What was the most pivotal game of the last 10 years for the Minnesota Vikings?
The 2010s began for the Minnesota Vikings with seismic optimism. Fresh off an NFC Championship appearance the year prior, the ushering in of a new decade could not have started sooner for the Vikings in September of 2010.
Within two months, the fans (and probably others in the organization) wanted to fast forward to 2011. The 2010 campaign saw the abrupt shriveling of Brett Favre, the whimsical trade and release of Randy Moss, and the termination of head coach Brad Childress. It was Minnesota malarkey.
Current head coach Mike Zimmer would not arrive until four years later. This 2011-2013 gap was mostly one of defensive buffoonery, uncharacteristically poor quarterback play, and blown leads. The lone sublime achievement of this three-year era was the MVP-trophy hoist by running back Adrian Peterson. Aside from that honor, the team was 18-25-1 (.385) in those three seasons, which exiled the Vikings to the twenty-fifth best win percentage during the Leslie Frazier era.
Zimmer was hired in 2014 and has been the skipper ever since. Under him, the Vikings have won sixty-percent of all games and the franchise has returned to its defensive supremacy akin to that fostered in the 1970s.
In the midst of the Zimmer era and the decade as a whole, one particularly pivotal game stands out.
The Vikings defeated the Chicago Bears in a Monday night matchup in Week 5 of the 2017 season by a score of 20-17. There are a few reasons this game was the most pivotal rendezvous for Minnesota from the last decade.
The Bradford Era was suddenly done and so was his career
This had to be bittersweet for Mr. Sam Bradford in the most sizable proportions imaginable. Just twenty-eight days prior, Bradford had the best game of his life in the season-opener against the New Orleans Saints at U.S. Bank Stadium. The Vikings bashed the Saints, and Sam tossed a 143.0 passer rating game to make it happen. To put it bluntly, that game could not have gone better for Sam Bradford.
Four weeks later–and he was a shell of himself due to a petulant knee injury. He was removed from the contest against the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football, and Case Keenum led the team to a narrow victory.
Many bizarre after-the-fact statistics occurred in the game. The score at halftime was 3-2. That’s just weird.
It was the last time the Vikings won a game via game-winning field goal late in a contest. That was courtesy of a Kai Forbath 26-yard chip shot.
To date, this was the last time the Vikings won at Soldier Field. The team has since failed in games at Chicago in 2018 and 2019 with rather anemic performances.
More broadly, this match-up was only the third time the Vikings have won at Soldier Field in the last nineteen tries.
Two new eras began during the night
The dawn of Mitchell Trubisky is largely unimportant to the day-to-day operation of the Minnesota Vikings, but he is the quarterback of a team within the NFC North division no less.
What was important was the commencement of Case Keenum’s brief tenure as starting quarterback for the Vikings. Keenum’s Vikings would win thirteen games in 2017 while only dropping three contests. Those regular-season losses came to the Pittsburgh Steelers, Detroit Lions, and Carolina Panthers.
As a future-telling component to the Vikings recent history, Keenum’s success in 2017 was gravely important. An eventual trip to the NFC Championship arguably coalesced Mike Zimmer’s job security in forthcoming seasons. Keenum’s wherewithal also sparked a debate pertaining to the future of the quarterback position. The contentious topics of the subsequent offseason were:
- Extend Keenum “for cheap”
- Revert back to Teddy Bridgewater and his uncertain capabilities
- Ink a free agent, Kirk Cousins, for top dollar
General Manager Rick Spielman and the Minnesota Vikings chose option three.
An eight-game winning streak was born
The momentum stemmed from squeaking by the Bears on the road propelled the 2017 Minnesota Vikings to an unanticipated stretch of triumphs. For the Vikings, it was the longest winning streak since 2002.
In each of the games, there was a sense that the success was “too good to be true,” yet the Vikings kept mowing down opponents–most of them in a decisive manner. The team finished best in the league in both points allowed and yards allowed.
At the time, the defense’s opposing third-down conversion rate of 25.2 percent was the best in recorded history. That feat has since been edged by the 2019 New England Patriots.
The victory over the Bears and ensuing win streak navigated the Vikings to an NFC Championship in the end. Although that contest was lost, the appearance alone in that NFC Championship game caused one vital and overlooked thing to occur: it made the allure of the Minnesota Vikings the top landing spot for Kirk Cousins’ impending free agency.
Vikings got a first glance at what a roster with an injured Cook would look like
The Monday night game at Chicago was the first game following Dalvin Cook‘s catastrophic injury.
Unfortunately, running back Dalvin Cook has missed forty percent of all games since the Vikings spent a second-round pick on him in 2017. In the sixty percent of games that he has been upright and participatory, he has been exemplary and unusually versatile.
Cook tore his ACL in Minneapolis against the Detroit Lions on October 1st, 2017. He missed twelve games in 2017 and missed out on the Vikings fortuitous playoff run.
And then he was hurt and missed five games the following year. And then three games the next year.
The Monday night game versus the Bears in 2017 was the first glimpse as to how the Vikings would function without Dalvin. It would turn into a theme. Thankfully for the purple and gold, the team has a 15-6 win-loss without him since 2017.
All statistics from Pro-Football-Reference.com unless otherwise stated.