The Vikings are oozing with confidence after another thrilling win
MINNEAPOLIS — This offseason Minnesota Vikings veteran players argued that they were really close to being a contending team. The best evidence they had was the sheer number of one-score games they dropped in dramatic fashion in 2021. To be exact, they lost eight games by one score last season. What if they turned those losses into wins? What if a little more confidence and a little more belief in each other could get them over the hump?
Whether betting on that line of thinking would have been approved by the sharps in Vegas or not doesn’t matter because it has come to fruition this season. The Vikings are now 6-1 and following Sunday’s victory over the Arizona Cardinals at US Bank Stadium, they are 5-0 in one-score games.
They needed every bit of their all-for-one attitude to pull off a win over the Cardinals, who took the lead in the third quarter and threatened to go ahead again in the fourth quarter after a strip sack. They also got a shot at tying the game late due to a doinked extra point. The Vikings held serve at the end again.
“I think a lot of guys are relying on a lot of experience,” receiver Adam Thielen said. “Experience from last year, experience from previous years in our careers and then the confidence from this year. This team, this family, this bond that we are building.”
Sometimes a plan comes together.
The hire of Kevin O’Connell signified a massive sea change in the way the players were managed. O’Connell’s ethos has been to give the players a voice, which has included getting their feedback schematically, pushing them to become closer as a group, express their personalities and manage their health smartly.
Some of these things might be classic Player’s Coach cliches, but seeing it all come to fruition during the hot start has made the team’s leaders into believers.
“As a group and as a whole we’re treated like family and everybody has really like family,” said Za’Darius Smith, who had three sacks on Sunday. “We have a younger coach and the coach wants to know what the players want and that’s a good thing to have.”
“I feel like it’s the chemistry,” Smith added.
Last year there was tension within the team even when they won. A mini shoving match between head coach and quarterback after a victory against the Lions was evidence of that. Now Kirk Cousins and O’Connell have consistent conversations throughout the game and teammates are brandishing the low-key Cousins with their chains after wins. Players revealed postgame that they’re making Cousins a custom chain for Christmas. You wouldn’t have dreamed that sentence last year.
“The feeling of going to work, the feeling of coming back in this locker room, the feeling of being around these guys is fun, it’s contagious,” Dalvin Cook said. “[O’Connell] brought that with him Day 1 when he walked in the building both in how we want to play and what team we want to be outside of this stadium.”
The Vikings needed chemistry to overcome some miscues on Sunday, including two sacks that ended drives, two penalties that set them back on drives, and 159 yards receiving by Cardinals superstar receiver DeAndre Hopkins. They overcame those issues by taking advantage of what the Cardinals gave them in the form of 10 penalties, two interceptions and a fumbled punt.
“The feeling you get on our sideline, in our locker room, no matter what the circumstances are, I do feel like these guys believe in each other, they believe in what we’re doing… that’s a proud feeling for a coach,” O’Connell said.
Of course, it wasn’t just self belief that drove the victory on Sunday. The Vikings got much more involvement from the entire offense than in previous weeks, which seemed to live and die on the hands of Justin Jefferson. They put together their most impressive all-around running game with 111 yards from Cook and 40 more from Alexander Mattison and Thielen and Cook both caught six passes.
“You go back to OTAs and it’s not just talk, coach comes in with a new culture and a new mindset and the new staff and we go on the field and spread the ball around. [O’Connell] talks about the amount of playmakers we have, the number of guys who can do things at a high level,” Thielen said.
As opportunistic as the Vikings were on Sunday, they still haven’t faced many tough tests. Out of their five wins, only the victory over Dolphins came against a team with a winning record and Miami was without their starting quarterback. The powers of O’Connell’s locker room vibes will be tested in the coming weeks as they travel to Washington and Buffalo and then take on the Cowboys at home.
“We have to get a lot better,” Thielen said. “You don’t want to get overconfident.”
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