The Minnesota Vikings finished the 2022 season with a 13-4 record and aren’t getting any credit for how well they played this past season.
“The Vikings got lucky winning so many one-score games”
“Their defense is awful”
“Kirk Cousins is your quarterback”
We’ve heard it all before and the disrespect for the first season under new head coach Kevin O’Connell continues, this time in the final power rankings from Nate Davis of USA Today. He has the Vikings down six spots from his previous power rankings all the way down to 15th.
“While it’s usually hard to quibble with a 13-win season, it’s nearly indisputable that almost everything broke in Minnesota’s favor in 2022 … until postseason arrived.”
Okay, we get it. The Vikings had the breaks go their way, but to rank them as the 15th-best behind four non-playoff teams feels disingenuous and are ranked that way because people want to confirm the priors of the Vikings being bad.
I will cut Davis a little bit of slack, he seems to be projecting forward with these rankings, especially when you consider that he had the Los Angeles Rams at nine, but isn’t it better to do a final 2022 power rankings instead of melding them with pre-2023 power rankings?
Regardless, the media will continue to sleep on the Vikings and they will be in a position to prove them wrong.
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