The Minnesota Vikings came into the 2026 season trying to get back to their winning ways. An offense that was stuck in the mud in 2025 was going to find new life under quarterback Kyler Murray. Changes to the running game would complement a championship-caliber defense to make them a force in the NFC.
But none of those things happened in Monday night’s 23-6 loss to the Buffalo Bills, and it led the Vikings to trade for Kirk Cousins on Tuesday.
The Vikings believe the trade is enough to give fans hope in a desperate situation. But it feels more like Billy Mays slapping a piece of Flex Seal on a leaking shark tank.
The reality is that O’Connell and the Vikings organization have made a habit of becoming professional gaslighters, and the flame could finally burn out as the promise of a 6-0 start evaporates.
Vikings keep promising championship contention without showing progress
There are several reasons to believe in this year’s team. The defense remains legit and held the Bills offense, which was the top-ranked unit in the NFL with 33 points per game entering Monday night, in check.
Minnesota also has Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and T.J. Hockenson as high-caliber weapons that can provide instant options.
Even Mason was efficient in his limited role against Buffalo, and with Cousins being the Vikings' living, breathing security blanket, you can talk yourself into this team getting back on track.
But that’s what the Vikings want you to believe. For years, they’ve created the illusion that their goal is chasing a championship, but fans have insinuated that they’re fine with just being good enough.
Former Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah talked frequently about getting into “the tournament” at the end of the year and seeing what happens.
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, who is also a Vikings fan, asked if ownership was doing enough to win a Super Bowl as they dragged through the final months of the Mike Zimmer era in 2021.
“The current Vikings are operating like the pre-[Brett Favre] Brad Childress teams. Keep it close and hope for a late break,” Florio wrote after the Vikings lost to Cooper Rush and the Dallas Cowboys on Halloween night in 2021.
"It’s a recipe for getting to the playoffs every other year. It’s a recipe for keeping the fan base engaged by the possibility that the team will deliver a Super Bowl win without ever taking the aggressive and necessary steps toward doing so.
It’s the Big Shield’s version of the Big Lie. All teams spout off the notion that the goal is to win the Super Bowl, this year and every year. But they all know that it’s not a realistic goal.
The real Super Bowl victory comes on the balance sheet, where they get brand-new Lombardi Trophies each and every year, even in the pandemic.
That’s part of the grift, frankly. Plenty of teams don’t make winning a Super Bowl a priority.
Instead, they simply act like they’re trying to win a Super Bowl because fans wouldn’t buy tickets or watch the games or funnel various forms of money and attention to the team if they knew the football gods’ honest truth.
And here it is. Just good enough is more than good enough to make many millions in profit, year after year.”
A few weeks later, Zimmer was fired. Vikings president and co-owner Mark Wilf also pushed back on that narrative, saying that their goal “is to consistently contend and win championships.”
O’Connell was hired to see that mission through and responded with a 13-win season and an NFC North championship in his first year as head coach in 2022, and a 14-win campaign during the 2024 season.
But even with a Coach of the Year Award hanging on his mantle, he feels like the perfect coach to see the Wilf's mission through.
Vikings fans have every reason to question Kevin O’Connell after Bills loss
The last 22 months have been a crash course in O’Connell keeping the Vikings' flame alive.
He earned the trust of Vikings fans by turning Sam Darnold into a franchise quarterback, and many believed he would do the same for J.J. McCarthy, who was selected with the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft to be their quarterback of the future.
That plan went up in flames when McCarthy struggled with consistency on the field and his health off of it. It also created the lie that McCarthy was the Vikings’ biggest problem, surrounded by a supporting cast that simultaneously didn’t live up to their career standards.
Adofo-Mensah became the fall guy after his firing last January, and O’Connell was the man who would solve all of the Vikings' problems, working in tandem with interim general manager Rob Brzezinski.
As the Vikings prepared for the Bills on Monday night, O’Connell’s decisions were largely found on the inactive list.
- Murray, the quarterback O’Connell chose to supplant McCarthy, was out with a hamstring injury.
- Jauan Jennings, the free agent signed to fill the third receiver role, was inactive and was reportedly on the way back to the San Francisco 49ers before he refused the trade.
- Caleb Banks, the controversial first-round pick due to his raw talent and injury history, was a healthy scratch.
- Jakobe Thomas, the safety taken in the third round over the widely mocked Dillon Thieneman, was also a healthy scratch.
- Chuck Demmings, who also got offseason hype for “shutting down” Justin Jefferson in a training camp practice and dropping freestyle beats, was another draft pick thrown into the Kellen Mond Memorial Broom Closet.
Even other decisions, such as taking Demond Claiborne and hyping him up as “Diet De’Von Achane” or signing Odell Beckham Jr. to the active roster, have backfired. But all of them pale in comparison to the quarterback position, which is still haunting the Vikings after Monday’s loss.
Vikings organizational problems go far beyond their quarterback situation
Fans will cling to the hope that Cousins will solve everything because the defense is good enough to win games by itself. But Cousins is another dose of copium than anything else.
While Cousins brings back plenty of nostalgia, it's also embarrassing that the Vikings have crawled back to the biggest gaslighter in franchise history.
In his previous six seasons, he made $185 million in fully guaranteed dollars, but delivered just one playoff win and other embarrassing moments, including lining up under the guard or checking down to Hockenson with the season on the line during a 2022 Wild Card loss to the New York Giants.
It also gives O'Connell a "Get out of jail free card" as his offense is under fire.
When Monday's game ended, there was the chance that O'Connell should give up playcalling to someone else on the staff.
But neither offensive coordinator Wes Phillips, quarterbacks coach Josh McCown, nor assistant head coach Frank Smith has called plays in the past, further limiting that possibility if O'Connell were ever open to letting someone wrestle those duties from his cold, dead hands.
It's another way to say that everything is fine. Just like the narrative that Murray will get better with more time on task.
Or how O'Connell's prized pupil, Max Brosmer, kept a flicker of hope alive late in Monday’s game but also threw four interceptions in his first career start after Adofo-Mensah called him their “secret” one year ago.
It’s an effort where the Vikings were scrambling to keep their manufactured flame alive, but the patience of fans (and Jefferson) was wearing out, necessitating the decision to bring back Cousins.
If Cousins can overcome the flaws of the Vikings organization and O'Connell's staff, nobody will care how he returned to Minnesota. But he hasn't been able to do it in the past, keeping the flame alive and stringing Vikings fans along for the ride.
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