Former Vikings offensive lineman Jeremiah Sirles reopened one of Minnesota’s biggest what-ifs when he looked back on the 2017 team’s NFC Championship loss to the Philadelphia Eagles and said he believed that group could have beaten the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
Sirles made the comments on an episode of "The OLine Committee" podcast, and he didn’t stop at saying the Vikings would have had a shot. He went further, arguing that Minnesota’s defense would have overwhelmed Tom Brady and New England.
"We went right down the field and scored on that opening drive, and I was like, 'We're going to the ship! Let's go!'
And so much after that game, there wasn't a lot of anger. Honestly, it was a lot of disbelief.
Like, it felt like after the 'Minneapolis Miracle,' [we all thought] 'It can't end this way. Not like this.
We got one more chance to do this, right? That wasn't it.
That wasn't the last time that this group of guys is together.'
... We were so close to playing [in the] Super Bowl in our own stadium.
I honestly believe we would've beat the Patriots that year. The way our defense was set up, they would've murdered Tom Brady."
The 2017 Vikings finished with the NFL’s top scoring defense, allowing just 15.8 points per game, and they came within one win of reaching a Super Bowl that would have been played at U.S. Bank Stadium. But the idea that they would have rolled past New England is a tougher sell.
A simulation run of 10,000 Super Bowl matchups between the 2017 Vikings and 2017 Patriots produced a much tighter picture. Minnesota won 4,780 times, or 47.8 percent, while New England took 5,220, or 52.2 percent.
The average result in those simulations was close as well: the Patriots scored 21.8 points and the Vikings 21.2. That points to a game that likely would have been decided late, not a runaway.
So Sirles may have been right to believe Minnesota had a real chance against the Patriots. But the part about the Vikings destroying Brady? That’s a much harder case to make.
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