The Vikings haven't been who we thought they were
The team was constructed to take on a team like the Eagles but they fell short on Sunday
By Matthew Coller
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minnesota Vikings were supposed to be built to win a lot of different types of fights. On Sunday, the fight they needed to win was the one where the backup quarterback couldn’t get the team in the end zone.
In order to win that fight, they would need to contain Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts from escaping pressure and hitting downfield passes to his elite receivers.
Turns out, they could not win that type of fight.
Hurts looked every bit the part of a champion, going 19-for-23 with 326 yards, three touchdowns and a perfect 158.3 passer rating.
“We have to be able to go out there no matter what the offense does,” safety Josh Metellus said. “We have to do our job.”
Hurts’ brilliant day began with pretty bad omens for the Vikings defense. On fourth down, Hurts stood in the pocket long enough to calculate the cap hits for all of the void years on his contract before he found a mismatch between safety Josh Metellus and superstar receiver AJ Brown. Hurts had time to point to Brown to go vertical, dropped a dime right into his hands and put the Eagles up 7-0.
“We have to get the quarterback on the ground,” outside linebacker Jonathan Greenard said.
That brings us to another type of fight that the Vikings aren’t designed to win: The one where you have to play from behind. The blueprint definitely wasn’t to have a pick-six turn into an instant two-score lead for the opponent but Wentz threw the ball right into the paws of Jalyx Hunt to open the second quarter.
“That guy kind of surprised me where he ended up,” Wentz said. “Obviously, don’t throw it right to his chest. That would be great. But yeah, I think they had a good call. I think I need to be better and just progress, or quite frankly, just take the sack there in that scenario. I saw the guy at the last second as I was releasing the ball, and I was looking up at the scoreboard, seeing him run. Not a good feeling. I need to be better.”
With Philly playing from ahead, they felt comfortable taking big shots downfield at every turn in the second half.
In the third quarter, for example, the Vikings settled for their third of five field goals to bring the score to 14-9. On second-and-5, Hurts launched the ball deep and it fell perfectly into the hands of DeVonta Smith, who trotted into the end zone for a 79-yard touchdown.
The Vikings were supposed to be able to win the type of fight where they get a key stop late and give the offense a chance to take the lead but that wasn’t in the cards either. In the biggest moment of the game — third-and-13 with 9:09 left in the fourth quarter — Hurts escaped the Vikings pass rushers for the 14th time of the day and found Brown matched up one-on-one with Jeff Okudah for a first-down completion.
“It was a big part of the game to try to contain him as much as we could to the pocket and try to get home,” O’Connell said. “The three [third down conversions] they had in the game were all long yardage were pretty back breaking plays when you’ve done everything to force those [down and distances] and then they not only end up converting, but for some explosive gains there.”
A few 20+ yard passes later and the Vikings found themselves down two scores again with time running out.
Likewise, when they needed to shut down the final Eagles drive to get one more chance at a game-winning touchdown drive, Brown got behind cornerback Isaiah Rodgers for a 45-yard completion to seal the game.
“I put it on me…I have to make those plays,” Rodgers said.
The Vikings have the weapons to win the type of fight where they make a furious, shocking comeback and win. We have seen that numerous times during the KOC years from Kirk Cousins and Sam Darnold. But while Carson Wentz tried his hardest with several pain-filled scrambles late in the game and close-enough-for-superstars-to-catch type throws, the offense did not have the juice to finish drives when they needed.
Not that they weren’t close. There were a lot of times throughout the game where it felt like the Vikings were winning the fight and then stepped on a rake.
On the first drive of the game, Adam Thielen converted a third down and then Jordan Addison caught a 34-yard pass. But the Vikings’ backup center Blake Brandel snapped the ball over the head of Wentz for a 22-yard loss.
In the second quarter, a 40-yard reception from Justin Jefferson set up first-and-10 at the Philly 15-yard line. After a 9-yard run, Kevin O’Connell called three straight pass plays , the last of which ended up in the end zone for a touchdown but was called back by a weak/confusing holding penalty.
