# Minnesota Vikings 2026: The Coverage Report — 17 Graded Trophy Calls, 17 Zeros

*Published 2026-09-06 — MissedTakes*

The Minnesota Vikings are the middle of our coverage distribution's lower half: 499 takes logged, 155 of them graded. That is 27th of 32 clubs by graded takes, against a league median of 207. Kansas City, the most-graded team on the site, has 389 — more than twice Minnesota's total.

One caveat, stated once and applied throughout: this measures the outlets and shows MissedTakes tracks, not all football media. Minnesota has a large local press we don't ingest. What follows is how the national pundits we do grade handled this team.

By raw take volume the picture is a little kinder — 499 takes ties the Jets for 22nd — but a lot of what gets said about the Vikings never resolves into something gradable. The gap between 499 takes and 155 grades is the widest kind of gap this site cares about: plenty of talk, not much of it in a form that can be checked.

![Vikings coverage, in context](/posts/visuals/0eabbe39-40a6-4510-bf22-789e4f35df6e.png)

The results didn't obviously deserve less attention. Minnesota went 9-8 in 2025 and missed the playoffs, one year after a 14-3 season that did reach them. A team that swings seven games in a season is normally a magnet for opinion. What our sources produced instead was volume without much settlement.

## The cutdown: 19 calls, two grades, and none of them from this year

The news hook of this series is the 53-man roster, and here the honest answer is that the Vikings file is nearly empty of results. We hold 19 roster-spot takes on Minnesota. Exactly two are graded, and both were claimed in 2025.

- [Yogi Roth](/pundits/yogi-roth) said in April 2025 that Max Brosmer, the 255th-ranked prospect at his position, would be on an NFL team "in less than a week." [Graded 100](/opinions/23460fdd-810f-4672-8183-6ff833229a01), skill +200: Brosmer was on the 53 for 17 of 18 weeks in 2025 against a naive baseline of zero.
- [Richard Sherman](/pundits/richard-sherman), in January 2025, on Sam Darnold: "Something tells me that they'll believe in him at least for one more season." [Graded 100](/opinions/956f5970-10c1-4e23-a612-56ce9ca02030), skill 0 — Darnold had been on a 53 the previous season, so the naive call already had it right.

Every one of the 17 calls tied to the 2026 cutdown is still pending. There are no graded surprises to lead with, so we won't manufacture any. What we can do is put the pending ledger on the record now, so the grades land against something published in advance:

- An unsigned FOX Sports item on September 3 said the Vikings "are expected to keep third-year quarterback [J.J. McCarthy](/nfl/players/j-j-mccarthy) on the active roster," repeating a cutdown-day version of the same claim from August 31.
- [Nathan Jahnke](/pundits/nathan-jahnke) of PFF twice pointed at snap counts as evidence for [Carson Wentz](/nfl/players/carson-wentz): "played only the second quarter last week and just eight snaps in this game, [suggesting he should make the Vikings' roster](/opinions/265cbdba-b0e0-4f80-9665-a4ca5aaec53e)."
- Trevor Ripley, on August 31, expected [Max Brosmer](/nfl/players/max-brosmer) back on the practice squad after being waived, and thought [Dillon Bell](/nfl/players/dillon-bell) was headed the same way: "a deep room makes him expendable."
- Adam Carlson argued on August 11 that rookie [Demond Claiborne](/nfl/players/demond-claiborne) would force his way onto the 53 as RB3 at [Zavier Scott](/nfl/players/zavier-scott)'s expense, then on August 24 that Brosmer "should be among the Vikings' roster cuts."
- The boldest pending call in the file: an NFL.com list of players expected to be released by cutdown day, credited to Tom Jensen, that included [T.J. Hockenson](/nfl/players/t-j-hockenson).

None of those has a score yet. When they do, they'll be graded against the announced roster, not against how camp looked.

## What the Vikings record actually shows

Across 155 graded takes, the club's file averages 44.5 accuracy with a skill delta of +16.5. That average hides a very clean split.

![Vikings takes by claim type: average accuracy](/posts/visuals/6240228d-1967-471f-9f6a-4d8de03c3e7f.png)

The trophy calls are a shutout. Division winners: eight graded, average accuracy 0.0. Conference champions: six graded, 0.0. Super Bowl picks: three graded, 0.0. That is 17 graded calls on Minnesota winning something, and 17 zeros. Playoff berths add six more graded takes at an average of 16.7.

