A group of former Vikings gathered at a Bloomington hotel on Friday night to celebrate the anniversary of the “Miracle at the Met” in which Tommy Kramer’s Hail Mary pass found Ahmad Rashad in the final seconds to give Minnesota an improbable victory over the Cleveland Browns and the 1980 NFC Central Division championship.
By the time the sun set on Saturday, the current group of Vikings had a victory that might have been even more miraculous and will be worthy of celebration for years to come. The fact this win clinched the Vikings’ first NFC North title since 2017 made it even sweeter.
The Vikings (11-3) come back from a 33-0 deficit for 39-36 overtime victory over the Indianapolis Colts at U.S. Bank Stadium left coach Kevin O’Connell nears near tears as he addressed his team in the postgame locker room.
“I’m absolutely exhausted right now,” O’Connell said after watching his team get booed off the field at halftime and then score five touchdowns in the final two quarters before Greg Joseph hit the game-winning, 40-yard field goal with 3 seconds remaining in overtime. A tie also would have given the Vikings the division crown, but the win gave them the biggest comeback in NFL history.
That record had been held by the Buffalo Bills, who rallied from a 32 points down to beat the Houston Oilers in the AFC wild card round in January 1993. That Bills team was led by quarterback Frank Reich, who was fired by the Colts as their coach earlier this season and replaced by Jeff Saturday.
The fact the Vikings won a close game was no surprise. This was their 10th win by one score this season, tying the 2019 Seattle Seahawks and the 1978 Oilers for the most in NFL history, according to ESPN Stats and Information.
But this one was hard to comprehend, even by the Vikings’ standards. Consider that teams leading by 30 points at any point of the game had been 1,548-1-1 in the regular season and playoffs since 1930, according to ESPN. The Bills had the lone victory and the tie came in a 1960 game between the Bills and Broncos in which Buffalo led by 31 points in the third quarter before Denver rallied to tie it at 38.
The Vikings played their 1,000th game in their 62nd season on Saturday and had never done anything like this. Their biggest comeback had come in December 1977 when they erased a 24-point deficit for a 28-27 victory over San Francisco at Met Stadium. Kramer also led that comeback.
“I will never discount this team’s ability to overcome, and continue to play for each other,” O’Connell said. “Sometimes the culture stuff gets challenged in our league, but you don’t win a game like that without it. Now, we’ve got to continue to work and continue to improve to be the best possible football team we can be through the rest of the month of December and, we know, into January.”
O’Connell made it clear he wasn’t satisfied with much of what he saw. The Vikings, coming off a loss at Detroit in which the defense gave up 400-plus yards for a franchise record fifth consecutive game, played about as poorly as a team can play in the opening 30 minutes. Embarrassing might not have been a strong enough word to describe the Vikings’ performance.
The offense looked clueless, the special teams was awful and the defense gave up 19 points and 209 yards. There was absolutely no reason to believe the Vikings were capable of rebounding.
But in the locker room at halftime, O’Connell heard veteran cornerback Patrick Peterson make his way over to the offense with a message that would have made many laugh and roll their eyes.
“I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” O’Connell said, “I walked out to address the team before we went back out there and I just overheard (Peterson say), ‘We’re going to get stops, you just need five touchdowns and that’s nothing.’ It was a nice little moment for me to lead in off of.
I said, ‘Pat, you’re exactly right.’ That’s what we needed at the time and it was probably the most motivated I’ve been to kind of challenge our players. Just so they knew, regardless of the outcome today, that first half was not good enough and will never be acceptable to have that kind of performance, regardless of the outcome today.”
The Vikings responded with touchdowns on their second, third and fourth drives of the second half as the 4-8-1 Colts began to tighten up and the opportunistic Vikings pounced. Veteran Matt Ryan, who had played well for the Colts in the first half, began to resemble the quarterback who had played a role in the Falcons being part of the biggest blown Super Bowl lead. The Falcons led 28-3 at halftime of Super Bowl LI over the Patriots but ended up with a 34-28 loss.
The Vikings, of course, are nowhere near the Super Bowl and won’t be if they continue to play like they did on Saturday. As impressive as the comeback might have been, it wouldn’t have happened against a good team and you can bet O’Connell will spend plenty of time focusing on what went wrong.
But that will come starting on Sunday. On Saturday, O’Connell’s voice cracked as he told his players how much he loved them and how they had reached their goal of an NFC North title in his first season.
They had done it in one of the most improbable and historical ways possible. How far these Vikings can go remains up for debate — Saturday’s game isn’t going to cause their doubters to believe — but this much is certain: This group of players, just like their 1980 counterparts, now have a memory that will be celebrated for years to come.
Judd Zulgad is co-host of the Purple Daily Podcast and Mackey & Judd podcast at www.skornorth.com