn for a 63-yard catch and they finished it off with a touchdown. On the subsequent drives, it became evident that the Colts were still going to throw the ball despite how broken Ryan was. They had two drives early in the fourth quarter that quickly ended on incomplete passes, leaving time on the clock for the Vikings to make something happen.
No surprise, Jefferson was special in this game. He had to briefly exit after Stephon Gilmore popped him and the two battled it out. But he went crazy after that, catching 12 passes for 123 yards.
By far the most memorable moment was an attempted Ryan QB sneak that failed and then Cousins threw a screen pass to Cook, who got behind a speedy Ezra Cleveland and scampered 64 yards for a touchdown. That may have been the last great Cook play of his history as a Viking.
The postgame locker room had a similar feeling of the Minneapolis Miracle. Nobody could believe what they just saw. There was a little bit of conflict in their voices. They were embarrassed to have been down that much to such a bad team but thrilled to have made history.
All year in 2022 we talked about whether they were a team of destiny or an insanely lucky group that was going to eventually fall apart. People took sides and argued and debated all season long about it and ultimately the skeptics were right. You shouldn’t fall down 33 to an amateur franchise. There was more signal in that then the second half.
It also strikes me that the Vikings are now a position where they shouldn’t have to be that team that gets the “are they forreal?” debates again.
Week 3, 2023: Crazy ending vs. Chargers
After an offseason in which the Vikings sent a lot of key veteran players packing i.e. Adam Thielen, Eric Kendricks, Dalvin Cook and Patrick Peterson, everyone was curious about how the “reset” year was going to look. The answer: Messy. They fumbled away games against the Bucs and Eagles to start the season and badly needed to beat a Chargers team that was on the ropes.
Justin Herbert put on one of the best shows that we have seen in all the years of opposing QBs at US Bank Stadium. He completed a preposterous 40-for-47 passes and 18 of those completions went to Keenan Allen. Oh, and there was Allen’s touchdown pass. The Chargers threw swing passes and short stuff all day and then caught the Vikings playing aggressively.
But KOC’s teams are just never out of games. They were down 21-10 but Kirk hit touchdowns of 36 yards to Osborn and 52 yards to Jefferson to take a lead in the fourth quarter.
Then disaster struck in the strangest ways. First, Herbert threw a touchdown pass that bounced off the face of Akayleb Evans. That was an unfortunate trend with him during his time with the Vikings. And then as Cousins was trying to lead a game-winning drive, there was confusion and panic with the clock. In a Zim-era throwback, KOC and Cousins seemed to point fingers at each other after the game. Still the Vikings had a look at winning the game but the ball bounced off TJ Hockenson’s hands for an interception to close out the loss.
The QBs combined for 772 yards on 72 completions and six touchdowns.
At that point, we assumed the season was over and were starting to discuss the possibility of the Vikings trading Kirk and sinking the rest of the season in order to get the highest pick possible.
If they had done that and Jayden Daniels… well, let’s save that for another article.
Week 7, 2023: Upsetting the 49ers
Kirk Cousins had a lot of good games to his name in Minnesota but I would rank his 2023 win over the 49ers as the best he ever played in purple. He went 35-for-45 with 378 yards, two touchdowns, one interception (that wasn’t really on him) and kept the Vikings on the field for nearly 35 minutes despite them having almost zero running game that night.
The 22-17 victory featured a shocking mistake by the 49ers that allowed a 60-yard touchdown to Jordan Addison that really put his name on the map because Justin Jefferson was out with a hamstring injury. With only a few seconds to go in the first half, the 49ers sent an all-out blitz and Cousins hung in the pocket despite immense pressure from a great 49ers D-line and threw the ball deep to Addison. The young receiver ripped the ball from the hands of the defender and ran into the end zone. That play was really the difference in the game because the Vikings only scored two second-half field goals and San Fran nearly came back if not for a bad Brock Purdy interception.
