In our recent expert Faux season projections, the Vikings received an average win total of 8.6 wins between five different prognosticators. Three of the five, myself included, had them at either 8 or 9 wins which seems to be by far the most common projection for them in the mainstream media and among fans.
The common thinking seems to be that they were a bit lucky to reach 13 wins last year after how they got mowed down in their final two games by the Lions and Rams, and that the QB position is a massive unknown with JJ McCarthy stepping into the lead role after missing his entire rookie season to a torn meniscus.
But when I began studying their situation deeper I started to question that narrative. In fact, I began to believe that not only could the Vikings possibly be considered the favorites to win the NFC North, but there’s a very real argument to be made that they could be the overall favorites for the entire NFC.
Are we underestimating the Vikings again?
Let’s start with precisely that…Kevin O’Connell has been the head coach of the Vikings for 3 seasons now. In those 3 seasons the team has won 13(!) games twice, both times when nobody in the media expected anything close to that level of performance. The one season he did not hit that mark, the team finished 7-10 after Kirk Cousins was lost for the year in week 8. They went 3-6 without Cousins.
There is a reason O’Connell just won Coach of the Year and has been receiving so much praise recently as perhaps the best coach in the league. He is consistently outperforming expectations including raising the level of play of individual players. Sam Darnold had never lived up to his high draft spot until this past year where he played at a near MVP level for much of the year.
So long as O’Connell remains head coach here, it doesn’t seem reasonable to so quickly write off the team.
And why are we so quick to discount the team anyways? They won 13 games last year with a journeyman QB, and it’s not like they got worse during the off-season. Quite the contrary. They got a lot better. Their two biggest weaknesses were the offensive and defensive lines, and management poured resources into dramatically beefing up both groups.
Coveted free agents Will Fries and Ryan Kelly come over from Indianapolis where they helped anchor one of the better lines in the league last year. The team also drafted arguably the best guard prospect in the draft, Donovan Jackson, in the first round.
The defensive line brought the additions of longtime Commanders stalwart Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave who just two years ago was playing at an extremely high level for the Eagles and then 49ers. He lost much of 2024 to a torn triceps.
They also added Isaiah Rodgers from the Eagles, a player PFF graded very highly, to help out at corner, and traded for Jordan Mason to compliment and spell Aaron Jones at RB.
Their biggest loss by far was Camryn Bynum, a good player, but one that plays a less important position, safety.
All together those are some serious upgrades to an already very good team, the most significant upgrades at the most critical positions outside of quarterback, and almost no major losses.
Which brings us to J.J. McCarthy and the “unknown” QB situation.
The Vikings are moving from Darnold to McCarthy this year, and that seems to be the primary motivation for everyone projecting the team to win 4-5 less games? That seems unlikely and completely illogical especially considering how often I have heard it said that the Seahawks downgraded by going from Geno Smith to Darnold.
If Darnold is such a bad QB then how terrible would McCarthy have to be to win five less games? And under Kevin O’Connell who hand-picked McCarthy and believes in him?
Let’s also not forget that before his injury last year, McCarthy was almost certainly going to start week 1 over Darnold…which means that O’Connell already felt that McCarthy was better at that time. But we’re supposed to believe that McCarthy is going to be a massive downgrade over Darnold, who again everyone seems to think isn’t that good anyways?
If we assume Darnold is, in fact, not a particularly good QB, average to below average, and O’Connell believed McCarthy was better already, then isn’t there a high chance that McCarthy could be an upgrade over Darnold?
And if we assume that Darnold really did morph into a well above-average starting QB last year, McCarthy would still have to play like Daniel Jones to drag down a very strong team that got much better, at least on paper, during the off-season. That just does not seem likely given his performance in the preseason last year before his injury and O’Connell’s coaching and confidence in him.
To simply say that McCarthy is in his second year and didn’t even play as a rookie and that is the sole reason not to believe the team can compete for a Superbowl is incredibly shallow and bad analysis.
Ben Roethlisberger went 13-0 as a rookie and won a Superbowl in his second season. Russell Wilson went 11-5 and won a Superbowl in his second season. Patrick Mahomes didn’t play as a rookie and won 12 games his second year before falling in the divisional round to the Patriots. Those are just a handful of recent examples, but there are many more.
Young quarterbacks do not automatically mean a team cannot compete, and you do not have to be an all-time great to do so either. Wilson was a short, 3rd round selection nobody wanted, and his years outside of Seattle have been less than stellar. Could McCarthy approximate Wilson or a young Roethlisberger, both of whom leaned on a strong defense? I think he can.
So, we’ve established that there are multiple reasons to believe the Vikings might actually be a better team in 2025 than last year, but what about their competition?
The team from their own division that topped them last year, the Lions, just lost both coordinators including the very highly thought of Ben Johnson. They scored 70 TDs last season, a feat only matched recently by the 2007 Patriots, the 2011 Packers, the 2013 Broncos, and the 2018 Chiefs. Those teams had arguably the best four QBs of the last 20 years, and all of them experienced some level of significant regression on offense the next season.
The Lions also lost All-Pro center Frank Ragnow to retirement, and it’s possible their best defensive player, Aidan Hutchinson, won’t be 100% after suffering a gruesome injury in week 6 last year.
Then there’s the Packers who for some reason are getting vaulted over the Vikings seemingly by default. I assume it’s because Jordan Love is a known quantity and a pretty good QB, but that’s hardly a good enough reason. I don’t see that the Packers are significantly better than last year. They signed a big-name guard and a corner in free agency, both good players, but they wasted their draft on two highly overrated receivers and a developmental tackle. They also lost to the Vikings twice in 2024.
So, it seems there’s good reason to believe the Vikings could be the NFC North favorites. How about the NFC as a whole?
The Eagles just won a Superbowl and returns all of their best players, but they also lost a lot of depth in free agency and their draft didn’t add any quick help.
The Commanders are entering year two of their new regime after making it to the conference finals last year, but they benefited from a very weak schedule last year and then beat a Lions team ravaged by injuries in the playoffs while the Vikings drew the rapidly rising Rams.
The Buccaneers are the South favorites, and while they are a good team the Vikings seem stronger and deeper.
And who knows what’s going on in the West. The 49ers are somehow the favorites there despite losing half their 2024 starters. The Rams didn’t get better during the off-season. The Cardinals could be in the mix, but it’s not a given, and while I think the Seahawks are quite underrated right now, I don’t see them as Super Bowl contenders just yet.
So, it seems to me that the Vikings have a reasonable case to at least be in the mix as the overall favorites. Calling them the favorites right now could be seen as a stretch as we haven’t seen McCarthy play a regular season game yet, and we don’t know how the new additions will fare.
But when considering the evidence and thinking about the situation logically, it’s not hard at all to see a reasonable path where they quickly ascend to the top of the NFC behind a very solid offense piloted by McCarthy playing a game manager style and an elite defense. That’s a path that has worked well in the past for other young QBs like Roethlisberger and Wilson, both cases landing them Superbowl in their second seasons.
Could history repeat in 2025?
