Where Do The 2024 Vikings Rank Historically?
Credit: Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images
Every now and then in the NFL, you get a moment when you realize a team is special. I had that epiphany after the Minnesota Vikings defeated the Green Bay Packers, when Sam Darnold was getting showered with Gatorade by his teammates, who all excitedly embraced their quarterback by lifting him in the air. The whole scene felt straight out of a cookie-cutter “inspirational” football movie… except it was real. As the players continued to celebrate, Kevin O’Connell quietly stood in the corner looking like a proud father.
THAT’S OUR FREAKING QUARTERBACK pic.twitter.com/pEo4aqPHen
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) December 30, 2024
After the dust settled and the post-game show ended, I came to the sudden realization that the 2024 Minnesota Vikings are now the winningest Vikings team I’ve ever witnessed in my 24-year lifetime, surpassing the 2017 team that finished the regular season with 13 wins. That’s right, I wasn’t alive in 1998, when the 15-1 Vikings were the most dominant team in the league, but I have to imagine fans who watched them play felt similarly about how special that group was.
Over the last 30 years, the Minnesota Vikings have reached the NFC Championship game four times, coming within a game of advancing to their first Super Bowl since Bud Grant and his Purple People Eaters made four trips from 1969 to 1975. Those teams are the aforementioned 1998 squad, the 2000 version (who couldn’t score a single point against the New York Giants), the 2009 Brett Favre-led team, and the 2017 club, which boasted an elite defense under head coach Mike Zimmer.
How do the 2024 Vikings compare to these teams?
It’s an arduous task trying to compare five different teams in slightly different areas, but we gotta try. We’re going to do this using point differential and yard differential for each team. This simple formula will show how many more points or yards each of these teams gained, on average, over their opponents and is easy to rank.
We’ll start with point differential per game:
1998: +16.3
2009: +9.9
2017: +8.1
2024: +7.6
2000: +1.6
Unsurprisingly, the team with Randy Moss and Cris Carter at their peaks lead the pack, with their top-scoring offense and (surprisingly) sixth-ranked scoring defense. The 2000 squad is at the bottom, and the 2024 squad is jammed into the middle of the pack (on the lower end of it, at that). But still, out-scoring opponents by a touchdown per game is fairly impressive.
Next, let’s look at the yardage differential rankings:
2017: 81.0
1998: 74.9
2009: 74.1
2024: 20.4
2000: 16.3
This time, Zimmer’s 2017 team leads the way, with the 1998 and 2009 versions not being too far behind. However, the 2024 is way behind the pack, out-gaining their opponents by 50-60 fewer yards than these predecessors. If football games were played on a spreadsheet, then this 2024 Vikings team wouldn’t be considered anything special.
Yet, there’s something about this team that feels special, and it’s more than just their 14-2 record. It’s the fact that the 2024 Vikings feel like a more complete team than some of their predecessors, even if the numbers don’t back it up.
The 2009 Vikings were an offensive-driven team with Favre’s gunslinger mentality, but the secondary was 19th in passing yards allowed per game and found themselves unable to slow down great offenses. Then there’s the 2017 Vikings, which had a historically great defense under Mike Zimmer but paired it with a conservative run-first offense and an overachieving backup quarterback in Case Keenum, whose production wasn’t sustainable.
The last time the Vikings had a team that seemed as well-rounded as the 2024 squad was in 1998, when they led the league in scoring offense and the sixth-ranked scoring defense. That’s not to say this team is just as dominant as the ’98 Vikings — it’s almost impossible to be that good. However, one thing that separates really good teams from legitimate Super Bowl contenders is that the latter tend to have the ability to win games in multiple different ways. The 2024 Vikings have that going for them, with arguably the best offensive and defensive play-calling duo in the league in O’Connell and Brian Flores.
It’s too early to definitively rank the 2024 Vikings amongst their predecessors. However, all the ingredients are there for this team to make a legitimate Super Bowl run. Darnold has been playing out of his mind, the skill positions on offense are fully loaded, and if the offense isn’t able to run up the score, Flores’ defense has proven time and time again that they can pick up the slack and win those defensive slugfests. Reaching 14 wins is no small feat, and that alone puts the 2024 Vikings in elite company in recent franchise history.
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