The Vikings’ Christmas Whiteout
Minnesota's defense stepped up big time against Detroit, turning a whiteout into a near shutout.
The logistics involved with NFL games make it difficult to make changes on the fly. When the NFL announced the schedule for the 2025 season on May 14, they hoped for a strong Christmas Day slate to compete with the NBA and feature five playoff teams from 2024, along with the ever-present Dallas Cowboys, in the day’s three games.
With one of those games, the Detroit Lions at the Minnesota Vikings, the NFL hoped to get stakes close to what the teams saw in Week 18 of 2024, when the two met in Detroit to decide the NFC North and the NFC’s No. 1 seed. The Vikings, recognizing the importance of the matchup, tabbed the game for their Winter Warrior uniforms, announcing the decision in July.
Given the results of the 2024 season, it would have been difficult for the NFL to predict that its 2025 Christmas Day slate would be almost entirely meaningless.
Washington and Dallas were eliminated from the playoffs, Kansas City was starting Chris Oladokun against Denver with Patrick Mahomes out for the season, and Detroit’s playoff hopes were hanging by a thread against the already-eliminated Vikings. The NFL allows some games to be flexed, but the Christmas Day games did not qualify under its procedures.
Like the NFL schedulers, the Vikings were also stuck in a difficult spot for their special uniforms. Teams like to highlight special uniforms in critical, heavily watched games, so it made sense for the team to choose Christmas as that opportunity before the season, but it felt hollow when the team was eliminated.
It’s easier for teams to change the week they wear a certain uniform (you may note that the Lions are noted as wearing their primary blue uniforms in the Vikings’ announcement above, but wore their alternate blacks instead), but the schedule also left the Vikings with few good choices.
The Vikings had played four of their last five games on the road, so they would have had to showcase the uniforms early in the season, which doesn’t fit the theme. They would have looked ridiculous in all-white, winter-themed uniforms for their Week 2 prime-time game. (Oh, wait, the Packers did that?)
For the Vikings, it would have been easy to feel trapped in a meaningless game, starting your third-string rookie UDFA at QB. The whole team could have phoned it in (and, you could argue that the offense did). Instead, the team cared.
In particular, the defense stepped up.
It donned its white uniforms, walked out on the field to a rocking crowd of fans, all dressed in white. A funny note: three of the team’s standout performers — Andrew Van Ginkel (1.5 sacks, 2 fumble recoveries), Harrison Smith (1 INT, 3 PDs, 1 sack, 2 TFLs), and Blake Cashman (17 tackles, 1 sack) — from the game all happen to be white. The Vikings brought a whiteout for Christmas, and the Lions were not ready for it. Let’s break it down.
Andrew Van Ginkel
Watching Andrew Van Ginkel on tape is an interesting experience. He’s a really athletic player, but as an undersized edge, he doesn’t consistently dominate from down to down like his counterpart, Jonathan Greenard, often does.
Instead, Van Ginkel’s versatility and football intelligence show up constantly, and they’re the main reason he makes as many impact plays as he does.
Van Ginkel’s great game started with a two-play sequence. On the first, he did a good job compressing the TE’s block on the edge. He disengaged and just barely got a hand on RB David Montgomery’s leg, helping precipitate a tackle that he earned along with Cashman.
The Vikings challenged the spot, and the original first down was overturned, making the down-and-distance third-and-1. The challenge was an odd decision to say the least, but of course, it immediately paid off.
The Lions tried to quick-count the Vikings, and QB Jared Goff fumbled the snap. Van Ginkel was right there to jump on the ball for a fumble recovery:
Van Ginkel had another fumble recovery later in the game, on another botched snap. This time, Goff was in shotgun, and the Lions were running a screen, leaving him unblocked on the back side.
This meant that Van Ginkel had a free run at the ball, and as Goff tried to fall on it, Van Ginkel niftily ripped the ball from Goff as he was rolling over and recovered it:
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