How the Vikings pulled off the largest comeback in NFL history
MINNEAPOLIS — In a year filled with crazy games, unexpected moments and shocking outcomes, Saturday’s 39-36 win by the Minnesota Vikings over the Indianapolis Colts stands in a class all by itself.
Vikings won in overtime on a Greg Joseph kick to come back from down 33 points, marking the largest comeback in NFL history.
Many years from now, Vikings fans will say to themselves: “How did they do that?”
Let’s try our best to explain…
Patrick Peterson’s halftime speech
You may never see the Vikings play another half of football as bad as the opening 30 minutes of their matchup against the lowly Colts.
Minnesota’s eight drives went like this: Blocked punt for touchdown, fumble, turnover on downs, turnover on downs, punt, pick-six, punt, kneel to halftime.
On the defensive side, the Vikings held strong in the red zone but still allowed points in five out of six drives.
After the game, players admitted that their mentality coming out of the locker room was just to play competitive football for the rest of the game. More or less, not be completely embarrassed.
But Patrick Peterson insisted that a comeback could be made.
“I'll never forget it as long as I live,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said. “I addressed the team before we went back out there. I overheard him walk over towards the offense, ‘We're going to get stops, you just need five touchdowns. That's nothing.’ It was a nice little moment for me to lead right in off of. I said, ‘Pat, you're exactly right.’ That's what we needed at the time.”
Kirk Cousins didn’t know what he was supposed to make of Peterson’s words.
“I didn't know if he was being sarcastic or what,” the Vikings QB said. “When I looked at him, he was serious. I think his point was, ‘We're not going to let them score anymore, so if you can get five touchdowns, that will be good enough.’”
“They were kicking our tails,” Cousins continued. “It's one thing to say we need five touchdowns. That's difficult to do. It's even more difficult when you have been struggling the way you've been struggling. Just reminds you again today, this is a crazy league.”
Peterson and the defense held up their end of the bargain in the second half. The Colts kicked one field goal, punted six times, fumbled and had a turnover on downs after going up by 33.
One of the defensive stops that changed the game came with eight minutes remaining in the game. Cousins threw an interception and the Colts started at their own 2-yard line. They went three-and-out and only took 56 seconds off the clock. The Vikings responded with a five play, 50-yard drive to cut the lead to one score.
The turnover on downs came in a situation where allowing one yard would have ended the game and then the Vikings scored a 64-yard touchdown on the following play.
While Ed Donatell’s defense has been under fire in recent weeks, they got back to their old ways of coming through when they absolutely needed a stop.
Kirk Cousins, Mr. One Play At A Time
Kirk Cousins doesn’t have seven fourth-quarter comebacks this year for no reason. The veteran quarterback has been astonishingly good at focusing on the play at hand, regardless of how things have gone during the rest of the game.
After a three-and-out to open the second half, he took full advantage of a Colts defense that appeared to play conservatively. Cousins hit KJ Osborn for a 63-yard pass that set up a Justin Jefferson touchdown to get the Vikings’ offense rolling.
“I'm kind of a one-play-at-a-time guy,” Cousins said. “My mindset is, ‘Tell me the first play of the second half and let me execute that as well as I can. You tell me the second play once we get there.’ Whenever I've been a part of comebacks like we've had through the years, that's kind of the way I operate. One play at a time and let's not get too far down the road.”
Cousins finished the game with the five touchdown drives in the second half that Peterson demanded. The comeback win required every single one of his 54 attempts for 460 yards.
When they believed
The atmosphere within the building was somewhere between angsty and dejected at the start of the second half. Fans were tossing paper airplanes toward the field and sarcastically clapping when the Vikings completed a pass. The first touchdown didn’t quite ignite US Bank Stadium but a comeback felt possible then for receiver KJ Osborn.
“We were 33-7 and I think we just kind of flipped the momentum and decided, ‘Lets keep going, lets keep going, let's keep chopping away,’” Osborn said. “We weren’t really trying to look at the scoreboard; we were trying to execute and get another score.”
Kevin O’Connell started to feel like something might be happening after the second touchdown.
