The Minnesota Vikings’ passing game was not exactly a work of art in their 23-10 victory over the Detroit Lions on Christmas Day. Anyone who watched the game can assure you of that. The aenimic nature of the offense and the fact that the Vikings won anyway just shows that there are a lot of different ways to win in the National Football League, and the Vikings found one of them on Thursday afternoon in Minneapolis.
But how rare is it that a team wins with a passing “attack” this bad? Well, there are a couple of stats that we can point to that illustrate just how infrequently something like this happens.
Max Brosmer finished the game with 51 passing yards, but since he took 48 yards worth of sacks in the seven times the Lions got to him, the Vikings finished the game with a net total of three passing yards. Three. Your living room is more than three yards wide, just for reference. I’m assuming it is, anyway. Honestly, some of you may have a bathroom that’s more than three yards from one side to the other.
According to Kevin Seifert of ESPN, the Vikings are just the third team in the last forty years to win a game with fewer than ten net passing yards. They join the 1987 St. Louis Cardinals, who had four net passing yards in a 24-19 victory over New Orleans, and the 2006 Houston Texans, who actually had minus-5 net passing yards in a 23-14 win over Oakland. And winning such a game by double digits is even more rare. You have to go back to 1974 to find the last instance of that, when the Green Bay Packers defeated the Los Angeles Rams, 17-6, in a game where their net passing yardage was minus-1 yard.
And then there’s Brosmer. According to stat service OptaStats, Brosmer is the only quarterback in the Super Bowl era to play an entire game, finish with fewer than 70 passing yards, take at least seven sacks. . .and still come out with a victory. It helps when you manage to not turn the ball over, which was a vast improvement from his first start against Seattle (when he threw four interceptions), and the other team’s offense is giving the ball away six times.
I think everyone understands that what we saw on Christmas Day was a real anomaly in terms of how things usually go in the National Football League. But, as Vikings fans, we’ve seen our fair share of anomalies in the past, and it’s sort of nice to be on the right end of one of them for a change.
See More:
