The Vikings Aren’t Getting Better — But It’s Working
When considering sports, you’ll often hear multiple taglines. The hope is that a coach can generate a compounding level of success. Sometimes, that manifests itself in a way where development takes place on a weekly basis. Sometimes, it’s the byproduct of being ready for the moment. The Vikings aren’t continuing to develop, but that’s okay because they’re winning a different way.
The Vikings Aren’t Getting Better — But It’s Working
It’s one thing to suggest that you don’t let a previous game or play impact the next one. That takes a relative amount of mental fortitude. It’s certainly something that any athlete, and plenty of those in the real world, can utilize on the path toward success. It has appeared to become synonymous with Kevin O’Connell’s Minnesota Vikings.
Minnesota has made many of the same mistakes for the last handful of weeks and the bulk of the season. Turnovers have been costly. It has been tough sledding to get the running game going. Ugly performances have been stacked. None of that matters when you continue to win, and that’s all the Vikings have done.
It seems that O’Connell has fully galvanized his locker room, and nothing is ever bigger than the moment. A turnover, opposing score, deficit — none of these seem to matter. The Vikings won another ugly game on Sunday against the Chicago Bears. It shouldn’t have been as close as it was. There was no reason for the game to head into overtime. Those things happened, but another tally in the win column is the metric that matters.
On a weekly basis, power rankings and analysts discredit the Vikings’ future prospects because of how they won games. Minnesota will be slighted because of its own shortcomings. Maybe that matters from a teaching standpoint, but it also overlooks that all of those circumstances didn’t change the contest’s result.
The Vikings aren’t going to be considered among the tier of Detroit or Kansas City. They aren’t blowing opponents out, and the results haven’t been consistent. It doesn’t matter, though. On a weekly basis, Minnesota is locked in with the sole focus of playing for 60 minutes and making sure they aren’t ever going to quit.
Winning in the NFL is hard. The Chiefs nearly lost to a bottom-feeder Carolina team on the same day. Minnesota might nearly lose, or win ugly on multiple occasions, but O’Connell will never stop preaching the message that looks don’t matter. Coming together as a team, supporting each other, and getting the job done is all that matters.
The Vikings continue to turn the page every week. They don’t need to worry about how it looks. Buckle up for a fun ride. There’s plenty of new swag to outfit yourself for the run too.
Ted Schwerzler is a blogger from the Twin Cities that is focused on all things Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. He’s active on Twitter and writes daily for Minnesota Sports Fan. As a former college athlete and avid sports fan, covering our pro teams with a passion has always seemed like such a natural outlet.
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