Minnesota Vikings

Minnesota Vikings, American professional football team founded in 1961 and based in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota, that plays in the National Football Conference (NFC) of the National Football League (NFL). The Vikings have appeared in four Super Bowls (1970, 1974, 1975, and 1977), losing each time.

(Read Walter Camp’s 1903 Britannica essay on inventing American football.)

The Vikings have a long and storied past, despite having won only one NFL championship, in 1969, the year before the NFL–American Football League merger. The Vikings’ most prominent period of success dates from the hiring of head coach Bud Grant in 1967. Grant, a future member of the Hall of Fame, guided the Vikings to all four of their Super Bowl appearances over the course of his career. His Vikings teams of the 1970s featured a tenacious defensive line known as the “Purple People Eaters,” which produced two Hall of Fame members (Alan Page and Carl Eller) and an efficient passing attack led by another future Hall of Fame member, quarterback Fran Tarkenton. Tarkenton paved the way for scrambling quarterbacks by being one of the first signal-callers to use his legs to make plays. The Vikings qualified for the playoffs in 10 of the 11 seasons between 1968 and 1978, but their 0–4 Super Bowl record is matched only by that of the Buffalo Bills teams of the 1990s.

The Vikings fell back into the NFL pack in the 1980s, a decade capped by a disastrous 1989 trade with the Dallas Cowboys that netted Minnesota underachieving running back Herschel Walker and gave Dallas draft choices that were used to select future NFL superstars Emmitt Smith and Darren Woodson, among others. The Vikings teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s featured an explosive offense, which starred running back Robert Smith and wide receivers Cris Carter and Randy Moss. The 1998 Vikings squad scored a then-NFL-record 556 points during the regular season on its way to a 15–1 record but was upset by the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC championship game.

In 2007 first-year running back Adrian Peterson, on his way to a Pro Bowl selection, set the record for most rushing yards in a single game, which provided a ray of hope for Minnesota’s fans. The Vikings qualified for the playoffs in 2008 and, after adding quarterback Brett Favre in the offseason, did so again in 2009. Favre led the Vikings to the NFC championship game the following January, where the team lost a close contest to the New Orleans Saints. Favre’s play fell off markedly the following season, and the Vikings struggled to a losing record. The team started three different quarterbacks in 2011, which contributed to the Vikings’ tying a club record with 13 losses that season.

Led by a remarkable 2,097 rushing yards from Peterson—who had torn both the anterior cruciate ligament and the medial collateral ligament in his left knee in the Vikings’ penultimate game in 2011—the team rebounded to win 10 games and earn a playoff berth in 2012, but it fell to the Packers in the first round. The following year the Vikings returned to the bottom of the divisional standings. In 2015 the team won 11 games and captured a division title but lost its opening playoff contest in heartbreaking fashion when kicker Blair Walsh missed a last-minute 27-yard field goal.

In 2017 the Vikings tied for the best record in the NFL by going 13–3. In the postseason the team pulled off one of the most thrilling playoff wins in league history, scoring a winning 61-yard touchdown as time expired in the fourth quarter of Minnesota’s divisional-round victory over the Saints. However, the Vikings were unable to harness that momentum in the NFC championship game, as they were soundly beaten by the Philadelphia Eagles. One of the Super Bowl favorites heading into the 2018 season, the Vikings had a disappointing year, winning just eight games and failing to even qualify for the playoffs. Minnesota bounced back in 2019, winning 10 games to qualify for the postseason, where they upset the Saints on the road before losing to the San Francisco 49ers in the divisional round.

After missing the playoffs for several seasons, in 2022 the Vikings hired Kevin O’Connell, an offensive specialist, as their new head coach. He oversaw a promising 8–1 start to the season, and the team finished with a 13–4 record and earned a playoff berth. However, they lost to the New York Giants in the wild card round. Minnesota regressed in 2023, winning only seven games, and in the offseason the team parted ways with longtime quarterback Kirk Cousins.