The Minnesota Vikings Are the Durable Fragility of Hope

The Minnesota Vikings beat the San Francisco 49ers 23-17 in one of the more eventful games of this short season, putting them into a position many didn't think was on the table when the season began.

Comic courtesy Dave Rappoccio of the Draw Play

Last year, the Vikings’ most exciting win came with the somber news that Kirk Cousins would be out for the rest of the season — the only multi-score win of the 2023 season against a hated division rival signaled a turnaround from the disappointing 0-3 start to the year.

Or it should have. But the Vikings quarterback, playing the best football of his career, was out for the season.

This year, the Vikings opened the season with a truly dominant win against a bad Giants team and were set to really test themselves against the San Francisco 49ers. Entering the game as 5.5-point underdogs at home, there wasn’t much to suggest that the Vikings should have walked away from this game against an NFC favorite with a win.

Instead, they rolled out to an early lead and kept piling on the damage. There were exciting (if unsustainable) plays like a punt block with a return. There were exciting, sort-of-telling plays, like a 97-yard touchdown to Justin Jefferson.

And there were the boring, confidence-inspiring plays like Darnold stepping up against pressure in the pocket and casually dumping the ball off for a small gain. Again and again.

The Vikings secured a win against the San Francisco 49ers at seemingly great cost. Jefferson, who generated 133 receiving yards in the first half, went down at the end of the third quarter and needed help getting off the field, leaning on two members of the Vikings staff as he gingerly walked toward the locker room.

Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images

It was an alarming sight that nevertheless followed the process that sportswriters and fans always go through when a star goes down — worry, fret, speculate and file it away until after the game. There was business to attend to.

In the middle of the fourth quarter, running back Aaron Jones — who had earned 64 yards in this game and was astounding last week against the Giants — entered the medical tent.

Jones had just earlier coughed up the ball after a humongous gain on a screen pass, giving the 49ers the ball at the one-yard line. Denied a chance to score, the Vikings would need to earn the ball back with good field position after “pinning” the 49ers on their own goal line.

That drive turned into a 49ers touchdown, making it a 20-14 affair instead of a 27-7 game.

As Jones vacated the tent, Vikings first-round pick Dallas Turner entered the foreboding blue canvas enclosure.

Draining the clock on their subsequent response four-minute drill, the Vikings stalled out in the red zone to settle for a field goal, manufacturing a nine-point lead with 3:30 left in the game, though importantly without any timeouts for the 49ers.

On that scoring drive, Jones re-entered the game with a run up the middle to set up the game-extending kick. He is, seemingly, fine.

The Vikings, with two scores to play with, prioritized clock management in the response drive from the 49ers, choosing to open up the underneath on defense to force the 49ers to chew up time on middle-of-the-field throws.

The strategy was fine but it was stressful. The 49ers opted for a field goal after getting rebuffed in the red zone and needed to secure the onside kick. Nick Muse recovered the attempt and Minnesota won the game to go 2-0 with both wins coming in conference — an important distinction, evidently, as we might end up talking about seeding by the end of the year.

It’s difficult to understand what to do with this. The Vikings’ 2-0 start seems a lot more “legitimate” than their 0-3 start last season, one that bore out as misleading after more stable measures of play evened out.

Until Cousins went down with injury.

That injury caveat is suddenly very relevant here. Darnold did well throwing to Jalen Nailor and Brandon Powell after Jefferson left the game. And he will have, in a short period of time, T.J. Hockenson and Jordan Addison.

There is also little cause for alarm with Jefferson. The compartmentalizing of the third quarter gave way to tense waiting as Vikings fans and media waited for an update from Kevin O’Connell on the franchise cornerstone, the highest-paid receiver in the NFL.

For Jefferson, it was a quad contusion. Painful, but not a long-term concern. The Vikings referred to the receiver as day-to-day. The Vikings’ first-round rookie — or rather, their healthy first-round rookie — also doesn’t seem to be a long-term worry, with a knee issue that didn’t alarm O’Connell.

The language surrounding his responses about both players suggests that Jefferson will be ready to play sooner rather than later, perhaps even next week. For Turner, it could take a little longer.

So, alright, are the Vikings good? We have more available evidence than two games; we have an understanding of their roster and expectations before the season, which should also factor into our projections.

Historically, this has been the smart play. Teams historically regress to their preseason expectations until surprisingly late into the season; in-game performances become more predictive of results than preseason predictions after about the halfway mark of the year.

But it’s not as if we’re seeing some astounding luck give the Vikings an unseen advantage — their turnover production has been even and they haven’t been particularly fortuitous when it comes to recovering loose balls.

So, what elements of the Vikings stood out as genuine reasons for optimism?

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