How the Vikings went from out of playoffs to back in the hunt in minutes

The Minnesota Vikings’ playoff hopes went from dead to quite alive in minutes during Week 12.

If you are a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, the Week 12 performance against the Carolina Panthers was a peak Vikings performance.

Minnesota fans have experienced the roller coaster that is being a fan of the purple and gold more times than they can count over the years and Sunday’s surprising victory at home was yet another example of that.

As a matter of fact, the Vikings literally went from being out of the NFC playoff picture to right back in the heart of them over the course of about two minutes.

With 2:18 seconds left in the fourth quarter on Sunday and Minnesota trailing Carolina 24-21, the Vikings were set to receive the ball off of a Panthers punt to try and march down the field and either tie the game with a field goal or possibly take the lead with a touchdown.

As Carolina punted the ball away, Minnesota punt returned Chad Beebe added to the continued struggles of the Vikings’ special teams unit, muffing the punt which was recovered by the Panthers deep on Minnesota’s end of the field.

When that turnover took place, the Panthers had a win probability of 95.9 percent, according to ESPN’s win probability tracker, and many Vikings fans had the game written off given the field position Carolina was in after recovering the fumble with just a few minutes remaining.

At that point in the game, the conversations surrounding Minnesota involved talks about the team officially putting any playoff hopes to rest while trying to focus on next season, as a loss in Week 12 would have resulted in the Vikings dropping to 4-7 overall and farther out of the postseason picture with a handful of regular season games left to play.

Instead, things changed in a matter of minutes. The Panthers failed to get into the endzone and extend its lead to two possessions, settling for a field goal with 1:51 on the clock to go up 27-21.

Without any timeouts remaining, the Vikings ended up marching 75 yards down the field on seven plays, ending with Kirk Cousins finding Beebe — who almost cost Minnesota the game and the season — in the end zone for a touchdown that finished with an extra point to put the Vikings up 28-27 with 46 seconds remaining and ultimately winning by that margin at home.

Immediately after that touchdown, conversations switched from the season is over to the Vikings have a legitimate shot at reaching the postseason. That over the course of a minute and a half.

The Minnesota Vikings are making fans sweat but are alive in the playoff hunt.

With the Arizona Cardinals surprisingly falling on the road just minutes before the end of Minnesota’s game at the hands of the New England Patriots, the Cardinals dropped to 6-5 on the year although they still hold onto the seventh and final Wild Card spot in the NFC playoff picture.

The team right behind Arizona? That would be the Vikings at 5-6 overall.

Minnesota is sitting in a good spot to potentially reach the playoffs in the NFC at the end of the year, something that seemed like an impossible feat after the team began the year 1-5 in the first six weeks.

The Vikings hold the tiebreakers over the Chicago Bears (5-6) and San Francisco 49ers (5-6) to sit in eighth place and are just one game out of that final Wild Card spot. That is unless the NFL expands the playoffs to eight teams per conference, which would mean Minnesota is currently in the postseason layout. Minnesota’s next game is also coming against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 13.

According to FiveThirtyEight, the Vikings have jumped to a 30 percent chance of reaching the postseason, a number that keeps increasing with each win.

With just a few minutes left in the Week 12 game against Carolina, Minnesota was viewed as a team that could see its playoff hopes come to a close once and for all. That completely changed in the matter of just a few minutes, as the Vikings are now right in the heart of the playoff race in the NFC.