— The Vikings’ 2024 season began with a five-game win streak that left them as the NFC’s last unbeaten team and vaulted them into national conversation as the surprise story of the season, before two losses in five days to the Lions and Rams squelched the delirium.
The Vikings responded with a nine-game win streak that sent them into one of the most anticipated regular-season games in NFL history with a 14-2 record, playing Detroit for home-field advantage in the NFC.
Eight days, and 18 points later, their season is over.
The Vikings lost in the first round of the playoffs after being favored to win for the second time in three years under coach Kevin O’Connell.
Their defeat on Monday night, before a crowd evenly split between Rams and Vikings fans, was even more emphatic than the loss to the Giants two years ago, playing out in a manner that courted unseemly statistical superlatives and reduced a 14-win season to rubble.
Sam Darnold, who’d reached the fringes of MVP conversation with his 35 touchdown passes in the Vikings’ first 16 games, followed up his disconcerting night against the Lions with another sordid performance, completing only 25 of his 40 passes for 245 yards while getting sacked nine times, eclipsing Wade Wilson’s eight sacks in the 1987 NFC Championship game for the most in Vikings history and tying a NFL playoff record first set in 1963.
Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold (14) walks off the field after the Vikings lost to the Rams. (Carlos Gonzalez/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
According to NFL Next Gen Stats, he held the ball for at least 3.2 seconds on all six of his first-half sacks, and held it for 4.4 seconds or longer on four of the six.
The Rams bull-rushed the Vikings’ tackles, got to Darnold with stunts up the middle, pulled him down after he stood in the pocket and changed the game with a second-quarter blitz.
On a third-and-5 with the Vikings trailing 10-3, the Rams sent safety Quentin Lake on a blitz that Dalton Risner failed to pick up, sending C.J. Ham into action as Darnold’s next line of defense. T.J. Hockenson chipped Beaux Limmer and briefly got a hand on Ahkello Witherspoon, who hit Darnold with a strip sack he didn’t see coming. Jared Verse picked up the loose ball, returning it 57 yards for a touchdown, and the Vikings went from having a chance to tie the game to a 14-point deficit.
The lead grew to 21 by halftime, after coach Kevin O’Connell went for a fourth-and-2 from midfield. Kobie Turner breezed past Blake Brandel on a stunt, sacking Darnold for an 11-yard loss that gave the Rams the ball on the Vikings 39. Four plays later, Stafford hit Davis Allen for a 13-yard touchdown that put the Vikings in their biggest halftime playoff deficit since Jan. 14, 2001, when they trailed the Giants by 34 in the NFC Championship Game.
Stafford, who hadn’t thrown for more than 189 yards since Dec. 8, had 124 in the first quarter, dissecting a Vikings defense that left receivers running open and struggled to keep receivers from gaining yards after the catch. The Rams ran just five times in the first half (though they averaged 7.4 yards on those plays); Stafford didn’t target Cooper Kupp until the third quarter. But he was free to work against a Vikings pass rush that played its fifth and sixth quarters against the 36-year-old quarterback without sacking him.
It appeared for a moment in the first half they’d ended the sackless streak, while producing a play that would have tied the game if it had counted.
Early in the second quarter, Blake Cashman recovered Stafford’s fumble after Jonathan Greenard’s strip sack, racing 26 yards to the end zone as Vikings fans exulted. But officials gave Stafford credit for an incomplete pass on the play, ruling his arm was moving forward while Greenard hit him and he flicked the ball to the ground.
The Vikings’ only touchdown came when T.J. Hockenson reached behind him for a Darnold pass, rolling 26 yards for his first touchdown of the season with a score that made it 27-9. But Justin Jefferson was tackled short of the end zone on a two-point conversion attempt after catching Darnold’s pass.
Early in the fourth quarter, with the Vikings facing a third-and-8 at the Rams’ 37, Darnold retreated from pressure after hitching in the pocket, backpedaling all the way to midfield before Braden Fiske pulled him down. The Vikings had to punt on fourth-and-21 after the 13-yard loss.
The Rams knelt out the clock after the ninth sack on Darnold, securing a matchup with the Eagles on Sunday in Philadelphia. O’Connell exchanged a brief embrace with his old boss Sean McVay, and the Vikings filed off the field quietly. Greenard, Cashman, Andrew Van Ginkel and Kamu Grugier-Hill briefly posed for a picture together as they left for the locker room. Josh Metellus, after trading jerseys with a Rams player, saluted a group of Vikings fans congregating by the tunnel.
Later, co-owners Zygi and Jonathan Wilf emerged from the locker room in a daze, looking like they were in utter disbelief.
As the Vikings said their goodbyes, fans were sent into another chilly offseason of waiting and wondering.
Los Angeles sacked Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold a record nine times and won its home game away from its fire-ravaged home in the wild-card round.
