While the Minnesota Vikings season didn’t end the way fans were hoping, their year wasn’t without its incredible highs.
Perhaps nothing will ever touch the extreme pendulum swing fans experienced when the Vikings erased a 33-point halftime deficit to beat the Indianapolis Colts back in December. It was the peak of comeback mountain for fans and ranks up there with the Minneapolis Miracle and the comeback against the Bills.
The Bills comeback came before the one against the Colts, which is just insane to think about what fans went through last season in down-to-the-wire games. But the comeback against the Colts is the largest in NFL history and something we’re still learning new details about months after it happened.
Vikings tight end KJ Obsorn sat down with Stacking The Box and revealed what he and Justin Jefferson said to each other heading into the locker room at halftime.
“Before we went into the locker room, me and were speaking, and the year before we were up on the Steelers something similar and they came back and we had to beat them on the last play of the game,” Osborn recalled. “So when we were walking into the locker room me and JJ were like we’ve seen this done against us and we can do the same thing.”
That Steelers game came during an era where the Vikings more often than not found themselves on the wrong wide of one-score games. It’s something that led to the firing of Mike Zimmer after last season, but fans experienced life on the other side of that this year.
“In the locker room, we were kind of kicking ourselves. Credit to the Colts, they were playing an amazing game and capitalizing on our mistakes,” Osborn said. “In that second half, we just tried to not look at the scoreboard and play each and every play to try and stack plays and build that momentum.”
Oh boy were they ever able to build that momentum.
Vikings fans lived life on the edge in historic ways last season. Of the team’s thirteen wins this season, eleven game in one-score games, including the epic comeback against the Colts.
Of course, the nature of the victories brought scrutiny from the national media. The Vikings point differential was cited as a reason why the team was labeled as a fraud, something punctuated by their one-and-done trip to the playoffs.
But no amount of slander can take away the thrill of the moment. In a season that ended on such a sour note, moments like the Colts game are what fans can look back on and think of fondly as the team enters the offseason.