SEATTLE — The video reel from this disaster of a season for the Minnesota Vikings won’t be pretty.
Each new blooper will top the previous one. A special teams gaffe will follow an interception. A wide receiver drop will surface after an offensive lineman gets turnstiled.
These clips will need accompanying music. Something that gives the mess a little bit of life. How about the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme song? It would go perfectly with the latest debacle.
On Sunday, a young, explosive and disciplined Seattle Seahawks team blanked a Vikings squad that featured none of those characteristics. J.J. McCarthy was not playing quarterback, but that did not prevent the offensive ineptitude from hitting a new rock bottom in a 26-0 beatdown.
The Vikings couldn’t run the football. They also couldn’t throw. They entered the game with the most turnovers in the NFL and left it with even more room at the top spot.
“What’s the frustration level?” safety Harrison Smith said. “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s a frustration level at this point. It’s just bad ball.”
Minnesota began November with a bang, but beating the Detroit Lions feels like a lifetime ago. The ensuing wreckage has frequently nudged up against history.
Earlier this month, the Vikings committed eight false starts against the Baltimore Ravens. It was something that hadn’t been done by a home team in multiple decades. Afterward, offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said he was embarrassed.
Last week in Green Bay, McCarthy’s play further cemented his place among the most inefficient starts to a quarterback’s career in decades.
On Sunday, the Vikings were shut out for the first time in 18 years. The 2007 Vikings, quarterbacked by Brooks Bollinger, lost 34-0 to the Packers. This result was similarly unsurprising, which says everything you need to know about the offensive abomination that has persisted all season.
“In no way, shape or form can we play offensive football like that and try to win at a place like this,” head coach and play caller Kevin O’Connell said.
Hope for the 2025 season faded long ago, both externally and internally. Now, the more relevant conversation is about the future. Given the way this season has played out, what is there to cling to moving forward?
The question may seem harsh, but it feels relevant. The team has an aging roster, no certainty at quarterback and a bevy of impactful decisions to be made by a leadership group whose plan for this season has flopped.
Sunday was not the first time this was starkly on display. However, facing off against Seattle did show what it takes to have a competent offense.
Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold did not generate huge plays throughout the afternoon. But he didn’t throw an interception. And he certainly didn’t turn a 4th-and-1 red zone situation into a touchdown for the opposition like undrafted rookie Max Brosmer, who made his first career start at quarterback with McCarthy in the concussion protocol, did.
This play will feature prominently in the season’s worst moments mix. The Vikings were still in the fight, trailing just 3-0 with 3:41 remaining in the first half. Rather than kick the field goal, O’Connell opted to go for it. Why not run instead of throw?
“We’d struggled to run it up until that point at the point of attack,” O’Connell said. “So, we wanted to see if we could get Max out on the perimeter with a run-pass option.”
Immediately, Seahawks edge rusher DeMarcus Lawrence blitzed Brosmer. The 24-year-old quarterback tried to escape Lawrence’s grasp, but at the last second, he heaved the ball underhanded directly to linebacker Ernest Jones IV, who had a clear path to the end zone 85 yards away.
The wheels fell off from there. Brosmer sailed throws. Right guard Will Fries couldn’t hold up in pass protection. Running back Aaron Jones fumbled. Minnesota’s offensive output, via EPA per play, ranked as the second-worst performance of any team this season, behind only a Week 7 game in which the Las Vegas Raiders were shut out.
If it weren’t for a defense that kept the Seahawks from scoring an offensive touchdown until the fourth quarter, the bloodbath would have been even more difficult to watch.
Brosmer finished with four interceptions. Until an 11-yard run from Jordan Mason in the fourth quarter, the Vikings possessed a rushing success rate of 0 percent. Justin Jefferson, who averaged 96.5 receiving yards per game in his career before this season, hauled in two passes for 4 yards. Four yards. The last time Jefferson recorded 100 yards on American soil, the Vikings were playing here at Lumen Field last December.
“Didn’t expect it,” right tackle Brian O’Neill said of the offensive performance this season. “You don’t plan on it. You don’t plan on the issues sticking around.”
The Vikings didn’t expect this season to go so poorly, but that doesn’t mean some of their offseason choices weren’t faulty. They knew the injury risk that came with center Ryan Kelly. He has played in only five games this season, and he exited Sunday with a hip-flexor injury.
They knew their secondary was imperfect. They viewed their best approach as signing interior defenders capable of rushing the passer to limit quarterbacks’ time to connect on deep passes.
They knew their quarterback was young and raw. Yet they thought he’d be able to navigate trouble in what they saw as a quarterback-friendly system, even though the system is mainly geared toward airing the football out.
Many of these half-measure solutions were tied to a lack of draft hits. Minnesota has not added one defensive starter via the draft since 2021. The team’s most dynamic pick, Jordan Addison, has been suspended for off-field issues. He also has six drops this season. Edge rusher Dallas Turner may be developing, left guard Donovan Jackson looks promising and kicker Will Reichard has excelled — but the cupboard is otherwise pretty bare.
That fact, paired with the team being well over the cap for 2026, complicates the future. Minnesota will have levers to pull with restructures, but doing so with expensive, oft-injured players like left tackle Christian Darrisaw is how the balance sheet becomes bloated, affecting future years as well. The Vikings may be in line for a premium pick in the 2026 NFL Draft. But will that be enough to transform the quality of this team into an immediate contender for a regime that will be entering its fifth season without a playoff win?
The best thing the Vikings have going for them might be Jefferson, who has handled this situation about as well as a player in his prime — and with high standards — could. What does he think of all of this? How much faith does he have in the direction after a 4-8 season that might very well place the Vikings back in the find-a-capable-quarterback cycle?
He left the Vikings’ locker room after the game Sunday night without answering questions. Jefferson said nothing — and everything.
