How the Vikings’ seemingly meaningless 2025 finish set the tone for their unbeaten start

The Vikings are on a seven-game winning streak after learning to win ugly following playoff elimination last season. Now they’re carrying that mentality into 2026.

The win streak is now at seven games. The Vikings won their final five games in 2025, and have started 2-0 in 2026 with wins over the Packers and Bears.

They’ve used four different starting quarterbacks in that time, and haven’t passed for more than 250 yards in any of the seven games. But a defense that’s only gotten more aggressive has allowed 13 points or fewer five times in that stretch.

In a period of quarterback transition, O’Connell has made his peace with winning ugly.

“I think what has carried over is just the mentality that we’ve got to go play well regardless of how we play the game: more runs, more passes, more blitzes, more coverage, whatever it may be,” O’Connell said. “The fundamental principles of what we’re looking for and what we want to be as a football team don’t change. And when we’ve matched those principles with schematics that give us the best chance to win, we’ve won football games.

“That doesn’t mean anything this week. That doesn’t mean anything moving forward. It just means that over the last seven opportunities, we’ve been able to apply that. We’re going to try to keep being who we want to be.”

How the Vikings’ winning streak carried into 2026 NFL season

That’s about as far as anyone will go, two weeks into the 2026 season, in drawing a link between what the Vikings did last December and January and how they started this season. But the Vikings’ last four wins are all in the NFC North, and their winning streak is the second-longest in the NFL behind only the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks.

The streak spans two different rosters, and began when the Vikings had a different front office under former GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, so its ultimate significance may be trivial.

But several Vikings veterans said the end of the 2025 season helped deliver a message to young players about the team’s standards.

“Oh yeah, for sure. That definitely was the start of it,” wide receiver Justin Jefferson said. “Our philosophy hasn’t changed. It was obviously about adding some key factors into our building and just getting them to learn our philosophy. It’s definitely been a great seven games we’ve won last, so it’s just continuing on from where we started off last [season].“

Can the Vikings extend their win streak vs. the Buccaneers?

The Vikings will try to extend the streak to eight games and improve their 2026 record to 3-0 when they travel to Tampa this weekend to face a Buccaneers team trying to avoid an 0-3 start.

Kyler Murray, who returned from the concussion protocol at the beginning of the week, will return to the starting role on Sunday after Carson Wentz played the past seven quarters.

Murray said it was his first concussion since 2015, but said he was “good pretty quickly” after the hit from Packers defenders Lukas Van Ness and Javon Bullard.

He‘s played just 11 regular-season snaps so far with the Vikings.

“I just felt like I didn’t even get to get in the game,” Murray said Thursday.

He’ll face off with Buccaneers QB Baker Mayfield, his former teammate at Oklahoma.

“I think we’re both competitors and we’re going to do anything to win,” Murray said.

The Vikings haven’t lost since they were shut out in Seattle last Nov. 30. They’ll take a team to Tampa that has used a seemingly inconsequential run at the end of last season to set up a foundation for this season.

“That’s the NFL; you have to win in different ways,” tight end T.J. Hockenson said. “It doesn’t matter how it happens. That’s the nice part about this locker room; we’re always going to continue to be together, and that’s how it is.”

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