The Vikings’ nine-game winning streak came crashing to a halt on Sunday night in Detroit.
They failed to score a touchdown despite moving the ball into the red zone four times and gave up the final 21 points of the game in a 31-9 loss that sends them to Los Angeles next Monday night as the No. 5 seed in the NFC. It’s a big difference than the top seed in the conference, which the Lions secured, and it will forced them to face the only team other than the Lions that has beaten them this season.
The Rams got a 30-20 home win over the Vikings on a Thursday night in Week Eight and that game came days after the Lions beat them 31-29 in Minnesota. The Vikings will have to fix what went wrong on Sunday night in order to avoid a quick end to what felt like a special season. Head coach Kevin O’Connell’s postgame press conference centered on the need to do that without forgetting the things that got the Vikings to 14 wins in the first place.
“It doesn’t change anything about what this team is made up of,” O’Connell said. “You can’t win nine in a row and then we lose one and allow that to change how we operate. But that also doesn’t mean you can’t improve and late-season improvement when you have been playing really good football in the month of December — sometimes you get hit in the mouth a little bit and you’ve got to respond. I know we’ve built this thing in a way that we’re going to do that.”
The Vikings will likely see variations on the same things that the Lions did to make Sam Darnold and the rest of their offense so uncomfortable,which is why O’Connell said they will have to be “ready to improve immediately.” If they can, they might find themselves back in Detroit for another crack at the Lions very soon.
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