There are times when a team can lose a primetime game and feel hard-done-by. A good squad can have an off-night, or run into a particularly bad matchup, and suddenly millions of Monday Night Football viewers have incorrectly concluded that those fellas are bad at football. The Vikings, who came into Monday's game against the Bills with a 6-1 record, offered no such misrepresentation. Anyone who watched that game came away with a precise understanding of who the Minnesota Vikings are: a team that can't move the ball to save its life.
I shudder to think of the hypothetical casual fan who was excited to tune into a game between two six-win teams, only to be treated to a game that, despite being close in a technical sense, never really offered any drama. The Vikings are to blame for that, as they managed to lose 23-6 while putting yet another inept offensive performance on tape. Minnesota finished the game with 178 total yards and nine first downs, and possessed the ball for 17:28, their lowest mark in franchise history. That was somehow all they could manage against the 30th ranked pass defense in the league.
The star of this horrible show was Carson Wentz, who was forced into starting quarterback duty thanks to Kyler Murray's hamstring injury. Wentz completed eight of his 25 passes for 81 yards, and threw two interceptions. It was a historically bad performance, one so vivid in its awful particulars that Joe Buck and Troy Aikman were able to set aside any hard feelings they might currently have for each other and join in channeling their disgust at the field:
Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on the disastrous quarterback play on MNF from the Vikings' Carson Wentz. 🏈🎙️
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social) 2026-11-10T04:10:28.897Z
Any team that starts Wentz in 2026 is asking for trouble, but Monday's meltdown was not some kind of aberration that can be easily laid at his feet. Wentz has started two games, Murray's started six, and in all of those the Vikings have played horrible offense. They've gained more than 300 total yards just twice, in wins against the Dolphins and Saints, have yet to throw for more than 213 yards in a single game, and have posted fewer than 150 passing yards in four games. They have 11 total touchdowns, which has them tied with the winless Chargers for the worst mark in the league. Every win this team has can be attributed entirely to Brian Flores's defense.
Murray and Wentz are obviously nobody's idea of an elite quarterback room, but I think the Vikings are long past the stage where their offensive problems can be blamed solely on the roster. The theory of this team is that head coach Kevin O'Connell is a particularly talented offensive schemer and quarterback tutor, one who can get a tune out of cheap, overlooked quarterbacks and free up money to be spent on the rest of the roster. Support for this theory comes almost entirely from the 2024 season, when super-bust Sam Darnold hooked up with O'Connell, became one of the best quarterbacks in the league, and led the Vikings to a 14-3 season. O'Connell's share of the glory of that season has lessened every day since—Darnold went on to win a Super Bowl with Seattle last year, and O'Connell has failed to work his magic on any of the Vikings' subsequent quarterbacks.
O'Connell has presided over 25 games since Darnold left, and has cycled through a handful of starting quarterbacks over that time. J.J. McCarthy started 10 games last year, Wentz started five, and Max Brosmer chipped in with two. Throw Murray into that group and you don't exactly have a list of quarterbacks that would be the envy of many other teams in the league, but what you do have is pretty wide range of play styles. If O'Connell really is a quarterback whisperer, it wouldn't be too much to expect him to figure out a way to move the ball up and down the field with at least one of them. McCarthy is a young playmaking quarterback with decent pedigree, and O'Connell couldn't mold him into anything. He has so far been unable to make any use of Murray's mobility, and whatever's left of Wentz's arm strength and stature has proven useless to him. Nobody expected O'Connell to turn any of these guys into Pro Bowlers, but it's not too much to ask for more than 11 total offensive touchdowns, or 160 passing yards per game.
The Vikings are 6-2, and yet their season is on the verge of collapse. The blame for that starts with O'Connell, who by this point has had more than enough opportunities to demonstrate his value to the franchise. The front office, meanwhile, has to decide whether they want to stand by and watch O'Connell and his quarterbacks guide the team off a cliff, or if they want to try and bail him out with a trade. Maybe they could pry Justin Herbert away from the Chargers, and bank on the fact that a partnership between a quarterback and head coach whose reputations have completely bottomed out has nowhere to go but up.
