The Cold Truth

The Seahawks throttled the Vikings by 31 last month but aren’t huge favorites in Sunday’s playoff rematch. Here's a look at how Minnesota could pull off the upset. Plus six surprise players and a wild-card preview


The blowout came a little more than a month ago, and it was about as decisive a win as one team can have over another. Seattle’s 38-7 beatdown of Minnesota in Week 13 is fresh enough that for this weekend’s playoff rematch, it feels like the Seahawks should be as decided a favorite as we see on wild-card weekend.

Digging into some of the numbers, though, that isn’t exactly true. Let’s start in Las Vegas, where the Vikings are only five-point underdogs. Sure, they’re playing at home, but that isn’t an overwhelming spread. A Minnesota win would be the biggest playoff upset in … two whole seasons. As someone who’s lost plenty of money to those guys on The Strip, I can attest to them being pretty smart, which means in some scenario grounded in reality, the Vikings can keep this game close. The question, then, is how.

Minnesota had the league’s fifth-best scoring defense this season (18.9 points per game) thanks in large part to a collection of budding or realized stars at every level of Mike Zimmer’s unit. When Russell Wilson ran roughshod over them in December, many of those stars were roaming the sideline in sweatpants. They were missing Harrison Smith, the blitzing, pick-sixing, do-it-all man at the back end of Minnesota’s defense, who has as diverse a skillset as any safety in football. Linebacker Anthony Barr, a similar type of renaissance defender at linebacker, was gone too. And nose tackle Linval Joseph, who might have been the Vikings’ best defender this season, was out with a hip injury.

Having Smith against a newly terrifying Seahawks passing game will help, and the Vikings will begin their stand against Russell Wilson with Joseph and Barr healthy too. The only time Wilson has looked mortal in the past six weeks was in a surprising Week 15 loss to the Rams. St. Louis took the approach that typically works best when dealing with a quarterback throwing actual fire—they put out the flames by stomping them into the dirt. Wilson was sacked “only” four times, but total hits equaled a baker’s dozen. In short, the Rams terrorized him.

As the season went along, Seattle’s offensive line improved on its frightful start, but that improvement was relative. It meant going from 31st in pressure rate from Weeks 1 through 8 to 26th from Weeks 9 through 17. The Seahawks’ offensive line is still the area that can short-circuit the team, and in Minnesota they’re getting one of the best pass-rush units in football. The Vikings finished the season with the fourth-highest pressure rate in the league, but what might be most concerning is that Minnesota is at its best when bringing extra guys. Mike Zimmer actually blitzes at a below-average rate, but when he does, it works. No team got pressure more often on blitzes this season than Minnesota, at 49.4 percent.

That’s where the returning Barr and Joseph will factor. Defensive end Everson Griffen has had a fine season, Minnesota is at its most dangerous when it’s getting pressure on the interior with Joseph, Tom Johnson and Shariff Floyd doing damage while Barr simultaneously tears past the center on the blitz. The interior of Seattle’s line happens to be its most glaring deficiency. All that combines to create the one area where Minnesota has a decided advantage. It may be the only one, but it could also be a significant one.

Finding reasons for hope on the other side of the ball isn’t as easy. The Seahawks have one of the best defenses in football—again—and are equally impressive against the run and the pass. Teddy Bridgewater and the passing game are going to have a tough road, and relying on Adrian Peterson being superhuman might not be enough. So instead of searching for rays of light, maybe it’s better to step further into the dark.

At kickoff in Minneapolis on Sunday, the temperature is supposed to be hovering around 0 degrees. The Vikings are offering both free Caribou coffee and hand warmers to fans while encouraging them to bring blankets. On top of this sounding miserable for everyone involved, Brian Nemhauser of Hawk Bloggeralso found that, not surprisingly, for games that happen in near-subzero temperature offense falters and the ball ends up with the other team considerably more often than it does in warm weather.

For Minnesota, that has to be considered a plus. The lesser team typically makes out better when a game is mucked up, especially if that team is dependent on running and defense, as the Vikings are. It may not seem like much, but if the Vikings can make Russell Wilson feel the cold and use that defense and the elements to pry away a few extra possessions, they could steal a game not many expect them to win.