Some people are fans of the Minnesota Vikings. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Minnesota Vikings. This 2015 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.


Your team: Minnesota Vikings. As I do every year, I must disclose in this preview that the Vikings are my favorite team, which means they are also my LEAST favorite team. This fucking team. To think that I’ve wasted YEARS of my life cheering on these goddamn losers. They don’t even have a cool uniform color. I’m fucking embarrassed.

Your 2014 record: 7-9. And anyone who thinks this team is a playoff dark horse should be forced to watch this Vine on a loop until death has settled in:


Trust me: You want nothing to do with this shitshow. Look at that goddamn play. Just the dumbest fucking way to lose. Not even Cleveland loses like this. That wasn’t even Minnesota’s worst loss of the season. I can’t grieve for these losses anymore. I just sit there, shake my head, and turn the TV off. I’m not angry, or sad. I’m just blank. Vacant. This is what the Vikings have done to me. I am devoid of emotion. I am a soulless wasteland of a man.

And that’s just what happens ON the field with this team. I haven’t even gotten to the little-covered subplot to last season in which our best player whipped his kid’s balls, got exiled for a full season, and STILL DOESN’T THINK HE DID ANYTHING WRONG. He also did this:

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Keep in mind that the Vikings were fully behind Peterson when his child assault allegations arose, only to do a 180° after the Radisson hotel chain threatened to pull its sponsorship. Join us this season when the team hands over play-calling duties to a particularly demanding manager at the Edina Wyndham.


After Peterson was formally disciplined, he threw a shit fit, threatened to hold out, and spent months trying to get traded to Dallas so that Jerry Jones could grope him like a stewardess. Now he’s back, and do you know what the worst part is? I couldn’t be more delighted. I am fucking pumped. All that pouting and child abuse? Forgotten the second he breaks one for 30 yards. I already forgot that Peterson used charity funds last year to host orgies. I’m a garbage person. I deserve to have the rug pulled out from me yet again. I bet Week 2 will roll by and Harrison Smith will get charged for bombing a church or something.


Also, rumor has it that Adrian Peterson is the most notoriously awful poker player in athlete circles, and that people make a point to swing through Minnesota casinos when Adrian is gonna be around. He probably thinks he can outwit blackjack dealers with the power of his handshake.

Your coach: Mike Zimmer. With Zimmer and Norv in charge, you can bet that your offense will get off exactly ONE play with 30 seconds left at the end of any half. It doesn’t matter how many timeouts you have, or how many times the offense has practiced the two-minute drill. You get one play at the maximum.


I watched the Vikings play last night and I swear to you, they only had one series with the offensive starters and Norv STILL fucked it up. With Norv, you are automatically doomed to the following play sequence:

Third down: Completed pass just short of the sticks

Fourth down: Failed dive play featuring your worst running back

You can set your watch by it.

Your quarterback: Teddy Bridgewater, who is poised, accurate, intelligent, tough, and has the arm strength of an amputee baby. It concerns me that the greatest weakness of our franchise quarterback is his ability to, you know, throw a football. That’s kind of an important part of the job. I’ve had suitcases at the Delta baggage claim that arrive in a more timely manner than a Teddy deep route. Time stops when that ball is in the air. I hope he spent all offseason rock climbing. Or doing roids. He probably did roids. I approve.


What’s new that sucks: Mike Wallace is here to run straight down the field and have nothing come of it. It’s like having Randy Moss around again, if Randy Moss were terrible. These receivers are shitty and Kyle Rudolph is the most perpetually overrated tight end in the sport. The team also spent its highest draft picks on fortifying the defense, but that won’t matter. These are the Vikings. Since the beginning of time, they have looked passable on defense only to fall apart at the worst possible moment.

In other news, Zygi Wilf was accused AGAIN of fucking people out of money. This happens every offseason. Does the NFL ever sanction mob boss Wario? No. Does he ever have to go to jail for this kind of shit? No. Of course not. Don’t be silly. When you’re a billionaire criminal, you don’t go to jail. Instead, you get this…


That’s a billion dollars for a bird-murdering stadium built entirely out of Magna-Tiles. For a fucking crook.



What has always sucked: Matt Kalil. Matt Kalil is fucking terrible and yet still in charge of making sure Teddy doesn’t get murdered. The Vikings’ offensive line is the kind of offensive line that gets praised by announcers while failing right in front of your very eyes. They couldn’t protect a Jell-O picnic.

