If the Minnesota Vikings were going to remain alive in the hunt for a playoff spot this season, they needed Shedeur Sanders and the Cleveland Browns to pull off an upset in their Week 15 matchup against the Chicago Bears on Sunday.
Well, it didn't take very long for the Vikings to figure out that the playoffs aren't going to be in their future this season, as the Bears stormed out to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter, and eventually walked off the field with a dominating 31-3 win over Sanders and the Browns.
So, before the Vikings even had a chance to run a play in their own Week 15 matchup on Sunday, they were eliminated from capturing a spot in this season's playoffs. Less than a year after Minnesota entered a Week 18 contest to compete for the No. 1 seed in the NFC, they'll be watching the 2025 postseason at home like the rest of their fans.
Minnesota Vikings eliminated from playoff contention after Chicago Bears defeat Cleveland Browns
This is now the second time in Kevin O'Connell's four seasons as the Vikings' head coach that the team has missed the playoffs. Minnesota could win each of its four remaining games, including a primetime matchup with the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, and it wouldn't make a difference.
The Vikings will not be playing in the playoffs this season thanks to the Bears earning their 10th victory of the 2025 campaign this weekend.
It's the latest event in what has been an incredibly disappointing season for Minnesota. After winning 14 games in 2024, the Vikings were hoping this could finally be the year in which they earned back-to-back trips to the playoffs for the first time since the 2009 season. But Minnesota ended up taking too many risks during the last several months for that to happen.
The biggest risk is obviously the one the Vikings took at the quarterback position. Minnesota opted to move on from Sam Darnold earlier this year and hand over the starting job to second-year signal-caller J.J. McCarthy.
The Vikings felt they could achieve a satisfactory amount of success with McCarthy as their quarterback this season, at the very least, and that assumption turned out to be false. Unsurprisingly, Minnesota's 22-year-old quarterback with no starting experience in the NFL has dealt with some significant struggles out on the field this season.
For McCarthy, perhaps he can now play the rest of the Vikings' 2025 schedule with a clear mind, knowing that nothing is on the line. Regardless of how he performs during the next four weeks, however, Minnesota has a lot of questions that need to be answered in the upcoming offseason, and they can now officially begin to think about all of them.