The 2013 Vikings, the franchise's last team not coached by Mike Zimmer, fielded a cornerback group of Chris Cook, Xavier Rhodes, A.J. Jefferson and Josh Robinson.
Rhodes played largely in a situational role as a rookie, Jefferson was released that November after an arrest on domestic violence charges, and Robinson was a former third-round pick who moved to slot cornerback in an ill-fated experiment after General Manager Rick Spielman released Antoine Winfield before the season.
That team allowed 480 points, the most in the NFL that season. The Vikings fired Leslie Frazier the day after a 5-10-1 season and brought in Zimmer, who'd first made his mark as a defensive backs coach before becoming one of the league's most highly regarded defensive coordinators.
The Vikings invested considerable resources in the secondary over the course of Spielman's time with Zimmer, using two first-round picks and a second-round pick on the group between 2015 and 2018 and then drafting two corners in the first three rounds of the 2020 draft as they tried to refresh a group that had aged after several years at the top of the league.
Of those five corners Spielman drafted in the first three rounds, only two remain in the organization, and only one — Mackensie Alexander, in his second stint with the team — was on the field at Lambeau Field on Sunday night, when Aaron Rodgers finished filleting the Vikings' current secondary in a manner that rivaled anything he'd done to the group before Zimmer.
If Sunday night was the final time Rodgers and Zimmer will face off, the Packers quarterback closed their 15-matchup stretch with the kinds of numbers he used to enjoy against the Vikings before Zimmer came to town. Rodgers, who completed 29 of his 38 passes for 288 yards and two touchdowns, posted a passer rating above 100 for the fourth consecutive game against the Vikings — only the second time he's done that in his career — and threw two touchdown passes to finish the season with six TDs against Minnesota.
In the past two seasons, he's thrown 13 touchdown passes without an interception against the Vikings. He'd never had two consecutive seasons when he'd been healthy for both games against the Vikings and gone without an interception.
The Vikings won two of those games: Dalvin Cook became the first person in Lambeau Field history with 200 yards from scrimmage (226, 163 rushing and 63 receiving) and four TDs in a 28-22 victory last year, and earlier this year, Justin Jefferson set what was then a career high in yards (169) while posting his only two-TD game of the season as the Vikings won 34-31 on a last-second field goal. On Sunday night, though, they had no exemplary offensive performance to answer the Packers quarterback, and no answer for some of the throws he made to wide receiver Davante Adams.