On Sunday afternoon, the 7-3 Vikings hosted the 3-6 Denver Broncos at US Bank Stadium in a 1:00pm start. Minnesota was without some key starters, including wide receiver Adam Thielen who is still recovering from a hamstring injury suffered early in the Detroit game, right guard Josh Kline (concussion), nose tackle Linval Joseph who had minor knee surgery and may be out for a few more games, along with safety Anthony Harris.

US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, home of the Minnesota Vikings by “www78”
“Viking Stadium” by www78 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Vikings fans were quite worried that the team would come out flat, having made the classic mistake of looking past the current opponent … making it a “trap” game:

Aside from that, one of the storylines of interest coming in was that it was going to be the first Vikings game for wide receiver Josh Doctson, who was just activated from injured reserve. He joined the Vikings early in the season, but was injured in one of his first practices with the team. The absence of Adam Thielen was thought to give him a good opportunity to show if his chemistry with Kirk Cousins had carried over from their time together in Washington. I watched the entire game, and while an Arif Hasan tweet told me that Doctson got on the field in the third quarter, he certainly didn’t make any catches.

For the first 30 minutes, this game totally lived up to the “trap” billing … the Vikings were putrid on defence, and cover-your-eyes awful on offence. As Matthew Coller put it, “There are 1,000 ways to lose a football game and the Minnesota Vikings attempted to try out every one of them on Sunday.” I’m not exaggerating by much to say the Vikings MVP in the first half was punter Britton Colquitt. At least he did his job with no obvious errors or miscues. It would be difficult to say the same for anyone else wearing purple in the first half. They went into the locker room — which must have appeared as welcoming as the gates of hell with Coach Zimmer ready to bite heads off — on the wrong side of a 20-0 score.

For every Vikings game, I print off a copy of the team roster and as the game progresses, I make notes beside players’ names for excellent play (“+”), terrible play (“-“), penalties (“P”), sacks (“S”), and so on. After 30 minutes, I had no “+” entries at all. The Vikings had gained all of 47 yards while holding the ball for only 11 minutes. The CBS crew covering the game helpfully noted that the last 99 teams to be down 20 points at the half had all lost the game. As you’d expect, the loyal fans took it well:

Even Ben Leber, who works for the Vikings Entertainment Network had to admit things were not going well:

The second half started well … in fact, the second half looked like a completely different team was wearing the purple uniforms than the collection of random bums who’d stumbled through the first half. The team gained nearly twice as many yards on their first drive as they’d done through the entire first half, taking the ball from their own 25 yard line to score their first points of the day on a Kirk Cousins to Irv Smith, Jr. ten yard pass (Smith’s first NFL TD). Vikings Twitter seemed to approve of the new plot twist:

But would the new-look Vikings continue the good work or lapse back into that zombie state of the first half? They did allow the Broncos to score, but only a field goal, then got back to work. It was the fourth quarter when the Vikings finally established a points lead they would not relinquish (although it went down to the final play of the game):

On their final drive, the Broncos pushed the ball all the way down to the Vikings’ 2-yard line. Denver had three chances on first-and-goal, but the Minnesota defense … and, specifically, Jayron Kearse … came up huge on the final three plays to hold on to the victory.

Kirk Cousins was absolutely on fire in the second half of this football game, and he ended up completing 29-of-35 passes for 319 yards and three touchdowns. After a first half where he had no catches, Stefon Diggs wound up with five receptions for 121 yards and a touchdown on the afternoon. Kyle Rudolph had five catches for 67 yards and a touchdown, while Olabisi Johnson had six catches, but managed just 35 yards. Dalvin Cook had 31 yards on five receptions, Tyler Conklin had two catches for 28 yards, Irv Smith Jr. had three catches for 20 yards and his first NFL touchdown, and Ameer Abdullah (two catches, 11 yards) and C.J. Ham (one catch, six yards) caught passes as well.

Cook didn’t get a whole lot going on the ground, though he did cross over the 1,000-yard threshold for the season. He had just 26 yards on 11 carries, as the Broncos did a very good job of taking him away.

As Christopher Gates also pointed out, this was only the fifth time in team history the Vikings have come back from a 20-point deficit to win the game. Andy Carlson provides his post-game take: