The Minnesota Vikings beat the Green Bay Packers 24-10 to improve to 4-4 on the year. On the surface, this is exactly what the Vikings needed: a divisional win that puts Minnesota firmly in the playoff hunt.
But grim circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the contest make it tough to show much optimism for the rest of the 2023 season.
Even so, the game had plenty of stocks rise in a commanding win and a few that fell for varying circumstances.
Stock up: Pass rush
The Vikings pass rush did exactly what they needed to do to get Jordan Love uncomfortable.
Minnesota ended the day with four sacks and seven quarterback hits. D.J. Wonnum had a stellar game as he finished with two of those sacks and three of those hits.
Jordan Love was unable to get into any sort of rhythm and a lot of that was due to the amount of pressure he faced on a snap-to-snap basis.
Stock down: Kirk Cousins
Kirk Cousins had an amazing day while he was on the field. He threw for 274 yards on 24-of-31 passing and finished with two touchdowns.
But, a non-contact Achilles injury will end what has been an amazing season for the 35-year-old signal caller.
With this being the final year of his contract, it is unlikely that Cousins will play another snap in the purple and gold. A possibly cataclysmic end to a great career in Minnesota for Cousins.
Stock up: Pass defense
The pass defense came to play against Green Bay, holding Love to only 58.5% completion percentage and under 230 yards on the day.
Overall, this Vikings defense shut down the Packers passing attack with seven pass deflections and the Josh Metellus interception that led to an immediate Jordan Addison touchdown.
A great day for the Minnesota defense as Jordan Love was rendered useless to the Green Bay offense.
Stock down: Playoff hopes
With the loss of Cousins, any playoff hopes for this Minnesota team are all but over. Unless they bring in a suitable replacement, the second half of this season looks fairly bleak for the Vikings.
Going into last week, the Vikings had the sixth-hardest strength of schedule. While the defense seems to be coming together, there is a chance that sixth-round rookie Jaren Hall and backup Nick Mullens could be starting the final nine games.
Minnesota needed Cousins to make a push for the playoffs. They need their leader to continue to be competitive. Unfortunately, that won’t be the case.
Stock up: Draft talk
It’s tough to talk about anything else other than the loss of Cousins, because of the impact that it has for the rest of the season.
Coinciding with that is the fact that this Minnesota team has a chance to be really bad without their starting quarterback. Kevin O’Connell formulated this offense around what Kirk does best, now they need to pivot to make either Hall or Mullens play to the best of their abilities.
That being said, it’s getting very close to opening up Tankathon and counting down the days to the new signal-caller in Minnesota.
Stock down: Greg Joseph
We’ll end this out on a weird stock down.
What is going on with Greg Joseph?
He missed two more kicks today from 42 and 44 yards with the latter being blocked by rookie Karl Brooks.
This makes the third miss in two weeks for Joseph. He is usually automatic from inside the 50-yard mark, but he went 0-for-2 today and missed an extra point last week.
This is a trend that we hope to see go away as the season goes on.
