The Minnesota Vikings secured their first win in Miami with a 24-16 win over the Dolphins in what ended up being an ugly football game. There were multiple turnovers, poor blocking and three turnovers that turned into 10 Vikings points.
Despite the Vikings’ poor overall performance, their record doesn’t reflect it in the slightest as they head into their bye week at 5-1. At the end of the day, that’s what matters.
The Vikings also are the only team in the National Football League with a two-game lead in their division. That’s a pretty remarkable feat for a Vikings team that is in the same division as the Green Bay Packers, who were viewed as a Super Bowl contender.
Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell downplayed the team’s record and league-high division lead.
“What it means is I think we’re six games into our season. I told the team last night, by this time tomorrow, we’ll have six examples of who we are as a football team, and will we come out of this stadium 5-1 and be able to say we’re a little bit more of a third of the way through our season with different identities, sometimes it may feel like to Vikings fans, depending on what Sunday it is, but what I would say is we’ve got a tough resilient group that maybe doesn’t always play the most consistent, but they are willing and able to have each other’s backs in all three phases. We rely on one another, we mush each other and not one time did you see any finger pointing, any kind of negativity on our sideline. What you felt was just support and you felt like we were going to believe — we all believed we were going to win that football team. “
Wide receiver Adam Thielen also downplayed the Vikings’ start, talking about how they have to finish just as fast as they started.
“Obviously it’s right where we want to be. I think if you asked anybody in this organization or the fanbase if we could be 5-1 at this point before the season started, I think everyone would be like ‘heck yeah, I’ll do whatever it takes to get to that point,’ right, but we know we’ve got to get a lot better. I’ve been on teams that have started fast and not made the playoffs. So we have a lot of guys on this team that have had that experience and know that we have to stay on top of it, we’ve got to keep getting better. The teams that find ways to get better throughout the season are the teams that do things in the end of the season, and that allows them to make the playoffs. We’ve got to take advantage of this bye week and then go back to work.”
The Vikings have set themselves up to make a run over the next few weeks before they face the Buffalo Bills in Western New York in week 10.
