The Minnesota Vikings Are Doing the Fucking Thing

After beating the Green Bay Packers 27-25, the Minnesota Vikings made good on what they’ve been demonstrating all year – that they’re a real NFC threat. Are you on board?

Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Getty Images

Throughout the season, the Minnesota Vikings’ success was seen as something of a mystery. While there have been illusory seasons from journeyman quarterbacks before, this carried none of the hallmarks; we saw decisive wins, come-from-behind victories, accuracy at all three levels of the field and genuine adaptation and progression.

Nevertheless, there was something insubstantial to the very real substance of the Vikings. How would one explain the success of a team whose third-down luck, fumble recovery luck, interception luck, red zone conversion rate and so on were… slightly positive but unremarkably close to average?

As always, it was a question of faith and belief, not science and data. The data generally told us this was a good Vikings team. Both the statistical analysis and the film analysis surrounding the team told us that they were talented and perhaps one of the best teams in the NFL.

Were they as good as a 14-2 record typically implies for an NFL team? Not really, but that’s true of every 11-plus win team this year.

Instead, the Vikings proved it, in front of our eyes, that they have some otherworldly, “it.” It feels good. There’s confidence there. They’re doing more than making a case. They’re building faith.

Now, the Vikings have the chance to claim a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. One more win, and it’s theirs.

Throughout all of the discussions about “sustainability” and the reality of a team winning games, there’s been a common thread — vulnerability. Can you allow yourself to believe in this team? Is your hope a threat?

This guardedness makes sense; the Vikings have done nothing but hurt their fanbase. As Bill Simmons wrote in 2010, shortly after the Brett Favre-led Minnesota Vikings lost to the eventual Super Bowl-winning New Orleans Saints, “Not even the Red Sox annihilated their fans at such a consistently efficient pace.”

And, to be sure, the Vikings reminded their fans of what they were trying to leave behind. No dispensation of the past is complete without pointing at it, mocking it. To kill the ghosts of your past, you must first lure them out.

The Vikings, up 17 entering the fourth quarter, salted away their lead by allowing consecutive touchdowns and a two-point conversion. This will continue, justly, to force the Vikings to figure out what’s going on in their end-of-half and end-of-game defensive approach but does not undermine the fact that they rocketed out to a 17-point lead against a high-level team in the first place.

So the choice is for the fans — are they willing to go through the entire season, refusing to enjoy it, until it’s all over? Until they know the result? Try to buy all the gains of emotional investment without the risk?

It doesn’t work like that. It won’t feel the same. It’s no way to be a fan.

And that’s no way to live.

Let’s talk about the game.

Sam Darnold is Good At Football