As always, this is what Minnesotans deserve. It is the Soccer Mom state. Minnesota is one giant Toyota Sequoia with happy stick figures on the back windshield, cutting you off at every highway merge. People there only vote Democrat to appear sensitive and open-minded, despite having hearts blacker than Scrooge himself. If you are from Iowa, you are treated like an undocumented immigrant if you walk into Minnesota. This state in a frozen, undead wasteland, and yet people there regard the rest of the world with complete and utter disdain. It’s never made sense to me, and it never will. It is a hateful place, full of Stepford wives and mute husbands. You’ll find more personality in a crate of pickled fish.


And they SUCK at being Vikings fans. The state is half Packers fans because Minnesotans are all front-running assholes. This is a young, likeable team, but I promise you that most Vikings fans won’t show up until the playoffs, and they’ll STILL have Favre jerseys on. I’m nauseous just thinking about it. Fuck that state. We gave the world Garrison Keillor AND Jonathan Franzen. We are ground zero for boring white culture. I’m never going back.

What might not suck: FUCK YOU WE’RE WINNING THE DIVISION

Hear it from Vikings fans!

Gil:

The biggest moments in our team’s history are all losses.

P:

I went to a game about a decade ago and sat behind a guy who wore a suit of license plates. FUCK THAT GUY.


Nate:

I thought I was doing okay until a random Wikipedia search revealed that Wasswa Serwanga went to the same college* as me. Now I feel lost and alone in life. *(Not UCLA - I graduated from the shitty school he went to before he transferred to UCLA)


Peregrin:

We’re one 60-year-old man having a health issue away from Head Coach Norv Turner.


Dave:

Fuck Dennis Green Fuck Gary Anderson HARD Fuck Mike Tice

Brett:

This shitty team has somehow made me convince myself that Adrian Peterson, a now known asshole and child beating sociopath, is just doing his job and somehow if the Vikings have a miraculous season, it won’t be marred by his Hall of Fame level douchebaggery. That it’s okay for this epic level assbag to play on my favorite team and it’s still okay for me to want him to do well even if I claim I don’t like him. Gah, they somehow made me hate myself even more.

Greg:

That damn camel. Doesn’t AP have anyone in his life snuffing out his bad ideas? He’s like a 16-year-old rich girl.


Tom:

Our all time best Quarterback was borrowed from Green Bay.

Nick:

Two former Vikings squared off in the main event of Wrestlemania 31 and they both lost.


Todd:

The Vikings suck because it’s only going to take one AD touchdown and all will be forgiven. Two touchdowns and the fans will be cutting switches for him.


Matthew:

Our fan base is in love again with a guy who beat his four-year-old child bloody (it’s cultural!). The team welcomed him back with open arms and guaranteed him a bunch of money to make sure he isn’t “uneasy.”


Brian:

I was 13 years old and attended Minnesota Vikings mini camp in Mankato, MN. Why they have it there, instead of somewhere that isn’t a shitty town, is beyond me. But they had just signed Bryce Paup, who in his day was a sack monster, and had won defensive player of the year in 1995. I played linebacker for my middle school team, so I was in awe. I got his autograph and it made my year. Fast forward to when I was a senior at Northeastern I had gone home for a few days to see family and to once again...go to Vikings minicamp. I brought my Bryce Paup football from 13 years earlier and my little cousin was carrying it around getting autograph of the players that I deemed “worthy”. Jared Allen. Yep. Antoine Winfield. Sure. I went to my car to get my phone and my sister, who knows nothing about football, was watching over him for the 10 minutes it took me to get to my car and back. This was a huge mistake. Later we go home and everyone is buzzing about seeing the players and how monstrous they were and we start counting the autographs. Of course I check Mr. Paup’s to make sure it’s still untouched by sharpie. It had been autographed over. My heart sank, but I saw the number “8” below the signature so I thought the “1” might’ve been lost in the scribbling. I googled Sidney Rice’s autograph. It looked nothing like it. Who else has numeral 8 in their fucking number? I googled more autographs. And finally...I came across Ryan Longwell’s. That motherfucker. Fuck kickers. Fuck punters. Fuck Gary Anderson.

Steven:

I’ll never forget the Vikings drafting Christian Ponder. By the time it was our pick I knew there were no good quarterbacks left. I could not believe it when I heard them call that stupid motherfucker’s name. My friend, who’s a professional sports bettor, just sighed and said, “sorry man”. I then get a ring on my phone, it’s my dad. I answer the call, put the phone to my ear, and in the smuggest fucking voice I’ve ever heard, all my dad says is: “We’ve got our guy”. Goddammit.

