LOS ANGELES – Even with as much as the Vikings had working against them, what happened against the Los Angeles Rams defied convention, for a defense that's been fashioned into one of the NFL's best under Mike Zimmer's watchful gaze.
A year ago, the Vikings had shut down the Rams' high-flying offense, delivering one of its signature performances in a victory that gave the Vikings the inside track on a first-round playoff bye. On Thursday night in the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, it was the Rams who landed the haymakers in a 38-31 victory.
Their futuristic offense left the Vikings searching for answers, four days after a surprising 27-7 loss to the Buffalo Bills at home. Now, as the Vikings take a 10-day break, sitting at 1-2-1 before an NFC Championship Game rematch with the Philadelphia Eagles a week from Sunday, they'll have to reckon with the kinds of defensive questions they've rarely faced under Zimmer.
Jared Goff threw five touchdown passes by the end of the third quarter, tying a record for the most TD passes against the Vikings and becoming the first quarterback to post that many against them since Drew Brees did it on Dec. 18, 2011. He finished with a perfect 158.3 passer rating — becoming the first quarterback to post a perfect rating against the Vikings while throwing more than seven passes in a game — and his 465 yards were the second-most ever against the Vikings, behind Doug Williams' 486 in 1980.
"At this point, I don't know," Zimmer said. "We've never been, probably anywhere I've ever been, this poor in pass coverage. We're going to look at everything we're doing and get back to doing things correctly."
Since 2006, teams traveling two or more time zones west were 13-30 in night games in the Pacific Time zone, posting a 0-6 record on Thursday nights. The Vikings traveled to Los Angeles to face the NFC's only undefeated team without defensive end Everson Griffen.
Nothing about their task was enviable. Still, the way the Rams carved up the Vikings' defense — the league's top-ranked unit from a year ago — was startling to watch.
It forced the Vikings into the kind of shootout they might be better prepared to handle with Kirk Cousins as their quarterback, but still probably would prefer to avoid.