Vikings' kryptonite: Outdoor road games against winning teams

It stands to reason that most NFL teams have a less-than-flattering record against quality opponents on the road because, well, those are the hardest games to win.

But the Vikings in recent years have had particularly ghastly outcomes in such situations, as brought to my attention by Warren Sharp of Sharp Football: 0-12-1 against teams with winning records since the start of 2016.

The tweet makes no mention of home/road, but obviously the “since 2016” part means those were all road games for the Vikings, who moved into U.S. Bank Stadium that season.

Those offensive/defensive expected vs. actual point splits are quite bad, and they help explain this: In taking a look back at all 13 games (including the NFC title game at Philadelphia), I can only find four of them in which the Vikings even held a lead at any point.

The most recent losses — including Sunday at Soldier Field — have come with Kirk Cousins at quarterback, but the cumulative defeats span three QBs (Cousins, Case Keenum and Sam Bradford) and countless offensive schemes.

There are some qualifiers to this since “winning record at the time” excludes teams that wound up being good (last year’s win at Philadelphia, though the Eagles were just 2-2 at the time of the game, was a quality road win for instance).

Still, the fact remains that the Vikings’ last win outdoors against a team with a winning record was Week 17 at Lambeau Field in 2015, a 20-13 victory over the Packers.

The Vikings won’t have a chance to break that skid this weekend at New York. The Giants are 2-2. The next road game after that is indoors at Detroit.

But their final four road games (at Kansas City, Dallas, Seattle and the L.A. Chargers) could all be outside against teams with winning records (pending Dallas having its roof open and all four expected contenders performing well).

It’s safe to say the Vikings probably need to stop that streak if they are going to have the type of season they want to have.