Vikings need to win next five games vs. lowly teams

Vikings history is scrawled with the graffiti of big losses, which is proof that they earned a lot of big victories. You can't lose a Super Bowl unless you can win a conference championship game.

Vikings recent history is dotted with big victories, if you accept the singular form of the word "dot.''

Since the retirement of Brett Favre's brain and heart following the 2009 season, the Vikings have earned only a few victories that were impressive at the time and in retrospect. In the past two seasons and four games, the Vikings have earned zero frame-worthy victory.

To find their last meaningful and impressive victory, you have to go back to Dec. 30, 2012, the night Adrian Peterson ran through the Green Bay Packers at the Metrodome, producing a 37-34 victory that captured a playoff berth.

That game demonstrated how great the NFL can be, as Peterson's legs and Aaron Rodgers' arm dueled at the heart of a compelling rivalry in a stadium so loud the game should have been sponsored by ibuprofen.

The Vikings did beat an Eagles team with a winning record late in the 2013 seasons, but the victory did nothing but damage the Vikings' draft position and hint at the mercurialness of Chip Kelly's teams.

Since that victory, the combined record of the teams the Vikings have beaten is 47-94-1. That's a horrific record even if the ace of your pitching staff is Ricky Nolasco.

Someday soon, the 2015 Vikings will have to win a big game, or at least beat a decent team, to fulfill their own expectations of becoming a powerhouse, but for the next five weeks they will have no use for the motto, "To be the best you have to beat the best."

For five weeks, starting today, the Vikings' motto should be, "Might as well beat the rest."

Sunday, the Vikings face the Kansas City Chiefs, a team with an offense as horizontal as the horizon. The Chiefs' best chance at making a big play has been handing or flipping the ball to Jamaal Charles and hoping he can break 12 tackles.

With Charles hurt, the Vikings may unveil the NFL's first 6-5 defensive alignment, with six linemen and five linebackers. If the Chiefs send a ball flying downfield today, it's guaranteed to be a punt.

Coming off a bye, with renewed health, playing at home, the Vikings have to win games like this to become contenders, and this is the first of five games that should elevate them in the wild-card race.

The Lions defense without Ndamukong Suh is not very good. The Dolphins defense with Suh is even worse. The Lions are 0-5 on merit, and the Dolphins' 1-3 record is better than they deserve.

After that it's the Bears, who somehow won at Kansas City with a one-legged Jay Cutler and no Alshon Jeffery, more of an indictment of Kansas City than a sign of progress for Chicago.

Then it's the Rams and Raiders. The Los Angeles market has been begging for NFL football for years, and if the Rams and Raiders relocate there, the Los Angeles market will be begging for NFL football for years.

The Vikings are like "Star Wars." Their history is remarkably deep in great talents and characters, and their future promises great improvement, but the recent past and present is a relentlessly hyped exercise in highly funded mediocrity.

And for the same reasons. "Star Wars" and the Vikings have wasted a lot of time telling awful or boring stories.