Analysis: Vikings inject hope into their season with ‘total team trust’ vs. the Lions

DETROIT — The Vikings could have returned from their weekend off wearing blinders, retreating to standard-issue NFL banalities about how each game counts the same and refusing to peer into the ravine they seemed in danger of toppling down. The Vikings seemed to know that approach would not do.

Coach Kevin O’Connell met with the team’s eight captains early last week, when the Vikings’ 37-10 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Oct. 23 was still smoldering and the prospect of righting their season required a victory in a building where they hadn’t won since the 2020 season. Social media debates over the Vikings’ treatment of Carson Wentz’s shoulder injury dragged into a second week. With J.J. McCarthy set to return from his five-game absence, oddsmakers installed the Vikings as 8½-point underdogs against the Detroit Lions, the largest handicap they had received in O’Connell’s four years.

The coach held a long team meeting Monday and told players they likely wouldn’t hear from him much the rest of the week. The captains of the 3-4 team would get the floor Saturday night in Detroit, to say whatever was on their minds about the tipping point the Vikings faced and the prospects the 2025 season still held for them.

“We all just trusted how we were feeling,” safety Josh Metellus said. “I wouldn’t put too much weight into it. All I can say is, the reaction we got, giving our thoughts and feelings about how we should approach the rest of the season and how we should approach this game, the reception we got back — that’s what makes this team what we are.”

The 27-24 victory they forged out of Sunday’s game against the Lions was their biggest upset victory under O’Connell, and it might prove to be one of their most significant.

They ended a five-game losing streak against Detroit that matched the one from their first three seasons as an expansion team as the longest in franchise history. They returned to .500 for the year and made up a game in the NFC North standings on both the Lions (5-3) and the Green Bay Packers (5-2-1), who lost at home to Carolina on Sunday. McCarthy, who threw two touchdowns and ran for a third in the win, is now 2-0 in road division games. The Vikings (4-4) are still at the bottom of the NFC North, but they’re only 1½ games behind Green Bay and a game behind the Lions and the Chicago Bears (two teams they have beaten) for the conference’s final playoff spot.

A loss, two days before the NFL’s trade deadline, might have nudged their season toward irrelevance. The win, nearly 10 months to the day after the NFC North title game they lost at Ford Field, injected a dose of hope into their season.

“It’s cliché, but when players deliver that message — in some cases emotionally, some cases with some fiery context to it — there was a lot of folks that wanted to play the game last night.”

The Vikings, who allowed 322 rushing yards to the Lions in the two games that decided the division last year, beat Detroit at its own game Sunday, running for 142 yards while holding the Lions to 65 on 20 attempts. Jahmyr Gibbs, the joystick who scored six times against the Vikings last year, had only 25 yards on nine attempts, as the Lions resorted to David Montgomery against the linebacker blitzes that seemed too much for Gibbs.

Ivan Pace throttled Gibbs on one in the first quarter, as Blake Cashman sliced in front of him and pressured Jared Goff before Levi Drake Rodriguez collected the Vikings’ first of five sacks. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Gibbs allowed seven pressures on 16 pass-blocking snaps, which tied him for the most allowed by a running back since at least 2018. It made the third-year back a liability as the Lions tried to rally, and it came on a day in which 10 Vikings defenders recorded at least one pressure.

“We knew there would be some wrinkles, but there was nothing that we hadn’t seen before,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “We did not handle it well. I know we got beat on a couple of them, just physically beat on a couple that we expect not to.”

The Lions’ opening drive suggested the game would go differently, as Detroit gained 32 yards on its first three plays and Goff hit Sam LaPorta behind Metellus with a fourth-down throw the tight end took into the end zone for a 40-yard touchdown, carrying four Vikings defenders with him.

When McCarthy returned to the field Sunday, 45 miles east of where he won a national championship at Michigan, he began with a performance that suggested his time off was well spent.

He deftly reacted to the Lions’ blitzes, checking the play before a third-and-10 throw to Aaron Jones and floating to his left away from pressure as he hit Jordan Addison for 31 yards on a third-and-9. McCarthy targeted one-on-one matchups against the Lions’ man coverages, hitting Justin Jefferson for a 10-yard touchdown against Amik Robertson’s press coverage on the first drive and beating Arthur Maulet on the 31-yarder to Addison.

When McCarthy rolled right and threw back across the middle to an open T.J. Hockenson for a 7-yard score in the first quarter, the Vikings led 14-7, their first lead at Ford Field since O’Connell became head coach.

“He always carried himself with that confidence,” Jefferson said of McCarthy. “He has that dog mentality, like we all know. I said to him before the game: ‘Just go out there. Just play your role. We’re all behind you. You’ve got 10 people behind you to go and fight and do what we need to do.’”

McCarthy, who went 5-for-7 for 68 yards and two touchdowns on the first two drives, was just 9-for-18 for 75 yards the rest of the day. He threw behind Jalen Nailor on a pass that Terrion Arnold intercepted before halftime and misfired several times while running away from pressure outside the pocket.

The quarterback arrived at Ford Field wearing the mechanic’s shirt with his initials on it that was given to him by Jim Harbaugh at Michigan, to symbolize the workmanlike approach his college coach prized and his NFL team would need Sunday.

“I’ve shed a lot of blood, sweat and tears here,” McCarthy said. “I’m a Michigan man through and through. I love this state. I love everything that went into cultivating and crafting who I am as an individual, who I am as a football player.”

He talked Saturday night about his recent sleepless nights while lying in his college bed, which McCarthy brought to his house in Minnesota so he could rest while his fiancée, Katya Kuropas, attends to the couple’s infant son, Rome. As he lay awake, McCarthy said, “it felt like I was catching this glare from the silver platter with the juicy opportunity right on top of it.”

“That’s what I told the guys,” he added. “This opportunity is something that we’ve been asking for and praying for ever since we started wearing pads. Put everything into this moment, put everything into this game, and we’ll see where we end up.”

The Vikings’ advantage grew to 10 twice, but they ended up clinging to a three-point lead, in need of one more third-down conversion after Goff summoned a quick drive to make it 27-24 late in the fourth quarter. O’Connell sent McCarthy back to pass on third-and-5, and the quarterback glanced over to one more single-coverage matchup, lacing a throw for Nailor against Maulet. Nailor’s leaping, twisting grab netted 16 yards and forced the Lions to burn their final timeout. McCarthy became the first Vikings quarterback under O’Connell to kneel in victory formation at Ford Field.

It meant the difference in a game the Vikings knew was not like all the others. On Sunday, in a building that had been a cauldron of chaos, a team on a precipice found a foothold.