Who Should Vikings Fans Root For On Thursday Night?

Every football fan contains multitudes.

So says Walt Whitman, or John Madden, or one of those guys. Says me, anyway. Because not only is every football fan built a little differently, they’re different kinds of fans depending on the situation. This is true of even the most franchise-monogamous stalwart.

Even a true-purple Minnesota Vikings fan (like yourself, perhaps) may have slightly shifting loyalties when the Vikes aren’t on the field. The most single-minded could determine their rooting interest in a game between two non-Minnesotan teams by calculating whose victory most benefits the Vikings — i.e., you cheer on pretty much any AFC team against any NFC team and root for anyone above Minnesota in the playoff picture to lose a few critical contests.

But there are vectors of interest beyond that. Maybe the game is between a lousy NFC squad and a loathsome AFC team. Maybe you have Joe Burrow on your fantasy team (congrats). Maybe you root against any team featuring a particular player — a certain sputtering Jet comes to mind — or you have a soft spot for an AFC team, or there’s one team you simply despise beyond all good reason and cannot bring yourself to hope for anything but their complete destruction. (The Packers. The team you’re thinking about here is the Packers.)

Week 14’s Thursday Night Football game between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers is a real head-scratcher for Vikings fans, and also a litmus test for their confidence level. Should a Faithful Purple Person be rooting for the Lions, or…ugh…the Packers?

The emotional answer here is an easy one. A Packers loss is the diet version of a Vikings win — a little less filling, but still great-tasting and oh-so-refreshing. Meanwhile, rooting against the Lions feels a little guilty, like wishing for something bad to happen to a three-legged dog. They’ve already had it hard enough. Dan Campbell is a delightful maniac, and the team’s belief in themselves is infectious. Plus, who can better sympathize with feeling the sting of defeat at the hands of Green Bay? (The Bears. The team you’re thinking about here is the Bears.)

But 2024 is different. This year, the whole dang NFC North is terrific. (Except the Bears, obviously.) Not only is there a truly tight three-way race for the No. 1 spot in the division, but all three non-ridiculous NFC North teams are jockeying for the top seed in the NFC, with the noxious Philadelphia Eagles also in the mix — speaking of impossible-to-root-for teams.

If you’re a Vikings fan trying to set emotion aside and simply root for the outcome that most benefits Minnesota, the answer still isn’t totally clear. And what you decide may well determine if you’re the sort of person who sees the pint glass as half full or half empty.

The optimist says: Hold your nose and root for the Packers. Another loss plus a Minnesota victory over the Atlanta Falcons would put the Vikings tantalizingly close to tied for first — the Lions currently own the head-to-head tie-breaker — and could help pave the path for the Week 18 final showdown to be the most important game in the whole league this regular season, as well as one of the most important games in modern Vikings history. And as long as the Vikings beat the Packers at home on Dec. 29, they’ll definitively own the tiebreaker and be awfully hard to catch.

But hold on, the pessimist has something to say about that. Detroit isn’t just good, they’re dominant. They’ve only lost once, an unlikely slip-up against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Vikings an among the few teams who faced the Motor City Kitties and didn’t absolutely get their clocks cleaned. Yes, the Vikings absolutely can beat the Lions, even at Ford Field. They came sorta-kinda close last time. But even with their recent spate of unfortunate injuries, the Lions are still a juggernaut unlikely to lose enough games between now and New Year's for the Vikings to catch up unless Minnesota plays near-perfect football. However, if the Lions win, they deal a devastating L to the Packers, who are on a hot streak but running out of time to catch up to the similarly soaring Vikings.

Therein lies the conundrum.

If you want to be scientific about it, consider all three teams’ upcoming schedules after Week 14:

The Lions face off against fellow bullies in the Buffalo Bills, albeit at home, before games against the befuddled Bears and

The Packers match up against a feisty but confusing Seattle Seahawks team, as well as the even more confounding New Orleans Saints, and Chicago, in addition to their game at U.S. Bank Stadium on Dec. 29.

The Vikings also get the Seahawks and Bears, but the big matzah ball hanging at the end of the schedule is that rematch with the Lions, in Detroit.

Sure, there’s a world where that game boosts Minnesota to bye-week glory. But there’s also a world where the Lions handle their business in the friendliest of environments while simultaneously putting the Vikings one game behind the Packers, who easily dust Chicago. And the lack of that extra-game cushion on the Packers adds even more pressure to what is already a hugely important game at the end of December.

Look at it this way: If the Vikings are going to the Super Bowl, there’s a good chance they’ll have to beat Detroit in Detroit to do it, be it on January 5 or a later date TBD. Maybe it’s the pessimist in me, but I say save your powder and hope that upset comes in early 2025 when it matters most. The more likely path to ultimate victory is a safer if slightly less lofty one where the Vikings maintain solid control of the second spot in the NFC North and a shot at a home game in the second round of the playoffs.

So, for that, among a few other reasons, I say, Go Lions go.

And while you’re at it, keep rooting against the Eagles, too, just because it’s the right thing to do.