“Just hurting ourselves,” Jefferson said. “Causing us to go backward instead of forward. We have to execute our plays.”
Jefferson blamed himself for not bringing in a fade pass that was broken up by the defender.
To start the third quarter, Wentz committed one of the more bizarre miscues you’ll see when he threw the ball into the ground without much pressure and drew an intentional grounding flag.
With a chance to take the lead in the fourth quarter, Wentz took a third-down sack in the red zone. This time there was nobody open.
And then when it looked like the Vikings had finally shaken off the red zone woes with a touchdown pass to TJ Hockenson, the league office came to the Eagles’ rescue and overturned the play.
Once upon a time, things like a bogus holding call and a puzzling decision on a replay review would have felt like major points of discussion coming out of a loss like this. Maybe if the Vikings were falling to 4-2 or 5-1, everyone would have the energy to rage out against the NFL’s wacked out replay system that picks and chooses when'/how to enforce the rules. But right before Hockenson’s overturned catch, ESPN’s Gamecast gave them a 10.5% chance to win. They put themselves in position to let the refs decide.
The bigger picture is that the Vikings haven’t received anywhere near the level of quarterback play (from either QB) that they would need to be a contending team. They also haven’t been good enough defensively to make up for said quarterback play. In their two losses to Super Bowl-winning QBs this season, the Vikings’ secondary has allowed — wait until you hear this — 37-for-45 passing for 526 yards, four TD, zero INT.
Between DK Metcalf, DeVonta Smith and AJ Brown, they have allowed 18 receptions for 430 yards. Did anyone think the 2025 Vikings were going to win the kind of fight where the other team’s top receivers average 24 yards per catch?
The next three QBs they play, by the way, are Justin Herbert, Jared Goff and Lamar Jackson.
Of course, things could change on offense when JJ McCarthy returns. If there was any thought that Wentz could go full Case Keenum 2017 mode, that disappeared on Sunday. If McCarthy can get healthy and turn a corner with his development, they could find more consistency than with the well-traveled Wentz, who is playing with an injured shoulder and probably several more wounds after the game against the Eagles.
Could we see McCarthy on Thursday night against the Los Angeles Chargers?
“J.J. was able to get some work last week,” O’Connell said. “We’ll see how he feels as well. And on a short week, we’re going to put together the best plan we can. And that’s also includes the players available to us.”
Will it be enough to make them anything more than another middling team in the league though? So far this season, they have been trailing in 18 quarters and ahead or tied in six. That doesn’t bode well for that notion. They may be farther away than it feels at 3-3.
“It didn’t really feel like we played a very complimentary football game,” O’Connell said. “When one side was stopping the run and getting them off the field, we were able to move the ball and possess the football quite a bit today, but not get seven in the red zone…And then when offensively we were doing a lot of good things to move it we couldn’t quite make that one stop truly flip the game. That’s what it felt like today.”
The only silver lining is that the Vikings get to play a struggling Chargers team that got blown out by the Colts on Sunday. If they can come out of this stretch at 4-3 before heading to Detroit the following week, it remains possible to get on track.
For today, though, the feeling coming out of the game is that the version of the Vikings that everyone envisioned heading into the season — the one where they could beat a banged-up Philly team at home and pick up steam heading into the mean of the schedule — is not the team that they are turning out to be.
Instead the loss may have solidified who the 2025 Vikings as a team with enough talent to be in every game but enough flaws to not consistently win. That sounds like a lot of the day-late-dollar-short teams of the recent past. It’s on them to prove that isn’t the case, starting with Thursday night’s game in Los Angeles.
If JJ is healthy, the Vikings need to start him to let him play. I guess we need to be patient as he develops. My concern is the two injuries. He is far from being bulletproof.
Not sure what the worst part of that game was, but the decision to not run the ball a single time from 2nd and 1 is a top contender.