In Vikings' confounding season, they had no answers in the end

During his three years at Louisiana State, Justin Jefferson played two playoff games, winning a national championship at the end of a tournament that admitted four teams each season. He has played just one playoff game in the NFL, which awards 14 postseason spots each year, and his fourth pro season will end on Sunday unless the Vikings beat the Lions and the results of three other games vault them into the NFC's final playoff spot.

The NFL's 2022 Offensive Player of the Year missed seven games with a hamstring injury and has surpassed 100 yards just once since his return four weeks ago, playing with three different quarterbacks in that time. "It's been one of the most difficult [years] I've experienced," Jefferson said Wednesday.

His synopsis of a confounding Vikings season neatly diagnosed the problems of a team that remains mired in the middle.

"Every year, we're great at one thing and not great at the other," he said. "Every single team has the same type of guys we have on our squad: those superstars that make plays. We just need to separate ourselves, try to really dig deep on what we really want as an organization. I feel like everybody just needs to go out there and play free: not overthink about the plays, not overthink about making the play. Just go out there and let the play happen."

No matter what happens this weekend, the 7-9 Vikings are set to follow up a playoff season with a losing record for the fourth time in 14 years. They have not posted consecutive playoff appearances since the 2009 team that lost in overtime of the NFC Championship Game.

Despite Jefferson's hamstring injury and quarterback Kirk Cousins' torn right Achilles, it appeared for much of the season like the Vikings might follow their 2022 NFC North championship with a return to the playoffs anyway. They fell to 1-4 the day they lost Jefferson, then fashioned a five-game win streak that continued through Cousins' injury to the giddy beginnings of Joshua Dobbs' time at quarterback. Following Dobbs' first victory as the starter on Nov. 12 against the Saints, the Vikings were 6-4, a game and a half clear of their closest pursuers for a wild-card spot and in control of their own destiny to win the division.

A team built on adept management of a complex offensive system, though, could not fill the void left by Cousins, whose veteran command of Kevin O'Connell's scheme put him near the top of the league in most major passing categories at the time of his Oct. 29 injury. The Vikings made three quarterback switches for performance reasons in their last six games, going from Dobbs to Nick Mullens, Mullens to Jaren Hall and Hall to Mullens while winning only once.

The Vikings' fervid defense, which overcame talent and experience shortages with coordinator Brian Flores' daring combination of pressure packages and zone coverages for so much of the season, succumbed to injuries to veterans and costly mistakes in the secondary that contributed to big plays the Vikings had rarely allowed before.

By the time the Vikings leave Ford Field on Sunday afternoon, they will know if they have any hope of ending their puzzling 2023 season in the playoffs.

If they don't, the Vikings will turn to an offseason filled with questions, after a regular season that could end with unmet expectations.

"We know that we have the talent on this team. It's just not our time," Jefferson said. "There are just things occurring that we can't control. So it's been a tough one."

Jefferson mentioned a point of offensive frustration that O'Connell has stressed all season: turnovers. The Vikings have given the ball away 32 times this season, the second-highest total in the league, with their four quarterbacks throwing 17 interceptions in 16 games. Mullens leads the team with six, despite having thrown fewer passes than either Cousins or Dobbs.

Mullens will start against the Lions, though. The Vikings' two biggest yardage days since Cousins' injury were with Mullens at quarterback; O'Connell said Mullens' effectiveness moving the offense was a big reason he returned to the job.

That might have something to do with the fact he has more experience than either Dobbs or Hall in a scheme that Jefferson called "one of the most difficult offenses in the league."

Vikings quarterbacks are part passer, part strategist, often relaying play calls of 15-20 words each and deciding between two called plays based on a defense's pre-snap look. Last January, Cousins compared weekly game preparation to "cramming for a final exam every single week of the season." He had a doctoral student's knowledge of the offense; Mullens might have been the Vikings' only other passer with a bachelor's degree.

"Is it a difficult offense to run? I don't know that answer," offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. "If you're too basic, you will get exposed by defenses. So I do think there should be some balance there, and some plays are certainly easier than others. But part of it is trying to find an edge from a schematic standpoint, where we're giving the quarterback the best possible looks. All those things can be challenging, even for Kirk."

The Vikings built their offense around Cousins, a pocket passer whose preparation and detail are his best assets. The time other players spent learning and rehearsing the scheme in the spring and summer made the Vikings reluctant to enact significant changes for a new QB in the middle of the season.

