Vikings Ups and Downs: Week 17 vs. the Chicago Bears
By Chris Schad
The Minnesota Vikings suffered one last back-breaking loss to the Chicago Bears on Sunday, ending their playoff hopes and begging questions for what’s next in 2019.
The 2018 season did not go the way that the Minnesota Vikings had envisioned when they broke training camp during the summer, limping to a 8-6-1 record as they headed into into a Week 17 showdown with the Chicago Bears.
Although things were not perfect heading into the game, the Vikings had one last chance to salvage their season with a victory over the Bears to head to the playoffs.
Instead, the Minnesota laid a complete egg.
The offense couldn’t sustain the momentum they had gathered during their first two games with Kevin Stefanski leading the offense and the defense that had been the foundation of this team a year ago, failed the Vikings as they fell 24-10 to Chicago inside U.S. Bank Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
The defeat coupled with the Philadelphia Eagles’ victory over the Washington Redskins officially knocked Minnesota out of the playoffs. That proves as a worst case scenario for a Vikings team that made the NFC Championship a year ago and had Super Bowl aspirations heading into this season.
Minnesota’s loss to the Bears on Sunday serves as a coup de grâce for a season that fell short of expectations.
While we will obviously get into what went wrong against the Chicago, this will be more of a microcosm of a Vikings season that went wrong and far short of what many expected heading into 2018.