I chose to study computer science in college in large part because the field is heavily built on two key aspects: math and logic. The two have always appealed to me; mathematics can be used to explain and/or predict even the most complicated of real-world problems, and logic can be used to form airtight, infallible arguments if executed properly. While others are born with talent in art, music, chemistry, biology, or any number of subjects, I’ve always had somewhat of a knack for boiling down complex ideas into their mathematical and logical explanations.
Which is why the Minnesota Vikings’ 2022 season makes absolutely no damn sense to me.
I’ve pored over the numbers. I’ve watched their games. I’ve consulted numerous sources. And still, I can’t wrap my head around why they just keep winning games. They’re not a bad team, per se, but they’re also… not very good? Yet, they sport a sterling 12-3 record, which ties them for second-best in the NFC and in the entire NFL.
Minnesota kicker Greg Joseph hit a franchise-record 61-yard game-winning field goal in the Vikings’ latest win. Image from: Carlos Gonzalez/Star Tribune.
It’s not just that they’ve been winning games at a strangely high clip. The way they’ve been winning has been downright bonkers all season as well. Just last week, kicker Greg Joseph -- who’s been on six different teams in his otherwise nondescript five-year career -- nailed a Vikings franchise-record 61-yard field goal to sink the Giants. And that game is still, at best, the third-craziest win of Minnesota’s year behind their previous victory, the largest comeback in NFL history, and, uh, this game.
Many of the underlying stats perhaps not-so-subtly hint at either massive regression in 2023 or a swift and embarrassing playoff exit (or maybe both) for Minnesota. But how much does that really matter when they keep winning games like they’ve been doing? Let’s dive into this logic-defying season in the Twin Cities and try to dissect who the Minnesota Vikings really are.
First, the good. The Vikings, as previously mentioned, stand at 12-3 and have already clinched the NFC North. They’re guaranteed a top-3 seed in the NFC, which matters because it means they’ll avoid Dallas, a team that demolished Minnesota earlier in the season, in the Wild Card round, and have a small chance to earn the conference’s #1 seed and a first-round bye if Philadelphia loses out.
They’ve posted wins against some quality opponents, starting the year by handily defeating Green Bay and have beaten other playoff or fringe-playoff teams such as Detroit, Miami, Washington, New England, New York (both teams), and, most notably, Buffalo. Minnesota has also found success through the brilliance of some individual bright spots in the team. First and foremost, wide receiver Justin Jefferson. Do I really need to do more than show this video?
Fine, I’ll do my job and write. Jefferson leads the league in catches and receiving yards with 123 and 1756, respectively, already sits seventh all-time in the single-season receiving yards leaderboard and is mathematically on pace to break Calvin Johnson’s record from 2012. Jefferson also leads all receivers in 20+ yard receptions and receiving first-downs, sits second in 40+ yard receptions only to Tyreek Hill, and third in yards after catch behind Austin Ekeler and Travis Kelce. He’s got a legit case for MVP votes as a wide receiver, something which is exceedingly rare.
Balancing out the offense, running back Dalvin Cook has enjoyed a fine season as well, currently sitting at ninth in the league in yards from scrimmage among all players to go along with 18 total touchdowns. He’s also been running the ball at a respectable 4.5 yards/carry average, despite the fact that ESPN tracks Minnesota as the eighth-worst run-blocking team in the league by run block win rate.
General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah swung a savvy midseason trade to acquire tight end T.J. Hockenson from Detroit; Hockenson has been the team’s second-most targeted player behind Jefferson since his arrival, and last week caught 13 passes (the most by a TE this season as well as a Vikings franchise-record for TEs) for 109 yards and two touchdowns.
Tight end T.J. Hockenson had a career day against the Giants last week. Image from: John Autey/Pioneer Press.
On defense, Minnesota has seen strong campaigns from their stars in the front seven. Linebackers Za’Darius Smith and Eric Kendricks rank 4th in the league in QB pressures and 10th in total tackles, respectively. Star pass-rusher Danielle Hunter has also notched double-digit sacks for the fourth time in his career. On the whole, this is a pretty talented roster with real stars at some key positions.
Next, the weird. Perhaps no quarterback in the NFL is as strange, on or off the field, as Kirk Cousins. Consistently, Cousins has posted respectable, sometimes even very good raw statistics in his career -- like this year, where he ranks fifth in passing yards and fourth in passing touchdowns, which helped earn his fourth Pro Bowl selection -- but fails to pass the advanced statistics sniff test.
This season is no exception to that. Cousins, despite his gaudy raw numbers and eight fourth-quarter comeback victories, ranks 20th in passing EPA/play, 12th in completion percentage over expected (CPOE), 16th in EPA+CPOE composite, and 20th in ESPN’s Total QBR. He’s also not one of the more particularly efficient passers in the league on third- and fourth-downs, ranking 16th in EPA+CPOE composite on such plays this season.
Having Cook, Hockenson, and especially Jefferson around him probably helps to mask Cousins’ deficiencies. Still, he’s mostly done his part to win games, and hasn’t been as awful in primetime games or in high-leverage situations as in years past. So in summary, I’m still not sure what to make of him, in all honesty. I’d like to say that when the chips are down and it’s on his shoulders to make a key throw in the playoffs that he’s not that guy, given his career history and his advanced metrics. But how can you argue with eight game-winning drives (and counting) this season?
Kirk Cousins, despite a Pro Bowl selection, hasn’t fared well in some advanced passing metrics. Image from: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images.
The Vikings, as a team, have also consistently failed to put away, let alone dominate, the weaker opposition they’ve faced this season. They’ve only beaten the Saints, Bears, Cardinals, Colts, and Dolphins (with their second-and-third-string QBs) by less than a touchdown on average. The three really tough teams that Minnesota has played this year -- Philadelphia, Dallas, and Buffalo -- have been a mixed bag at best. They lost to the former two by 17 and 37, respectively, and although they enjoyed a thrilling comeback victory in overtime over the Bills, the only reasons they were in that game were a series of stunningly bad errors from Josh Allen and the Bills offense, as well as Jefferson making the greatest, most difficult catch in NFL history (see video above).
And last, the ugly. Major advanced metrics don’t show the Vikings as an elite team, or as a team with a real identity at all besides “that team that keeps winning weird games”. RBSDM pins Minnesota’s offense at 17th in the league in Offensive EPA/play and 14th in Defensive EPA/play. More damning still, Football Outsiders’ overall team DVOA rankings actually rates the Vikings as the eighth-worst team in the league.
At some point, to win in the playoffs, the Vikings will need to slow down a superstar quarterback. Nothing about Minnesota’s pass defense this season indicates that they are capable of such a thing. Minnesota has given up more passing yards than any other team in the league and allows the seventh-highest completion percentage to opposing quarterbacks. Per Pro Football Reference, the Vikings also allow the fourth-highest net yards per pass attempt in the entire league behind only Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta, and are the seventh-least valuable pass defense by expected points contributed. They’re really bad. NFL Analyst Brett Kollmann even made an entire video breaking down just how poor the unit has been, and it’s well worth a watch.
Minnesota’s pass defense has been a weak point all season. Image from: Timothy T Ludwig/Getty Images.
The Vikings’ success in one-score games is extremely uncommon in NFL history. Their win over the Giants last week marked their 11th this season, which set an all-time league record. According to this piece by Tyler Greenawalt of Yahoo! Sports, only five teams since 2010 won at least nine games by one possession-- only one of those teams advanced past the Divisional round, the 2015 Denver Broncos, who went on to win the Super Bowl, albeit behind one of the finest defenses the game has ever seen. Is it a matter of time, then, that Minnesota gets exposed, or can they pull off some January (and February) magic?
Given that the Vikings have been blown out by quality teams multiple times and have hardly any wins by more than one possession, one could assume that their point differential, often a strong indicator of true contenders, isn’t great. I’ll go ahead and show you the net points of the teams in 2022 with double-digit wins and have you guess which one is Minnesota (hint: they’re the ones circled in red).
Point differential isn’t the be-all and end-all of deciphering Super Bowl contenders, but it’s certainly an important metric historically. Adding last year’s data to a November 2021 study by CBS Sports’ Chris Trapasso, we find that seven of the last nine Lombardi Trophy winners finished the regular season in the top-five in net points, as well as 17 of the last 24 Conference Championship participants. Extrapolating further, 32 of the last 44 Championship-round teams and 16 of the last 22 Super Bowl participants ended the regular season top-five in point differential. That’s 73% for each, for those keeping track at home.
