How The Gink Saved Christmas
The Minnesota Vikings demolished the Detroit Lions in a testament to how effort and meaning can emerge from what feel like pointless origins. Did it move you?
The NFL's decision to host multiple games on Christmas — two streamed on Netflix and the third on Amazon Prime, their traditional Thursday Night Football broadcast partner this year — was met with eyerolls from sportswriters hoping to spend time with their families instead of being forced to cover a game.
The hope, at least, was that the games would matter — that the outcomes decided rank-order among the NFL’s best and would help determine who’s jockeying for the top seed in the playoffs.
Instead, writers were forced to cover teams either mathematically or spiritually eliminated from the playoffs. The Vikings eliminated the lifeless Lions from playoff contention with their 23-10 victory over last year’s top seed.
Was it worth it? It depends on how one approaches sports.
The Vikings put together one of the best defensive performances any NFL fan of any team has seen this year. And it may not even have been the Vikings’ best.
It is astounding that one can look at the defensive performance the Vikings put together against the Lions and potentially conclude that it’s not even their best of the year —six takeaways and the best offensive field position of the year, and it doesn’t touch what the Vikings were able to do against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Arguably, it’s not even better than what they did against the New York Giants just four days prior.
It, contextually, could be the best performance they’ve put together all year after accounting for the fact that Jared Goff was bandied about as an MVP candidate at points this season, and neither Jake Browning nor Jaxson Dart were.
Brian Flores Put Jaxson Dart In A Blender
It is understandable that many fans felt that the Minnesota Vikings’ 16-13 win over the New York Giants on Sunday was hollow. To Brian Flores, however, the win had to feel great. Flores had filed a lawsuit against multiple teams, including the Giants, after allegedly learning he would not get the job before he even interviewed — former Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick texted Flores a message congratulating him on getting the job; that text was meant for a different Brian: former Giants’ head coach Brian Daboll.
The other defensive performance contending for this list, their Week 14 matchup against the Washington Commanders, was against Marcus Mariota for half the game.
Either way, ambiguities like these are a testament to what Brian Flores can do when fully enabled to send chaos.
So What’s the Takeaway?
The Vikings are projected to have negative-$35 million in cap space in 2026, which means they have some decisions to make. Those decisions will likely revolve around aged veterans; the Vikings have the second-oldest snap-weighted defense using both season-long snap counts and last week’s snap counts.
They can clear up some of that space without cuts — about $20 million is available via restructure for both Justin Jefferson and Brian O’Neill, with more for T.J. Hockenson and Jonathan Greenard — but given how much they have to reserve for draft picks and theoretical re-signings, Vikings fans should be prepared to lose some key members of this year’s defense.
That includes players likely to retire like Harrison Smith as well as older players who filled spot roles, like Eric Wilson. Both of them are free agents, as are Jeff Okudah and Fabian Moreau. Cap casualties might include Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave.
On offense, losses could potentially include Ryan Kelly, Josh Oliver and Aaron Jones. Next year’s team won’t look like this year’s team. So what is the worth of progress in a lost season when the most important developmental player cannot play?
It depends on what one is a fan for — the spite value of denying the Lions a playoff spot is hard to deny. It feels good. And it reminds us that there was something in the hope the fanbase had in the team at the start of the season; a validation of sorts, insulation against the idea that one was made a fool of.
Perhaps it is too little, too late, for repairing the ego it takes to have an opinion about how good a team is, but there is something fulfilling about seeing someone like Andrew Van Ginkel tear the soul out of the Lions offense — the worst performance we’ve seen for them all year.
That’s not much of an exaggeration; the Lions produced their worst total offensive yards, yards per play, success rate and EPA per play. They only scored one more point than they did in their dismal effort against the Philadelphia Eagles, a product of three consecutive conversions on third-and-long and 12 plays within the 12-yard line.
Despite those three conversions, this was their second-worst conversion rate (20.0%) on third down, beating out their zero percent rate against the Bengals — a win where they scored 37 points and only had eight third downs in the game at all.
How Did It Happen?
This was, unavoidably, the Van Ginkel game. He was in on two sacks directly, indirectly on at least one more, recovered two fumbles and caused an interception with a different pressure.
Goff may see Van Ginkel in his nightmares, his own personal Krampus.
Seeing Van Ginkel perform like he did in this game — like he has in the past three games — serves as a reminder of how drastically the defense changes with him on the field. He’s a supercharged version of the hybrid linebacker/edge rusher Flores has employed in the past, like Kyle Van Noy in 2017 or Van Ginkel himself in 2020.
