Minnesota’s microscopic playoff hopes were officially extinguished Sunday afternoon when the Bears beat Cleveland, ensuring the Vikings’ season will end in Week 18.

As much was effectively determined after the Vikings were waxed in Seattle two weeks prior. It’s why a portion of the fan base couldn’t get overly excited about a shutout win over Washington last week and were equally conflicted for Sunday’s primetime showdown with Dallas.

To tank or to not tank?

In the NFL, is that even a question?

“Tanking” is a refrain more aptly saved for the NBA.  Frankly, it’s hard to do in the NFL.

It’s not as applicable in a season that provides with only 17 opportunities in which players can prove themselves each fall. In a league where contracts feature minimal guarantees, meaning guys are always playing for their financial future. Most players aren’t going to be happy if they’re held out with a minor injury. And the rosters simply aren’t deep enough to hold out healthy bodies, anyway.

Football is also a sport where if you go at anything less than full speed with laser focus, you open yourself up to a higher potential for injury. Pride comes into play, as well. You think Justin Jefferson isn’t going to do everything in his power to reach the 1,000-yard plateau this season?

If the best players are out there, you’re going to get their best.

About the only cord teams can pull to attempt to lessen their chances of winning a game is to change quarterbacks. We’ve seen organizations do that at the end of seasons to give a younger player an opportunity or to prevent a veteran from complicating a contract situation with an injury. And, in turn, the move frequently helps produce losses.

That opportunity doesn’t exist for the Vikings, who are already playing their second-year signal caller. J.J. McCarthy, if healthy, is going to be under center for Minnesota for the season’s duration, for better or worse. The snaps give the 22-year-old more experience and gives the Vikings more data to evaluate as they head into the offseason.

Minnesota is going to push full throttle through the finish line, or at least until Week 18. And is there much harm in that? Realistically, the Vikings are going to draft somewhere between 10-16 in Round 1.

Would you rather draft 10th? Sure. Is there a massive difference between the two slots? Not really. Evaluating and selecting prospects and moving around the board via trades are such inexact sciences that once you move outside of the top five – where the prospective franchise quarterbacks and left tackles reside – it’s all somewhat of a crapshoot.

The more concrete advantage of a poor finish is the schedule it locks in for your following season. Finishing last in your division means you’ll face last-place teams in three other divisions in 2026. Three extra wins can make all the difference in a 17-game season.

The NFC North is such a juggernaut, the Vikings have a fourth-place finish all but assured. Which means any damages done for Minnesota via wins picked up between now and the end of the season are nominal, at best. And there’s something to be said for gaining positive traction over the final quarter of the campaign. Not only for McCarthy, but for the team at large as it hopes to bounce back for a brighter 2026.

Tanking isn’t possible, anyway. The Vikings may as well charge forward, full speed ahead.

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ARLINGTON, Texas — This is pretty much as close as veteran running back Aaron Jones can get to a homecoming in the NFL. He grew up in El Paso, Texas, which is roughly 600 miles away from Arlington, Texas.

Though his hometown certainly isn’t close in proximity, Jones said he was expecting more than 30 people to be in attendance when the Vikings played the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night at AT&T Stadium.

“I truly thank them for their support,” Jones said. “I’m really nothing without them.”

There’s something about Jones being relatively close to his hometown that seems to bring out the best in him. He entered the primetime matchup having rushed for 488 yards and nine touchdowns against the Cowboys in his career. That included a whopping 350 yards and eight touchdowns at AT&T Stadium alone.

“It’s definitely a special place to play,” Jones said with a smile. “I feel like I’m able to get into a groove there.”

The fact that the Vikings were playing the Cowboys under the lights also carried a personal element for him. He remembers his dad always cheering for the Cowboys when he was a kid, so naturally he started cheering for them, as well.

“I wanted to be like him, so that became my team,” Jones said. “As soon as I got drafted, we put those jerseys away.”

The only time that Jones actually got to experience the NFL in person as a kid came when his dad took him to a game at the old Texas Stadium. As awestruck as he was by getting to see the Cowboys up close, he said it also motivated him to do everything in his power to make it to the highest level.

“I think that’s kind of what helped me get here,” Jones said. “Just being able to see it with my own eyes.”

As the memories came flooding back this week, Jones made it very clear that the homecoming never gets old. He doesn’t take any part of it for granted. He added that he had plans to recognize everybody from El Paso that showed up to watch him.

“I’ll throw up the 915 as a tribute to them back home,” Jones said in reference to the El Paso area code. “Just letting them know I appreciate them, because there was a point in time where they were the only people who believed in me.”

Briefly

After being listed as questionable heading into the matchup between the Vikings and Cowboys, star left tackle Christian Darrisaw was inactive for the game. This is the latest absence caused by a knee injury that has lingered much longer than most expected. In place of Darrisaw, the Vikings turned to Justin Skule, who has notably struggled at times this season.

