Minnesota beat Green Bay by 17, and our model still cannot make the math work past six wins
Updated
The Vikings opened the season with the best result in the division, a 39-22 win over Green Bay at home, and they did it with Carson Wentz at quarterback for three and a half quarters after Kyler Murray was ruled out with a concussion late in the first. Wentz threw three touchdowns on 19 attempts, Justin Jefferson caught two of them, and the defense sacked Jordan Love four times. It counts, it is banked, and it is worth more than a normal win because it came against a team we still project to finish ahead of Minnesota. And when we re-ran the season with that result seeded in, the Vikings came out at 6-11, essentially the same number we had for them in July. That is a strange sentence to write about a team that just scored 39 on a division rival, and it deserves a straight explanation.
The explanation is that the roster grades did not move, and the roster grades are the projection. Our model still has Minnesota scoring 317 points, 25th in the league, and allowing 387, also 25th. The 39 points against Green Bay are in the numbers, and they lifted the offense from the 290-point projection we had in July. But the rest of the schedule got harder in the same weekend. Chicago scored 59 in Carolina and climbed to a nine-win projection with a top-five offense. Detroit held at thirteen wins. The two remaining Green Bay games are still against a team with a top-three offensive grade and Micah Parsons. Six divisional games against that trio, with a defense that grades in the bottom third, is where the wins go.
The offense showed something in Week 1 with a backup at the controls, and the projection reflects some of it. Murray's status for Week 2 is the first question, and our model still projects him as the starter for the bulk of the season. His line reads 3,521 yards and 16 touchdowns against eleven interceptions behind a passer rating of 88, a functional season that is a touch more efficient than the summer run. Justin Jefferson's projection climbed from 79 catches and 975 yards to 89 catches for 1,111 and six scores, which is still the best receiver in football producing a number one season in a limited offense. Jauan Jennings adds 66 catches, Jordan Addison 49, T.J. Hockenson 51. Aaron Jones carries the ground game at 727 yards and Jordan Mason adds 498 with six scores. It is a competent group. Against Green Bay it was more than that, and our model is not yet convinced Sunday was the rule rather than the exception.
The defense is the crux, as it was in July, and it did not get its spine back. Harrison Smith, Jonathan Greenard, Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave are still gone. Dallas Turner projects for 14 sacks and Andrew Van Ginkel for nearly 12, so the edge rush is real and it showed against Jordan Love. But the interior is thin, the team projects for fewer than nine interceptions, 30th in the league, and a unit that does not take the ball away has to win every game on the scoreboard. Holding Green Bay to 22 was a good afternoon. The 387 points the model projects for the season says the good afternoons will be outnumbered.
So the arithmetic is the same arithmetic. A bottom-third offense with one superstar and a bottom-third defense with no takeaways do not add up to a playoff team, no matter how loud the opener was. When we ran the rest of the season, Minnesota won a few more shootouts than it did in July and lost the same grinders, and it came out in the same place.
The market opened Minnesota around eight and a half wins, and in July our model sat two under it. It still does. The bearish lean is grounded in personnel losses that a single result cannot repair, and the honest read after Week 1 is that the model saw the win, moved the offense up, and then watched the rest of the division move up faster.
The path to being wrong runs through Murray and Jefferson, and it is a wider path than it was. If Sunday was the offense's real level rather than its ceiling, if the offense that beat the Packers by 17 with Wentz is the real one and Murray is healthy on top of it, Minnesota can steal enough shootouts to reach eight wins and the market number. A dynamic quarterback with the best receiver in football is exactly the combination that outruns a conservative projection, and one week in it has already done so once. The model is waiting for a second sample.
The next month will settle the argument between Week 1 and the roster grade. Minnesota goes to Chicago in Week 2 against an offense that just scored 59, then to Tampa Bay, hosts Miami in Week 4 and travels to New Orleans in Week 5. When we ran that stretch, the Vikings were a slight favorite in Tampa Bay, a modest underdog against Miami and in New Orleans, and a heavy underdog in Chicago, which is a 2-2 month if the offense is what it was against Green Bay and 1-3 if the defense is what the grades say. Three of those four opponents project for eight wins or fewer. If Minnesota cannot get to 3-2 against that slate, the six-win projection is right. If it does, the model will have to move.
So the read is a team in transition that opened its season with a statement and a projection that has not heard it yet. Six wins is the honest number on the roster as graded. The Green Bay game is the honest argument against it. Watch the defense over the next month, because if the takeaways start coming the grades will follow, and the Vikings will look like a very different team than the one our model still sees.
