Maybe the most frustrating part of the the Vikings’ 28-22 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium was the fact that the game was there for the taking.

It wasn’t a dominant effort from the defending Super Bowl champions, by any means. The eagles didn’t deliver the dagger until very late, when quarterback Jalen Hurts completed a deep pass to put the game away for good.

The result might have been different had Vikings quarterback Carson Wentz taken better care of the ball. They also were 1 for 6 in the red zone in total, settling for field goals instead of touchdowns far too often, which largely contributed to the loss.

As much as the offense was fighting it throughout the game, however, the defense wasn’t much better in key moments.

Here are some takeaways from Sunday’s loss, which dropped the Vikings to 3-3 and into last place in the NFC North:

The mistakes of Carson Wentz

It might be unfair to hold Wentz to a high standard because he’s probably best suited as a backup rather than a starter at this point in his career. That said, Wentz simply wasn’t good enough for the Vikings, even if he battled down the stretch against the Eagles. He missed a wide open touchdown on the opening drive, then followed it up by throwing an interception that was returned for a touchdown on the next drive. There were also too many times that Wentz went backwards in the red zone whether it be him getting called for intentional grounding or taking a sack. He acknowledged his shortcoming after the game and vowed to be better. That is a must for the Vikings if they want to have a chance.

The dominance of Jalen Hurts

Though he has become synonymous with the highly controversial Tush Push largely because of his legs, Hurts proved throughout the game that he can still very much beat an opposing team with his arm. He finished with a perfect 158.3 quarterback rating, completing 19 of 23 passes for 326 yards and 3 touchdowns. The performance from Hurts came at a time that his play has become a polarizing topic of conversation. Some people don’t consider him to be an elite quarterback in the NFL. His recent play against the Vikings would suggest otherwise.

The rise of Jordan Addison

It’s no secret that star receiver Justin Jefferson attracts double coverage most of the time he’s on the field. He has even occasionally seen triple coverage in his career. That might change if fellow receiver Jordan Addison continues to dominate. He’s been nothing short of spectacular for the Vikings since returning from his suspension a few weeks ago. It’s hard for opposing teams to cover Addison because he often gets to line up against single coverage. He took advantage of that against the Eagles, hauling in 9 catches for 128 yards in the game. If Addison continues to produce, Jefferson might start to draw some single coverage himself.

The struggles of Isaiah Rodgers

The film is not going to be very fun for cornerback Isaiah Rodgers to watch. As impressive as he’s been for the Vikings since signing as a free agent, he had an extremely rough game against the Eagles. Not only was he beat by receiver Devonta Smith for a 79-yard touchdown, Rodgers was also beat by receiver A.J. Brown for a 45-yard gain that effectively ended the game. This is the first time Rodgers has faced adversity since joining the Vikings. It will be interesting to see how he responds.

The excellence of Will Reichard

There aren’t enough words to describe how good kicker Will Reichard has been for the Vikings as of late. The trend continued against the Eagles as he went 5 of 5 on field goals. That included a 59-yarder that Reichard made with relative ease. He’s been a model of consistency for the Vikings game in and game out. It’s gotten to the point that every time Reichard trots on the field it’s assumed he’s going to put the ball through the uprights. His only miss over the past month and a half came in London and it might have been because the ball hit a wire in midair.

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Today is Monday, Oct. 20, the 293rd day of 2024. There are 72 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Oct. 20, 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee opened hearings into alleged Communist influence in the U.S. motion picture industry.

Also on this date:

In 1803, the U.S. Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase.

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Today in History: October 19, ‘Black Monday’ on Wall Street

In 1944, Gen. Douglas MacArthur waded ashore in his return to the Philippines against Japanese forces in World War II, fulfilling a promise he made (“I shall return”) after being ordered to evacuate the country in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1967, a jury in Meridian, Mississippi, convicted seven men of violating the civil rights of killed civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner; the seven received prison terms ranging from three to 10 years.

In 1973, in what would become known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” President Richard M. Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox; Richardson refused and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus also refused to fire Cox and resigned. Acting Attorney General Robert Bork fired Cox.

In 1973, the Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1976, 78 people were killed when the Norwegian tanker SS Frosta rammed the commuter ferry George Prince on the Mississippi River near New Orleans.

In 1977, three members of the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd, including lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, were killed along with three others in the crash of a chartered plane near McComb, Mississippi.

In 1990, three members of the rap group 2 Live Crew were acquitted by a jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, of violating obscenity laws with an adults-only concert in nearby Hollywood the previous June.

In 2011, Moammar Gadhafi, 69, Libya’s dictator for 42 years, was killed as revolutionary fighters overwhelmed his hometown of Sirte and captured the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.

In 2022, British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned after just 49 days in office when her plan for billions in tax cuts rocked financial markets and battered the value of the pound; Truss also resigned as head of the Conservative Party.

