The Minnesota Vikings have been through the wringer in 2023.
This is not an especially new or unique feeling for the Vikings. This is a team whose six decades of existence has been defined by sustained success that ultimately ends in failure.
This fall was the backdrop for more of this. Kirk Cousins played the best football of his career but still started the season 1-4 thanks to untenable turnover luck. Minnesota regressed to the mean in order to put itself in playoff contention at 4-4 only to lose Cousins to a torn Achilles. The Vikings still managed to keep up their winning ways with Joshua Dobbs at quarterback, but things fell apart from there. A 7-6 record became a 7-9 one, and Week 17’s loss to the Green Bay Packers eliminated them from postseason contention.
That still left one final game, however. And after third-and-goal from the Detroit Lions’ 25-yard line turned into a hopeless screen pass, star wide receiver Justin Jefferson summed up Minnesota’s 2023 with one perfect word.
That is, one perfect word we’re not allowed to print here at USA Today.
Justin Jefferson is visibly frustrated on the Vikings sideline pic.twitter.com/Ees9vrVdpZ
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) January 7, 2024
Jefferson had big expectations for 2023. He was coming off the best year of his career and the Vikings had won the NFC North. Despite an imperfect start, Brian Flores taught a scrappy defense to punch above its weight class en route to promsing returns.
And none of this mattered, because the football gods cursed Minnesota with crushing injury luck and some awful bounces that left no room for the Vikings to avenge last year’s Wild Card loss. There’s not much you can say in the face of adversity like this when Nick Mullens is your starting quarterback. But Jefferson found a way to sum things up pretty succinctly.
