Vikings choke in final minutes of Week 5 loss to Seahawks

The Minnesota Vikings suffered a brutal loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday night.

Instead of making the easy decision and kicking a field goal that would have put his team up by eight points over the Seattle Seahawks with two minutes left in the game, Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer took a gamble and attempted to seal a victory with a 4th-and-1 conversion.

Unfortunately, the Vikings did not covert on that fourth down, and instead, Zimmer had to hope that his 26th-ranked defense could stop Russell Wilson and the Seahawks offense from scoring a touchdown.

Spoiler alert, Zimmer’s defense didn’t stop Wilson and Minnesota ended up on the losing end of a game that the purple and gold were in control of for most of the night.

Minnesota Vikings should have left the field with a win

On a night where the Vikings did just about everything they could to pull off an impressive upset over an undefeated Seattle team, the decision by Minnesota’s head coach to not kick a field goal late in the fourth quarter might have ended his team’s hopes of returning to the playoffs this season.

Almost everyone counted the Vikings out heading into their matchup with the Seahawks on Sunday night. But Minnesota overcame the third-quarter injury to running back Dalvin Cook, they overcame a 21-point surge by Seattle to begin the second half, and the Vikings had a five-point lead until there were 15 seconds left in the contest.

However, Minnesota couldn’t overcome the terrible decision by Zimmer in the fourth quarter. It doesn’t matter if the Vikings were having success running the ball all night or their head coach thought his defense could stop the Seahawks from driving 94 yards down the field for the go-ahead touchdown.

That field goal should have been attempted by Minnesota on 4th-and-1 and there is no logical explanation for why it shouldn’t have. It was just a mind-boggling decision from Zimmer who made a number of good choices throughout the night that should have resulted in the Vikings getting a win.

Instead, Minnesota just added another member to the franchise’s extensive list of heartbreaking losses

Zimmer and the Vikings will get a chance to redeem themselves when they take on the winless Atlanta Falcons inside U.S. Bank Stadium next Sunday.