After their impressive 26-20 overtime win over the Saints in the wild card round, the Vikings have jumped into the top-5 of NFL.com’s power rankings.
Going into the week, the Vikings ranked 11th.
Here’s a snippet of what writer Dan Hanzus wrote about the Vikings:
Good for Kirk Cousins. The Vikings quarterback entered Sunday’s wild-card matchup against the Saints with a 6-30 career mark against teams with winning records. The Can’t-Win-The-Big-One reputation was stuck to the man like Gorilla Glue, but that all fell away with two massive throws in overtime: a 43-yard rainbow strike to Adam Thielen to put the Vikings at the goal line and — three plays later — a perfectly placed fade ball to Kyle Rudolph for the game-winner. Hot Take Specialists can continue to move the goal posts on Cousins if they wish, but he remade his image on the strength of that scoring drive.
The Vikings will have the challenge of the NFC’s No. 1 seed, the 49ers in the Divisional Round, let alone on a short week.
The 49ers rank second in the power rankings.