According to the jumbotron at U.S. Bank Stadium, the crowd noise can reach over 110 decibels in big moments. The Minnesota Vikings designed the stadium to be loud to replicate the noise inside the old Metrodome, and they actively lobby their fans to make noise to befuddle opposing offenses. And 110 decibels is no joke. Prolonged exposure to sounds that loud can cause instantaneous hearing loss. Hair dryers, blenders, power lawnmowers, and subway trains all can generate that kind of noise.
Understandably, the crowd cranked up the decibels after Kirk Cousins found T.J. Hockenson behind the chains to convert a fourth-and-five with 41 seconds left in the game. However, it caused an unexpected disruption. Cousins couldn’t initially hear Kevin O’Connell on the headset. Cousins pressed his hands against his helmet but couldn’t hear O’Connell clearly. “Just couldn’t hear him in the noise,” Cousins said after the game. “Just ended up calling the play, and the play I called was the same play he was trying to get to.”
Cousins got the playoff with 12 seconds to go, meaning 29 seconds elapsed between Hockenson’s catch and Austin Schlottmann’s subsequent snap. Cousins dropped back and fired a pass to Hockenson in the end zone. The ball bounced off Hockenson’s hands, glanced off Nick Niemann, and Kenneth Murray Jr. reeled it in for the game-winning interception. “With the crowd and the situation with the headsets, there was a little bit of confusion early on,” O’Connell said afterward. “By the time [Kirk] was able to cleanly hear me and get everybody aligned, too much time had come off the clock. Probably looking back on it, just should have clocked it and taken the three snaps from there to try to punch the ball in the end zone.”
On Wednesday, Cousins said certain plays in the Los Angeles Chargers game tormented him while driving home. Kevin O’Connell admitted that he’s still thinking about a few things from the game here and there. Those 29 seconds have to linger. But the Vikings are trying to have their best week of practice, knowing they can do nothing about time lost and the 0-3 record they carry.
The hard thing is trying to find a way to have our best possible week of preparation and try and win a game this week. If we take that approach week in and week out, it is going to require an incredible amount of fortitude and understanding that we’ve got to ignore some of the noise, as justified as it may be, by no stretch is claiming to be oblivious to the truth. That’s what we need to be in this building right now as coaches and players – truth-tellers, and have that personal responsibility to what has taken place has carved and shaped our plans moving forward.
U.S. Bank Stadium may have hit 110 decibels on Sunday, but the noise is coming in at 100,000 watts from a radio tower in Shoreview during the week. On Wednesday, NBC’s Mike Florio expressed his disappointment in Cousins’ late-game management on KFAN.
What the hell is this lack of communication at the end of the game, when anyone who has ever played any amount of football or Madden knows what to do after you convert fourth-and-five and the clock is tick-tick-tick-ticking?
What is wrong with No. 8 that he did not get his ass to the line of scrimmage, and you spike the ball and get three shots at the end zone? Instead, it was chickens with their heads cut off. A rushed play, and no surprise that, ultimately, it went haywire because the whole thing felt like it falling apart because they couldn’t get a play called.
You can find similar opinions on ESPN’s programming or popular podcasts. Florio articulated what many fans are thinking. What the hell was going on in those 29 seconds between Hockenson’s fourth-down catch and the final meaningful play of the game? Why wouldn’t Cousins instinctually clock it with under 40 seconds left in the game? Wouldn’t it have been easier for O’Connell to gesture to spike the ball rather than try to get a play in?
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Kevin,” Cousins said when a reporter asked why he didn’t just clock it. “I was just trying to get up and call a play.”
“The way we were defended down there if we can get a call, that essentially gives us a chance to score before they can set their defensive plan,” O’Connell said after the game, “bring extra DBs and things in the game to defend some of our personnel.”
Florio wasn’t buying it on Wednesday.
Spike the ball? You don’t need a permission slip or a hall pass from the head coach to go spike the ball. I couldn’t believe that. And I think with each one of these games, we’re getting closer and closer to the moment where the Vikings say, ‘Thanks for the memories, Kirk. We’re gonna find another quarterback that better fits what we’re trying to do here.’
Only one 0-3 team has made the playoffs since 2002. The 2018 Houston Texans won a weak division and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Last year, the Vikings were situational masters, going 11-0 in one-score games. Some of it was fortune, of course. But they practice late-game situations, which is why Cousins knew which play to call at the end of the game. Nobody is talking about those lost 29 seconds this week if Hockenson secures that ball.
Rarely does a pass glance off a defending player and into his teammate’s hands. But the Vikings aren’t helping themselves. They’ve turned the ball over nine times and generated their first takeaway against the Chargers. They went one for four in the red zone and ceded over 400 yards to Justin Herbert. They nearly gave up 250 rushing yards in Philadelphia. And they must face some hard truths, even if they win in Carolina on Sunday.
Therein lies the balance they must strike. They can’t listen to all the noise. Too much exposure to high decibels will cause deafness; watching too much First Take in the morning will cause your head to explode. But the Vikings have to acknowledge some hard truths. They haven’t won a game this season because they haven’t been situational masters. And if they lose to the Carolina Panthers, Minnesota might have to consider trading Cousins to the New York Jets and doing everything they can to land Caleb Williams or Drake Maye.
Football is a game of inches. But Minnesota’s failure to execute on Sunday is best measured in decibels and time. They couldn’t block out the noise, and now they don’t have much time to turn things around.
