Vikings Fans Feel Good About Playoff Chances

At least, according to our survey for this week

We’ve got a pretty long time to wait until things kick off in Glendale between the Los Angeles Rams and our Minnesota Vikings, so while we’ve got some time to kill we can look at the results of our SB Nation Reacts poll for this week. We’ve got a lot of things to go over, so let’s get to it.

First off, I want to point out one of the questions from the national polls that get sent out each week, because it shows the Vikings getting a little bit of respect from NFL fans as a whole. The question of which team was the biggest positive surprise of this season has been, and the Vikings were well-represented in the voting.

The Vikings were deemed to be the second-biggest positive surprise of the season, trailing only the Washington Commanders. There’s no shame in finishing second in this one, quite frankly. Nobody expected anything from the Commanders this season, much the same as they didn’t expect anything from Minnesota. Obviously, I’d lean towards our side given the choice, but there’s no shame in picking Washington here, I don’t think.

Now, we move to our regular weekly question about how confident people are in the direction the team is going. The number is a slight bit lower after the rough loss on Sunday night, but it wasn’t a preciptious drop or anything like that.

Of those who responded to our poll, 90% of them still believe the Vikings are heading in the right direction. Sure, it would have been nice to win on Sunday night and have this week off, but this team still put together a 14-3 season and are in a pretty good place, all things considered.

That leads to our next question, whether or not you believe this season to be a successful one for the Minnesota Vikings. I was curious to see how folks would feel about this one, but common sense appears to have prevailed in the results.

More than three-fourths of those who responded to our poll said that they believe this season has been a successful one as it stands right now. Beyond that, eighteen percent said that this team needs to win a playoff game in order for it to be a successful year, while a combined six percent says that the Vikings need to at least reach the Super Bowl to classify 2024 as a successful season.

Again, just about nothing was expected of this team going into the season. Sure, we’d love to see the team win the Super Bowl, and they’re currently one of just nine teams who still have an opportunity to do just that. But this has been a great season no matter how you slice it, in my opinion.

We also asked about some of the numbers connected to tonight’s game, courtesy of our friends from FanDuel. First, we asked what you think of the point spread and whether the Vikings will cover it tonight.

According to Vikings fans like us, which will differ from a graphic that I’ll put up here in a bit, a very nice percentage of them think that the Vikings will win this one by at least two points. (Yeah, I’m leaving the standard internet joke there for others to make.) Of the remainder, 26% are of the impression that the Vikings are going to outright lose this game, while 5% are trying to call their shot by declaring that the Vikings will win by one point.

We also asked what you think about the scoring potential for this one, particularly the over/under.

A little more than half of our respondents expect this game to hit the “under,” with 54% leaning in that direction. The other 46% are expecting the game to hit the over. With that number being 47.5 and my prediction for tonight being 27-20, that means I’m leaning. . .does public math. . .under!

Now, our friends from FanDuel also asked the betting public at large what they think of tonight’s game, and once again there’s a lot of faith being placed in the Vikings in this one.

Of those who are going to be putting their money down on Monday night’s game, two-thirds of them are expecting the Vikings to cover the number, while the other one-third are putting their money on the Rams. I’m not sure how much the spread moving to 2.5 points would make to these folks, but that’s where it’s sitting right now.

Those are all of our SB Nation Reacts results for this week, folks. Here’s hoping that the wave of positivity that we’re seeing in this post will carry into tonight’s contest and the Vikings can come out with a playoff win.