“I think when we were able to get the two scores…I just knew it was possible just because the momentum we were building,” O’Connell said.
Peterson began to see the Colts tensing up and playing more conservatively after the second TD.
“I would say when it became 14-33, I believe those guys started to feel the pressure,” Peterson said. “They tried to do things to not mess up the game. We understood that and knew that we wanted to stop the run.”
If you judged by the crowd, Vikings fans seemed to start getting back into it when Jefferson scored to close the gap to 36-21 with 12:53 left in the game. Suddenly two scores didn’t seem implausible considering the way both teams were playing.
Cousins felt it at that moment too.
“I was asking myself that — at what point does it become a normal NFL football game?” Cousins said. “Off the top of my head here, when we cut it 15, that's when I felt like maybe there were 12 minutes left, something like that, this is right there.”
Linebacker Eric Kendricks didn’t know when it seemed real to him because he was doing everything he could to ignore the challenges of the situation.
“I was trying my hardest not to look at the score, I didn’t know if we needed two or any of that,” said the veteran, who was emotional at his locker after the game. “I knew we were putting points on the board and getting stops. I felt the momentum on our team lift and the energy shift; it was inspiring to be out there with my teammates. Nobody pointed fingers, everyone knew what kind of position we were in and we had to battle. It was very, very special and I’m never going to forget this.”
KJ Osborn’s breakout game
Following a season in which KJ Osborn established himself as a quality weapon, he’s found it more difficult to get opportunities within O’Connell’s offense this year. Until Saturday, that is. The third-year receiver caught 10 passes for 157 yards, playing a massive role in the comeback.
“I told K.J. a few weeks back that his time was coming,” O’Connell said. “Regardless with how our offense is evolving, his value to us, I just knew it would happen. I didn't necessarily envision is maybe the scenario that played out today. But think back. Some of those catches, conversions, his willingness to catch, get north, the yards after catch, critical plays for our team. People won't see some of the blocking that he did, helping spring some of those underneath completions.”
Osborn had a 63-yard reception that set up the first of five touchdowns, a 17-yard grab that put the Vikings in position to bring the game within one TD and a 15-yard catch in overtime that got the final drive rolling.
The Crowd
While fans inside US Bank Stadium were certainly restless and made their frustrations known as the Vikings were falling behind in the first half, they were still there at the end at playoff-level decibels.
“I can't say enough about our fans,” O’Connell said. “Although I felt it and heard some of the rightly due displeasure with our team in the first half, the moment that we could get some enthusiasm back in this building, no matter how farfetched it seemed that we could come back, our fans were right there. You felt them. Unbelievable. I don't know if I've heard a building like that.”
Over the years since the downtown venue opened, the Vikings have witnessed many teams struggle with the noise and energy and the Colts appeared to be no different during their meltdown.
“I think the fact that the fans stayed until the end and provided so much energy is a big deal,” Cousins said. “There was one time when they were doing the Skol chant, and I was surprised they were still in it the way they were. So grateful they were there with us all the way through it until the end.”
Dalvin Cook air game
Cook’s 64-yard touchdown on a screen pass immediately following the Vikings’ game-saving fourth-and-1 stop will be one of the defining plays of the team’s historic comeback.
“It's a great play call, first of all, incredibly well-blocked to get a screen like that off, then it was Dalvin showing why he's Dalvin Cook,” Cousins said.
The Vikings’ offense has struggled this season in the screen game, ranking toward the bottom of the league in yards per attempt on screens. Cook hasn’t been as big of a factor through the air as expected but he ended the comeback win with 95 yards receiving and added another 95 on the ground.
“He had a couple other big catches today,” Cousins said. “It's fun to think back on all the times I got to see him be a special player in this league and then to think that's probably the top one for me is fun.”
The Refs
It wouldn’t be the NFL if we didn’t have some controversy regarding the referees.
The Vikings appeared to get a bounce-back play in the second quarter when Matt Ryan threw a 2-yard pass to Michael Pittman Jr. and the receiver fumbled the ball. Cornerback Chandon Sullivan picked it up and returned it for a touchdown but the play was called dead. The Colts got to punt rather than the Vikings being on the board.
