The 2025 Vikings Are Fraudulently Bad
The 2025 Vikings season feels like a complete disaster. But there’s a case to be made that the team is actually somewhat decent, and could legitimately compete in 2026 and beyond.
To begin, despite playing in one of the best divisions in football, the Vikings have a point differential of -26; that’s still not good, but it’s slightly better than a 5-8 record suggests. Historically, point differential has been a better predictor of future success than winning percentage, which suggests that the Vikings aren’t quite as bad as their record indicates.
Furthermore, the Vikings have suffered from an injury to their starting QB, with Carson Wentz and Max Brosmer combining for six starts out of 13 games. Teams rarely see success with a backup QB, and the team’s constant QB changes have arguably made it difficult for first-time starter J.J. McCarthy and the rest of the offense to find a rhythm.
Finally, the team has suffered mightily from a lack of defensive turnovers. The team has just 14 takeaways thus far, good for the 9th worst in the league. This is remarkable given that the defense is, on the whole, playing admirably this season.
Defense turnovers are not completely determined by luck: teams that are good at forcing interceptions and fumbles one season tend to force slightly more during the next season. But the correlation is rather weak, and we can expect the Vikings’ takeaways to regress (or more accurately, progress) in 2026. When the Vikings have managed to force turnovers—as they did against the Bengals and Commanders—the team has looked downright dominant.
To put it succinctly, all of the metrics that led people to accuse the Vikings of being frauds in 2022 and 2024 have reversed this year. So if those teams were fraudulently good, this team must be fraudulently bad.
At the end of the day, the success of the Vikings’ 2026 season will depend overwhelmingly on McCarthy’s ability to improve this offseason. Finding a successor that is an actual improvement would do the trick, too. But even in the midst of despair, there are reasons for optimism.