Let’s be frank here. The Vikings never had a chance.
With Kirk Cousins out due to testing positive for COVID and his vaccination status preventing an accelerated timeline for return, the Vikings were forced to start Sean Mannion. And despite Cris Collinsworth’s weird complimentary nature of Mannion throughout much of the first half, he was a quarterback clearly in over his head and incapable of doing enough to win his team a football game.
The Vikings’ defense played well enough in the early going that, with a competent offense in place, the Vikings pay have done enough to put some pressure on the Packers, whose offense once again got off to a slow start.
But without Cousins, who can play efficient football, the Vikings never had a chance.
The Packers held Dalvin Cook to 13 yards on 12 total touches. For comparison, Vikings center Garrett Bradbury managed 21 receiving yards on a fluke play in the third quarter.
The Vikings were unable to continue feeding Cook throughout most of the game because they found themselves in a 20-0 hole. With Cook essentially taken out of the game, the Vikings were left to watch Mannion throw short routes for little gain, or whiff badly on balls thrown longer than five yards.
One must wonder about Kellen Mond’s playing ability if the Vikings judged Mannion to give the team a better chance at victory on Sunday night.
The result: the Vikings were eliminated from playoff contention, head coach Mike Zimmer will almost certainly be fired after a second consecutive season out of the playoffs, and the conversation will ratchet back up once again on Kirk Cousins’ tenure with the Vikings and whether the team would simply be better off moving on.
But hey, at least the Vikings got their Super Bowl win in November!
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Tim Backes is a lifelong Packer fan and a contributor to CheeseheadTV. Follow him on Twitter @timbackes for his Packer takes, random musings and Untappd beer check-ins.