Vikings’ Captains Helped Spark Stunning Upset
The vibes surrounding the Minnesota Vikings were predictably poor following the team’s disastrous Thursday night fiasco versus the Los Angeles Chargers. With the annual road game in Detroit coming up next — a team the Vikings hadn’t beaten since 2022 — the season was about to spiral into a lost one pretty quickly.
Vikings’ Captains Helped Spark Stunning Upset
It was hardly a surprise to anyone who had watched the Vikings play the first seven games of the season; the Lions were favored by 8.5 or even 9.5 points, depending on where and when one checked the numbers throughout the week. That was the highest spread in the Kevin O’Connell era, and the Vikings delivered the largest upset in over a decade.
Well, head coach O’Connell reached deep into the bag of tricks and had his captains lead the team in the week leading up.
After the game, the head coach revealed that he led a tone-setting meeting on Monday and then mostly left the floor to his captains for the remainder of the week, with a powerful set of speeches on Saturday.
He noted, “They just wanted to make sure that everybody heard all eight of them individually stand up and deliver messages of encouragement of what we’ve built here, the things that matter. Just find a way to have the performance needed, sticking to the principles that we thought were important, but then collectively, doing a lot of things out there at a high level for the guy next to you.”
Those messages seemed to work, as the Vikings showed improvement from ten days prior in pretty much every facet of the game, cleaning up various mistakes.
O’Connell added, “It’s cliché, but when players deliver that message — in some cases emotionally, some cases with some fiery context to it — there was a lot of folks that wanted to play the game last night.”
The Vikings have eight team captains in 2025. When they were announced in August, the headlines primarily featured quarterback J.J. McCarthy. His colleagues are Justin Jefferson, Aaron Jones, Brian O’Neill, Harrison Smith, Josh Metellus, Jonathan Greenard, and Andrew DePaola.
One of them — Metellus — was asked about that after the game, “We all just trusted how we were feeling, I wouldn’t put too much weight into it. All I can say is, the reaction we got, giving our thoughts and feelings about how we should approach the rest of the season and how we should approach this game, the reception we got back — that’s what makes this team what we are.”
Big deal or not, the result is what matters, and it ultimately worked.
Jefferson, the face of the franchise, stated, “We had everybody say what they expected for the whole team. It was great for everybody to hear that.”
Asked about what he specifically said, he replied, “I said a lot. The main thing was, ‘It’s time for us to go out there and play like we’re supposed to play.’ Let’s go out there and play ball and have fun doing it. I feel like we definitely had fun out there making our plays and executing.”
Maybe the meeting helped put some focus on the fundamentals. The Vikings tied the turnover battle (could’ve won without the questionable interception call), and they were called for fewer penalties.
O’Connell will probably regain control this week as the Baltimore Ravens try to secure the victory in the battle of purple organizations. Another win could catapult the Vikings into playoff contention.
Editor’s Note: Information from PFF, Over The Cap, and Sports Reference helped with this article.