Getty Some respect finally coming the Vikings way this year? Kirk Cousins must like that.
Only one team in the National Football League has a better record than the Minnesota Vikings, but you might not know it if you only listened to the national talking heads. For weeks now, the conversation around contenders has centered around the Buffalo Bills, Philadelphia Eagles, and Kansas City Chiefs. When another team sneaks into the conversation, it’s usually the Dallas Cowboys.
It’s easy to imagine the Vikings starting to feel like Rodney Dangerfield, with the story of their season being no respect. But not anymore, as Heavy NFL insider Matt Lombardo has called the Vikings, “the best team in the NFL that nobody’s talking about,” during his weekly podcast The Matt Lombardo Show.
Perhaps most enjoyable to Vikings fans will be Lombardo’s description of the Vikings win over their arch rivals and lead in the division as “brow-beating the Green Bay Packers.” The Vikings won their season opening game 23-7, and have left the Packers in the dust since, opening up a 4.5-game lead in the division.
Lombardo playfully took aim at some critics of the Vikings in saying, “They don’t know that the Vikings are going to make a run, they’re kind of bearish on Minnesota. They think that they’re a great story right now by the numbers but they’re probably not going to make a great run.”
Lombardo disagrees and puts Minnesota near the top of the conference, “There’s a good chance that they’re going to be the number two seed in the NFC.”
Vikings Ability to Win Close Games Could Propel Them
After their comfortable week one win, the Vikings were on the wrong side of a 24-7 contest in Philadelphia, Since then, they’ve done nothing but win close games. Lombardo finds that encouraging.
“They found a way to win six games in a row by one score, which by the way, those type of wins, those are the type of victories that sharpen championship character,” Lombardo said. He went on to pardon the loss to the Eagles as a mark against the Vikings, since he believes Philadelphia has the most complete roster from top to bottom in the entire league.
Vikings Close Wins Go Beyond Luck and Into Analytics
Lombardo dove deep into the math that might be behind the Vikings’ success, but it can be put pretty simply. The Vikings are starting drives with better field position than their opponents.
Minnesota leads the NFL in net line of scrimmage per drive, with a 6.28 yard edge per drive over their opponents, according to Football Outsiders. That’s apparently the newest football analytics way to say that Minnesota wins the field position battle.
“So you start to think about this, if you’re getting a six yard edge every possession, that’s the key to winning the possessions late that help you win one-possession, one-score games. In a tight game it makes all the difference,” Lombardo said.
The keys to setting up that field position are what you’d expect. The Vikings don’t go three-and-out very often on offense, and their special teams coverage has been stellar.
On offense, Minnesota is seventh in the league with 21.8 first downs per game, according to the NFL’s Game Statistics and Information System. Meanwhile, the Vikings’ opponents have the fifth worst punt return average, and the seventh worst kick return average.