Mike:

Watching the stadium construction progress is like watching Unicron take a shit on downtown Minneapolis.


Joey:

If there’s one thing I know about the Vikings, it’s that with our confessed child-beater at the helm, we deserve to win the Super Bowl this and only this year. And then cringe about it for the rest of our goddamned lives as we tell our grandchildren stories of that one magical time when Adrian Peterson brought us aboard his camel to victory.


Rich:

Our owner makes Oliver North seem trustworthy and our star player is a functional illiterate who treats his children like he’s Mola Ram trying to get Indiana Jones to drink the blood of Kali in Temple of Doom.


Gopher:

This is the first year I can remember that the Vikings didn’t bring a UDFA to training camp who grew up in a small town Minnesota shithole, and attended a miniscule Lutheran college in an even smaller town Minnesota shithole. This player always makes the fanbase spray their collective shorts and post on message boads “Yeah dat kid looks really good out dere. Hope he makes da team.” Why Vikings, why did you deprive us of our THIELEN!!! fix this year.


Gregg:

Adrian Peterson was my favorite football player. Rooting for his prodigious talent was one of the greatest joys of my life up until last year. And now, after about a year of defending my position on the complicated “social structures” of corporal punishment, half the time not even sure what I’m trying to defend and the other half the time feeling simply gross about the entire situation, I will be rooting for what I feel like is a zombie version of the athlete I once adored. Like...I want him to score and be a great player...but just how much of my soul have I sold at this point in simply remaining a fan? We all saw the Pluto statistic, but the real tragedy is that I still can’t wait to see that brand new stadium. Fuck Pluto.

Natalie:

On my ninth birthday I wished for the Vikings to go to the Super Bowl. Roughly three hours later Gary Anderson Gary Andersoned. At least I knew what I was getting myself in for early. I love this team but dear God it’s a new ordeal every single year.

DS:

They suck and they ALWAYS suck because they have no luck. They never catch a meaningful break in a play, call, or anything else. Even when crucial games should go their way, they never do.


Ford:

Each Minnesota Vikings loss comes in a new horrifying and soul-numbing fashion which you couldn’t have predicted before the game. Surrendering 3 TD’s to the Ravens in the last 2:05 of the game. The Josh Freeman Incident on Monday Night Football. The blocked punt for a safety with under a minute left against the Dolphins. The Joe Webb game. There are so many of these that I had actually managed to forget about letting Kyle Orton drive down the field and win the game on a touchdown pass with 1 second left, and that just happened last season.


Robert:

I’ve never seen so much pre-season media hype for a team whose ceiling is 8-8. My only hope is that Norv Turner and Matt Kalil do not actively conspire to have Teddy Bridgewater killed. Also, the star player made a 4 year old bleed from the nuts. Not cool.


Nate:

Adrian Peterson’s horrifying act of discipline is just the latest in a long tradition of idiocy that stretches from the Love Boat to Onterrio “Whizzinator” Smith to Chris Cook the domestic abuser and Brett Favre’s dick picks, plus a pile of DUI arrests too numerous to count. Oh yeah, Darren Sharper was on this team for awhile too. The worst part is none of these guys are exactly criminal masterminds; these are all crimes that only a moron would commit.


David:

The face or our franchise felt betrayed and was genuinely hurt because people had the audacity to tell him he did something wrong. The monstrous stadium our sleezeball owners bilked the public into purchasing for them looks like an Imperial Cruiser that has landed downtown Minneapolis. It’ll basically serve as a $1.1 billion vomitorium for assholes in Jared Allen jerseys who drive into from third ring suburbs to drink Icehouse.


Corey:

The 2014 NFC Championship game was the most joyful experience I have ever had as a Vikings Fan.


Mark:

If you want to really piss off a Minnesotan, make a comment about cold winter weather in your city. Minnesotans believe they have a patent on cold weather, and will sue you to the fullest extent of the law should you make such comments. “Oh, it snowed 4 feet there yesterday? Well, in Minnesota, we don’t even plow when it snows 4 feet. Oh, it was 2 degrees for a high there? Well, in Minnesota, we wear jorts, flip flops, and tank tops and go fishing for walleye in 2 degrees. No one is as hearty as we Minnesotans! Kneel before our heartiness!” Yet, when it came time to build a new stadium, they joined Detroit and insisted on an indoor stadium, so Frojid from Forest Lake could sit and stuff lutefisk nuggets and Grain Belt into his face in a nice warm 80 degree stadium.


Submissions for the 2015 NFL previews are now closed. Next up: The Cleveland Browns.