The Great Mahomes Debate: Are the Vikings Better Off Facing or Not Facing the Reigning League MVP?
Joe Johnson
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Since news of the Patrick Mahomes knee cap dislocation of the century began to spread around the Viking’s interwebs I’ve heard two stark arguments about how that injury impacts the purple and gold. The first is that it was a relief, as the Vikings are facing the Chiefs in Kansas City on Sunday and without Mahomes they’re not the high-scoring threat or the assumed ‘L’ that some of us penciled into that spot when the season schedule was released. The other? That the Vikings should want to face every team at their “best” because it’ll be better for them in the long run/show where the Vikings are as a team, especially, after winning four games in a row against competition that ranges from ‘meh’ to terrible.
Let’s break each of these down before I give you my two cents on everything, although, if you’re familiar at all with my style of writing/speaking (on my Podcast ‘Morning Joes’) or the fact that I own a site called purplePTSD.com (and VikingsTerritory.com), you might already know where I fall.
So let’s first look at the latter of the two arguments mentioned above: facing a team at it’s “best” perspective. The type of people who typically make that argument have a different outlook on life or sports than most Vikings fans, I find. They typically love the actual drama and competition that comes from sports and are also the type of people who would root for a close/drama-filled contest than a complete blow-out by the Vikings. I may be tipping my hand here, but I don’t watch Vikings games that way, I actually have to immediately rewatch most games because I’m so tense during games that I find I don’t retain a whole lot (which if you’ve read my post-game articles in Joe Oberle’s stead, shouldn’t surprise you).
That’s not to say that everyone who wants the Vikings to face Mahomes is one of those people. There are others that believe that by playing teams at their best, the Vikings will either raise their quality of play or at least not become pretenders who skate through the regular season besting mediocre opponents only to be steam-rolled in the playoffs when the rubber begins to meet the road. This line of reasoning makes more sense, as you’re going to eventually have to face great teams if you want to win a championship. So, why not see if you’re good enough to even really be in the playoffs before getting there and getting people’s hopes up?
Now that I actually wrote that down I actually feel like I relate to it more than I originally imagined I did. I mean, I’m writing this solely from the perspective of a fan and not as someone who is all in (and then some) on a network of Vikings content sites. If I were solely writing as a businessman I’d say that I want the Vikings to win no matter who they play because the sites do better when the team does “better” (or appears to be doing better).
Let’s now look at the inverse argument(s).
The idea that you want the Vikings to simply come out of Kansas City with a W, regardless of whether or not they faced the “real” Chiefs is an attractive one regardless of whether or not you’re a fan or a writer. Sure, you’ll have Chiefs fans online saying what they’re saying to Packers fans as we speak. That they only beat the Matt Moore version of the Chiefs by a touchdown, so “Imagine what would’ve happened had Mahomes been both healthy and playing”. But, who cares what people in Kansas City have to say about our team? You’re always going to hear something negative from the opposing fans, so it’s not something that should dictate our feelings one way or the other.
The other is the reality that the NFL is a week-to-week league (Somewhere a Joe Oberle just got its wings!). Just because the Vikings beat the Chiefs in Week 9 doesn’t mean that they’re the same Vikings team that we’ll see come Week 17. That is, that even if the Vikings “only” limped away from Arrowhead with a 1-point victory over the Mahomes-less Chiefs, doesn’t mean that the Vikings will be slaughtered come playoff time. I mean, look at where we were a month ago. Fans in the live chat on purplePTSD/VikingsTerritory were calling for Cousins to be benched for… Shudder… Sean Mannion. Now? He’s being compared to 2018 Mahomes in terms of his MVP potential.
The only thing that will be set in stone at the end of the season when we look back at Week 9 will be the fact that the Vikings either won or lost the game. Considering how tight the NFC is, every win and loss will carry very heavy consequences and with the Vikings losing two very winnable games in Green Bay and Chicago earlier this season, they have to make up a win elsewhere to ensure that they stay in contention for both the NFC North and the NFC Wild Card spot.
That’s just the general idea as to the argument about winning or losing against a team that is sans it’s (or the league’s) MVP. When it comes to the current state of the Vikings, though, there’s another aspect we need to think about. That’s the roll that Cousins and company are on and what losing might mean for that and the remainder of the season. Since the Bears game, Cousins has been playing lights out and while that’s been spectacular and strangely validating for those of us who called this last off-season, there still the fear that he might regress to his happy footed, panicky style of play that we saw in the Bears and Packers games.
We’re basically Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsley at the end of ‘Shutter Island’, fearing that Leonardo DiCaprio (Cousins) will reset, “like a tape”, and start the horror all over again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_0TQHoV_2I
That’s a valid fear, as while he’s been playing amazingly since that meltdown in Chicago, the Vikings also haven’t played the 2000 Ravens in the weeks since that game. The Chiefs’ defense isn’t great but they’re pretty good against the pass (ranking 11th in the league), whereas their overall defense is 24th in yards allowed in general and 30th in rushing yards allowed (as well as 16th in scoring, allowing over 22 points per game).
A Vikings loss would most likely mean that the offense has indeed regressed, especially considering how poor the Chiefs do against the run and the fact that the Vikings have the league’s leading rusher in Dalvin Cook. That, or, that the defense hasn’t bounced back from a couple of bad-to-shaky weeks against the Lions and Redskins. I know, the ‘Skins only scored 9 points against the Vikings but they were bleeding yardage when Case Keenum was on the field and if not for his concussion perhaps we’d be writing a completely different story today, one in which everyone agrees that the Vikings just need to win and get the hell out of dodge.
I know I said I’d tell you where I stand but it’s pretty clear from everything above that I, too, want the Vikings to win regardless of who is playing QB on the other side. As we saw with Green Bay, the Moore-lead Chiefs aren’t just some pushover team like the Bears with Chase Danie…. Oh, wait. Bad example. Moore looked good against the “unstoppable defense” of the Packers, throwing for 267 yards and two touchdowns (and no picks), so regardless the Chiefs aren’t going to be pushovers on Sunday and considering the tie-breaker implications that this game will have (as the Packers beat them over the weekend), I’m going to say I don’t care if they Vikings are facing a cardboard cutout of Joe Montana in his Chiefs jersey, I want a win!
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