Monday Morning Mailbag: Jefferson's Monster Rookie Season & Vikings Inconsistencies

[Viktor]

Yes, the Vikings are currently in a playoff spot after beating the Jaguars, and coupled with the Cardinals loss to the Rams on Sunday afternoon. Both Minnesota and Arizona are 6-6, but the Vikings hold the tiebreaker there.


But there are still four games to go, and three of them are on the road, meaning the Vikings still have plenty of work to do in order to get to the dance. You could argue that there's no superior NFC team this season (maybe it's New Orleans), but the Vikings certainly wouldn't fall into the upper echelon of NFC teams.


Here's what Kirk Cousins said Sunday as the Vikings enter the final four games of the 2020 season.


"Now we enter the final four games of the regular season — the fourth quarter if you will — and we've got to be at our best in the fourth quarter," Cousins said. "We have some good teams we're going to have to play, and we're going to need our best football to have a shot to get into the playoffs."


The Vikings, to date, probably haven't played their best football yet. And there's still time to make that happen. But it's going to require a lot more consistency than we saw on Sunday, and that we've seen for most of this season.


We won the game of errors!!


— Joe P.


This is a good way to sum up Sunday's win, and close out this week's Mailbag. No, Sunday wasn't pretty, and Vikings coaches and players know it.


But just as I mentioned last week, you take wins any and every way you can get them in the NFL, even if they won't hang in an art museum one day.


Through 12 games, eight of Minnesota's games have been decided by eight or fewer points. They have won five of those (at Houston, at Green Bay, at Chicago; against Carolina and Jacksonville) and lost the other three (Tennessee, at Seattle and against Dallas).


That's not too bad of a record in such close games, but you can bet Zimmer would prefer to have a little more cushion at the end than these frantic one-possession games.


And with four games to go, it's likely we see more close ones down the stretch. So hop along for the wild roller-coaster ride that is the 2020 Vikings and hope the twists and turns end up with a playoff berth.