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Exactly 15 years later, Vikings share memories of Metrodome collapse

By JONATHAN MATTISE

When Brown University junior Mia Tretta’s phone began buzzing with an emergency alert during finals week, she tried to convince herself it couldn’t be happening again.

In 2019, Tretta had been shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Two students were killed, and she and two others were wounded. She was 15 at the time.

On Saturday, Tretta was studying in her dorm with a friend when the first message arrived, warning of an emergency at the university’s engineering building. Something must have happened, she thought, but surely it couldn’t be a shooting.

As more alerts poured in, urging people to lock down and stay away from windows, the familiarity of the language made clear what she had feared. By the end of the day, two people were dead and nine others injured in the Providence, Rhode Island, shooting that once again upended a school campus.

“No one should ever have to go through one shooting, let alone two,” Tretta said in a phone interview Sunday. “And as someone who was shot at my high school when I was 15 years old, I never thought that this was something I’d have to go through again.”

Tretta’s experience captures a grim reality for a generation now in college: students who grew up rehearsing lockdowns and active-shooter drills, only to encounter the same violence again years later on campuses that once seemed like an escape from it.

In recent years, small groups of students have endured multiple mass shootings at different stages of their education, including survivors of the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who later experienced a deadly shooting at Florida State University in April.

Another Brown student, Zoe Weissman, reflected on social media about attending middle school next door to the Parkland high school during the mass killing there. She said she was outside the middle school when the shooting happened, and heard gunshots and screams, saw first responders and then watched videos of what happened.

Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg said on Facebook that his son Ben, a junior at Brown, is safe after using furniture to barricade himself and his roommates inside their room. Greenberg survived an assassination attempt during his mayoral campaign in 2022.

After Tretta was shot in high school, she pushed for tighter gun restrictions and rose to a leadership role with the group Students Demand Action. Her advocacy took her to the White House under former President Joe Biden, and she also met with his former Attorney General Merrick Garland.

She has particularly focused on “ghost guns,” such as the one used at her high school, that can be built from parts and make it difficult to track or regulate owners.

And at Brown, Tretta had been working on a paper about the educational journeys of students who have lived through school shootings, a subject shaped by her own experience. The paper was due in a few days.

Tretta, who studies international and public affairs and education, said Saturday was the first time she’d gotten such an active shooter alert at Brown.

“I chose Brown, a place that I love, because it felt like somewhere I could finally be safe and finally, you know, be normal in this new normal that I live of a school shooting survivor,” she said. “And it’s happened again. And it didn’t have to.”

By JONATHAN MATTISE

When Brown University junior Mia Tretta’s phone began buzzing with an emergency alert during finals week, she tried to convince herself it couldn’t be happening again.

In 2019, Tretta had been shot in the abdomen during a mass shooting at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Two students were killed, and she and two others were wounded. She was 15 at the time.

On Saturday, Tretta was studying in her dorm with a friend when the first message arrived, warning of an emergency at the university’s engineering building. Something must have happened, she thought, but surely it couldn’t be a shooting.

As more alerts poured in, urging people to lock down and stay away from windows, the familiarity of the language made clear what she had feared. By the end of the day, two people were dead and nine others injured in the Providence, Rhode Island, shooting that once again upended a school campus.

“No one should ever have to go through one shooting, let alone two,” Tretta said in a phone interview Sunday. “And as someone who was shot at my high school when I was 15 years old, I never thought that this was something I’d have to go through again.”

Tretta’s experience captures a grim reality for a generation now in college: students who grew up rehearsing lockdowns and active-shooter drills, only to encounter the same violence again years later on campuses that once seemed like an escape from it.

In recent years, small groups of students have endured multiple mass shootings at different stages of their education, including survivors of the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who later experienced a deadly shooting at Florida State University in April.

Another Brown student, Zoe Weissman, reflected on social media about attending middle school next door to the Parkland high school during the mass killing there. She said she was outside the middle school when the shooting happened, and heard gunshots and screams, saw first responders and then watched videos of what happened.

Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg said on Facebook that his son Ben, a junior at Brown, is safe after using furniture to barricade himself and his roommates inside their room. Greenberg survived an assassination attempt during his mayoral campaign in 2022.

After Tretta was shot in high school, she pushed for tighter gun restrictions and rose to a leadership role with the group Students Demand Action. Her advocacy took her to the White House under former President Joe Biden, and she also met with his former Attorney General Merrick Garland.

She has particularly focused on “ghost guns,” such as the one used at her high school, that can be built from parts and make it difficult to track or regulate owners.

And at Brown, Tretta had been working on a paper about the educational journeys of students who have lived through school shootings, a subject shaped by her own experience. The paper was due in a few days.

Tretta, who studies international and public affairs and education, said Saturday was the first time she’d gotten such an active shooter alert at Brown.

“I chose Brown, a place that I love, because it felt like somewhere I could finally be safe and finally, you know, be normal in this new normal that I live of a school shooting survivor,” she said. “And it’s happened again. And it didn’t have to.”