The Vikings Have a Sad Reality in 2026
We’ve all been waiting for the Minnesota Vikings to get over the hump. If the old saying of “whatever can happen, will happen” isn’t just something we tell ourselves to feel better, then eventually, they actually will.
They’ve obviously come close a couple times, but in the end, there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Instead, it’s sempiternal pain and suffering, and trying to figure out why we signed up for this. What hurts the most, is missed opportunities.
2025 felt like a dumpster fire of a season, and it was mostly due to poor QB play. Even with it, Minnesota still technically had a winning record. To put it into perspective, the Vikings had the last pick in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft of all of the non-playoff teams. They were right there when it comes to notching a playoff spot, but alas, they didn’t, and they were the first one in line of the outsiders looking in at everyone else duking it out for a Lombardi Trophy.
While the NFC did win the Super Bowl via representation from the Sam Darnold-led Seattle Seahawks, there was a lot of opportunity within the conference. Truth be told, the NFC wasn’t all that good last season. As a matter of fact, the entire NFL seemed kind of down. The Chiefs didn’t even make the playoffs, the Broncos beat the Bills to go to the AFC Championship. and the Patriots rode an easy schedule and solid defense all the way to a Super Bowl berth, just to get embarrassed.
I have to ponder, what could’ve been? And will it be like that in 2026? While I can’t predict the future, I’d say the Vikings might not be as lucky this time around when it comes to the quality of play in the NFC this coming season.
Vikings Staring Down a Very Tough NFC in 2026
We do have to mention that the Vikings are likely to be one of the teams that got better in the NFC through the addition of Kyler Murray alone. Even so, the landscape around the NFC looks a bit more like a hellscape of opponents.
The Vikings’ native NFC North, for example, might be even more competitive than it was last season. The Bears will be going into the second year of the Johnson-Williams marriage, and the first year provided some fireworks and a playoff win. The Lions had a down year in 2025, even finishing in last in the NFC North. While I don’t have a ton of confidence in their coordinators, it’s hard to think that a team as resilient as Detroit has been this decade isn’t going to bounce back this year. As for the Packers, truth be told, I don’t really know what to think about those guys.
Our Dustin Baker provided his own sentiment on the current optics of the NFC North:
“As recently as three years ago, the NFC North always had a team to beat up. They just did. It was usually the Detroit Lions, sometimes intermixed with a mediocre-to-poor Chicago Bears team. The Vikings have also been mediocre every other year since 2012.
The days of one pushover team in the NFC North are gone. Oddsmakers project every team to win at least eight games. Every NFC North matchup features, at least, a Wildcard playoff level of difficulty.
Even if Minnesota is good, 10-7 or so may be the ceiling inside a vicious division.”
The NFC North could be a bloodbath in 2025, and honestly, you could tell me that it will finish in any possible combination of team standings from 1st to 4th next season. I would believe you.
Also, just in case you didn’t know, the North is only one out of four divisions in the NFC.
Vikings’ Path to the Super Bowl Runs Through Treacherous NFC Conference as a Whole
Getting through your division is the first part of making it deep in the postseason usually, and the fact that it’s likely to be a bloodbath this season is pretty scary.
If you take your telescope and zoom out just a little bit from the Northern territory and shift it to the Western one, the clouds are just as ominous. The NFC West had three teams make the playoffs in 2025, and two of them faced off in the NFC Championship. Seattle may miss Klint Kubiak after his departure to the Raiders, but they will still be a force in the NFC as a whole.
The Rams will be as good as they usually are under Sean McVay, as Matt Stafford might’ve been the best QB in the NFL last season pound-for-pound. His 2025 NFL MVP Award supports that theory. Adding Myles Garrett certainly helps their cause, if you ask me. And the 49ers are the 49ers; always solid, and will pretty much always been in the conversation in January under Kyle Shanahan, pending health.
The NFC East and South aren’t quite as daunting, especially the latter. Outside of a large surprise, the winner of the NFC South will likely just be fodder for whoever they face in the playoffs, which will likely be a very good team that came second in their division to an even better team.
The NFC East poses some interesting teams; the Cowboys’ offense will likely be electric again, the Giants now have John Harbaugh, the Commanders will have healthy Jayden Daniels, and the Eagles may be as solid as they’ve been for a while. They hired former Vikings QB Sean Mannion to be their OC, a first for him in his football career. That sounds like it could be an issue, but someone other than Kevin Patullo is probably an upgrade.
The Vikings will have to make it through some very dark storms to their destination, and their QB situation is really gonna have to work out if they want to navigate them.
