After suffering a 27-point loss to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, the Minnesota Vikings will not be participating in the playoffs for the second season in a row.
This past Friday, Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer announced that Sean Mannion would be the starter in the team’s Week 17 game against the Green Bay Packers following the placement of Kirk Cousins on the Reserve/COVID-19 list.
Zimmer tried to convince himself that the Vikings would still have a shot against the NFC-leading Packers on Sunday with Mannion starting under center by saying that Minnesota’s players “would rally around Sean. they know how important this game is.”
Well, the Vikings must have missed Zimmer’s comments on Friday as they didn’t “rally around Sean” on Sunday night and it resulted in an ugly 37-10 loss to Green Bay.
Minnesota Vikings eliminated from playoff contention with loss to Green Bay Packers
During the first few drives of the game on Sunday, Minnesota did what they could to hang in the matchup with the Packers. But with the Vikings’ offense essentially paralyzed with Mannion at quarterback, they had no way of responding once Green Bay started to find the end zone in the second quarter.
The Packers carried a 20-3 lead into the half and Minnesota didn’t have any sort of response when they came out of the locker room for the third quarter. Green Bay went on to outscore the Vikings 17-7 in the final 30 minutes of Sunday’s contest thanks in part to the performances of Aaron Rodgers, AJ Dillon, and Davante Adams.
As for Mannion, well he finally threw the very first touchdown pass of his NFL career, something that he hadn’t been able to do since entering the league in 2015. The Vikings’ No. 2 quarterback finished his night with 189 passing yards, his one touchdown toss, and an 84.1 rating.
With Sunday’s loss, Minnesota will miss out on the playoffs for the second season in a row and for the third time in the last four years.
Major changes need to be made to this franchise during the next few weeks, both to the roster and to the coaching staff.
What exactly those changes will be is something that we will have to wait and find out. But they absolutely need to be made before the Vikings take the field for their first game of the 2022 season.