Minnesota, at +5, currently sit 10th in this year’s net points rankings, behind the Patriots and Jaguars and just above the Jets and Raiders (all of whom have seven or fewer wins). The team ranking fifth in point differential in 2022 is Kansas City, all the way at +106.
Looking further, history continues to be unkind to the Vikings. RBSDM separates NFL teams into tiers by plotting their Offensive EPA/play against their Defensive EPA/play, and it’s generally a good measure of team quality. For instance, the teams in the top tier include San Francisco, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Kansas City-- makes sense so far, right? Closely behind them in the second tier are Dallas and Cincinnati. So perhaps unsurprisingly, the graph has Minnesota firmly in the middle of the pack in the fourth tier:
I dug through team tier graphs all the way back to 2010 (the earliest the website’s data goes), and cross-checked where on the graph teams finished the regular season with playoff results, specifically looking for teams that reached the Championship round. Here’s what I found out about such “semi-finalist” teams since 2010:
Also, funnily enough, this year’s Vikings sit in almost the exact same spot on the graph as they did in 2021, when they went 8-9, missed the playoffs, and fired their head coach. All of this is to say, there’s nothing besides their record that points to the Vikings being an exceptional football team with real Super Bowl aspirations.
It’s possible, if not highly likely, that this Minnesota Vikings team is a house of cards, continually built upwards on a shaky foundation with little thought given to its architecture, and liable to completely fall apart at any given moment. All the math and logic in the world would seem to point to that conclusion.
Still, they’ve still got a shot at the #1 seed in the NFC if they beat the Packers and Bears and if the Eagles sans MVP-candidate Jalen Hurts drop their last two games; in that case Minnesota would just need to luck their way into three more wins to immortalize themselves in Super Bowl glory. If that happens, maybe I’d need to denounce math and logic entirely and instead consult, say, the supernatural. After all, what do any of us really know, anyway? ■
Which is why the Minnesota Vikings’ 2022 season makes absolutely no damn sense to me.
I’ve pored over the numbers. I’ve watched their games. I’ve consulted numerous sources. And still, I can’t wrap my head around why they just keep winning games. They’re not a bad team, per se, but they’re also… not very good? Yet, they sport a sterling 12-3 record, which ties them for second-best in the NFC and in the entire NFL.
Minnesota kicker Greg Joseph hit a franchise-record 61-yard game-winning field goal in the Vikings’ latest win. Image from: Carlos Gonzalez/Star Tribune.
It’s not just that they’ve been winning games at a strangely high clip. The way they’ve been winning has been downright bonkers all season as well. Just last week, kicker Greg Joseph -- who’s been on six different teams in his otherwise nondescript five-year career -- nailed a Vikings franchise-record 61-yard field goal to sink the Giants. And that game is still, at best, the third-craziest win of Minnesota’s year behind their previous victory, the largest comeback in NFL history, and, uh, this game.
Many of the underlying stats perhaps not-so-subtly hint at either massive regression in 2023 or a swift and embarrassing playoff exit (or maybe both) for Minnesota. But how much does that really matter when they keep winning games like they’ve been doing? Let’s dive into this logic-defying season in the Twin Cities and try to dissect who the Minnesota Vikings really are.
First, the good. The Vikings, as previously mentioned, stand at 12-3 and have already clinched the NFC North. They’re guaranteed a top-3 seed in the NFC, which matters because it means they’ll avoid Dallas, a team that demolished Minnesota earlier in the season, in the Wild Card round, and have a small chance to earn the conference’s #1 seed and a first-round bye if Philadelphia loses out.
They’ve posted wins against some quality opponents, starting the year by handily defeating Green Bay and have beaten other playoff or fringe-playoff teams such as Detroit, Miami, Washington, New England, New York (both teams), and, most notably, Buffalo. Minnesota has also found success through the brilliance of some individual bright spots in the team. First and foremost, wide receiver Justin Jefferson. Do I really need to do more than show this video?
JUSTIN JEFFERSON OH MY GOODNESS 😱🤯
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) November 13, 2022
(via @NFL)pic.twitter.com/h71fuciUrv
Fine, I’ll do my job and write. Jefferson leads the league in catches and receiving yards with 123 and 1756, respectively, already sits seventh all-time in the single-season receiving yards leaderboard and is mathematically on pace to break Calvin Johnson’s record from 2012. Jefferson also leads all receivers in 20+ yard receptions and receiving first-downs, sits second in 40+ yard receptions only to Tyreek Hill, and third in yards after catch behind Austin Ekeler and Travis Kelce. He’s got a legit case for MVP votes as a wide receiver, something which is exceedingly rare.
