Home-field advantage? Vikings were as bad as the Les Steckel year

The 2011 Vikings, playing with a rookie quarterback in Leslie Frazier's first season as head coach while embarking on perhaps the largest roster reset of the Wilf family's ownership, lost seven of their eight games at the Metrodome, dropping six of those games by six points or less.

The 1984 Vikings were beaten in six of their eight games at the Metrodome, losing four times by at least two touchdowns in a 3-13 season that went so poorly, Bud Grant came out of retirement to coach one more season after Les Steckel's firing.

Until Sunday, those teams were the only two in Vikings history to finish with six home losses. The 2023 Vikings, who entered the season as the defending NFC North champions, joined that group on Sunday night.

Their New Year's Eve game against the Packers, the team they'd beaten emphatically for Kevin O'Connell's first win as Vikings head coach last season, turned into a 33-10 defeat that was both costly and concerning. It means the Vikings' playoff hopes depend on a win in Detroit and a complicated parlay of losses around the NFC. After O'Connell made his third quarterback switch — and his second mid-game change — of December, it reopened questions about how the Vikings will finish the season at QB in Detroit and what their future at the position looks like with Kirk Cousins headed for free agency.

Beyond the questions it raised, the defeat was an emetic for Vikings fans. It was the team's worst loss at home to Green Bay since Dec. 16, 1984, when Steckel's club lost by 24 points. It continued a yearly ritual of lopsided New Year's weekend defeats to the Packers, following a 41-17 loss in Green Bay last Jan. 1 and a 37-10 loss at Lambeau Field on Jan. 2, 2022.

Eight weeks after the Vikings won by two touchdowns at Lambeau Field to put themselves in line for a wild-card spot, they fell behind the Packers in the race for the NFC's final playoff spot, as Vikings fans departed early and Green Bay supporters remained to cheer on their team.

The Vikings had built one of the NFL's most consistent home-field advantages in their first seven seasons at U.S. Bank Stadium, buoyed by sellout crowds and elaborate in-game productions to a 39-18 regular-season record at home. Only the Chiefs (with 44 wins) and the Packers (with 42) had won more home games in that time, with four other teams — the Ravens, Steelers, Patriots and Cowboys — tied with the Vikings at 39. Their lone home playoff victory in that time, their 2017 NFC divisional round win over the Saints, ended with the most euphoric finish in Vikings history.

In O'Connell's first season in Minnesota, the Vikings went 8-1 at home, clinching an NFC North title with a 33-point comeback last December that ranked as the largest in NFL history.

But the Vikings lost their NFC wild-card game at home to the Giants in January and dropped their first three home games this season by a combined 14 points, in games changed by a goal-line interception before halftime, a game-winning-TD-turned-interception in the fourth quarter and an injury to Justin Jefferson. After Cousins' stirring performance in a Monday night win over the 49ers and Joshua Dobbs' lone victory as the starting quarterback against the Saints, the Vikings lost all three division games at home, falling to the Bears by two points and the Lions by six before the Packers became the first team to beat them by more than one score this season.

Next season, the Vikings will have nine regular-season home games on the schedule again (though it's worth watching if one of those games is played internationally). O'Connell has talked several times this season about his concern over how much the Vikings have lost in front of their fans this year. On Sunday night, they concluded one of their worst home seasons in the most dispiriting fashion imaginable.