Souhan: Is Sunday the biggest Vikings regular-season game ever?

The 2021 NFL regular season ended with the Lions earning their third victory, the Vikings firing their coach and Sam Darnold badly losing a meaningless game for Carolina, which had benched him earlier that season and would bench him to start 2022.

The Lions, Vikings and Darnold missed the playoffs that year, and could have been described as woeful, frustrated and despairing.

Three years later, on the last Sunday of the 2024 regular season, Darnold will lead the Vikings in Detroit in the first game ever to feature two teams with 14 regular-season victories, a game that will determine the champion of the suddenly-powerful NFC North and the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs.

For this game, the hype and the facts are identical.

“I guess people can argue this point,” said former Vikings general manager Jeff Diamond. “But I think it’s the biggest, regular-season game in team history.”

Diamond began working for the Vikings when Bud Grant was the coach, and experienced the team’s last Super Bowl. He rose through the organization, and was the general manager of the 1998 team that came within one kick of finally returning to the Super Bowl.

“There have been other Vikings games where division titles were on the line,” he said. “In 2015, they won at Lambeau to win the division. In this case, even though both teams are in the playoffs, there’s just a huge difference between being the No. 1 seed and getting a bye week and home-field advantage through the playoffs, with both teams having raucous crowds and significant home-field advantages, versus going on the road and having to win three playoff games to get to the Super Bowl.”

This is a matchup of likable coaches, altered cultures and outsized ambitions.

The Lions’ Dan Campbell has pulled off the remarkable trick of simultaneously becoming one of the most controversial and popular coaches in pro sports. His audacity charms even when it fails. He has turned the Lions into an offensive powerhouse that can run around you, but prefers to run over you.

The Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell should be coach of the year for winning 14 and perhaps 15 games with a quarterback who either failed or barely played with his three previous teams.

If the Lions were at full strength, they would be marked favorites. But they are not at full strength, and that’s where the different approaches of Campbell and O’Connell could matter most on Sunday.

Campbell believes in promoting toughness. Monday, playing in a meaningless game at San Francisco, he didn’t rest a single starter, six days before the game of the year.

He brought in power runner David Montgomery to set a physical tone, and he has built the defense with physical players.

Is it coincidental that the Lions have been the most-injured quality team in the NFL this season?

At one point, they had 16 defensive contributors unavailable. Montgomery will miss the game on Sunday, along with the Lions’ two best defensive linemen, Aidan Hutchinson and Alim McNeill.

In their last three games against quality offensive teams, the Lions allowed 34 points to the injury-depleted 49ers, 48 points to the Bills and 31 to the Packers.

They also won two of those games.

The Vikings pride themselves on player comfort. They have ranked first and second in the last two seasons in the NFL Players Association player surveys about the best places to play.

They have been remarkably healthy this season, with their only major, lasting injury being outstanding left tackle Christian Darrisaw’s season-ending knee surgery.

It’s not that the Vikings aren’t physical, or tough. It’s just that the Lions pride themselves on running through walls, while the Vikings would rather scheme a path around it.

“That’s how we do things around here,” said veteran Vikings fullback C.J. Ham. “Our coaches, our athletic training staff, our performance staff, everyone. Everything is done for a purpose, for a reason. When it’s time to go hard, we go hard, and when it’s time to recover, we take time to do that.

“Like I said, it’s just how we do things around here.”