[Jamie Erdahl](/pundits/jamie-erdahl) went there twice in September 2025, most explicitly on September 6: "the Minnesota Vikings, in their fifth Super Bowl appearance, will finally, for the first time in the history of the organization win a Lombardi." [Graded 0](/opinions/5cf850dd-0eb1-41d3-b417-21382a6ab157) — Seattle won it, New England lost it. [Chris Brockman](/pundits/chris-brockman)'s December 2024 "I think the Vikings are going Super Bowl. That's not an overreaction" [scored 0 with a skill delta of −111](/opinions/d0066710-bef2-4ad6-ba0f-12a0f699e6a0), because the naive baseline — last season's conference champions — was already better than his pick.

Now the other half. On the boring number, the field was excellent. Eleven graded season win-total calls on Minnesota average 81.8 accuracy and +55 skill. Ten pundits put a 2025 number on this team; the mean of those calls was 8.7 against an actual nine wins.

![2025 Vikings win-total calls vs. the actual nine](/posts/visuals/0691fc37-096c-4118-8b08-f17a2a47300d.png)

[Jason McIntyre](/pundits/jason-mcintyre) publicly walked himself down — "it seems like maybe I overreacted this summer on the Vikings and they profiled more like a nine ish win team, yes, as opposed to eleven" — and [scored 100 with +90 skill](/opinions/8ff5dbf3-7afa-4601-b6e7-66f0d967908b). [Nick Shook](/pundits/nick-shook) ("On what planet do they not win nine games this year?") and [Gregg Rosenthal](/pundits/gregg-rosenthal) ("let's go Vikings over eight and a half") landed the same 100/+90.

Depth-chart calls grade even higher — 15 graded, 97.8 average accuracy — but read that with the difficulty attached. Most of them are versions of "McCarthy starts," and the naive baseline was already at 91.7. [Ian Rapoport](/pundits/ian-rapoport), [Peter Schrager](/pundits/peter-schrager) and [Colin Cowherd](/pundits/colin-cowherd) each scored 100 there for skill deltas of +16.67 or less. Mock drafts involving Minnesota: 39 graded, 54.5 accuracy. Game picks: 16 graded, 37.5, with a skill delta of −16.2 — the one category where backing the Vikings actively cost pundits against the naive call.

## Who has earned a named record here

Setting a floor of five graded takes, eleven pundits have a Vikings file. These are small samples and we are not ranking anyone on them — five to 13 graded takes is a footnote, not a verdict.

| Pundit | Graded | Avg accuracy | Skill delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| [Rich Eisen](/pundits/rich-eisen) | 13 | 44.6 | +9.3 |
| Gregg Rosenthal | 8 | 72.7 | +2.0 |
| [Andrew Erickson](/pundits/andrew-erickson) | 8 | 49.4 | +89.9 |
| Colin Cowherd | 8 | 43.2 | +14.0 |
| Jamie Erdahl | 8 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| [Derek Brown](/pundits/derek-brown) | 6 | 29.0 | −27.8 |
| [Pat Fitzmaurice](/pundits/pat-fitzmaurice) | 6 | 4.5 | −57.4 |
| [LaVar Arrington](/pundits/lavar-arrington) | 6 | 16.7 | −4.5 |
| Jason McIntyre | 5 | 49.6 | +23.3 |
| [Nick Wright](/pundits/nick-wright) | 5 | 38.3 | −52.3 |
| Kyle Crabbs | 5 | 25.5 | +34.6 |

Erickson's +89.9 comes largely from one repeated call: he named [Jordan Mason](/nfl/players/jordan-mason) a sleeper twice, and Mason finished RB33 — [exactly the bar](/opinions/f6287666-eaac-4848-8f1d-0a470374edf0), worth 100 accuracy and +200 skill each time. [Ryan Wormeli](/pundits/ryan-wormeli) had the same player at the same grade. On the other side, Derek Brown twice called [McCarthy a fantasy QB1](/opinions/e7b414f5-0aba-48e0-afd9-1da70ed5dd9d); McCarthy finished QB32.

By outlet, The Herd with Colin Cowherd carries the most graded Vikings takes of anything we track — 44, at 35.8 accuracy and +0.6 skill. Around the NFL is next with 18 at 62.7.

The summary is short: our sources talked about this team plenty, converted it into checkable claims at a below-median rate, priced their nine-win season almost exactly right, and were wrong on every single graded claim that Minnesota would win a division, a conference or a Super Bowl. The 2026 roster is 17 more claims waiting on a grade.