EAGAN — If you were trying to figure out whether the Minnesota Vikings were viewing Sunday’s playoff matchup against the New York Giants as the biggest of their lives or just another football game with a dash of extra hype, you would have a pretty tough time deciding based on their answers this week.
There’s a group that could consider this a “last dance.” Those are the players who understand that a US Bank Stadium playoff game might not happen again for them, whether that’s because of age or contract status. That bunch is led by Patrick Peterson. The future Hall of Fame cornerback hasn’t been in the playoffs since 2015 when his Arizona Cardinals went 13-3 and lost to the Panthers in the NFC Championship game. Peterson signed with the Vikings in 2021 with hopes of helping the team return to its NFC Championship form but instead saw the downfall of the Spielman-Zimmer era.
Though the organization’s culture was left in shambles and everything from the general manger to head coach to defensive system was changing, Peterson chose to return. In a sit-down interview with Purple Insider before the season, Peterson said that he returned to Minnesota, despite multiple offers from other projected contenders, because he felt this group could compete for a Super Bowl ring — the one thing missing from his trophy case.
“The team from [last year] was very promising and there was no doubt in my mind that we’d be in this position right here if we had the right guy leading this group,” Peterson said on Thursday. “Kwesi [Adofo-Mensah] did a great job of picking the right guy in [Kevin O’Connell], making us better in every facet of the game.”
At 32, Peterson had an All-Pro caliber season that went under the radar because of the defense’s overall struggles. Pro Football Focus graded him the third best corner in coverage only behind Sauce Gardner and Patrick Surtain II. He allowed the fifth lowest QB rating into his coverage in the NFL and finished one interception behind the league-leading corner Tariq Wooten.
Those stats would suggest he is far from done in the NFL but he is not under contract for next season. With the number of Vikings players who are aging or have contract issues for the future, there are no guarantees that he will get another chance like this.
Peterson’s message to the team?
“We have a lot of young guys who have never tasted this type of success, I want those guys to relish this moment,” said Peterson, who is playing in just his fourth playoff game in 12 seasons.
“But we have to understand…there is no tomorrow,” he added. “That’s the margin of error. Having the guys understand that it’s much smaller than it was in the regular season.”
Even with the pressure of potentially playing his final playoff game if things don’t go as planned, defensive coordinator Ed Donatell tabbed Peterson with the job this week of keeping everyone else calm.
“He’s been an A-plus-plus-plus veteran influence on our football team,” Donatell said. “A lot of guys become veterans…but they’re not always as giving as that guy…He’s in charge of any body getting tight this week.”
Justin Jefferson is one of those players making his first playoff appearance. He’s coming off a regular season in which he led the NFL in receiving and was unanimously voted first-team All-Pro. This season is more like what he expected in the NFL, having come from a national championship team at LSU. But he isn’t in relish-the-moment mode against the Giants.
“It’s really not that much to me, I feel like I’ll feel it once I get to the Super Bowl,” Jefferson said. “At this moment, I’m just trying to get there.”
Though he isn’t feeling the magnitude of the moment in the same way as Peterson, Jefferson also finds himself in a leadership role as he heads into his first playoff game.
“Coach made me a leader this year so it kind of is my job to get everybody else loose, to be that leader on the team, to be the person that gets everybody going,” Jefferson said.
“I live for moments like this,” he said.
You don’t have to tell Harrison Phillips how hard it is to win in the playoffs. When he entered the league, he joined a Buffalo Bills team in 2018 that had just made the postseason for the first time since the Music City Miracle in 1999. In his second season, the Bills lost on a late-game fumble to Houston in the Wild Card round. In his third year, they lost to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship. Last year they were 13 seconds away from making the AFC title game again but lost to Mahomes’ magic.
“Every single snap is life or death,” Phillips said. “When you’re out there in the regular season against a non-conference opponent and the play is over there, you’re like, ‘Ah, somebody else will get it.’ In the playoffs, you have to have the mindset that I’m the only person who can stop this play.”
He may have five games of postseason experience but the Vikings’ defensive tackle said he could feel the nervous energy of the playoffs. His advice for players going through it for the first time?
“It’s very tricky,” Phillips said. “The best way to do it is to delay [the pre-game excitement] as much as possible. You want to encourage the calm before the storm because the night before the game it’s hard to sleep. I’ve been there.”
While Phillips will be here in the future, he’s aware this could be the last time together for a group of players who won 11 games by one score and continually found ways to come together at the right times. It may not be his last dance as a Viking but it might be his last with Dalvin Tomlinson, who’s set to hit free agency, or Jordan Hicks, who he did his introductory press conference with back in March.
“I look around at our locker room and I have so many people that are near and dear to my heart and I consider great friends of mine, and so, just the reality of the business is that not everyone will be here next year,” Phillips said. “You want to win it with the guys you’re brothers with.”
You could argue head coach Kevin O’Connell and quarterback Kirk Cousins are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the magnitude of Sunday’s game.
O’Connell won the Super Bowl last year as the Rams’ offensive coordinator and he’s already solidified himself as one of the brightest young coaches in the NFL. That isn’t to say the game against the Giants’ isn’t important or rare, only that it could be viewed as the first of many chances he will get in a long coaching career.
In the moments leading up to his first playoff game as a head coach, he’s reminding the team of the way they got here: By winning in playoff atmospheres.
“These games can go, like our season has in a lot of ways, it can go down to the wire and every little thing matters,” O’Connell said. “A play in the first quarter might affect your ability to win it in the fourth quarter, and that’s why I hope our experience in close games this year and being at our best in the final four minutes… I hope our team really relies on that, the experience, the feeling of when this game ends up being close, we feel like our guys should have confidence and the quiet of mind to do what we need to do to win.”
Cousins might never see a year like this again. Since 2000, only Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Matt Ryan and Philip Rivers have multiple 13-win seasons. Eighteen other QBs have one.
Cousins has been in the NFL since 2012 and started since 2015. He’s appeared in the postseason twice and has one win in three games. His career had previously been defined by his .500 record but this year he changed that perception with eight game-winning drives. While unfair, the matchup with the Giants will be used as a referendum on his career and the questions about whether he’s capable of taking a team deep into the postseason — and whether 2022 was the real version of him as a QB or a mirage.
“I’ll talk to Dr. Mack about, our team psychologist… ‘How do we play loose, how do we avoid anything that could creep in that could hurt us?’” Cousins said. “These are all the things that as a professional you’re aware of, but in my experience of playing at this level for a lot of years, you view it as an opportunity. You view it as a fun challenge, you trust the people around you and you go play. You trust your training and your preparation and it’s not going to be perfect because it never is. Mistakes are going to get made, but it’s all about getting that win and the process to get there however imperfect it may be is secondary to getting the win.”
This season’s performance may have earned Cousins more dances in Minnesota. With O’Connell and Jefferson in place, it would be hard to argue that they can’t be competitive in the NFC North going forward. But successful QBs over 34 years old are hard to find beyond the GOATs like Brady and Rodgers and price tags are always rising at the QB position. The NFL is an economics problem, remember, and that might not include an expensive veteran quarterback too much farther in the future.
So it might be Cousins’ last dance. Or maybe his shot at redemption for years of battling uphill. Or the start of a dynasty late in his career.
Who knows. The only thing we can say for sure is that it isn’t just another game to him.
“Knowing that nothing is guaranteed after this season, you want to not only enjoy every game left with them but every meeting, every walk through, every practice, every cafeteria meal because those are moments that you took for granted for four years, but you realize are not guaranteed moving forward,” Cousins said.
