Analysis: Vikings defense, inspired Harrison Smith deliver a Christmas spectacle

The announced 66,874 fans at U.S. Bank Stadium were awash in holiday revelry by the two-minute warning of the Vikings’ 23-10 Christmas Day victory over the Lions, as video board operators focused on individual players for what amounted to curtain calls.

They roared for Justin Jefferson, whose 10-yard reception moments earlier had helped him pass Randy Moss for the most receiving yards by a NFL player in the first six seasons of his career. Then the picture changed to Harrison Smith, who had sacked Jared Goff in the first quarter and pounced on an Amon-Ra St. Brown crossing route in the third for the 39th interception of his 14-year career. The fans, dressed in winter white to match the Vikings’ special uniforms, lauded the safety with a grateful ovation. Smith, rarely the type to display emotion, responded by blowing kisses to the crowd.

“The fans here have never experienced a Super Bowl, and they always show up,” Smith said, holding back tears for the second consecutive home game. “For them to keep going, it just shows how much they love the team, how much they love everything that goes into it. I mean, we’re out of the playoffs, everybody shows up in white. They do their part. One of these days, they’ll get it.”

“It,” of course, is the Lombardi Trophy the Vikings have never won and haven’t played for in nearly 50 years. The 2025 season, the 65th in franchise history, will end without a playoff berth; it means if Smith retires after this year, he will never have reached a Super Bowl. The looming sunset seemed on the minds of the fans who saluted Smith and the safety who returned their gratitude.

Valedictory moments, at the end of a victory by a team already eliminated from the postseason, are small payoffs in a season that began with starry expectations and faded to disappointment. But as they ensured the Lions team that snatched the NFC North title from them the past two years would also miss the playoffs, the Vikings delivered a Christmas spectacle.

Smith’s interception was one of six turnovers the Vikings (8-8) forced in a victory that came almost solely because of their defense. They sacked Goff five times and intercepted him twice, while picking up three of his fumbles and recovering another one from Jahmyr Gibbs. Their interceptions came on the back end of a blitz that has become even more cavalier in recent weeks; the Vikings blitzed Goff on 55.9% of his dropbacks, according to NFL Next Gen Stats, and forced him into the first two interceptions he’s thrown against the blitz all year.

“The number one priority going into the game was to win the turnover margin and a pretty phenomenal, historical kind of effort by our defense clearly led the way,” coach Kevin O’Connell said.

That season was the Lions’ last before they acquired Goff in the trade that sent Matthew Stafford to the Rams, after coach Sean McVay and O’Connell (then the Rams offensive coordinator) decided they needed a QB upgrade for Los Angeles to win a Super Bowl. The Rams’ 28-17 loss in Miami that year, when Brian Flores’ defense forced Goff into four turnovers, became a catalyst for the trade and seared an appreciation for Flores’ aggression into O’Connell’s brain, eventually leading to the coach making Flores his defensive coordinator before his second season in Minnesota. Goff won his first four meetings against Flores’ Vikings defenses, and he still threw for 284 yards and two touchdowns in the Vikings’ Nov. 2 victory at Detroit.

But Ben Johnson no longer calls plays for Goff, and with Flores sending a half-dozen defenders after the quarterback at a time, the Vikings played with an edge that has given their 36-year-old safety an injection of youth.

“I don’t know if it’s adrenaline or whatever it is, it’s just the style of play that we have,” Smith said. “There’s a gamesmanship that you don’t always get to have in defensive football games. And so these last couple years have been a different style — not just [typical] defensive football. It just kind of excites your nervous system.”

Against Detroit, it also sustained the Vikings’ vital signs.

They won a game where they produced just 3 net passing yards, the fewest in any of the 545 regular-season wins in franchise history and the fewest by any NFL team since the 2006 Texans beat the Raiders despite minus-5 passing yards. With three starting offensive linemen out with injuries, the Vikings gave up a season-high seven sacks, as Max Brosmer threw for only 51 yards while starting in place of the injured J.J. McCarthy.

“A win’s a win, and the guys on the other side of the ball helped out a lot today,” Brosmer said.

The group has coalesced in recent weeks, after new players grew comfortable with a level of aggressiveness that veterans said can feel unsettling at first. Few players arrive in Minnesota familiar with anything resembling what the Vikings do, blitzing quarterbacks far more than any NFL team while playing coverage structures behind the pressures that can sometimes leave zones open. It’s like progressing from groomed ski trails to backcountry runs, and acquiring the confidence to take daring lines over uncertain terrain.

“You have to put a lot of trust in not only the scheme, but everybody doing their job,” linebacker Blake Cashman said. “You’re sending the house, it’s eyes on the quarterback, everyone breaking on the ball. It’s high-risk, high-reward.

“When new guys come in, especially for the defensive backs to trust it, it takes sometimes in the whole offseason, OTAs and training camp. But I would say the new guys we brought in this year really bought in and trusted the scheme. And I think the coaches continue to do a better job at coaching it.”

As new players have mastered the scheme, defensive backs have found it has a peculiar simplicity. Because quarterbacks are so focused on releasing the ball ahead of heavy pressure, receivers rarely have time to execute a full route tree.

Had the Vikings solidified their run defense enough to flip early one-score losses to the Steelers and Eagles, or built an offense even close to the league average, it’s tempting to think about what they could have done with a defense heading into the postseason with this level of command. It’s equally easy to drift toward the future, with Flores possibly pursuing the open market after his contract expires next month and several veterans, including Smith, facing uncertain futures.

The safety wouldn’t entertain the question of retirement after the game, calling himself a “very much in-the-moment type of guy” and saying he wanted to savor the time he has with teammates he loves.

He has decided to come back the past two years after contemplating retirement, and this year, when he missed the Vikings’ first two games with a personal medical issue, he admitted he wondered briefly if he would make it back.

The Lions game, then, was a kind of capstone. After Smith broke from his deep safety position to cut off the in-breaking pass he knew Goff liked to throw to St. Brown, he thought about firing the ball into the stands, but pulled up when he realized his 39th interception — possibly his last at U.S. Bank Stadium — was one he would like to keep.

“The pick was a good one,” Smith said with a smirk afterward, allowing himself a moment of self-congratulation.

“There’s definitely a maturity, and you realize your own football mortality,” he said. ”When you’re young, there’s no end in sight. The past couple years, I know it’s there. It’s not an emotion of sadness. It’s more heightened, I would say. So you just feel it a little bit more.”

He had looked askance at self-promotion throughout his career, to the point where teammates and Vikings officials wondered whether he had cost himself more accolades by passing up publicity. On Christmas Day, though, the Vikings’ defensive masterpiece afforded their senior member a chance to take it all in.

This victory could not redeem the Vikings’ season. That a group of veteran defenders would play with such competitiveness anyway was a moment to treasure.

“There’s something about this group, when you get in between the lines, you go all-out,” Smith said. “I don’t know why, exactly, but it makes it fun. I forget my age. I forget all that. I just enjoy the moment.”

So did the fans who turned out in white to salute him.