Another playoff season has come and gone for the Minnesota Vikings without success. The NFL’s best regular season team continues to struggle when the games matter the most, and that manifested on Monday night with a blowout loss to the Los Angeles Rams that made it look like the Vikings never belonged in the playoffs.
It was also a loss that cemented the Vikings in history once more. Minnesota is now the only team in NFL history to win 14 games in the regular season, then lose in the Wild Card Playoff round. It’s a horrible record to own and we might need to wait a long time for it to be broken.
We know this because the only 13-win team to lose in the Wild Card Round is also the Minnesota Vikings. This mark was set in 2022 with Kirk Cousins, when the Vikings lost to the Giants on an afternoon Daniel Jones played some of the best football of his career. Losing in the Wild Card with 14 wins requires having a stellar regular season (obviously), without being good enough to earn a first-round bye in the playoffs.
If anyone is capable of this unique level of postseason failure it’s the Minnesota Vikings. A team so exquisitely gifted at finding pain in the playoffs that Secret Base’s “History of the Minnesota Vikings.”
There are some other wild facts that came about from the loss on Monday night.
- The Vikings now have 22 seasons with 10+ wins without a Super Bowl win
- Minnesota’s four losses this season only came against two opponents with two losses to the Rams and two losses to the Lions
Congratulations to Minnesota for making history once more.
