Five extra points: Vikings stop the Eagles run game, get their own going too late

Keep Saquon Barkley mired in his seasonlong slump and the Vikings beat the Eagles at home. That’s how all of us saw Sunday’s game going. Well, the Vikings lost with Barkley gaining only 20 yards on his final 13 carries and 44 with a 2.0 average overall.

“We got on him before he could get going,” said Jalen Redmond, who tackled Barkley for a 6-yard loss and assisted on another loss of 3 yards.

Great job. Unfortunately, no one saw Jalen Hurts posting the first perfect passer rating of his career (158.3). Hurts isn’t supposed to do what he did with ease and little pressure against a Vikings team that was stuffing the run. What did he do? Throw five balls 20 or more yards downfield, completing all five for 215 yards and three touchdowns. Ouch.

Coach Kevin O’Connell called 16 passes and 12 runs on first down. That’s not bad balance considering he doesn’t have a strong running game, and the Eagles’ strength is their defensive tackles. One call he’d like to have back is the first of 21 snaps the team ran while going 1 for 6 in the red zone. K.O. had thrown on back-to-back first downs and had just run for a first down to the Eagles’ 19. He got impatient and called for a pass into the end zone. Carson Wentz threw high, wild and incomplete. Then he skipped a swing pass off the turf and watched as Blake Brandel’s third-and-10 snap sailed 22 yards the wrong way.

O’Connell’s commitment to the run in the second half — eight runs for 33 yards and a first down, eight passes for 42 yards and two first downs — was a key component in the Vikings moving the ball better and scoring their only red-zone touchdown (on a direct snap to Jordan Mason).

Ryan Longwell played 96 games over six seasons as a Viking (2006-11). He went 11 of 17 on field goal attempts of 50-plus. Well, guess what. Will Reichard has played 19 games over two seasons and he just made his 12th field goal of 50-plus. When the Vikings turned first-and-10 at the Philly 19 into fourth-and-32, Reichard, ho-hum, nailed the 59-yarder. He’s 11 of 17 from 50-plus in his career, including 9 of 10 this year. His only miss — a 51-yarder in London — might have hit a “spider wire” that controls the camera above the field.

Reichard was asked Sunday if it was “crazy” that 59-yarders are now considered “easy.” “Well,” said the flatline kicker, “they aren’t easy.” He only makes them look that way. He’s 3 of 3 this year on field goals of 59 or longer, including a franchise-record 62-yarder.

Another thing to admire about Price: He’s fearless, going into the game with the fewest fair catches in the league with one. He had another one Sunday and is on pace for only six. Former Viking Brandon Powell had 16 last year and 14 the year before.

Raise your hand if you bought the Vikings’ offseason sales pitch on center Ryan Kelly being a massive upgrade over undersized Garrett Bradbury (my hand is firmly raised). Now? Kelly was a 32-year-old injury risk who has missed two games with the fourth and fifth concussions of his career and isn’t eligible to return from injured reserve until Week 10. His backup — second-year pro Michael Jurgens — is so overmatched that backup guard Blake Brandel took his job easily after playing the position in a game for the first time ever two weeks ago.

Brandel is a hard-working, serviceable backup. He’s not a starting center and showed that while struggling mightily on Sunday. In the red zone alone, Brandel snapped a ball 22 yards over Wentz’s head, negated a touchdown pass with a holding penalty and gave up a sack. As for the Colts, well, they’re 6-1 and leading the league in scoring with Kelly’s former backup, Tanor Bortolini, a 23-year-old fourth-round pick in 2024. There isn’t a position higher on the Vikings’ list of 2026 draft needs than center right now.