Today’s Birthdays:

Japan’s Empress Michiko is 91.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer Wanda Jackson is 88.
Baseball Hall of Famer Juan Marichal is 88.
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky is 85.
Retired MLB All-Star Keith Hernandez is 72.
Composer Thomas Newman is 70.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., is 70.
Film director Danny Boyle is 69.
Actor Viggo Mortensen is 67.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris is 61.
Actor William Zabka is 60.
Journalist Sunny Hostin (TV: “The View”) is 57.
Actor Kenneth Choi is 54.
Rapper Snoop Dogg is 54.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, is 53.
Actor John Krasinski is 46.
Rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again is 26.

The kapémni form, an abstract Lakota symbol broadly recognizable to Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains, consists of two mirrored triangles balanced in the center at their tips in an hourglass shape. The lower one represents the physical world, the upper one the sky and spiritual realm. The form was traditionally rendered in porcupine quillwork, beadwork and parfleche painting on garments and objects made by Native women.

“The kapémni really is a worldview based in Lakota philosophy that underscores our connectedness across all humanity, all plant life, all life period,” said Dyani White Hawk, a Minneapolis-based artist who is Sicangu Lakota, of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

She has integrated the kapémni motif in different media and at increasing scale and innovation over the last 15 years. “Utilizing it in my own work serves as a personal reminder over and over again to live by our values.”

White Hawk, 48, has recently received a surge of recognition in the art world for her multidisciplinary work that puts abstraction long used by the Lakota people in active conversation with elements of mid-20th century American painting including abstract expressionism, color field, hard-edge and minimalism.

Awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2023 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2024, White Hawk has high-profile commissions in progress at Kennedy International Airport and Portland International Airport in Oregon, and her work has been collected by dozens of major museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.

Strips of beadwork at Dyani White Hawk’s studio in Minneapolis, Sept. 22, 2025. White Hawk incorporates strips of bead, and other beadwork, into many of her pieces (Ben Brewer/The New York Times)

Walker exhibit

Now, a midcareer survey has opened in her hometown, Minneapolis, at the Walker Art Center called “Dyani White Hawk: Love Language,” on view through Feb. 15, with more than 90 paintings, works on paper, video installations, objects incorporating quillwork and beadwork, and several new sculptures and mosaics. It was organized in collaboration with the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the show will travel next year. The two institutions bridge the Plains homelands of the Oceti Sakowin cultural group comprising the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations whose territory long predates that national boundary.

“A driving force within what I do is about making sure that Native voices are included and heard and celebrated in our mainstream public art spaces to the equal level of all our counterparts in the field,” said White Hawk in a video interview.

She aims to remind people “of the artistic history that existed on this land base before colonization and the ways that that has been intertwined with other communities after colonization.”

Art history incomplete

Of mixed Lakota and European ancestry, White Hawk grew up in Madison, Wis., where she was raised predominantly by her mother, who was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Sandy White Hawk was adopted at 18 months by white missionaries, who moved with her to Wisconsin. As an adult, she reunited with her Lakota family and brought her children back to South Dakota for ceremonies throughout their youths.

“My mom was in that era of often forced, manipulated, very systematic removal of children,” said White Hawk, whose mother founded the First Nations Repatriation Institute and has been an activist in reconnecting separated families.

White Hawk studied art and United States and Tribal history from Indigenous perspectives at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, where she received a degree in elementary education in 2003. She learned native art history and had her first painting classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, graduating in 2008 with a bachelor of fine arts.

After these tribal colleges, she described experiencing “culture shock” when she began graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There she was introduced to Western art history that omitted discussion of everything she had studied before. Independently, she researched names that came up in class, such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and was instinctively drawn to their abstract language, she said. She was not surprised to then learn they had been influenced by Indigenous art forms.

White Hawk was simultaneously “falling in love with abstract expressionism and troubled by the narrative that abstract painting in the U.S. began in the ‘40s and ‘50s in New York at the Cedar Tavern,” said Siri Engberg, the Walker’s senior curator and director of visual arts who co-organized the survey with Tarah Hogue of the Remai Modern. From the artist’s student works to today, Engberg added, “Dyani is thinking about ways that she could counter that narrative and, more importantly, foreground the legacy of Lakota abstraction.”

The artist Dyani White Hawk works at her studio in Minneapolis, Sept. 22, 2025. Motifs of repeated patterns are frequently part of White Hawk’s work. (Ben Brewer/The New York Times)

An artistic language

In her early work, White Hawk juxtaposed dual artistic lineages. She alternated stripes painted gesturally to summon artists like Rothko, Sean Scully or Frank Stella with stripes painted in neat rows of short, parallel marks to mimic the practices of Lakota quillwork and beadwork (sometimes incorporating actual quills and beads on the surface).

In her larger “Quiet Strength” series, begun in 2016, White Hawk laid down expressionistic brushwork in gold, silver or copper. On top, she painted thousands of vertical marks in horizontal bands, coalescing into the kapémni shape or other geometric Lakota symbols, with the flicker of the underlying metallic pigments creating an aura of radiance and value.

“Dyani always says that beauty is medicinal,” said Hogue, adjunct curator of Indigenous art at Remai Modern. “Through color, through the materials, she really opens up these rich and sometimes difficult conversations about what people know about the art history and even the history of the land that they’re on.”

