The moments after Greg Joseph’s game-winning 61-yard field goal on Saturday were euphoric for Minnesota Vikings fans. U.S. Bank Stadium erupted as the Vikings improved to 12-3 on the year and seemed destined to march into the playoffs with all of the momentum in the world.
After years of watching a mediocre and (at times) unlikeable team, this felt different. This is not a team that fumbles away opportunities. It’s not a team that crumbles when it counts. In their minds, it’s a team that belongs with the NFL’s best. However, that opinion isn’t shared with anyone beyond the state border.
The Vikings are frauds in the minds of the national media. There are some outliers, such as Kyle Brandt passionately standing up for Kirk Cousins on Good Morning Football and Colin Cowherd boldly declaring the Vikings would double their win total this season. But for the most part, the Vikings aren’t held to the same standard as some of the other elite teams in the NFL, such as the Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, and San Francisco 49ers.
The national media isn’t only giving more love to the NFC’s elite teams, either. Some of the mediocre teams are getting more credit for their remarkable turnarounds.
You would have thought Jonathan Vilma was wearing a Barry Sanders jersey while he was calling the Vikings’ Week 14 loss to the Detroit Lions. Even the sharks in Vegas were wearing cheeseheads as the Green Bay Packers opened up as 3.5-point favorites for this Sunday’s matchup at Lambeau Field.
So why does the national media hate the Vikings? Maybe it’s the eye test.
Two of Minnesota’s biggest flops this season have come on national television. In Week 2, Cousins’ own eyes appeared to be the size of silver dollars when he tossed three interceptions in a 24-7 loss to the Eagles on Monday Night Football. In Week 11, the Cowboys laid a 40-3 beating on the Vikings that was so bad that CBS switched to a different game in the fourth quarter.
A team like Philadelphia or Dallas can easily bounce back from this, thanks to their level of national exposure. For the Vikings, it was one of their few opportunities to show a national audience how good they could be.
Instead, this validated that the Vikings have gotten to 12-3 with a lot of luck. They dismissed Minnesota’s home win over the Packers as Aaron Rodgers’ annual Week 1 disaster. They know the Vikings beat Andy Dalton, Skylar Thompson, and Justin Fields earlier this year.
Never mind that Fields and Taylor Heinicke have become national darlings since then. In the national media’s eyes, it’s about who you play and when you play them.
People who don’t follow the team closely also can’t figure out how this team is winning games. The Vikings are a perfect 11-0 in one-score games this season, and many believe the team will eventually regress.
Cue the analytics community. The numbers from outlets like Pro Football Focus and Football Outsiders show a team that is out-performing its analytics and will eventually regress to the mean. But although the defense has been leaky and the offense disappears at times, they’re the same team we’ve seen since Week 1.
That’s not appealing to a national audience that wants to know who is playing at their best coming into the playoffs. You could argue the Vikings are doing that as we speak, but that’s less exciting than a Lions team that has won six of their past eight games or a 49ers team that is riding an eight-game winning streak.
There’s also not a lot of star power on this roster. Justin Jefferson is the face of the franchise, but his chase to 2,000 yards receiving isn’t gaining as much attention as Tyreek Hill’s in Miami. Nobody wears Adam Thielen jerseys outside of the state of Minnesota, and the rest of the roster is filled with players who aren’t household names – except for the quarterback.
Cousins is the type of player who a lot of the TV talking-head former jocks used to stuff into lockers. His jersey isn’t a top seller nationally, and he’s an extremely polarizing player, even within the Vikings fan base.
People who don’t watch the Vikings every week remember his freak out in Philadelphia, his prime-time flops, and his failures in clutch situations. Although Cousins has done a great job correcting those flaws and showing his personality this season, he doesn’t get much credit for his team’s success.
Pro Football Focus’ Sam Monson led the charge last week when he said the skill position players on the Vikings fueled Cousins’s 460-yard, four-touchdown comeback performance against the Indianapolis Colts. That’s partially true, but it also ignores that every quarterback in the league has some form of help.
Suppose we use this theory around the league. In that case, we’ll see that Jalen Hurts only took off because the Eagles traded for A.J. Brown and signed a bunch of defensive free agents. Travis Kelce has fueled Patrick Mahomes’ MVP campaign; he’s one if the best tight ends in NFL history. Joe Burrow and Josh Allen have Stefon Diggs and Ja’Marr Chase.
Even then, Cousins is getting tossed around behind an offensive line made of duct tape, and he’s doing that with a skill-position group collectively aging faster than Russell Wilson. But still, Cousins isn’t cool enough to fail and dodge the bullet like Lamar Jackson is currently doing with the Baltimore Ravens.
The mere sight of Cousins smirking while wearing something he bought with Kohl’s cash is a turnoff for most people in the media. Therefore, it limits the Vikings’ credibility as Super Bowl contenders. Even if they win three games to get to the Super Bowl, analysts might get whiplash from rolling their eyes when comparing them to the mighty Kansas City Chiefs or Cincinnati Bengals.
That might be just fine for the Vikings, whose head coach, Kevin O’Connell, was in a similar situation a year ago when the national media wrote off Los Angeles Rams after a four-game losing streak last November. Led by Matthew Stafford, the Rams knocked off Kyler Murray, Tom Brady, and a white-hot Niners team before beating Burrow to win the Super Bowl.
It shows that anything could happen for this team down the stretch. A negative view in the national eye could make a playoff run that much sweeter for Vikings fans.
