Consistency eludes Vikings as 5-1 start raises aspirations
MIAMI — Flashback to early September before the Minnesota Vikings had played a single regular season snap.
Projected with about a coin flip’s chance of making the playoffs for the first time in three years, the prospect of a 5-1 start was a possibility but hardly seemed probable.
“I think if you asked anybody in this organization or the fanbase if we could be 5-1 at this point before the season started I think everyone would be like ‘heck yeah, I’ll do whatever it takes to get to that point,’” said Adam Thielen after the Vikings 24-16 win over the Miami Dolphins Sunday did just that.
Two games ahead of the floundering Green Bay Packers in the NFC North, the Vikings now boast a 92 percent chance to make the playoffs and an 83 percent chance to win the division, per FiveThirtyEight. Yet before he even finished his sentence, Thielen reiterated a sentiment that was widely shared post-game in the visiting locker room of Hard Rock Stadium.
“But we know we’ve got to get a lot better,” he said.
Such is the territory when the Vikings’ number of three-and-outs on offense, 10, nearly matched the team’s total first downs, 11. Or when the Dolphins outgained Minnesota 458-234, ran 23 more plays and were on the field for nearly 10 more minutes and still found a way to lose the game.
It’s not just one game of evidence that has the coaching staff and players alike suggesting there’s work to do. Throughout the Vikings’ current four-game win streak (longest since 2019), each game could’ve slipped through their hands. There was Dan Campbell’s 4th down decision in Week 3 that prompted Minnesota’s game-winning drive against the Lions. Without their starting quarterback and No. 1 running back and wide receiver, the Saints were within a double-doinked field goal of forcing overtime in Week 4 and a series of penalty calls in the Vikings’ favor flipped a nervy game against the Bears in Week 5.
More than what the Vikings’ opponents failed to do is what Minnesota itself has lacked – a semblance of consistency. For drives, quarters and even full games, Minnesota has looked dominant, particularly on offense, but without much warning or explanation, it disappears.
On Sunday, Minnesota's first four drives gained a total of 15 yards without a first down. Suddenly on the fourth drive, the team awoke. Kirk Cousins found Thielen for back-to-back catches of 14 and 11 yards, then connected with Justin Jefferson for a 20-yard catch. Four plays later Cousins connected with Irv Smith Jr. for the one-yard touchdown pass. The following five drives of offense resulted in four punts and a field goal in which the Vikings took over at Miami’s 41-yard line.
“We still haven’t played our best ball yet, honestly,” Jefferson said. “There’s so many more things that we need to fix. The plays are there, we just have to execute them. I feel like the game that we will play our best ball in is still yet to come.”
Kevin O’Connell admitted it was” way too much of a struggle today” and that from game to game the offense can seemingly have “different identities.” Sunday it struggled with both execution and playcalling, he said.
“Sometimes it may feel like (that) to Vikings fans, depending on what Sunday it is, but what I would say is we've got a tough resilient group that maybe doesn't always play the most consistent, but they are willing and able to have each other's backs in all three phases,” O’Connell said.
To the Vikings’ credit, as inconsistencies have popped up, a different player, position group or unit has stepped up to fill in the gaps. It was the defensive line against the Dolphins. The Vikings’ generated six sacks on 25 pressures, per NFL’s NextGen Stats. Za’Darius Smith and Danielle Hunter put together their best tandem performance of the year, albeit against a banged-up and underwhelming Miami offensive line. Patrick Jones finished with two sacks as a rotational rusher, replacing D.J. Wonnum who was out with an injury.
“We’ve been lacking a little bit on that, but today, we brought that pressure. And as you can see, the world saw it today,” Smith said.
It’s the type of performance that lacked last year when the team began 1-3 and lost each game by less than one score. Minnesota is 4-0 in one-score games this season.
“Very much the inverse of '21,” said Cousins, who was visibly upset after several stalled drives Sunday. “I would walk off the field after we had lost and say, ‘we're playing so well. We're playing so well, and somehow, some way we lost, but we're playing at a very high level.’ This year I'm saying, ‘gosh, we can play better, but we won.’ It's just kind of an inverse, and I'll take this any day.”
The result is a team that’s 5-1, that for its faults has managed to avoid stepping on its toes unlike the Packers or other conference foes like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams. They’ve won in London, in the Miami heat and gone undefeated in division play thus far. That has put them in a position where Minnesota no longer “could” make the playoffs, they now “should.” With it comes a higher level of scrutiny, as the goal no longer sits at solely a playoff berth. That is now the expectation with aspirations aimed even higher. On the other side of the bye are more flawed teams – like the Arizona Cardinals and Washington Commanders. But there are also top tier teams like the Buffalo Bills and Dallas Cowboys and a pair of plucky New York teams.
“I'm really, really proud to be 5-1 right now. We talked last night about anyway it would take, any means necessary to get to 5-1 going into this bye. We've learned a lot about our football team. We also have learned, coaches included, we've got a long way to go and a lot of room to improve, which I'm really, really excited about,” O’Connell said.
Related: Vikings PFF grades: That was vintage Za'Darius Smith
Related: 5 things that stood out in the Vikings' win over the Dolphins
