The first five weeks of the Minnesota Vikings season have been … improbable, to say the least. Even the most optimistic Vikings fan wouldn’t have expected them to sprint out of the gates to a 5-0 start. Most prognosticators saw these first five weeks before the bye as the most harrowing part of the schedule. Instead, the Vikings have handled their business in a way that has taken the football world by surprise.
However, with the NFC North shaping up to be one of the toughest divisions in football, the Vikings will need to keep on racking up the wins in the next three months to win a division that looks to be filled with playoff-caliber teams.
But that’s another worry for another time. This week isn’t about that. This is a week is to reflect on the season so far and readjust our expectations. It is also a time to analyze all the data we currently have available. To quote the old adage “Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t.”
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the numbers that are indicative to the start of the season.
6
This is the sixth time the Vikings have started 5-0 since 1990, the most by any team in that 35-year span. Over the last three and a half decades, the Vikings have gotten off to some flying starts. People often think back to the 1998 team with a dynamic offense featuring a rookie Randy Moss, Cris Carter, Jake Reed, Robert Smith, and a veteran Randall Cunningham. Much like this team, that squad also had a bye in Week 6 after a red-hot 5-0 start.
While comparisons have been made between the 1990 Vikings and their 2024 counterparts, we also can look at the 2016 squad that started 5-0 with a Week 6 bye that eventually fizzled out to an 8-8 record. Only six teams in NFL history have started 5-0 and have gone on to miss the playoffs, and the Vikings are the only franchise to accomplish this feat twice with both the 2003 and 2016 teams missing out.
While almost all of the key numbers surrounding the 2024 iteration of the Vikings seem to be more on track with the 1998 team than the 2016 one, it would make sense why certain more jaded Vikings fans still refuse to buy into this team just yet.
4
The Vikings have trailed for three minutes and 26 seconds this season. Only four teams since the 1970 merger have trailed for less time in Games 1-5.
All went to the Super Bowl, as did the team with the sixth-best mark:
2009 Saints: 0:00, won Super Bowl
1984 Dolphins: 1:07, lost Super Bowl
2023 49ers: 1:45, lost Super Bowl
1999 Rams: 2:30, won Super Bowl
2024 Vikings: 3:26, ???
1998 Broncos: 4:23, won Super Bowl
I’ve already pointed out that there are certain key numbers that suggest this team bears much more similarities to the 1998 group than the one in 2016. Well, this number shows that this iteration might be more dominant than even the great 1998 team through the first five weeks. Since C.J. Ham’s fumble on the opening drive of the season, which gifted the New York Giants three points, the Vikings have not been trailing for even one second of a football game.
This number is even more impressive when you consider the teams they have accomplished this feat against. The San Francisco 49ers, Houston Texans, Green Bay Packers, and New York Jets all came into the season projected to make the playoffs. They are dominating good teams and getting out to early leads.
63
Through the first five games of the season, the Vikings have a point differential of +63. Point differential is another stat Vikings fans have become well versed in, particularly after 2022 when they went 13-4 in the regular season but finished with a negative point differential. That season everyone pointed to the Vikings’ inability to put bad teams away, as well the regular trashing that high-level contenders had given them, as an indication of their inability to compete with the best of the best.
The skeptics proved to be correct when Minnesota got bounced in the first round by the New York Giants in an embarrassing home playoff loss. But the 2024 team has been characterized by their ability to put teams away squarely. While the past two weeks have yielded a bit of dramatic tension, the win probability index never dropped below 84% in the fourth quarter. This means the Vikings were, at least in the minds of the ESPN statisticians, firmly in control of those two games. The Texans and the Giants games were different stories; the Vikings were able to put together dominant multi-score wins, something that wasn’t present in prior iterations of Kevin O’Connells teams.
15.2
Up to this point in the season, the Vikings’ defense is allowing just 15.2 points per game. Much of this team’s overall improvement is due to Brian Flores’ defense. While we saw glimpses of what it could be last season, we are now witnessing a more fully actualized version — and it is suffocating opposing offenses.
In the offseason, Minnesota invested in impact players on the defense with Jonathan Greenard, Andrew Van Ginkel, Blake Cashman, Stephon Gilmore, Shaq Griffin, Jerry Tillery, and Jihad Ward. All of these players have already put their fingerprints on this season helped make this defense the monster that it is. After the Shannahan/McVay-style offense taking over the NFL in the past couple seasons, it seems like, Flores, armed with the personnel he wants, has found a way to slow these offenses down.
10
Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold has an ADOT (Average Depth Of Target) of 10 yards this season. When the Vikings let Kirk Cousins walk last season and replaced him with Darnold, most expected the offense to go back into their shell a little bit and not force the ball down the field as much. Instead, they went the opposite route and aired it out even more.
In more than one way we are seeing the real O’Connell shine through with a quarterback who is younger and more adaptable to coaching. Instead of a quarterback who takes the safer route, the Vikings now have one who is more aligned with the ideas of the head coach and isn’t afraid to air it out.
