In the last decade, the closest the Minnesota Vikings have come to playing in the Super Bowl was during the 2017 season, when their efforts unfortunately came to a close in the NFC Championship thanks to the Philadelphia Eagles.
To make matters worse, the Vikings would have been able to play the Super Bowl on their home field, since the big game was being held inside U.S. Bank Stadium that season.
Recently, former Minnesota offensive lineman Jeremiah Sirles recalled the letdown of the 2017 NFC Championship during an episode of "The OLine Committee" podcast, and he even made a bit of bold claim about the Vikings' chances to beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl had they been able to get past the Eagles.
"We went right down the field and scored on that opening drive, and I was like, 'We're going to the ship! Let's go!' And so much after that game, there wasn't a lot of anger. Honestly, it was a lot of disbelief.
Like, it felt like after the 'Minneapolis Miracle,' [we all thought] 'It can't end this way. Not like this. We got one more chance to do this, right? That wasn't it. That wasn't the last time that this group of guys is together.'
...We were so close to playing [in the] Super Bowl in our own stadium. I honestly believe we would've beat the Patriots that year. The way our defense was set up, they would've murdered Tom Brady."
Had they made the Super Bowl in 2017, would the Minnesota Vikings have been able to defeat the New England Patriots?
While the Vikings had a truly elite defense in 2017 (first in the NFL in points allowed per game with just 15.8), was that enough to pummel the Patriots in the Super Bowl like Sirles believes they would have had they been able to defeat Philadelphia in the NFC Championship?
The simple answer is no, but this doesn't mean Minnesota wouldn't have won. The matchup probably would've just been much closer than what Sirles imagined.
Since it's 2026 and we can do these kinds of things, we asked Claude.ai to run 10,000 simulations between the 2017 Vikings and 2017 Patriots in the Super Bowl, and the results were very intriguing.
Minnesota only won 4,780 of the 10,000 simulated Super Bowl matchups against New England (47.8 percent), while the Patriots emerged with a victory in 5,220 of the simulations (52.2 percent).
However, the average score between the two teams had New England putting up 21.8 points on the board, and the Vikings scoring 21.2 points, meaning a Super Bowl matchup between these two squads likely would have come down to the last drive.
So, Sirles isn't necessarily wrong when he says he thinks Minnesota would've beat the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, since the closeness of the matchup means the Vikings could have emerged victorious if the ball bounced their way just a few more times than it did for New England.
But defeat the Patriots by destroying Tom Brady? That's probably not how it would've happened for Minnesota.
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