Two Years Ago, the “Slobberknocker” In Detroit Became A Vikings Sliding Doors Moment

Remember the hype for the Minnesota Vikings’ Week 18 game in Detroit last year?

Minnesota and Detroit Lions each had 14 wins and would battle it out to determine the NFC North champion. Had the Vikings won, they would have earned a bye. Instead, they faced the Los Angeles Rams, who beat them in the regular season and promptly eliminated them from the playoffs the following week.

“[The Lions] do a great job of bringing a physical mentality to the football game,” special teams coordinator Matt Daniels

A slobberknocker is a match that’s particularly hard-fought and physically aggressive. Daniels used a fitting term for a Flores defense going up against Aaron Glenn’s Lions unit. It was also the perfect setting: a Rust Belt city with a Joe Louis statue.

Unfortunately, the game didn’t live up to the hype. The Lions knocked Sam Darnold around, sacking him twice and holding him to a season-low 43.9% completion percentage. A week later, the Rams ended Minnesota’s season. The Vikings moved on from Darnold this year; Kevin O’Connell is still looking for his first playoff win.

Last year’s game in Detroit wasn’t a slobberknocker, but it became a Sliding Doors moment. The 1998 film Sliding Doors presents the audience with two storylines: one in which Gwyneth Paltrow makes the train and another in which she misses it. The consequences of making the train or missing it have a meaningful impact on her life.

Minnesota’s Week 18 game in Detroit has become its Sliding Doors moment.

Darnold had a 55.5 passer rating in Detroit, his lowest rating aside from his 48.2 in Week 10 against the Jacksonville Jaguars. He followed up the Week 18 Lions game with a 25-for-40, 245-yard performance against the Rams in the playoffs, where he threw for a touchdown, a pick, and took nine sacks. The final two games sullied a season in which he threw for 35 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and 4,319 yards.

Instead of franchise-tagging Darnold and holding a camp competition, the Vikings turned to first-year quarterback J.J. McCarthy, coming off a meniscus tear. Minnesota had drafted McCarthy 10th-overall a year before and signed Darnold as a bridge quarterback. Still, they may have considered giving Darnold a chance to win the job if he had finished the season stronger.

A year later, Sam Darnold threw for 25 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, and 4,048 yards, leading the Seattle Seahawks to the NFC Championship. J.J. McCarthy threw for 11 touchdowns, 12 picks, and 1,632 yards this year, and the Vikings have not committed to him as their starter next season.

Still, the Vikings finished ahead of the Lions this season. Minnesota and Detroit went 9-8, but the Vikings beat the Lions twice, giving them the tiebreaker. Meanwhile, the Green Bay Packers finished 9-7-1, with only a Week 4 tie to the Dallas Cowboys separating them in the standings.

That’s a little misleading, given that the Packers rested many of their starters in Week 18 against Minnesota because they had secured the No. 7 seed and couldn’t move up. Green Bay likely would have beaten the Vikings in that game if it had started Jordan Love and other star players.

Green Bay will get Micah Parsons back next year, which may allow them to challenge for the division. However, the 11-6 Chicago Bears won the North this year after hiring former Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, who has unlocked Caleb Williams.

Chicago took Williams first-overall in 2024, and he threw for 3,541 yards with 20 touchdowns and six interceptions as a rookie last year. However, the Bears went 5-12, only a two-win improvement from 2023. Williams threw for 3,942 yards with 27 interceptions and seven picks this year and made throws that indicate he could become one of the league’s best quarterbacks.

Williams still misses routine passes, and his 58.1% completion percentage this season is lower than his 62.5% completion percentage last season. However, if he cleans up his mechanics and becomes a more accurate passer while mastering Johnson’s dynamic offense, the Bears could take over the North.

Green Bay may have something to say about that when Parsons returns next year. Still, that could leave Detroit and Minnesota fighting for a wild-card spot for the foreseeable future. That’s a long fall from where they were the Lions and Vikings were two years ago.

The Lions may not be the same without Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn, their former defensive coordinator, who left to coach the New York Jets. Dan Campbell sets the culture in Detroit, but Johnson and Glenn masterminded the X’s and O’s. Meanwhile, the Vikings chose the uncertainty of a first-year quarterback over Sam Darnold, who’s in his prime.

It’s easy blame Matt Daniels for the botched kickoff that cost the Vikings the Week 11 Bears game at home. That appeared to be Minnesota’s Sliding Doors moment.

Win that game, and the Vikings are competing for the NFC North at the end of the season. However, that assumes the Vikings reel off five straight wins to end the season, including an improbable Week 17 win over Detroit and a game against Green Bay’s starters the following week. Instead, Minnesota’s Sliding Doors moment happened two years ago, in Detroit.

It felt anticlimactic at the time, but that might have been the game that changed everything.