Cousins' injury, then, put the Vikings in an untenable situation they never really solved. Dobbs, with his 4.0 grade-point average and aerospace engineering education from Tennessee, arrived Oct. 31; Mullens, who had been traded from the Raiders just before the 2022 season, knew how difficult a task Dobbs faced. "You're slamming the books," he said.

"There are offenses that are simpler," Phillips said. "A lot of those offenses involve a running quarterback, where they're more static [in their formations], there's more zone reads, there's less variation in concepts, but they've also got that quarterback who can take off and run."

Dobbs' remarkable debut on Nov. 5, directing a comeback victory over Atlanta with teammates he'd barely met after Hall's concussion forced him into the game, was facilitated with O'Connell calling a hurry-up offense that bought him more time to talk Dobbs through the upcoming play in the 25 seconds before his headset cut out. Dobbs ran 10 no-huddle snaps against Atlanta, and 14 in a win over the Saints the next week. The Vikings planned to use more of them with Dobbs coming out of the bye, following two losses where he turned the ball over six times, but only had six before Dobbs was pulled in favor of Mullens. They also used more shotgun runs and zone read handoffs against the Raiders on Dec. 10 to take advantage of Dobbs' mobility. The idea of fully remaking the offense in the middle of the season to suit Dobbs seemed beyond the pale, however.

Hall got the job after Mullens' six interceptions but missed some open reads during a tentative first half against the Packers. The carousel spun back to Mullens, with plans for Dobbs to back him up at the end of a season during which Cousins' injury meant the Vikings lost their footing.

"It's absolutely not the preference to have multiple guys in and out of the lineup at that position," O'Connell said. "There's a reason why all those guys are here. They all have strengths. Physically, they all have the ability to throw the football at a high level. It's the technique, fundamentals and the awareness of what it's going to take mentally to activate the things we want to do."

While the Vikings tried to regain their stability on offense, they benefited, until recently, from the surprising fortitude of a defense they hadn't expected to lean on.

After allowing 73 plays of 20 yards or more — the second most in the league — in 2022, the Vikings have given up just 48, the fourth fewest in the NFL. Flores brought an unorthodox combination of pressure packages and zone coverages to the Vikings. As they blitzed opposing quarterbacks more frequently than any other team in the NFL, they also helped a young secondary by forcing quick throws and mixing in eight-man coverages that forced quarterbacks to decipher thick coverage shells on third downs.

But a lack of proven pass rushers behind Danielle Hunter means the Vikings, with all their blitzes, rank just 14th in pressure percentage. They have gotten just 118 snaps out of Marcus Davenport and they lost D.J. Wonnum and his eight sacks to a torn quadriceps muscle on Dec. 24 vs. Detroit.

That left the secondary, also without top corner Byron Murphy Jr., especially vulnerable against the Packers last week.

"We didn't get enough pressure throughout the night," Flores said Wednesday. "They got it out quickly. We missed some tackles; we didn't defeat blocks the way we needed to. We didn't play with the juice we needed that night."

The Vikings allowed the fewest expected points per play in the NFL from a Week 4 win over the Panthers to a Week 14 shutout against the Raiders. They rank 31st through the past three games, all losses.

Flores has won plaudits from players for his approach, and was named the league's fourth-best defensive coordinator in an NFL Players Association survey released this week. He called his first year with the Vikings "one of the most rewarding seasons I've been a part of" for the ways it helped him grow while he steered the defense in a bold direction.

Flores might be a candidate for a second head coaching job this winter, but if he returns in 2024, he'll oversee what could be another significant set of personnel changes, with Hunter and Wonnum headed for free agency and the Vikings defensive line likely needing a talent infusion.

The defensive decisions will coincide with what could be a franchise-changing call on whether the QB room will include Cousins, a rookie QB or both. The Vikings will also try to complete long-term deals with left tackle Christian Darrisaw and Jefferson.

The team's efforts to pull it all together, all at once, have eluded the Vikings during Jefferson's first four seasons. Their next attempt will begin in earnest soon.

"This year has just been a roller coaster: the injuries that have been occurring, us not being on the same page, the turnovers that happened," Jefferson said. "This season has just been crazy all around."

Vikings win at Lions (Noon)
Falcons win at Saints OR Panthers win vs. Buccaneers (Noon)
Bears win at Packers (3:25 p.m.)
Cardinals win vs. Seahawks (3:25 p.m.)