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The Packers, who have clinched a playoff spot but cannot catch the Bears for the division title, plan to play third-string quarterback Clayton Tune and rest starters against the Vikings, who will try to salvage a winning record from a season they began with hopes of contending in the NFC.
They have won four games in a row to get to 8-8; they have played three of those knowing they had already been eliminated from the playoff race.
If one drive, maybe even one play, had gone differently, the Vikings’ regular-season finale would have markedly higher stakes.
Had the Bears’ Devin Duvernay not returned a kickoff 56 yards late in the fourth quarter on Nov. 16 to set up Cairo Santos’ winning field goal, the Vikings would be 9-7. Their game against the Packers would likely be a nationally televised late-afternoon start, with the winner stealing a playoff spot from its bitter rival and holding a chance to win the NFC North if the Bears lost to the Lions.
It’s a picture of how tantalizingly close the Vikings were to a playoff spot. Stare at that picture long enough, and the conclusions you draw might depend on your vantage point.
Could the Vikings, with a healthier offensive line and another year of development from J.J. McCarthy, rejoin the ranks of conference contenders in 2026? Or is their late-season progress made of pyrite, built on victories over other NFC also-rans and not worth trusting as an indicator they can do more with the same crew next year?
The answers their decisionmakers reach will inform the Vikings’ next moves, in what appears to be another important offseason for a regime that has won nearly two-thirds of its regular-season games but will head into Year 5 without a playoff victory.
The Vikings, who spent more than $340 million this season to surround McCarthy with veterans who were brought in to make his first starting season easier, will face salary-cap questions as they determine what to do with players such as center Ryan Kelly, right tackle Brian O’Neill and tight end T.J. Hockenson.
Brian Flores, the conductor of the defensive frenzy that has kept the Vikings in many games this season, will be a free agent if the team does not agree to a new deal with the coordinator by Jan. 14. And the plan at quarterback will again loom over the offseason, as the Vikings decide whether to bring in a veteran or remain fully invested in McCarthy as he turns 23 later this month.
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They will have months to mine the 2025 season for conclusions about what went wrong, after they face the Packers with mostly intangible rewards on the line. They can choose to either be encouraged or infuriated by how close they came to ending this disjointed season in the playoffs.
“There’s certain plays you can look at within several games,” coach Kevin O’Connell said. “I’ll look first and foremost at myself. That’s managing the team, how we prepare, when we were able to handle some of the unique parts of the season well, when we were not playing [well], calling all those things. That’s part of what the end of the season is for, right?
‘Beautiful’ struggle for McCarthy
Any postseason forensics about the 2025 Vikings will have to begin with McCarthy, whose percentage of on-target throws (64.9) this season is the ninth-lowest of any quarterback since Sports Info Solutions began tracking the stat in 2015. He appears set to return from a hairline fracture in his right hand to start his 10th game this season, but questions about his durability and accuracy, as well as his mechanics and the pace of his decisionmaking in the Vikings’ pure progression-based system, have taken turns as the lead talking point around the team in his first season as the starter.
When McCarthy missed five games early in the season because of a high ankle sprain, the Vikings used his absence to drill the changes they wanted him to make in his footwork, stabilizing his base and curtailing things like the whipping action his back leg often makes when he follows through on a pass. Before the Vikings’ Dec. 7 game against the Commanders, though, O’Connell declared he was done focusing on McCarthy’s mechanics, telling the quarterback (who admitted he struggles with overthinking) to simply worry about making good decisions with the ball.
McCarthy posted a 129.2 passer rating in the Vikings’ 31-0 victory that day, and he has thrown five touchdowns against two interceptions in his three games since then. His on-target percentage in those games, per SIS, is 77.6 — the third-best in the league behind Joe Burrow and Justin Herbert.
The quarterback who had lost just three games as a starter since high school is 5-4 this season and scheduled to miss the postseason for the first time since before he had a driver’s license. Asked this week what it’s been like to struggle more than he ever has in his career, McCarthy said, “It’s beautiful, as messed up as it sounds.
“This is inevitable for me to get to where I’ve wanted to go ever since I was a fifth-grader. You’ve got to go through these patches. It’s an opportunity to really refine some things we were overlooking and make sure these habits and outcomes don’t happen again. But yeah, it’s beautiful, all the ups and downs.”
It seems likely the Vikings will bring in a veteran quarterback this offseason, either as a stable backup for McCarthy or genuine competition. Does the team’s most important receiver want him to start again?
“That’s not my job,” Justin Jefferson said. “Of course, I would love for him to be the quarterback, especially off of this year. I feel like he needs to show everybody and prove to everybody that he is that top-tier quarterback. But I feel like that starts in the offseason, building that connection, eliminating those habits that he had that we felt hindered him throughout the season. But he’s still young. He still has learning to do and growing to do. So that’s all part of the game. But it’s up to me to require more from him and work with him there.”
If the end-of-season run has advanced the idea the Vikings could be competitive as McCarthy develops, the first 12 games showed how little slippage they could afford around him. O’Connell acknowledged the Vikings’ “pretty razor-thin” margin for error after a 23-6 loss at Green Bay sent them to 4-7.
Their plan to fix the offensive line, which involved more than $100 million in contract commitments to Will Fries and Ryan Kelly as well as the first-round selection of Donovan Jackson, still resulted in a league-high 11.4% sack rate (according to NFL Next Gen Stats) as injuries forced the Vikings to use 25 offensive line combinations.
Javon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen, the team’s two pricey veteran defensive tackles, have combined for only seven sacks and 52 pressures (per SIS), while the Vikings lost midseason games to teams that realized they could run on them.
The debrief will begin in earnest after Sunday, when the Vikings chase a winning record as a consolation prize for a season they hoped would last longer. What they do next could depend on whether they view the 2025 season as a near-miss, or a costly miscalculation.
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