Referee Tra Blake explained what happened:
“The ruling on the field was that the runner’s forward progress had been stopped. Once he’s wrapped up by the defender and his forward progress is stopped, the play is over. So, any action that happens subsequently after that is nullified because the play is dead. That was the ruling on the field.”
O’Connell said that the forward progress ruling is not one that can be reviewed.
With 3:28 remaining the Colts fumbled again and remarkably Sullivan also picked up that ball and ran it for a touchdown but the referees initially decided that running back Deon Jackson was down. Upon review they gave the ball to the Vikings but the touchdown did not count.
Walt Anderson, SVP of officiating, gave the explanation for the second fumble: “The original ruling on the field was that the runner that was in the pile was down by contact. Subsequently, a Minnesota player got it back. We had a look and could tell right away that the runner was still up when the ball came loose. We had a good view that it was a clear recovery by Minnesota No. 39. But the ruling on the field was the runner was down by contact. There was a subsequent loose ball and then a recovery by Minnesota and an advance. Minnesota challenged that and by the time they challenged, we had good views. We had an expedited review to announce that it was a fumble, and we had a clear recovery. But all we could do was give Minnesota the ball at the spot of the recovery.”
The Colts didn’t leave the stadium happy either. On a QB sneak late in the fourth quarter that would have ended the game, Ryan appeared to be very close to getting a first down but he was called short. They were also penalized 11 times for 103 yards, including a roughing call in overtime.
A tie?
When the Vikings got the ball back in overtime with 1:41 remaining, O’Connell considered running the clock out because a tie would solidify their position as division champions. He decided to start with a run and then make his call from there about whether to be aggressive.
“It was very much in my head,” O’Connell said. “That's why the last time we got the ball, we started the drive out with a run. All I wanted to see is: can we get a new set of downs?
After a 6-yard run, O’Connell decided to put the gas pedal down and aim to win the game.
“There's moments where it says a lot of about your confidence in your team,” O’Connell said. “I wanted to win this football game. I thought our team earned the right to win the game.”
Cousins did not know until right before the possession that they could clinch with a tie.
“I didn't know all this and like 10 seconds before we get the ball back, Chris O’Hara, our QB coach, goes, ‘We're going to run it to start. A tie wins the division.” I looked at him like, ‘It would have been nice to know that at least 10 minutes ago, maybe three days ago.’ I'm jogging on the field thinking, ‘A tie wins the division; you have options here.’”
When the second play came in, the entire offense knew it was go time.
“ The second call didn't come in very quick, I'm kind of sitting there like, ‘Maybe he's going for the tie,’” Cousins said. “Then he called the dropback, so I thought, ‘No, he's going to go for it.’ We went from there.”
Nobody in US Bank Stadium or inside the huddle wanted the Vikings to simply drain clock in that moment.
“I don’t want a tie,” Osborn said. “That was a long game, overtime, coming back from 30. I did not want a tie; I wasn’t thinking of a tie at all.”
Colts miscues
There can’t be an all-time comeback without an all-time disaster on the other side. Following the nationally televised broadcast, analyst Steve Smith suggested that Colts interim head coach Jeff Saturday be fired for allowing his team to blow a 33 point lead.
The Colts struggled to manage the clock, making some bizarre play calls, including throwing a deep pass from their own 2-yard line that fell incomplete and stopped the clock, giving the Vikings more time to come back.
“We were moving the ball running it, but we still felt like there were shots to be had,” Saturday said. “We just didn't convert them. There was nothing about the game or the way the game played out other than, again, we don't make the plays and they continue to make them that I look back with disappointment.”
The Colts went just 6-for-19 on third downs and were held to three points in the second half.
History
Most Vikings players did not know that they had completed the biggest comeback in history but Cousins thought back to the ‘92 playoff game between the Bills and Oilers in which Buffalo came back from down 32.
“I thought of Frank Reich, the Bills, [Oilers], Warren Moon, that game in Buffalo, I thought it couldn't have been bigger than that comeback,” Cousins said. “That one still to this day, I wonder, ‘How did that happen?’ It's thrilling.”
