Minnesota Vikings: Positives and negatives from 2020 season
Looking back at the Minnesota Vikings 2020 season and the positives and negatives from the year.
A season after reaching the Divisional Round of the playoffs, the Minnesota Vikings failed to return to the postseason in 2020 while now watching the rest of the playoff bracket play itself out and see who will hold up the Lombardi Trophy in February.
Minnesota, which had a chance to reach the playoffs in the final few weeks of the regular seasons, finished the 2020 campaign with a record of 7-9 overall, remaining in the postseason pictures up until Week 16 of the year.
With just a few games remaining in the season, the Vikings jumped up as high as the No. 7 seed in the NFC Playoffs, sitting in the third and final Wild Card spot with only a handful of games left to play in the regular-season schedule.
Unfortunately for Minnesota, the final few games of the year ended with a record of 1-3 over the last four weeks and ultimately getting bounced out of the playoff picture.
Along with that 7-9 record, the Vikings finished in third place in the NFC North standings, trailing the Green Bay Packers (13-3) and Chicago Bears (8-8) atop the standings, while sitting in front of the last-place Detroit Lions (5-11) in the division. Minnesota also rounded out the year with a record of 3-5 overall at home and 4-4 on the road in 2020.
As a team, the purple and gold had one of the top offenses in the NFL during the regular season, while the defense and special teams were a few weaknesses on the squad in 2020.
On offense, Minnesota ranked in the top 10 in multiple offensive categories, including having a high-powered running game that was countered nicely by a talented attack through the air.
On defense, that’s where the team took a big step back and allowed opponents to outscore them more often than not throughout the year. Additionally, with special teams, an area that was probably the biggest weakness on the team in the final few games of the season, Minnesota struggled outside of a solid offensive group throughout its 16-game schedule.
With the season now over with and the offseason officially here for the Vikings, let’s go back and look at the season that was for the purple and gold and pick out some positives and negatives that occurred in 2020.
Negative: Injuries occurring early and often
One thing that really hurt the Vikings since the start of the season was injuries throughout the team, specifically on the defensive side of the ball.
Minnesota came into the new year already having some new faces take over in key roles on the defensive side of the ball, but injuries early on and throughout the regular season didn’t help in getting those players into the mix of things to help the team on defense.
Right out of the gate, the Vikings found out they would be without two key pieces on the defensive line going into the 2020 campaign. Throughout the offseason and in training camp, Minnesota dealt with star defensive end Danielle Hunter dealing with a neck injury that ended up resulting in him having surgery and ending his season before it could even begin.
Shortly after, one of the important offseason signings in free agency on the front line of the defense, that being veteran defensive tackle Michael Pierce, opted out of the 2020 season with concerns over COVID-19.
Those two absences left some big holes on the defensive side of the ball for Minnesota, but the injuries didn’t stop there. Throughout the regular season, the Vikings also saw injuries to key starters such as linebackers Anthony Barr (torn pectoral muscle) and Eric Kendricks (calf), cornerbacks Mike Hughes (neck), Cameron Dantzler (hamstring) and Kris Boyd (shoulder), tight end Kyle Rudolph (foot), safety George Iloka (knee), among others.
Those injuries, among the other week-to-week injuries that occurred, put the Vikings behind the 8-ball right away and throughout the year, resulting in multiple key contributors sitting out for an extended period of time.