Two weeks from now, a Minnesota Vikings fan and a Buffalo Bills fan will bump into each other on Bourbon Street. The Super Bowl is in New Orleans, and both fans are there because of the over-optimistic nature of their fandom
“We were 14-2,” The Vikings fan will stammer. “How in the hell did we lose those last two games?”
“I hate Patrick Mahomes so much,” the Bills fan will reply. “First the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s and now this.”
After a few cocktails, both fans sigh that they’re destined to do this forever. The Vikings and Bills have lost four Super Bowls. Both teams tease before crushing their hopes in the worst way possible. They were juggernauts who could have gone to the Super Bowl this year.
However, there’s one key difference between the latest iterations of the teams that failed to reach the big game.
After a few years of hibernation, the running game has returned to the NFL. In some ways, you could argue it never left, as teams continued to run the ball to keep defenses honest. However, the NFL also devalued the running back position, emphasizing Moneyball team-building methods.
Running backs can be impact players, but they never seem to last long enough. Emmitt Smith ran over the Bills the last time they were in the Super Bowl. Minnesota’s running game was an underrated part of their success when they emerged in the late 1990s, and Robert Smith took a backseat to Randy Moss.
Adrian Peterson. Thurman Thomas. Hell, even Chester Taylor and Thomas Jones deserve some love. But the respect for the running game changed after Peterson signed a six-year, $86.3 million contract in 2011.
Peterson’s contract aged like a gallon of milk in a cornfield. Part of it was due to a child abuse charge that wiped out his 2014 season. The other was a slew of injuries, including a multi-ligament knee injury suffered toward the end of the 2011 season. His effectiveness waned, and other teams sought to get younger and cheaper at running back.
The trend continued into the 2020s. Teams could still have a dominant running game, as Kyle Shanahan showed in San Francisco with players like Raheem Mostert and Elijah Mitchell. Still, it made more sense to grab a guy in the later rounds of the draft than use a first-rounder on one.
The thought process makes sense. But, at some point, everyone went the other way. Signing a veteran running back to a second contract was like feeding a Mogwai after midnight. When Dalvin Cook aged out, the Vikings tried to replace him with Alexander Mattison, Ty Chandler, and DeWayne McBride.
Vikings fans know how this story ends. In 2022, Kevin O’Connell‘s first season as head coach, Minnesota ranked 27th in rushing yards and attempts with Cook in the backfield. They improved to 22nd in yardage but ranked 28th in attempts during O’Connell’s second season.
Again, part of it is the personnel. Why would you run the ball when your running back can’t find the end zone for an entire year?
The Vikings weren’t the only team caught in this mess. Minnesota took Cook in the 2017 draft, which was a strong running back class. Joe Mixon, Christian McCaffrey, and Cook got big-money deals. However, all three players suffered injuries, and the teams didn’t get a return on their investment.
When the 2018 class hit free agency, teams decided the buck stopped there. New York Giants general manager Joe Schoen spent half of Hard Knocks’ offseason show aggravated over Barkley’s contract. The Tennessee Titans let Derrick Henry walk out the door. The Green Bay Packers drafted Aaron Jones in 2018, but he wound up in Minnesota when they balked at his contract demands.
Everyone used to predict that the running back cliff would occur at age 30. However, many GMs believed it would drop in their late 20s.
However, teams that prioritized running backs benefitted in this year’s playoffs. With a 14-3 record, the Vikings were in a great spot to make noise in the postseason. However, one of their biggest flaws was a consistent running game that ranked 19th in rushing offense.
Minnesota upgraded by replacing Mattison with Jones, but it wasn’t enough to get consistent gains on the ground at 4.1 yards per carry. Things got worse when Jones was out of the game, and the Vikings turned to Chandler and Cam Akers.
I’m not pinning everything on the running back. Minnesota’s interior offensive line of Dalton Risner, Garrett Bradbury, and Blake Brandel struggled, hampering the run game. However, it’s also why O’Connell asked Sam Darnold to chase 30-yard bombs downfield, knowing it was his only chance for an explosive play.
It was the same playstyle that the Bills were asking Josh Allen to play when he was averaging 591 attempts per season between 2020 and 2023. When you have Stefon Diggs as your top target, airing it out makes sense. However, it also neglected what could have been a simpler approach to the running game.
In some ways, it’s ironic that Dalvin’s brother, James Cook, led the Buffalo backfield. A second-round pick in the 2022 draft, James had only 89 attempts behind Devin Singletary in his rookie season before erupting for 16 touchdowns this year.
With a 53.1% success rate – defined as the frequency a running back picks up 40 percent of yards needed on first down, 60% on second down, and 100% on third and fourth down – Cook took some of the load off Allen’s plate after they traded Diggs to the Houston Texans.
While the Bills-Vikings comparison is interesting, the Bills weren’t the only team to prioritize the run game. The Eagles blew out the Washington Commanders in the NFC title game because Washington was looking at Barkley’s nameplate the entire afternoon.
The Detroit Lions team that hammered the Vikings in Week 18 was sixth in the league in rushing yards. Another 2017 running back, Kareem Hunt, leads the Kansas City Chiefs’ running attack. The running backs who were “too old” at 25 and 26 carry their teams to the Super Bowl while the Vikings sit at home and wonder what happened.
Fixing the running game probably won’t relieve the sting of the past two weeks, or Minnesota’s sordid playoff history. But even if the Bills didn’t ride their running game to the Super Bowl, their success showed that it’s a good place to start.