Vikings’ season of rising expectations plummets to an end with a 27-9 playoff loss to the Rams

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The Vikings huddled behind the closed doors of State Farm Stadium’s auxiliary locker room for nearly a half-hour after their 27-9 loss to the Rams on Monday night, before principal owner Zygi Wilf emerged with a blank expression and players packed for the long flight home. As coach Kevin O’Connell prepared to address his second playoff loss with reporters, he fought to keep his lip from quivering, over the sentiment stirred by the end of a season he’d believed to be special.

“Very, very tough feeling in that locker room right now,” the coach said. “This team was really one of one, in my mind, as far as the feeling that’s in there right now, the brotherhood. … We’ve got the right things going in this organization. But we’ve got to find a way to do the things we need to do to win games against the class of the NFL.”

It was a postmortem similar to the one he’d delivered after a playoff loss to the Giants two years ago, and it came at the end of a season in which the Vikings were widely picked to finish in the bottom half of the NFC. But all the enthusiasm their 14-win season had stirred was doused by a simple truth: Twice, the Vikings had met the same two contenders in back-to-back weeks. Twice, they lost to them.

Their second pair of losses to the Lions and Rams ended their season, costing them two chances to advance to the NFC divisional playoffs for the first time since the 2019 season. After losing 31-9 to the Lions last Sunday, they lost to the Rams in a game moved to Arizona because of the deadly wildfires in Los Angeles, falling as favorites for the second time in the playoffs under O’Connell.

“I love these players more than anything,” O’Connell said. “They’re a part of me, and they all know that, but that only gets you so far. You’ve got to play to a certain standard.”

Their defeat Monday night, before a crowd evenly split between Rams and Vikings fans, was even more emphatic than the Giants loss 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 the 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 an NFL playoff record first set in 1963.

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.

“They had a really good plan,” Darnold said. “They brought some good pressures. They played some good man coverage in those second-and-longs, even third downs. I feel like I can be a lot better in terms of just moving on with my progressions, not trying to force anything.”

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. The Vikings went from having a chance to tie the game to a 14-point deficit.

The lead grew to 21 by halftime, after 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.

“There’s times where, no matter how much you believe in the scheme, especially when you’re calling quick game and they take away your first throw, there’s completions to be had,” O’Connell said. “You’ve got to find a way to check the ball down and keep moving the ball forward. Completions have a negative effect on a defense. They just do. When you’re holding the ball and your reaction is to try to make a play, we can’t talk out of both sides of our mouth, because he sure as heck made a lot of plays doing that this year. But I think that’s part of the growth.”

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 early in the second quarter they’d ended the sackless streak, while producing a play that would have tied the game if it had counted.

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.

“They just said that [Puka Nacua] was in the area, and it was an incomplete pass,” said O’Connell, who was the Rams’ offensive coordinator when Stafford led them to a Super Bowl title in the 2021 season. “I know that quarterback pretty well, and I know when he’s trying to throw to somebody and when he’s not, but that was the explanation I got.”

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 with about five minutes left in the third quarter. 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 of 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.

Safety Harrison Smith, playing his 200th game at the end of his 13th season, teared up as he contemplated his future.

Running back Aaron Jones, who’d played seven playoff games in as many years with Green Bay, became a central figure for the Vikings and ran for a career-high 1,138 yards on a one-year deal. It was all prologue to Monday’s harsh exit.

“You work so hard for 20 weeks, at least, but it’s more than that, if you’re going to include the offseason,” he said. “So a lot goes into it, just for 60 minutes. So you feel it more.”

For all the feelings their 14-win season generated, there will be no banner for the 2024 Vikings: no NFC North title, and certainly not the championship emblems their fans have dreamt of for decades.

They left Arizona on Monday night still in search of something tangible.

“Back to work we go,” O’Connell said. “But this stings. I know it stings for our fans. It hurts, and we’ve got to use it as fuel moving forward.”

To get exclusive analysis on the Vikings by Ben Goessling in your inbox every Friday, sign up for the free Access Vikings newsletter. Email your Vikings questions to accessvikings@startribune.com.