Minnesota Vikings not viewed as a playoff team for the 2019 season

In a recent way-too-early prediction of the teams that will make the NFL playoffs next season, the Minnesota Vikings were not among those selected.

Since Mike Zimmer became the team’s head coach in 2014, the Minnesota Vikings have failed to make the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.

Under Zimmer, the Vikings have made the postseason during the years that end in odd numbers. So based on this, one would assume that Minnesota is going to find their way back into the playoffs during the upcoming 2019 NFL season.

Despite the fact that the Vikings haven’t finished a year with a losing record since 2014, they were not among the teams from around the league that were included in a recent way-too-early playoff prediction.

In the spirit of the current NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, NFL Media’s Adam Schein recently revealed his “Sweet 16” teams for next season. He selected six playoff teams and two two squads who he believes will finish on the brink of the postseason in 2019 for both the AFC and the NFC.

So was Minnesota among the eight teams Schein selected for the NFC? Of course not. The Vikings weren’t even selected as one of the two bubble teams that might be able to sneak into the playoffs next season.

Instead Schein went with the Los Angeles Rams (1), Dallas Cowboys (2), New Orleans Saints (3), Chicago Bears (4), Philadelphia Eagles (5), and Green Bay Packers (6) to qualify for the NFC’s postseason bracket in 2019 and the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks as the two bubble teams for the conference.

So he believes that the Packers and 49ers, who both failed to win more than six games in 2018, have improved enough during the current offseason to warrant a belief that they will be among the NFC’s top eight teams in 2019. This seems logical.

Choosing Green Bay seems to always be the trendy pick when it comes to yearly predictions because of the Aaron Rodgers factor. But San Francisco has done absolutely nothing out on the field during the last four seasons to deserve more playoff consideration than Minnesota in 2019.

Less than a year after a number of people were predicting the Vikings to make last season’s Super Bowl, any confidence in the team having any sort of significant success in 2019 has seemed to have already vanished.