Minnesota Vikings Are Closing in on Contender Status but Aren't Quite There Yet

It will fall upon deaf ears for most Minnesota Vikings fans still anguishing about a tough 23-20 loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Thursday Night Football. But the Vikings are by far the closest they've been to NFC contenders since the short-lived tenure of Brett Favre.

Moral victories may not exist in the NFL, but it'd be quite hard to come away from Thursday's game and avoid the growing realization that the Vikings are close—very close—to being one of the conference's top threats come January.

The writing was on the wall for a predictable step back entering Thursday. Only four days removed from a humiliating 38-7 loss to Seattle, they traveled to face an even greater NFC West force on the road that's healthy and peaking entering a push for the postseason.

Speaking of healthy, Minnesota was nothing near that for a game that would be a so-called measuring stick to their NFC prowess. Top contributors at every level of the defense were missing Thursday, as linebacker Anthony Barr, defensive tackle Linval Joseph and safety Harrison Smith were just three of the eight defensive players in street clothes.

With all the chips stacked against them facing the NFL's most potent offense, the expected result was a comfortable Arizona win. Instead, it took a Dwight Freeney strip-sack of Teddy Bridgewater to prevent a game-tying field goal that would have sent the game into overtime.

Despite the late blunder, the Vikings' second-year quarterback delivered one of his greatest performances as a pro. Field Yates of ESPN noted his breakthrough with over 330 yards through the air:

With Adrian Peterson mostly bottled up, rushing 23 times for 69 yards and one early touchdown, Bridgewater needed to be more than just a game manager. He had to make big plays down the field against a top defense.

Bridgewater did just that, connecting for gains of more than 20 yards to a whopping six different receivers. He completed a pass to 11 different guys, showing this offense doesn't need a dominant perimeter threat to be potent through the air.

In the process, he made strides not often seen from a young signal-caller, as Bleacher Report's Matt Miller observed:

Bridgewater's greatest moments came on a fourth-quarter drive that tied the game up at 20 heading down the stretch. He orchestrated a dream-like drive of 88 yards on 11 plays, hitting Mike Wallace for the tying score.

But Bridgewater's offense wouldn't have been in position to do that without a defense that hung in there despite being down nearly half its starting lineup. The Vikings held Arizona to its third-lowest scoring total of the entire season.

Doing so in an ultra-shorthanded fashion was all the more impressive, as Kent Somers of AZCentralSports.com noted:

The defense wasn't able to get the big stop down the stretch it needed, but it still held the Cardinals to a long field goal late, which gave the offense time to get into game-tying position. Without a pair of long touchdowns to Michael Floyd and John Brown, we'd be singing a very different tune about how this game turned out.

With the defense playing as well as it did minus key starters and the opposition needing two big-play touchdowns to survive, it's hard not to see the upward trajectory Minnesota showed even despite a heartbreaking loss.

Had the Vikings avoided those big-play gashes and not lost the turnover battle by a margin of three, it's safe to assume the game Bridgewater and the offense had would've been more than enough.

For now, playing with the chips stacked against them is helping these Vikings to sharpen their tools and be ready for similar fights come January, when the stakes are highest as head coach Mike Zimmer told the team's official Twitter:

On the heels of a tough loss in a game that felt very winnable until the fateful Freeney strip-sack, that may not carry much weight for Vikings fans. But when those same fans wake up in mid-December with an 8-5 record, entering an extended game week after going toe-to-toe with a conference favorite, they'll likely feel a lot better about where this team is.

The Vikings are still sitting pretty for a wild-card spot at 8-5, and remain just half a game back of Green Bay in the NFC North. One can assume that if they do make it to January, the defense will be considerably healthier. The big plays Arizona won this game on, then, will be hard to come by. The offense will be more in its element and able to play to its strength, which is Peterson on the ground.

Moral victories have no place in the NFL, and nobody knows that more than Vikings fans. But if Thursday's game proved anything beyond the immediate outcome, it's that Minnesota is closing in fast on joining the elite group of NFC Super Bowl contenders.