Balancing out the offense, running back Dalvin Cook has enjoyed a fine season as well, currently sitting at ninth in the league in yards from scrimmage among all players to go along with 18 total touchdowns. He’s also been running the ball at a respectable 4.5 yards/carry average, despite the fact that ESPN tracks Minnesota as the eighth-worst run-blocking team in the league by run block win rate.
General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah swung a savvy midseason trade to acquire tight end T.J. Hockenson from Detroit; Hockenson has been the team’s second-most targeted player behind Jefferson since his arrival, and last week caught 13 passes (the most by a TE this season as well as a Vikings franchise-record for TEs) for 109 yards and two touchdowns.
Tight end T.J. Hockenson had a career day against the Giants last week. Image from: John Autey/Pioneer Press.
On defense, Minnesota has seen strong campaigns from their stars in the front seven. Linebackers Za’Darius Smith and Eric Kendricks rank 4th in the league in QB pressures and 10th in total tackles, respectively. Star pass-rusher Danielle Hunter has also notched double-digit sacks for the fourth time in his career. On the whole, this is a pretty talented roster with real stars at some key positions.
Next, the weird. Perhaps no quarterback in the NFL is as strange, on or off the field, as Kirk Cousins. Consistently, Cousins has posted respectable, sometimes even very good raw statistics in his career -- like this year, where he ranks fifth in passing yards and fourth in passing touchdowns, which helped earn his fourth Pro Bowl selection -- but fails to pass the advanced statistics sniff test.
This season is no exception to that. Cousins, despite his gaudy raw numbers and eight fourth-quarter comeback victories, ranks 20th in passing EPA/play, 12th in completion percentage over expected (CPOE), 16th in EPA+CPOE composite, and 20th in ESPN’s Total QBR. He’s also not one of the more particularly efficient passers in the league on third- and fourth-downs, ranking 16th in EPA+CPOE composite on such plays this season.
Having Cook, Hockenson, and especially Jefferson around him probably helps to mask Cousins’ deficiencies. Still, he’s mostly done his part to win games, and hasn’t been as awful in primetime games or in high-leverage situations as in years past. So in summary, I’m still not sure what to make of him, in all honesty. I’d like to say that when the chips are down and it’s on his shoulders to make a key throw in the playoffs that he’s not that guy, given his career history and his advanced metrics. But how can you argue with eight game-winning drives (and counting) this season?
Kirk Cousins, despite a Pro Bowl selection, hasn’t fared well in some advanced passing metrics. Image from: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images.
The Vikings, as a team, have also consistently failed to put away, let alone dominate, the weaker opposition they’ve faced this season. They’ve only beaten the Saints, Bears, Cardinals, Colts, and Dolphins (with their second-and-third-string QBs) by less than a touchdown on average. The three really tough teams that Minnesota has played this year -- Philadelphia, Dallas, and Buffalo -- have been a mixed bag at best. They lost to the former two by 17 and 37, respectively, and although they enjoyed a thrilling comeback victory in overtime over the Bills, the only reasons they were in that game were a series of stunningly bad errors from Josh Allen and the Bills offense, as well as Jefferson making the greatest, most difficult catch in NFL history (see video above).
And last, the ugly. Major advanced metrics don’t show the Vikings as an elite team, or as a team with a real identity at all besides “that team that keeps winning weird games”. RBSDM pins Minnesota’s offense at 17th in the league in Offensive EPA/play and 14th in Defensive EPA/play. More damning still, Football Outsiders’ overall team DVOA rankings actually rates the Vikings as the eighth-worst team in the league.
At some point, to win in the playoffs, the Vikings will need to slow down a superstar quarterback. Nothing about Minnesota’s pass defense this season indicates that they are capable of such a thing. Minnesota has given up more passing yards than any other team in the league and allows the seventh-highest completion percentage to opposing quarterbacks. Per Pro Football Reference, the Vikings also allow the fourth-highest net yards per pass attempt in the entire league behind only Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta, and are the seventh-least valuable pass defense by expected points contributed. They’re really bad. NFL Analyst Brett Kollmann even made an entire video breaking down just how poor the unit has been, and it’s well worth a watch.
