Minnesota’s 9–3 win over Chicago was short on touchdowns but rich in reminders that the Vikings have found stranger ways to win.
Sports fans who are dismayed, like me, by the paucity of scoring in soccer might be expected to be distraught by the Minnesota Vikings’ anemic offense in beating the Chicago Bears 9–3 last Sunday without scoring a touchdown. My sentiments about soccer were expressed in “Glad That the World Cup Bypassed Here,” July 15, 2026.
Wrong!
While the 12 points tallied by the touchdown-challenged teams might constitute a month of scoring in soccer, the football outcome was pleasing and hardly unprecedented for the Vikings and their fans.
The victory, following the prior week’s 39–22 comeback against Green Bay, gave Minnesota a 2–0 record against its NFC North foes. According to the Vikings, this is only the third time the club has opened a season with two victories against division opponents, and the first since 2003.
That year, the team opened 6–0 before a remarkable collapse left it 9–7 and outside the playoffs, capped by a season-ending, last-play loss to the Arizona Cardinals.
Sooner Successors
The Vikings now head to Tampa Bay for Sunday’s game against the Buccaneers, with quarterback Kyler Murray cleared from concussion protocol and scheduled to return. The matchup will pit him against another Heisman Trophy winner, Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield.
Clashes between Heisman-winning quarterbacks are hardly novel. Neither is this particular pairing: Murray and Mayfield first faced each other in the NFL in December 2019, when Murray played for Arizona and Mayfield for Cleveland.
But their shared history gives the meeting a distinctive pedigree. Both won their awards at Oklahoma: Mayfield in 2017 and Murray a year later as his Sooner successor. They are two of the school’s four Heisman-winning quarterbacks from 2003 through 2018, joining Jason White and one-time Viking Sam Bradford, among Oklahoma’s seven winners.
The Minnesota connections were explored in “Vikings’ Murray Faces Low Bar Set by Prior Heisman Winners Here,” Sept. 17, 2026.
Field Goal Foibles
While Sunday’s quarterback reunion offers its own attraction, the Vikings’ touchdown-less victory over the Bears belongs to a longer tradition. It was their third such win in the last four seasons, with earlier examples stretching back decades.
One memorable instance came against the rival Packers in 1971, a 3–0 victory at Metropolitan Stadium in which the only scoring was a 25-yard field goal by old-time, straight-on kicker Fred Cox.
The game was scoreless through three quarters, much to the delight of soccer aficionados, until Cox booted the ball through the uprights. It was welcome relief in a game in which the Vikings completed just five of 11 passes for 42 yards.
Then there was the strange 23–21 overtime victory over the Los Angeles Rams in 1989. Rich Karlis supplied seven field goals while the Rams scored three touchdowns. Minnesota finally won when Mike Merriweather blocked a punt out of the end zone for a safety.
It was the first NFL overtime game decided by a safety. Chicago in 2004 and Miami in 2013 subsequently won overtime games on safeties, too.
The Vikings also managed the feat twice in 1993, beating Green Bay 15–13 and Tampa Bay 15–0, with Fuad Reveiz kicking five field goals in each game.
The two most recent examples preceding the Bears battle occurred in 2023 and 2024. In the former, the Vikings beat the Las Vegas Raiders 3–0 with injured starter Kirk Cousins sidelined. Nick Mullens replaced Joshua Dobbs in the fourth quarter and directed the game’s only scoring drive.
That was the seventh 3–0 NFL game since the 1970 merger with the AFL. For even greater scoring scarcity, the league’s early history offers 73 scoreless ties, the last in 1943.
Following the Raiders’ 3–0 rout, the Vikings managed a 12–7 victory over Jacksonville the next year, derived from four field goals by John Parker Romo, a short-term substitute kicker. Minnesota outgained the Jaguars 402–143, with Sam Darnold throwing for 241 yards, without scoring a touchdown.
Shutout Symmetry?
The Vikings have also been on the receiving end of this indignity. Green Bay beat them 9–7 in December 2006, accounting for all its points with three field goals.
Being held entirely scoreless is another matter. Minnesota has suffered eight regular-season shutout losses, most recently last year’s 26–0 defeat at Seattle, which went on to win the Super Bowl. Including the 41–0 playoff loss to the Giants following the 2000 season brings the total to nine.
On the other side of the ledger, the Vikings have recorded 17 regular-season shutout victories, including last year’s 31–0 win over Washington.
Those consecutive games in 2025 produced a 57-point swing in scoring margin, from minus 26 against Seattle to plus 31 against Washington. This season’s opening two games supplied a different measure of football’s topsy-turvy drama: 61 combined points against Green Bay, followed by 12 against Chicago.
What should we expect Sunday, as the two former Sooners meet again and the Vikings try to extend their flawless start to 3–0?
