The visitors’ locker room at Ford Field in Detroit was nearly silent last weekend as the Vikings tried to turn the page on a 31-9 loss to the Detroit Lions.
Instead of earning the No. 1 seed in the NFC and ensuring the road to the Super Bowl went through U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, the Vikings were suddenly heading on the road for the first round of the playoffs.
The fallout was enough for head coach Kevin O’Connell to tap into his memory bank. Though he rarely brings up his time with the Los Angeles Rams unprompted, the similarities were too much for him to ignore.
“I was a part of a team in 2021,” O’Connell said. “We lost our last game and found a way to do what we needed to do to have a chance to play for a world championship.”
If the Vikings need a blueprint, those Rams provided one with their Super Bowl run.
It also helps that O’Connell, offensive coordinator Wes Phillips, running back Cam Akers, receiver Brandon Powell, and tight end Johnny Mundt were all a part of that that experience with the Rams.
“We didn’t get the result we wanted in that last (regular-season) game, and we were able to, in many ways, do what we’re attempting to do this week,” O’Connell said. “We’ve got to make sure we find a way to do a lot of those things in a single elimination tournament to give ourselves the best chance to win a game.”
After losing to the San Francisco 49ers in overtime of the regular season finale, the Rams entered the playoffs with nobody expecting much out of them. Not only did the road to the Super Bowl get much more challenging, period, the Rams had lost six straight game to the 49ers.
The narrative suggested that if the Rams had to play the 49ers at any point in the playoffs, they would succumb to them once again. Naturally, the Rams dispatched the Arizona Cardinals, then beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to set up a rematch with the 49ers.
“We really didn’t have the right formula or the right answer,” Phillips. “We were able to kind of put together a good plan for the NFC Championship Game and we were able to get that win.”
In the Super Bowl, the Rams defeated the Cincinnati Bengals, pulling ahead in the final minutes, when star quarterback Matthew Stafford found star receiver Cooper Kupp in the back of the end zone.
That moment on the biggest stage was a microcosm of the Super Bowl run as the Rams consistently got production from their best players, with Stafford, Kupp, and star defensive tackle Aaron Darnold, among a handful of others, stepping up whenever they needed it.
As he reflected on the Super Bowl run, O’Connell admitted that the Rams also needed a fair share of good fortune.
“I can think back to 7 to 10 plays throughout the course of that run,” O’Connell said. “If any of those go differently, who knows what happens?”
Some notable inflection points for the Rams included a furious comeback led by the Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady in the divisional round that came up a little bit short, and maybe most notably, a dropped interception by 49ers safety Jaquiski Tartt in the NFC Championship Game that loomed large down the stretch.
The path wasn’t easy for the Rams, nor will it be for the Vikings. That said, the loss to the 49ers wasn’t a death sentence for the Rams, and the loss to the Lions doesn’t have to be for the Vikings.
“We knew it was the playoffs; we couldn’t lose because we didn’t want to go home,” Powell said. “Just being on that team and seeing how well everybody executed was a big thing for me. You have to have execution to win these type of games. I think we’ve got the players on this team to get it done.”
Fittingly, for the Vikings to replicate that Super Bowl run, they will first need to start by beating the Rams.
“We’ve got experience having things not go our way very recently,” O’Connell said. “What are we going to do about it as a team to make sure we go play the kind of game we want to play in a game like this?”
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