Vikings Offense Suffers 'Self-Inflicteds' in Loss at Rams
The Rams finally defended Justin Jefferson on third-and-goal with 6:29 to play in the third quarter.
Los Angeles tried earlier, of course, but with no luck. "Jets," the fifth-leading receiver in Vikings history, put on a spectacle for a national audience on Thursday Night Football, catching his first eight targets.
But the third-down stop was enough. It forced Minnesota to settle for three; the Rams took their first lead approximately four minutes later and never glanced back as they defeated the Vikings 30-20 in Head Coach Kevin O'Connell's first visit to SoFi Stadium since winning Super Bowl LVI under Sean McVay.
"We just didn't sustain enough, and we weren't on the field enough," O'Connell said after the game. "I mean 50 plays, again, when it's a game like this and their offense is making some plays and sustaining drives and kind of eating a lot of clock it can feel like an awfully short game to you as an offense when you're either scoring or going backwards, either self-inflicted or sacks, so we've got to just try to find a way to mitigate that."
Minnesota's fall to 5-2 featured trading first-half touchdowns for second-half field goals; committing a laundry list of "self-inflicteds" (a trend recently) that O'Connell mentioned was exacerbated by the noise level and struggles with the cadence; and costly decisions after a couple big connections.
Four plays before the Rams forced an incompletion in the end zone with bracket coverage on Jefferson, the Vikings star submitted the top highlight of the Week 8 kickoff game, bobbling then pinning a 27-yard pass on top of his shoulder pad with one hand. The next play call, unfortunately, had an opposite effect.
Thinking McVay was going to unfurl his challenge flag, the Vikings hastily rushed to the line, snapped and handed off to running back Aaron Jones, Sr. The Rams head coach opted not to challenge, and Jones was dropped for a loss of 4, sapping offensive momentum.
Jones got 3 back on a second-down run, and Jefferson slipped as he was bracketed on the third-down play, resulting in his only target that didn't end in a catch.
That led to a Will Reichard 23-yard field goal.
"I feel like these last two losses [have] just been self-inflicted," Jefferson stated. "The non-execution on certain plays that we need is definitely something that hurts us in the long run."
A negative outcome on even one snap can be one too many.
Minnesota was penalized nine times – five gifted the Rams offense a new set of downs, by the way – and Sam Darnold lost 28 yards on three sacks, the second-to-last of which happened with 5:10 left and killed a prospective game-tying drive that began with his 16th completion this year of 25-plus yards.
Reichard was called upon again near the start of the fourth quarter after the Vikings offense fizzled deep in Rams territory. This time, Jones made a sweet catch for 25 yards along the sideline. But then O'Connell burned his first of three timeouts, while already in field-goal range, and the offense gained just 6 yards.
The rookie kicker drew the Vikings within one point instead of Minnesota possibly retaking the lead.
"That's definitely something that we don't like," Jefferson said about the red-zone shortcomings. "If you look at the scoreboard, we put seven instead of three a couple of those times, this game would be totally different."
Jefferson saved his best game so far this season for everybody to see, finishing with eight grabs for 115 yards. Unbelievably, eight is not a typo. He wasn't involved on a single pass after that goal-line sequence.
Jets can't do everything, but he does a lot. With 10 games remaining in his fifth NFL campaign, he moved past Randy Moss as the league's all-time leader for 100-yard games over a player's first five seasons (31).
"We just need to just stay on people's necks," Jefferson explained. "Just go out there and execute every single play for 60 minutes. That's what it comes down to – who wants it more at the end of the day? … No team is just a sad team, and we're just gonna walk all over [them]. That's not gonna happen."
The truth is that Minnesota must learn how to finish games the way it starts them.
Darnold capped an 8-play, 70-yard, game-opening drive with the type of patience that is defining his Renaissance seventh NFL season, pattering his feet in a clean pocket as tight end Josh Oliver uncovered on a shallow crossing route from the Rams' 5-yard line. Darnold flicked his wrist for a simple touchdown.
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