It might seem odd to say that it was Cousins’s best showing when they only scored six in the final 30 minutes but he played a winning style of football that night by sustaining drives and keeping the ball away from all of the 49ers’ weapons. In the second half he led drives of 4:46, 5:34, 4:07 and 4:19. That took a ton of big plays on third down (8-for-13) because they weren’t grinding the clock with the run game.
After winning that game, it felt like the Vikings were a lock to make the playoffs. That was the moment that KOC’s offense seemed to completely make sense to Cousins and he was playing some of the best football we had ever seen from him (I would argue the best was during the middle of the 2019 season).
Week 9, 2023: The Josh Dobbs Game
One of my bigger regrets over the five years covering the team was not traveling to Atlanta for the Josh Dobbs game. I try to travel to every road game but sometimes it isn’t in the budget so I try to identify a couple games that aren’t going to have a lot of juice. With Cousins out and Jaren Hall starting against Taylor Heinicke, I figured that it was a pretty safe play to stay home for that one. Whoops!
Even going back and reviewing the Dobbs game, it’s still kind of a blur. Jaren Hall started out looking so good and then got crushed trying to run into the end zone. When Dobbs came in, it looked like the Vikings were about to lose by 57 points. He instantly took a safety and then got strip-sacked on the next drive. It felt like it might be dangerous for him to even be in the game with no understanding of the offense.
We didn’t fully realize what was going on in the headset. It turned out that KOC was yelling instructions to the plays as fast as he could and then Dobbs was doing his best to figure it out on the fly. Late in the second quarter he got it and led a touchdown drive to make it 11-10 Falcons. That’s when it seemed possible they could win.
All hell broke loose in the second half. Jonnu Smith caught a 60-yard touchdown, then Dobbs flashed Michael Vick-like playmaking ability with an 18-yard touchdown run that was probably the highlight of the entire season.
We almost witnessed the Falcons winning the game on a seven-minute drive in which they threw a grand total of one pass. But instead Dobbs went into legend mode. He scrambled for 22 yards on fourth-and-7 and then found Brandon Powell open for a game-winning touchdown with 27 seconds left.
Everything about the whole thing was sports magic, from the guys picking up Dobbs on their shoulders in the locker room to KOC’s reactions on the sideline to the stories that came out afterward about how the entire thing happened.
We all understood that the Dobbs thing might not last, so we went into full-feature mode. Because he had gone to college to be an astronaut (or something like that), Chip Scoggins called NASA. I did an article with an aerospace engineer who was a football fan. Others called former teammates, college coaches, high school coaches, parents. It was all Dobbs all the time.
When he won the next game against New Orleans, then we started to wonder if he might be the bridge quarterback when they drafted someone. I have thought about whether that hit he took against the Denver Broncos the next week on that silly trick play with TJ Hockenson taking the snap knocked him off his game because he was never the same. Or if that’s just Josh Dobbs.
Like so many things about Vikings history, it was fun while it lasted.
Week 16, 2024: Sam’s Seattle Shot
I made the unadvisable decision to walk from my hotel to the stadium rather than getting an Uber. I love walking to stadiums whenever I can because I like to see the crowds outside and get a sense for the buzz before the game and it’s easier to dead reckon to find the media entrance if I’m walking up than being dropped off somewhere.
In this instance, it started drizzling hard as I was on my two mile walk from the hotel and then security was not helpful in pointing me toward the media gate. Soaked, I ran into Dane Mizutani in the parking lot and we tried to navigate it together, though we ended up getting sent around the back to where group buses were being dropped off. Just as we were getting through a massive hoard of people, a woman stepped off the bus and faceplanted right into the concrete right in front of us. That stopped the crowd in its tracks and we stood getting more and more wet. By the time we got inside the stadium, we might as well have taken a dip in the Puget Sound. Luckily I brought extra socks. Dane did not.
Traveling for games can be really fun or really treacherous.
The actual contest was one of those “they can’t keep getting away with it” games. The Vikings had played with fire in the weeks leading up to their matchup with the Seahawks, letting Atlanta hang in before the wheels came off and nearly losing to Arizona. Seattle’s defense just seemed to have a lot of answers and Geno Smith was throwing the heck out of the ball that day.
