Luke Braun's Film Room: What Is Real, And Are The Vikings For It?

Luke Braun explores a Cartesian theory of the Vikings' recent success.

Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images

If you’ve been a Vikings fan for a long time, you may have felt a strange, surreal comfort as Minnesota’s 31-29 win scrambled through the 2nd half. The Vikings watched their biggest ever lead at Lambeau Field slip away as Packers fans shook the building’s old bones to their core. We, as fans, thought, “here we go again.”

I know you thought it. Even if you tell me you never had a doubt, I know you’re lying - if not to me, then to yourself. If you’ve been a Vikings fan for any amount of time, images of Tee Higgins bullying Akayleb Evans at the pylon or sounds of a younger Paul Allen’s crackly screams flitted through your mind. 

Deep down in any Vikings fan, as long as we’ve watched enough missed 27-yarders or cross-body interceptions, is an innate resistance to success. It’s a defense mechanism. Every time we’ve gotten our hopes up, without fail, we’ve been burned. Eventually, our bodies physically revile at the idea of touching that hot stove again.

So, as the Vikings built up a fourth straight massive lead in the first half, that instinct kicked in. The games weren’t flukes, either. The Vikings weren’t squeaking out heart-attack victories like in 2022, and they weren’t winning on the back of convenient special teams plays like in 2016. They were just hammering teams they weren’t supposed to be able to keep up with. 

Sam Darnold was playing like an MVP Candidate. Yes, that Sam Darnold. The one you remember making fun of over a bout with mononucleosis and a particularly disastrous Monday Night Game.

The Vikings were destroying another team in a perfectly normal way. And yet, it felt fake. Like the other shoe was ready to drop. It wasn’t a question of if things would all go wrong. It was a question of when. Of how.

Finally, the crash back to earth.

Like the moments after a jump scare in a slasher movie, there was a sense of relief, wasn’t there? That the Vikings were finally as you remember them. You didn’t like what was happening, but you were relieved that you didn’t have to anticipate it anymore. Perhaps the fear of the monster was worse than the monster itself. 

But the Minnesota Vikings held the Green Bay Packers’ late rally at bay and escaped Wisconsin with a 31-29 victory. The other shoe didn’t drop. The real monster has yet to reveal itself.

Or has it?

Are the Minnesota Vikings for real? Can we afford to trust them? What will it take for us to overcome our body’s natural resistance to hope?

Cogito, Ergo Sum

It’s November 10th,1619. The eve of St. Martin’s Day. A French mercenary working in service of a Bavarian Duke holes himself up in a small room in Neuburg an der Donau, about halfway between Neuremberg and Munic. As he goes to sleep, he leaves the cocklestone oven on.