Pumping the brakes...
There is no disputing that Minnesota has great playmakers led by the best receiver in football, Justin Jefferson. It's also a fact that the Vikings are by far the worst 8-1 team in years and have benefitted as much from good luck as from actually being good.
The Bills rushed out to a 17-point lead against Minnesota before the Bills gave the game away on a first down fumble from their own 1-yard line with under a minute remaining. As Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders suggests, there's no reason to believe the Vikings are better than Buffalo just because of a fluke, fumbled snap they had no influence over.
"Those fumbles are almost always recovered by the offense, and I give no credit to the defense on those plays because the defense had nothing to do with a bad exchange," said Schatz.
Per Football Outsiders, the Vikings are by far the worst 8-1 team since 1981. The gap between Minnesota and the 2014 Arizona Cardinals, the team with the next-worst DVOA for an 8-1 team, is greater than the gap between the Cardinals and the tenth-worst team by DVOA, the 1985 Los Angeles Rams.
Entering Week 11, the Vikings rank 17th in DVOA, sandwiched between the Jacksonville Jaguars (3-7) and Atlanta Falcons (4-6).
The team will likely go as far as QB Kirk Cousins can take them and nothing in his history -- including this year -- suggests he's primed to level up and lead a team to a Super Bowl.
He has his worst completion percentage (64.1 percent) and passer rating (87) since the 2014 season and his touchdown rate (4 percent), yards per attempt (6.7) and QBR (47.7) are his worst since 2013.
Minnesota gets another chance to prove doubters wrong on Sunday against Dallas (6-3).
Per Oddschecker, Dallas is a one-point road favorite. A win for Minnesota will go a long way to shaking off the perception of the team as overachievers. With a loss, they'll be exactly who we thought they were.
Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger!
I rewatched the game and had also forgotten about Cook dropping the ball right in his hands which would have been an easy TD on the play from the 1 that the Bills were offsides, did this reporter not see that as a fluke?
You guys are too desperate for someone else’s approval.
For me, I don’t think the original post is that far
off. I think we’ve shown that peak Vikings
football is good enough to beat anyone, but we left ourselves in a scenario where
we needed a lot of things in a row to go right for us in order to get the win
and it’s great that we achieved it, but if we end up in the championship game /
super bowl depending on a fumble recovery for a TD, how much do you want to bet
on that happening? Part of the appeal and
why everyone is calling it the game of the year is the unlikely nature of our
comeback, and while I certainly appreciate having the moxie to perform those
comebacks, I’d also like to not need to do so because we took care of business
earlier. That said, games against top
teams come down to the end, because it’s just hard to dominate top teams, but
if we had more convincing wins against lesser teams, it would seem less like
luck when we beat top teams.
Everyone in the fanbase is so skittish and defensive.....the next loss and it'll be Eeyore-fest on this board and the 'I told you so' brigade will show up. Can't enjoy anything because the scars run so deep. Take a different mindset, I have. And I'm as long-timer as they get and always expect the other shoe to drop.
If they lose today, they'll be 8-2. Which anyone on this board would have slapped their Grandmother for in late August. Chill the F out.
I'm enjoying it game to game.
@"badgervike" said: I get it. Vikes don't have gaudy stats to back up their record. Expect more of the same from the talking heads. Might as well start prepping.
I think this is Mike McCarthy on the left and Kevin O'Connell to the right, if I'm not mistaken.
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