Matthew Coller: 6.5 wins is a line of demarcation for the 2024 Vikings

Some sportsbooks are really not buying the Vikings this year but that's not the interesting part of a 6.5-win line.

Aug 2, 2024; Eagan, MN, USA; Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell and wide receiver Justin Jefferson (18) talk during practice at Vikings training camp in Eagan, MN. Mandatory Credit: Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports / Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

LAS VEGAS — Over the past few years, Circa Casino and Sportsbook has been kind enough to invite me out to their sports palace in Las Vegas to record some podcasts and talk about their Million and Survivor contests. They have a Super Bowl style radio row set up in a ballroom where dozens of radio stations and podcasts gather to do their shows for a few days. It’s a tough gig but somebody has to do it.

At every table they have a huge packet of Circa Sportsbook odds for hosts to chatter about. Super Bowl, over-under win totals, Rookie of the Year, MVP and on and on. So before dragging out my podcast gear, I ripped open the packet to see their line for the Minnesota Vikings. My main thought: Was it interesting enough to spend an entire podcast breaking it down?

You betcha.

I was surprised to see 6.5 wins sitting in front of me. That’s Commanders and Titans territory. Surely the Vikings deserve more credit than that, right? They won seven games and only had a minus-18 point differential last season with their starting QB missing half the year and the team setting Guinness World Records for fumbles in the first month.

It’s understandable that bettors wouldn’t buy into The Sam Darnold Experience. Over 56 games he has just a 78.3 QB rating and is 14 games under .500. Still, he played 17 games for the Panthers and went 8-9. When anyone else started for Carolina between 2021 and 2022 they combined for a 4-12 record. He had a couple of really good stretches in there that could give a jury reasonable doubt if he were defending himself against charges of being a bad quarterback.

It’s not unprecedented for a QB to turn things around later in their career. Geno Smith was worse than Darnold. He had a 75.7 rating through 34 starts before his breakout 2022. What about Jake Plummer or Vinny Testaverde? Or all the QBs who were good when they had strong supporting casts and then faded like Carson Wentz or Scott Mitchell.

There are pop-up seasons all over Vikings history and only three of the last 20 years where they didn’t win at least six games. The quarterbacks for those seasons were Matt Cassel, Christian Ponder and broken Brett Favre. It doesn’t seem absurd to suggest Darnold can be better than that with Justin Jefferson and Kevin O’Connell on his side.

Usually it takes a total system failure to win less than six games in the NFL. The 2013 team was 32nd in defense and the 2011 club was 31st. In 2010 they ranked 29th offensively. The average point differential for teams that won six or fewer games last season was minus-126.

It’s hard to see the Vikings getting outscored by 100 points when a ragtag defense in 2023 managed to rank 13th in points allowed under Brian Flores. That side of the ball has improved a fair amount with free agent additions and Dallas Turner in the first round. Every team in the top 13 last year won at least seven games, even the Jets with Zach Wilson playing QB and the Steelers playing behind Mason Rudolph.

Preseason win totals are pretty good when it comes to the best and worst teams but not so much in the middle. Last year 12 teams had lines at 7.5 or 6.5 and five of the teams won at least nine games. The Bucs made the playoffs with Baker Mayfield as a 6.5 team.

But when I talked to some other folks around Circa, they were giving condolences for a lost season. Former PFF’er (now doing the Check The Mic podcast) Sam Monson called it a “Mulligan Season.” Without JJ McCarthy, everyone seemed to think, why bother?

The Vikings 6.5 truthers aren’t being irrational though. Darnold has never led a team to a top-half offense and he’s never played a full season as a starter due to injuries. If he gets hurt it’s going to be tough sledding. Same goes for Aaron Jones. If Stephon Gilmore doesn’t hold down the cornerback group, the likes of Brock Purdy, CJ Stroud, Jordan Love, Aaron Rodgers, Jared Goff and Matthew Stafford could cause a lot of problems.