“Infinite We,” White Hawk’s newest sculpture making its debut at the Walker, realizes the kapémni form completely in the round. Rising 10 feet tall and five feet in diameter, the surface of the two conjoined cones is a mosaic of colorful triangles in enamel on copper that optically form shifting pinwheels and embody the idea of the kapémni as a vortex.

The motif will reappear in the guise of Oregon’s Mount Hood, represented in a monumental mosaic to be unveiled next year at the Portland International Airport. Stretching 55 feet long and 9 feet high, White Hawk’s design presents the majestic mountain silhouette adorned with a tribal beaded cape, like a snow cap, and mirrored in the sky. A striking horizon line separates sunrise and starscape.

“The whole composition is a kapémni,” said White Hawk, excited by the increasing opportunities she’s had to translate her work into permanent public installations. “I’m really grateful to be able to play this big and create this thing that honors that landscape but also stays within the realm of my artistic language and the way I see the world.”

‘Dyani White Hawk: Love Language’

What: More than 90 paintings, works on paper, video installations and objects incorporating quillwork and beadwork.

Where: Walker Art Center Galleries 1, 2, 3; 725 Vineland Pl., Minneapolis.

Tickets: Free-$18, available at walkerart.org

Accessibility: Elevators, lifts, wheelchairs and other services are available.

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There was little consternation in Minnesota when the state’s favorite professional sports team decided not sign a veteran quarterback to tutor, or at least babysit, J.J. McCarthy through his first real NFL season.

It seemed Vikings fans were ready for the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft to take the reins of a team whose fortunes seemed to be resting on the performance of its quarterback. This despite the fact that McCarthy, a national championship winner at Michigan, missed his entire rookie season because of a knee injury.

The Vikings could have re-signed Sam Darnold, a revelation as he defibrillated his career with a sensational year while leading Minnesota to a 14-3 record in 2024. But it would have been expensive, more than $40 million for a one-year franchise tag, and the Vikings were committed to McCarthy long term.

Then Aaron Rodgers, looking for one last shot at winning his second Super Bowl, threw his hat into the ring, meeting with Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell over the summer to see if there would be a fit. From the outside, it seemed like a good idea. Nope.

Now the Vikings, who spent big on free-agent deals last spring to create a soft landing for McCarthy, are 3-3 and in last place in the NFC North Division after losing to the Philadelphia Eagles, 28-22, on Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.

Sunday’s loss was largely because Carson Wentz wasn’t good enough, unable to coax his team to touchdowns on 5 of 6 drives inside the red zone and giving the Eagles their second touchdown with a pick six.

“I thought he competed,” O’Connell said.

He did, and let’s be clear. This is not a Carson Wentz issue; it’s a Vikings management issue. General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, in fact, did well to sign Wentz — idle after not being picked up by anyone after last season — the week after training camp came to a close. But he waited too long. Wentz didn’t have a training camp with anyone.

On Sunday, Wentz nearly willed the Vikings down the field as they rallied to make it a one-score game late in the fourth quarter, twice converting third-and-10 plays by scrambling for 16 and 12 yards. But after T.J. Hockenson failed to corral Wentz’s pass in the back of the end zone, the Vikings settled for a field goal that made it 28-22.

Justin Jefferson probably would have caught that pass and given the Vikings a little more life than Will Reichert’s 29-yard field goal, but it was aimed at a tight end and not one of the NFL’s best two or three wide receivers.

It would be disingenuous to actually pin Sunday’s loss on Wentz, especially when the Vikings’ defense was torched by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who passed for 326 yards and three touchdowns — the first a 37-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Brown on fourth-and-4 that made it 7-0, the second a 79-yarder to Brown on their first second-half possession that made it 21-6.

The Vikings held the Eagles’ struggling rushing attack to 45 yards on 23 carries, yet trailed the entire game because almost every time the Eagles needed a big play, the Vikings’ secondary complied.

Cornerback Isaiah Rodgers, on the wrong end of the Eagles’ 79-yard touchdown, fell on his sword, saying, “I put it on me. I put the whole team on me. I’ve gotta make those plays.”

Hey, there was plenty of blame to go around.

Center Blake Brandel was called for holding to negate a third-down touchdown pass to Jalen Nailor (Reichard field goal) and snapped the ball over his quarterback’s head for a 22-yard loss to kill another touchdown opportunity (Reichard field goal).

Josh Metellus was burned by Brown on the Eagles’ first touchdown, and Rodgers was beat by Brown on a 45-yard, fourth-down pass deep into Vikings’ territory that essentially ended the game with 1 minute, 35 second remaining.

Wentz is just the easiest target because of the pick six and an intentional grounding penalty that ended a touchdown bid with another Reichard field goal instead. That’s 11 points in a six-point loss.

Under the circumstances, Wentz has probably exceeded realistic expectations. He certainly has been better than McCarthy was in his two starts before being lost to a high-ankle sprain. It just hasn’t been good enough — and it only magnifies the team’s big offseason decision to spend more than $200 million on free agents, then to give the keys to a quarterback who is, for all intents and purposes, a rookie.

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