Vikings rout turns into an escape from Green Bay with a 31-29 win and 4-0 record

GREEN BAY, WIS. – The Vikings arrived at Lambeau Field for the 51st time on a brilliant Sunday morning, taking the field at the historic venue 67 years to the day since Richard Nixon, then the vice president, dedicated the stadium in a halftime ceremony of the Green Bay Packers’ first game.

For the first 25 minutes of their 31-29 victory over Green Bay on Sunday, the Vikings exhibited such dominance, you had to go back to the penultimate year of Nixon’s presidency to find a time they had led by so much at Lambeau.

They needed just five possessions to build a 28-0 lead over the Packers, their largest in Green Bay since Dec. 8, 1973, when Bud Grant’s second Super Bowl team went up by 31 in a 31-7 whipping of Dan Devine’s Packers.

There was a larger difference between the two teams then than there was Sunday, when the undefeated Vikings were playing to keep their NFC North lead over a Packers team that reached the divisional playoffs last year. But for most of the first half, the Packers simply appeared outclassed.

A team that had eight sacks a week ago didn’t touch Sam Darnold once, as the Vikings quarterback completed 11 of his 15 passes for 136 yards in pristine pockets and even slipped past center Garrett Bradbury’s collision with a Packers defender to gain 9 yards on a third-and-1. The Vikings dissected Green Bay’s man coverages with deep crossing routes and a stutter-go route by Jordan Addison for a 29-yard touchdown to open the scoring.

The defense intercepted Jordan Love twice, setting up a fourth touchdown with a delayed Blake Cashman blitz before Shaq Griffin intercepted Love’s overthrow of Tucker Kraft. And in the red zone, the Vikings were clinical: Darnold worked to his third option to find Josh Oliver on the backside of a pass play for a 2-yard score; Addison juked Keisean Nixon to the ground on a 7-yard jet sweep; and Justin Jefferson fought off Nixon’s grabby coverage to snatch a back-shoulder 14-yard throw, shoving the cornerback away before doing the Griddy he’d promised to dance in the Lambeau end zone.

And then it all changed. Green Bay scored its first touchdown before halftime after Jalen Nailor muffed a punt while staring into the September sunshine; Xavier McKinney undercut a Darnold throw for Aaron Jones for an interception at the Packers 2; Green Bay opened the fourth quarter with two straight touchdown drives; and coach Matt LaFleur ordered a two-point conversion that made it 28-22.

In a game where the Packers dropped five passes, turned the ball over four times and saw kicker Brayden Narveson miss two field goals, they were within an onside kick of attempting to finish the biggest comeback in their history.

The Vikings left with the victory, albeit not in the emphatic fashion their fans might have preferred to use as fuel for workplace jabs at Wisconsin transplants on Monday. But they are 4-0, after three consecutive wins over teams that reached the playoffs last year, and departed Green Bay with more support for their burgeoning confidence.

“We talked at halftime [about] understanding there was going to be a momentum [shift] coming,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said. “I didn’t love the way we finished the first half,” referring to Brandon Powell getting banged up and forcing Nailor to return punts.

He credited Nailor for being willing to try to field the kick, but said, “we thought at that point anything over his head probably shouldn’t be fielded. In the moment, he’s trying to make a play and it ended up being a big play.”

And then there were things the coach “didn’t particularly like” in the second half: “execution wise, pre-snap offensively, some of the pressures that they were able to get home on and force some negatives.”

But, O’Connell added, “Our defense responded in some critical moments. Just [with] the back and forth of a team that was very, very close to playing for it all last year, we knew what we were signing up for today. This is a really good football team. Tough place to come play. To come here two years in a row and get a win speaks to what we have in that locker room.”

O’Connell explained two of his pivotal second-half decisions — throwing on four consecutive plays after the Packers cut their deficit to six in the fourth quarter, and going for it on fourth-and-1 from the Green Bay 4 instead of kicking a field goal to go up by 12 — through the prism of his belief in his team.

On the first one, O’Connell would not confirm whether Darnold checked from a run to a pass to Jefferson on first down; “You know I’m not going to answer that question,” he said with a laugh. But the fact he sent Darnold to the line with an option to throw, based on the look he saw, indicated the coach wasn’t going to pull back.

Nor did O’Connell settle for a field goal that would have put the Vikings up 12 with 2:21 left, instead running Nailor on a jet sweep on a play that would have effectively ended the game if it had worked. The Packers stopped Nailor from getting the first down and went 96 yards in five plays to pull within two.

Analytics models slightly favored kicking the field goal, though the Vikings were in such a strong position either way that the decision was essentially a toss-up. But O’Connell viewed it as much as a message to the people he coaches as a stratagem that could be measured with numbers.

“I just want our guys to understand that I believe in them ... I want our guys to know I’m going to be aggressive,” O’Connell said. “I have nothing but confidence in the 11 guys in any phase of our team going out there in those moments.”

The Vikings will head to London next, giving up a home game against the New York Jets for a neutral-site venue that won’t allow them to turn their cacophonous home environment on Aaron Rodgers the way they would have at U.S. Bank Stadium.

But they are favorites for the first time since Week 1, after three straight victories as underdogs that have tilted the national perception of what they can do.

Their self-belief was justifiable in Sunday’s first-half romp, and it remained through a dicey second half, even as the Packers pass rush started to breach the Vikings offensive line and Love landed enough shots to pull Green Bay within two, despite cornerback Byron Murphy Jr. both picking off an overthrow of Dontayvion Wicks in the end zone and then punching the ball out of Kraft’s hands for a fumble on the Packers’ next possession.

“Before anybody was talking about us and gave us a shot, we believed in ourselves, and we just continue to do that,” said Jones, who rushed for 93 yards on 22 attempts in a Green Bay homecoming that began with the running back circling the apron to greet Packers fans and ended with him hugging Packers staffers before finding a group of Vikings fans for a postgame Lambeau Leap. “The reason we can do that is because of the work that we put in.”

The Vikings’ 51st trip to Lambeau gave them a longer to-do list than the first half appeared they might have. But they are guaranteed to head into their bye week with at least a share of the NFC North lead, thanks to a start they insisted was no shock to them.

“In the first half, we dominated in all three phases,” Jefferson said. “We just have a lot of energy. I feel like we had a lot of energy in the second half; it was just, them getting the points at the end of the second [quarter] gave them a little more momentum. But it happens. ... Once we all get healthy, I feel like we’re going to be in a great spot.”

To get exclusive analysis on the Vikings by Ben Goessling in your inbox every Friday, sign up for the free Access Vikings newsletter here.