Minnesota’s pass defense has been a weak point all season. Image from: Timothy T Ludwig/Getty Images.
The Vikings’ success in one-score games is extremely uncommon in NFL history. Their win over the Giants last week marked their 11th this season, which set an all-time league record. According to this piece by Tyler Greenawalt of Yahoo! Sports, only five teams since 2010 won at least nine games by one possession-- only one of those teams advanced past the Divisional round, the 2015 Denver Broncos, who went on to win the Super Bowl, albeit behind one of the finest defenses the game has ever seen. Is it a matter of time, then, that Minnesota gets exposed, or can they pull off some January (and February) magic?
Given that the Vikings have been blown out by quality teams multiple times and have hardly any wins by more than one possession, one could assume that their point differential, often a strong indicator of true contenders, isn’t great. I’ll go ahead and show you the net points of the teams in 2022 with double-digit wins and have you guess which one is Minnesota (hint: they’re the ones circled in red).
Point differential isn’t the be-all and end-all of deciphering Super Bowl contenders, but it’s certainly an important metric historically. Adding last year’s data to a November 2021 study by CBS Sports’ Chris Trapasso, we find that seven of the last nine Lombardi Trophy winners finished the regular season in the top-five in net points, as well as 17 of the last 24 Conference Championship participants. Extrapolating further, 32 of the last 44 Championship-round teams and 16 of the last 22 Super Bowl participants ended the regular season top-five in point differential. That’s 73% for each, for those keeping track at home.
Minnesota, at +5, currently sit 10th in this year’s net points rankings, behind the Patriots and Jaguars and just above the Jets and Raiders (all of whom have seven or fewer wins). The team ranking fifth in point differential in 2022 is Kansas City, all the way at +106.
Looking further, history continues to be unkind to the Vikings. RBSDM separates NFL teams into tiers by plotting their Offensive EPA/play against their Defensive EPA/play, and it’s generally a good measure of team quality. For instance, the teams in the top tier include San Francisco, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Kansas City-- makes sense so far, right? Closely behind them in the second tier are Dallas and Cincinnati. So perhaps unsurprisingly, the graph has Minnesota firmly in the middle of the pack in the fourth tier:
I dug through team tier graphs all the way back to 2010 (the earliest the website’s data goes), and cross-checked where on the graph teams finished the regular season with playoff results, specifically looking for teams that reached the Championship round. Here’s what I found out about such “semi-finalist” teams since 2010:
- Only one has finished the regular season around where the Vikings are on the graph, lacking a real offensive or defensive identity-- the 2012 Ravens, who actually won the Super Bowl on a legendary playoff run from quarterback Joe Flacco. The team missed the playoffs the following year and Flacco never repeated that level of play.
- Only two others were somewhat close to the Vikings’ central position on the graph (2013 Patriots and 2014 Colts) and neither reached the Super Bowl.
- Exactly three finished the regular season in tier 4 or lower since 2010 (2011 Giants, 2010 Jets, 2010 Bears). Only one of those teams made (or won) the Super Bowl (2011 Giants). And yes, 2010 was a very weird year.
- 73% finished the regular season in tiers 1 or 2 — since 2016, that percentage has risen to 92%.
Also, funnily enough, this year’s Vikings sit in almost the exact same spot on the graph as they did in 2021, when they went 8-9, missed the playoffs, and fired their head coach. All of this is to say, there’s nothing besides their record that points to the Vikings being an exceptional football team with real Super Bowl aspirations.
It’s possible, if not highly likely, that this Minnesota Vikings team is a house of cards, continually built upwards on a shaky foundation with little thought given to its architecture, and liable to completely fall apart at any given moment. All the math and logic in the world would seem to point to that conclusion.
Still, they’ve still got a shot at the #1 seed in the NFC if they beat the Packers and Bears and if the Eagles sans MVP-candidate Jalen Hurts drop their last two games; in that case Minnesota would just need to luck their way into three more wins to immortalize themselves in Super Bowl glory. If that happens, maybe I’d need to denounce math and logic entirely and instead consult, say, the supernatural. After all, what do any of us really know, anyway? ■
Nice blog!
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