That was my first time seeing Geno and after that I fully understood why the Seahawks would be OK moving on from him. He has top-10 arm talent but he can’t really be contained by coaching. He threw a terrible pick to Dallas Turner (great play by Turner too) and the INT that ended the game was baffling. Those weren’t even the only ill-advised passes that he made. Sometimes it was impossible to figure out what he even saw on the plays. He’s one of those QBs that often makes “big-time throws” because he takes a silly chance and it works out. I’m not sure you can win more than nine or 10 games with that.
Of course, that made the game interesting as the two sides made great plays and sloppy plays left and right, as you’d expect from a drizzly day in Seattle.
No matter how hard Vikings fans try to forget Sam Darnold because they love JJ McCarthy now, they should never forget the throw he made to Justin Jefferson to win in Seattle. The Seahawks were killing the Vikings offensive line and disrupting everything in conjunction with the noise. The fans brought it that day because they were desperate to get their team back to the playoffs and Darnold had been struggling at times. But his throw to Jefferson was one of the best of the last five years, hands down.
Darnold had to escape the pressure, step up in the pocket and keep his eyes down field and then calculate the distance to lead Jefferson so he could grab it. Everything was right on the money, allowing Jefferson to get into the end zone for a 39-yard TD to win the game.
One thing I want to add: Don’t take these Jefferson moments for granted just because the Vikings always have great receivers. What you are seeing is all-time excellence in NFL history and he hasn’t even had The Guy at QB.
The cherry on top was Theo Jackson’s interception. I’m sure people keep hearing about Theo and thinking, “why does everybody love this guy so much?” Plays like that are always going to earn you street cred with players but it’s the fact that Theo has had the talent to be a starter and has crushed every opportunity yet he does everything behind the scenes that he’s asked to do and he’s prepared when his time comes. Everyone respects that. There aren’t many moments you’ll find when the entire team is so genuinely thrilled for somebody like they were Theo on that day.
Week 7, 2024: Heavyweight Fight vs. Lions
I know, another loss. I thought about picking the win over the Packers here because Sam Darnold played so freaking well in that game but it just wasn’t a great game. It was the Vikings getting off to a big lead and then Green Bay scrambling to get back in it. The game in Week 7 was back-and-forth. Two really strong teams throwing blows at each other in an awesome environment at US Bank Stadium.
The yardage total in this game was 391 to 383. It was 247 to 244 in net passing yards and 144 to 139 in rushing, 19 to 16 in first downs and 29:03 to 30:57 in time of possession. Find me a closer NFL game.
With every score, there was an answer. The Lions tried a crazed fake punt and the Vikings snuffed it out and then Aaron Jones ripped off a 34-yard touchdown. But the Lions soon came back with a Jahmyr Gibbs 45-yard TD and Amon-Ra St. Brown 35-yard TD. Justin Jefferson responded with a 25-yard touchdown of his own and then Viking killer Kalif Raymond scored again.
It was a straight up fireworks show with a classic ending. Ivan Pace Jr. picked up a fumble and took it back for a touchdown and then the Vikings had a chance to put the dagger in Detroit but couldn’t do it and the Lions made them pay and won the game on a Jake Bates field goal.
The budding rivalry between the Vikings and Lions during the Campbell/KOC years has been awesome, even if the Vikings haven’t been on the right side of it. So many games have either come down to the wire or they have been really meaningful. How many years did we go without that being the case? The best part is that there are maybe three other teams in the league outside of these two that have as much skill player talent. Hopefully there are a lot more of these battles in the next five years.
Incidentally my son is starting school next fall to study aerospace engineering. I will be fascinated to know how his experience would match up with someone (hypothetically) also playing football while doing the program.
The Vikings letting you keep your credentials was the best decision they made that year.
Also, KJ Osborn! That guy definitely made his share of memorable plays.
And finally... poor Sports Dad. I still laugh when I remember that game and his early departure. 😂