The reality is, I have no idea if the Vikings are going to win more or less than 6.5 games. I hope you weren’t using this column to figure out which side to bet. I’ve seen teams that I thought had no shot to make the playoffs (the 2017 Vikings after Bradford got hurt) end up deep in the playoffs and teams I thought had legit Super Bowl chances (2018) end up watching from their couches in January.

I can, however, tell you about the consequences of each outcome.

If the Vikings win more than 6.5 games, then the feeling about where they are headed as a franchise doesn’t change. Even if that number is only seven, the belief that JJ McCarthy will take over a pretty strong team in 2025 would still remain. A seven-win season would likely mean a rough ride for Sam Darnold but the heap of cap space the Vikings can spend on the weak parts of the roster next March there would still be a feeling that McCarthy was inheriting a team that could win quickly with him at the helm. A prove-it type of extension for O’Connell would likely be in order at that point.

Anything more than eight wins would bring about an extremely high level of confidence in the future. Think Lions 2022. Detroit won on the last day of the season to boot the Packers from the playoffs and finished 9-8. Despite missing the postseason there was a strong sense that they were on the cusp of something really good. If the Vikings win 9-plus, that means O’Connell got a lot out of Darnold and the pieces that they’ll be relying upon for the future came together nicely.

In that case the extension decision for the Wilfs would be easy. Sign up KOC for the foreseeable future.

Anything more than 11 wins would be Case Keenum crazy outlier territory. No team that was under 8.5 in their preseason win totals last year ended up with more than 10 wins.

How about the other side of the 6.5 line?

The response to that will depend on how the Vikings got there. If Darnold were to get hurt, then it might be more of a shoulder shrug than trying to pin anything on the coaches or roster build. Otherwise, the “Mulligan Season” idea goes out the window. If Darnold plays and they fail to even reach mediocrity, there will be more skepticism about the magic of the Vikings’ supporting situation for McCarthy. Is it wrong to conflate the two when Darnold has a lower career passer rating than Nick Mullens? Sure. But the free pass doesn’t exist here when the reason they paid Darnold $10 million was due to some belief in his rehabilitation within KOC’s scheme and with Justin Jefferson’s hands.

Winning fewer than seven games would likely mean the defense wasn’t all it was cracked up to be despite the spending spree and first-round pick dedicated to Dallas Turner. It might leave in question the magic of Flores’ ability to get the most out of everyone.

It’s easy to be rational now and say that a rough season like that would be great for draft capital. As it’s happening, it will feel much more like the cupboard is darn near empty and major changes are on the way.

It would be very surprising if a brutal season meant a coaching search. GM? Maybe more plausible. The ownership has been clear: They understand that the Vikings are playing in a tough division but they still want to be in the race. A horrendous year would have to come along with some repercussions, right?

At very least the extensions would be short, much like Mike Zimmer’s was once he reached hot-seat territory. And it’s hard to blame the Wilfs for being a little harsher than folks who buy into the overall timeline. After all the Vikings have one playoff win since the Minneapolis Miracle. Don’t look at your iPhone photos from the Miracle season or you’ll realize how long ago that really was.

The results matter to the evaluation of where this train is headed. How the Vikings get to the results matters to the confidence level of the leadership. Whether they can prove Vegas wrong will say something about the strength of the foundation that they have built and where they stand within the “competitive rebuild.”

It’s a daunting truth for a team starting a quarterback who has never taken a team to the playoffs before. But without having the JJ McCarthy button to push at midseason, the job is to make it work. Last year the Browns made the playoffs with Joe Flacco, Cincinnati was on the doorstep with Jake Browning, so were the Colts with Gardner Minshew and Denver was almost there with a struggling Russell Wilson.

So here’s what we know: Preseason over-under bettors are not fortune tellers. Having a 6.5 over-under isn’t a death knell to the 2024 season. But it does provide a baseline for expectations that seems pretty fair with the entire context of the roster rebuild in mind. It’s fair to expect the Vikings to be flying to Detroit at the end of the year still fighting for a playoff spot. It’s also fair to consider that the team has planned everything for 2025 and beyond, making this season more of a transition than all-in on the final results.