The Minnesota Vikings and the Curse of Hope

The Minnesota Vikings lost 31-9 to the Detroit Lions and lost the opportunity to secure homefield advantage for the playoffs. It is difficult to take this away in the moment, but it is important to remember that they are arguably the most impressive fifth seed in NFL playoff history, a 14-win anomaly among a history of good, but not great, teams to populate the playoff bracket’s best runner-up spot.

A loss like this saps a fanbase’s excitement for that fact. It triggers the panic room mentality of a fanbase nearly traumatized by the mere concept of hope. The doors are locked, the windows are shuttered and the pantry is stocked with MREs.

Were life like a story, this would be the final setback before the ultimate, narrative-ending gauntlet — the moment before the protagonists prove their mettle and tear down the obstacles in their way.

Vikings fans know, however, that there are no protagonists in real life. Or rather, there are no heroes while the stories are being written; we decide who they are after the fact.

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The meeting between the Vikings and Lions was a clash of similar opposites. Both had generated enviable team cultures and unerring belief in their mission. It wasn’t difficult to find fans sharing locker room moments after wins for either franchise.

One team specializes in high-powered passing offenses and rehabilitating quarterbacks. The other has one rehabilitated quarterback, manning a run-forward offense that mirrors the physicality of their defense, a gritty throwback to teams of yore.

But the similarities — and differences — don’t end there. Each fanbase has a particular relationship to hope, a relationship that comes together and splits apart in unique ways that color their reactions to big games and big moments like this.

In Greek mythology, Tantalus was an ancient king who had been punished by the gods with a unique torment: he was doomed to perpetually stand in a pool of water, positioned just below a fruit tree with low-hanging branches.

Struck with eternal hunger and thirst, the water was forever below the level of his lips and the fruit forever just inside the grasping reach of his fingertips. Every time he bent down to take a drink, the water would recede away from his mouth. Every time he reached for the fruit, the branches would move just far enough away from his hands.

The Greeks knew that mere starvation and thirst wouldn’t be punishment enough to engender fear of the underworld. It was the knowledge — the visceral understanding — that relief was moments away. True agony came from the fact that one could feel the end of the torment, anticipate the release from pain and yet never realize it.

Starvation, thirst — those are hardships. Being tantalized… that’s torture.

The permanent misery of Lions fans and Vikings fans is the difference between these two concepts. Lions fans had been struck with starvation. Any memories of success required that they stretch back — sparse and unsatisfying playoff appearances in the Caldwell and Schwartz eras. A division win in 1991. A brief glimmer of success in 1983.

Until their NFC Championship appearance last year, the Lions hadn’t been exposed to the kind of success that makes one lament it. Unlike the Lions, the Vikings carry a fanbase taught to fear hope, a unique kind of damage different than one who has had the hope beaten out of them.

In that sense, the emotional high of a Lions win in Week 18 is more meaningful than one from the Vikings. Detroit fans were always going to drink more from the fountain of hope than Minnesota fans were.

The good news for Vikings fans is that there is no eternal decree that they’ll be doomed to failure. These are patterns identified by the pattern-seeking brains of humans that we understand to be perpetual but are actually discrete moments in time.

The Vikings will not cure their fanbase of their hope-related trauma until they win, but while that happens, that fanbase will have to understand that these are not the Favre-ian figures of the past.

They are not beholden to the ghosts of Gary Anderson, Fran Tarkenton or Joe Kapp. For Vikings fans, the most courageous thing they can do despite the evidence in front of them is to believe.

But for the Vikings to pay back that belief, they’ll have to fix a few things. This was a devastating loss to what seems to be the big brothers of the NFC North.

Throughout the first half, Sam Darnold played out of character, at least for what he had established for himself this season. The timing was right, the reads were correct and the receivers were open. But the throws were always high and often behind.

The national commentariat were quick to turn on Darnold and the redemptive quality of his story — that he is who he’s always been, that he’d been seeing ghosts and couldn’t live up to the moment.

But his failures in the first half were not of the type that typified his Jets career; he knew what he was looking at, he sensed the pressure in the pocket and he remained in rhythm. It’s too easy to say he was the failure he always was.

More worryingly, his foibles were of a new variety, perhaps excited to play the most meaningful game of his career.

Darnold was under extraordinary pressure and it wasn’t just a product of the offense’s demand that he hold on to the ball. Detroit’s blitzes, numerous in the absence of their primary pass rusher, wreaked havoc on the offensive line and protection unit.

Even without that pressure, however, Darnold faltered. From clean pockets and clear throwing windows, Darnold couldn’t connect to his receivers. When there was no pressure in his face, Darnold averaged just 3.6 yards per attempt. When the Lions held off on the blitz, he averaged just 2.0 yards per attempt.

It was a massive failure on Darnold’s part, made clear in the red zone but a problem everywhere on the field.

That red zone performance is what stands out, however.

Four consecutive trips to the Lions red zone — two of which crossed the Lions’ five-yard line — produced just six points. Had they maintained their red zone offensive averages against a beleaguered defense that had given up scores of points in the prior several weeks, they would have come away with 20 points on those possessions in addition to whatever they could score from explosives.

Certainly, a 20-10 lead by the middle of the third quarter would have led to different management by the time the Lions had started their offensive flurry.

A number of individual problems contributed to this loss: the free points off of the Will Reichard kick out of bounds and subsequent signature defensive collapse at the end of the half, the unwillingness to leverage the successful running game, and the poor play design in the red zone — but one persistent problem tanked the Vikings: Sam Darnold.

The playcalling wasn’t ideal, but it was good enough. The offensive line didn’t meet the standards it had set in the previous two weeks, but it had done enough. The defense collapsed late in the game, but it had given the offense incredible opportunities earlier in the contest.

Darnold saw the field well enough, set the protections well enough and got rid of the ball relatively on time. He simply wasn’t accurate.

Certainly, Kevin O’Connell could have done more to take plays off of Darnold’s plate. At the same time, unerring trust in this much-maligned quarterback produced this outstanding season. While it remains a mistake, it is a more forgivable one than Darnold’s own series of mistakes.

The Vikings, and Sam Darnold, may have lost some of the wind behind their sails. That’s alright; that’s what the oars are for.