On October 24th, the Minnesota Vikings lost to the Los Angeles Rams 20-30. As a result, their record dropped to 5-2. The Vikings will bounce back and be ready to take on the Indianapolis Colts next week.
The Minnesota offensive performance was disappointing. They made big plays but failed to execute touchdowns in the endzone. For example, Minnesota’s offense was driving down the field for a touchdown but got stopped short due to many bad passes. Minnesota scored 20 points in total, 10 points short of the Rams. Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell talked about the offensive issues.
“We just didn’t sustain enough, and we weren’t on the field enough,” O’Connell said after the game, “I mean 50 plays, again, when it’s a game like this and their offense is making some plays and sustaining drives and kind of eating a lot of clocks it can feel like an awfully short game to you as an offense when you’re either scoring or going backward, either self-inflicted or sacks, so we’ve got to just try to find a way to mitigate that.”
The offense had enough time to tie the game. The score was 20-28 near the end of the fourth quarter, and the Vikings had the ball on the one-yard line from the Vikings’ endzone. If the Vikings’ offense could score a touch and the 2-point conversion, they would send the game to overtime. Unfortunately, however, during the first snap, quarterback Sam Darnold was sacked for a safety, essentially ending the game.
“It looked like he got a pretty good amount of facemask there,” O’Connell said. “I told our team, officiating and all that stuff, for us to talk about that, for us to seek comfort in that is not how we’re going to respond to this, it’s just not going to happen. … I really don’t have a comment on whether it looked like he got a piece of the facemask. They didn’t think so, so they didn’t throw the flag.”
The Vikings defense also played poorly, allowing the Rams to score 28 points. The Viking’s defense lacked quality coverage of the Rams and was bad in the defensive rushing game. They did not put any pressure on Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, as the Vikings recorded zero sacks against him.
“I think we were close on some plays in the passing game, but when you’re playing against that quarterback and those receivers (Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua) getting healthy and making some plays for him, I just think it comes down to, can we get enough rush and coverage working together to maybe not give a quarterback like that a couple of extra clicks?” O’Connell said, “And we’ve got to tighten up and try to get off the field and find some of those third-down plays where drives were extended not necessarily by conversions. I thought those were critical plays because we did some good things defensively in those moments.”
As the Vikings get ready for the Colts next week, the Vikings have a really big question: who will replace left tackle Christian Darrisaw. Last week, Darrisaw suffered a huge injury to his left knee and is expected to miss the rest of the season. The way forward was to acquire Cam Robinson, an offensive tackle for the Jaguars, in exchange for a 2026 fifth-round pick that, based on playing time, could be upgraded to a fourth-round pick. Vikings fans are ready to take on the Colts on Sunday Night Football on November 3rd at 7:20 p.m.