The Minnesota Vikings missed an opportunity to get a win in Seattle with no fans in the stands. It would have been a massive breakthrough, like the playoff win in New Orleans last year. As we all know, the crowd noise in the Superdome last January played a role until Kyle Rudolph snuffed it out with his overtime catch in the end zone. The lack of noise at CenturyLink Field had to have given the Vikings an advantage on Sunday night, but it’s hard to quantify how it affected both teams.
I get that in our analytically-savvy modern sports world that Monday morning quarterbacking should involve, well, analytics. We all saw the SNF Genius display, for example:
- The Vikings had a 94% chance of winning before they snapped the ball on 4th and inches.
- If they get a first down, they win the game.
- If Dan Bailey hits the field goal, they stay at 94%.
- If they are stopped, they still have a 79% chance of winning.
They were stopped. Russell Wilson did his thing. We all know what happened.
The lack of attendance and how it affects the outcome of games intrigues me, though. Vegas had Minnesota losing that game by seven. They lost by one. It’s not any consolation for anyone who bleeds purple, but I wonder if this game is as close as it was if there were fans in the stands.
Let me be the umpteenth person in the past week to remind you that 2020 is a weird year, and that it was incredibly odd to see what looked like a half full stadium for the Florida-Texas A&M game on Saturday. That’s Kyle Field, Home of the 12th Man, to you, buddy!
The crowd mattered in that marquee game, even if there were less people in the stands than there normally are.
The Seahawks also brand their fans as the “12th Man,” as you know, and deservedly so. I can attest to it because I was there last season.
I attended two Vikings games last year: Their Week 9 contest in Kansas City and Week 13 in Seattle.
Arrowhead Stadium lives up to its reputation. The tailgating is great, and the fans are loud. I went down there hoping to see Patrick Mahomes live and got Matt Moore. And as you remember the 35-year-old Moore, who was considering retirement before the season and was forced into action when Mahomes was injured, led the Chiefs to a 26-23 comeback on the final drive of the game.
That place got loud. Loud enough that I swear I could feel a small crack in my skull start above my eye socket, snake its way up my forehead and into my hairline. My head was still ringing as I watched Lamar Jackson lead the Baltimore Ravens to a win over the New England Patriots on TV that night. I still had a headache as I drove the six hours back to Minneapolis the next day.
CenturyLink Field in Seattle was that loud… but for the entire second half.
I attended that game with a friend of mine who is a Seahawks season-ticket holder. He had warned me about the noise before the game. I told him I would be fine, that it can’t be that different than Kansas City. But it was. It’s one thing to tolerate that decibel level for a final drive; it’s another to try and power through the entire second half.
I know what I’m offering here isn’t novel. We know fans impact a game, and that it’s hard to measure. In Week 1 we saw Aaron Rodgers draw the Vikings offside in a way he couldn’t have if U.S. Bank Stadium was full. Maybe there will be fans at Lambeau when the teams meet in Week 8. That’s probably unfair, but we also don’t know how much it will matter.
There is part of me that thinks that the loss to Seattle was ultimately the best outcome for Minnesota. The Vikings won’t outright tank — Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman are incentivized to win, and players themselves never try to lose games — but they are in position to lose enough games to take a quarterback early in the draft.
It doesn’t need to be Trevor Lawrence, either. Justin Fields would do, and who doesn’t want Trey Lance from a sentimental standpoint? He’s from Marshall, dontcha know.
I’m increasingly convinced, however, that the Vikings are a good team that just needed a preseason. They are starting rookie cornerbacks, Justin Jefferson needed two live games to get going and there have to be many unquantifiable benefits to playing live games that don’t count.
The Vikings hung with Seattle, one of the best teams in the NFC, and a Tennessee Titans team that was in the AFC title game last year. They are better than their record indicates, and could easily be 3-2 and facing an Atlanta Falcons team that just fired their coach before the bye.
If they could sneak into the playoffs, this Vikings team could go on a playoff run — especially when home field advantage matters less. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen at this point. It also doesn’t look like they’ll go 1-15 and get the No. 1 pick. They seem destined for football purgatory with a 6-10 or 7-9 record: No high pick and no playoffs.
That’s why this was a major missed opportunity. It wasn’t just a chance to go 2-3 and be .500 at the bye. It was a chance to get another breakthrough win in a unique circumstance.
