Vikings see parallels and draw inspiration from Rams’ Super Bowl run in 2021

For those searching for hope after the 14-win Vikings’ playoff hopes were deflated by the season’s worst loss, a handful of coaches and players can say they’ve been in a similar spot and managed to win a Super Bowl.

“We gotta get through this [Monday night] game first,” receiver Brandon Powell said. “That’s what we’re thinking about. But you know how everybody is saying L.A., then you gotta go through Detroit? Man, it’s the same thing. Like we already — some of us: me, Cam [Akers], K.O. [Kevin O’Connell], Wes [Phillips], we all done experienced it before.”

Powell was talking about the 2021 Super Bowl run by the Los Angeles Rams — Monday night’s opponent in the NFC wild-card round — that catapulted O’Connell to Minnesota.

Update: Playoff game against Rams moved from L.A. to Arizona

That season, the Rams lost the regular-season finale to their rival, the then-reigning NFC champion 49ers — marking L.A.’s sixth straight loss to San Francisco. The Rams fell from the NFC’s No. 2 seed to the No. 4 seed with a 12-5 record, not exactly setting up the momentum for a Super Bowl run.

The Rams beat the division rival Arizona Cardinals in the wild-card round. Then L.A. went on the road and toppled Tom Brady’s Buccaneers in the divisional round, setting up a rematch with San Francisco in the NFC Championship Game.

The kind of playoff rematch Lions head coach Dan Campbell envisioned when he told O’Connell following the Vikings’ 31-9 loss in Detroit, “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

If the Vikings beat the Rams, they could be headed back to Ford Field should the No. 2 seed Eagles and No. 3 seed Buccaneers also win this weekend.

The Vikings have lost five straight games to the Lions.

The Rams ended a six-game losing streak to the 49ers in the 2021 NFC title game.

“We really did have the formula, the right answer, and were able to put together a good plan,” Phillips said. “But I’ve always felt like the teams that make it to the Super Bowl, the ball — it’s got to bounce the right way. … Your best players got to play great at the big moments in the game, and you kind of see that throughout the league.”

Quarterback Sam Darnold is among those best players who need to play great.

Coming off his worst game of the year, Darnold said Thursday that he needs to “trust the throws.”

“Letting it rip,” Darnold said. “I think that’s the biggest thing. When I see the throw there, just being able to let it rip and don’t think twice about it.”

Phillips hopes the loss can be “good” for the players because it featured a playoff-type atmosphere at Ford Field.

“Just the magnitude of the game and how it was propped up,” Phillips said. “It was good for this team. I think you want to win every game you play, but I’m just talking about the scale and magnitude of the game. … It’s just good to understand that the bigger the game is, the more you have to rely on your technique, your fundamentals, understanding the plan.”

Darnold returning to the form that led to his first 4,000-yard, 35-touchdown season would go a long way toward the Vikings duplicating the Rams’ 2021 title run.

“We were able to, in many ways, do [in 2021] what we’re attempting to do this week,” O’Connell said. “Acknowledging how it happened, acknowledging how we need to improve. The late-season improvement, sometimes, is just about consistency. It’s about doing some of the things that you think back over the season we did really well. We got to make sure we find a way to do a lot of those things.”

“Then it’s about momentum from there. In a game, in a quarter, starting the game the way you want to start, responding to adversity. … From there, there’s 1,000 little things that go on in the game. … I can think back to seven to 10 plays throughout the course of that run, where if one of those go differently, who knows.”

Powell, a receiver and punt returner, recalled one of those iffy moments in the 2021 divisional round in Tampa Bay. The Rams blew a 27-3 lead and found themselves tied with Brady with less than a minute left in regulation.

“We kind of was up, got lackadaisical,” Powell said. “Tom Brady did his thing to come back.”

Powell said one of Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford’s passes to set up the game-winning field goal was a play they hadn’t run in a game.

“A play we practiced all year,” Powell said, “and it never came up the whole year, and it came up that one time in that one game, and it helped us win the game.”

The gravity of Monday night is not lost on Darnold, who said he’s channeling anticipation into excitement.

“It’s kind of where legacies, I guess, are made,” Darnold said. “Not just winning games, but winning those later games like AFC, NFC championships, winning Super Bowls. That’s how you’re going to be remembered.”