MINNEAPOLIS — The Vikings closed out their 2021 season with a 31-17 victory over the Bears on Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.
After falling behind 14-0 in a first half where they averaged just over a yard per play on their first three possessions, the Vikings sprang to life for 28 points in the second half, pulling away for a win that allowed Mike Zimmer to say he's never lost 10 games in a season and sending the Vikings fans who showed up for the final game of the season happy.
If the game was Zimmer's last as Vikings coach, it served as a fitting epitaph in some ways for an eight-year run in which the team was always respectable but too often incapable of more.
The Vikings will head into the offseason with an 8-9 record, facing big decisions that could come as soon as Monday. They swept the Bears for the first time since 2017, finishing the year second in the NFC North behind the 13-4 Packers. It provided a measure of dignity in a meaningless game that stoked an anxious fan base's ire in the first half.
Until Kirk Cousins completed passes of 25 and 40 yards on the Vikings' final drive of the first half, Minnesota had negative passing yards for the day. The Vikings' first three possessions totaled 22 yards on 18 plays, with Zimmer unleashing a more vulgar version of Vince Lombardi's famous exasperated sideline exclamation as he called a timeout before a third down in the second quarter.
The first round of boos arrived in the second quarter from a half-empty stadium. The Vikings' game production crew resorted to old favorites to focus fans' angst elsewhere: several shots of a woman in an Aaron Rodgers jersey drew jeers from the fans, and a brief display of the Lions-Packers score — which showed Green Bay down by a point in the first half, a week after beating the Vikings at Lambeau Field to clinch home-field advantage through the NFC playoffs — drew the biggest cheers of the day to that point.
The Bears led 14-3 at halftime, after the Vikings managed a field goal to get on the board on the final play of the first half.
Minnesota opened the second half by running Dalvin Cook three straight times for 34 yards, and Cousins hit Ihmir Smith-Marsette for a 44-yard TD to pull the Vikings within four in the third quarter. The Bears appeared to answer with a touchdown on their next drive when Andy Dalton eluded D.J. Wonnum on a third-down scramble to the end zone, but officials ruled Dalton's knee hit the ground before he slipped past Cameron Dantzler on his way to the goal line.
On fourth-and-goal from the Vikings' 1, the Bears opted for a play-action pass that got Dalton sacked. But even after the Vikings gained 9 yards on first down, they went three-and-out on their next possession, with Cook losing 2 yards and Cousins getting sacked as he stayed in a collapsing pocket on third down. The Bears drove for a field goal to make it 17-10 through three quarters.
Fox sideline reporter Megan Olivi said early in the fourth quarter that Justin Jefferson had been imploring the Vikings on the sideline to get him the ball as he tried to break Randy Moss' single-season record of 1,632 receiving yards. Shortly after Olivi's report, Cousins hit Jefferson for a 45-yard touchdown that the receiver caught easily in the end zone after Bears safety Eddie Jackson got lost on the play.
The touchdown, Jefferson's 10th of the season, tied the game at 17. He was wide open on the Vikings' next TD, too, when they ran two deep crossing routes and Cousins threw to K.J. Osborn beyond four Bears defenders.
Then with Dalton trying to flee pressure from Patrick Jones, he heaved the ball into traffic, where Patrick Peterson got his first interception of the season and brought it back for a decisive touchdown that gave the Vikings a 31-17 lead.
The Vikings took over at the Bears' 31 on their final possession, but Cousins handed off to Alexander Mattison for 8 yards on first down, as fans chanted for one more throw to Jefferson and booed the decision to run the ball. Cousins took one final knee, to a chorus of boos for not giving Jefferson at shot at the record, as the Vikings closed out the win.
