Matthew Coller: How I learned to love the one-score win

The Vikings have played a lot of close games but that doesn't mean it's been all luck.

Nov 24, 2024; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell looks on against the Chicago Bears during the second quarter at Soldier Field. Mandatory Credit: Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images / Daniel Bartel-Imagn Images

MINNEAPOLIS — On Sunday the Minnesota Vikings won by one score.

Oh no. Not again. Here comes the flood of parrots squawking at the top of their lungs that one-score wins are random and definitive proof that the Vikings are not as good as their 10-2 record.

I’m not sure when it happened that the world decided one-score wins were completely random. Was there some analytics study in the earliest days of the internet that everyone decided was correct and then never, ever checked back in on?

If one-score wins are random, then holy cow Tom Brady was lucky. He went 91-43 in games separated by seven points. Horseshoe around his neck, I tell ya! That silly Peyton Manning only went 77-40. Maybe that Pat Mahomes should be taken off the Madden cover. What happens when the world finds out his 42-17 record in one-score games was just a pact with the devil, not talent or skill?

By the way, has anybody noticed that the entire league plays one-score games every single week? Tom Pelissero of NFL Network wrote on Twitter/X that 12 of the 13 games this week (before SNF) were separated by one score. Alec Lewis of The Athletic noted that 80% of all games this season have been separated by one score.

Why do we even watch football when we could be rolling dice over and over instead? Same odds, right?

I’m sure there’s nothing to the fact that Kevin O’Connell’s Vikings have won 24 of 33 one-score tries and Matt Eberflub won 5 of 23.

It probably makes no difference that in the biggest moments the Vikings have Justin Jefferson, who caught a fourth-and-6 pass to set up the game-winning score. Probably Jonathan Greenard’s unbelievable effort to chase down Kyler Murray was a stroke of good luck.

OK, I know what you’re thinking: What about 2022? The Vikings won a bunch of one-score games and then lost in the playoffs to the Giants. What then, pal!

Here’s the thing about 2022: It wasn’t that the Vikings had one-score wins, it was how the one-score wins happened and the fact that they got destroyed in their losses. They were allowing 400 yards to Andy Dalton, Mike White, Justin Fields and Daniel Jones (twice). They were blessed with a tanking division and the easiest opposing QB schedule known to man and barely survived on weird stuff going in their favor like doinked field goals and Josh Allen’s QB sneak fumble.

This year hasn’t been that weird. In fact, the weird stuff has often gone against the Vikings. I’ve never heard of a Watermelon Kick before the Bears somehow pulled that off to force overtime. Red zone fumbles are pretty random, right?

The Vikings woke up on Monday ranking top 10 in points for and points against. The allow the lowest percentage of drives to turn into scores in the NFL and they are top 10 in net yards per pass attempt and net yards per pass attempt allowed. That’s a little different than ranking 13th and 30th in NY/A or 28th in points allowed.

The Expected Win-Loss of the 2022 team was 8.4-8.6. This year it’s 8.1-3.9. They are better than expected, yes, but not egregiously so.

But here’s the thing about 2022: The one-score games that year were not completely random either. The Vikings outplayed the Lions, Bears, Saints, Dolphins, Patriots and Jets that year and let them hang around at the end.

A few years ago the website tried to parse through the real random one-score games and the one-score-games-in-name-only.

The way the author looked at the problem was through the lens of win probability. Did both teams have between a 40% and 60% win probability in the fourth quarter with five minutes left?

Now this method isn’t perfect because it doesn’t factor for Eberflub forgetting to call timeout or Jefferson making an insane catch. Some coaches are absolutely better at late-game spots and some players are more suited to go win a ballgame. Still, the point is to focus on whether one team was outplaying the other team and the loser somehow made it close at the end.

If we put the Vikings under the win probability microscope, the One Score Games Are Random crowd has a point about the Vikings win over Arizona. With four minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Vikings had a 7.5% chance to win the game. The Cards blew it in multiple ways, most notably not finishing their late-game drive with a touchdown and keeping the Vikings alive with a field goal that made it 22-16.

(Is blowing it with bad game management random? Hm.)

But against the Bears, ESPN’s Gamecast gave the Vikings a 99.7% chance to win late in the fourth quarter. In fact, the Vikings were hovering around or above 75% the entire second half until the tomfoolery at the end.

You can plainly see that these two one-score wins are not remotely the same.

Against the Jaguars, the Vikings had an 84% chance to win before hitting the 5 minute mark in the fourth quarter and dominated the yardage and time of possession.

Against the Colts, the Vikings had a 79% chance to win with 5 minutes left.

Against the Jets, 80% at the 5 minute mark.

Against the Packers, 93% at the 5-minute mark.

This was the win probability chart vs. Green Bay. Does this look like a random one-score game to you?

ESPN's Gamecast win probability during Vikings-Packers in Week 4. / ESPN

This does not mean that style points don’t matter at all.

The Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions blowing teams out is undoubtedly more impressive. No one would ever argue otherwise. Last year the NFC team that made the Super Bowl had a +193 point differential. The year before that, +133. Though in 2021, +88 was good enough and last year’s 49ers barely survived the +66 Lions.

Anyway, it’s fair to wonder if the Vikings have the juice to reach the Super Bowl. Heck, when their point differential was +260 in 1998 they didn’t make the Super Bowl so it’s always fair to wonder.

It’s fair to question the offensive gameplan on Sunday. To ask if they have enough in the secondary to stop teams with great wide receivers in the postseason. It’s safe to say that if they play like they did against Arizona in the playoffs, they will not make it past the divisional round. There is more to prove in the final five games, most of them coming against good-to-great teams.

But it doesn’t make sense to bundle all one-score games together to make a statement on the 2024 Vikings. It’s become clear that Sam Darnold’s arm talent, O’Connell’s game management, Jefferson/Addison/Hockenson and a decent pass blocking offensive line give them a much better chance to win these games than other teams, just as having the league’s top pressure creator in Greenard and ballhawks on the secondary does as well.

It’s a weird league and it can be random as heck. The Cincinnati Bengals probably wonder what witch doctor cast a spell on them this year. But we can do better than just looking at the 2024 Vikings and lazily equating this season to 2022 because many of the games were close.