Josh Freeman’s lone run with the Minnesota Vikings is one of those quarterback detours that never had much of a chance to work out. He arrived with real momentum, coming off a 2012 season in Tampa Bay where he threw for more than 4,000 yards and 27 touchdowns at age 24. But once he got to Minnesota in 2013, the whole thing quickly slid off the rails.
The Vikings were already scrambling by the time Freeman entered the picture. Christian Ponder’s third year had opened badly, Matt Cassel didn’t stabilize anything when he got his shot, and Minnesota sat at 1-3 after four games while searching for a solution. Freeman, recently cut loose by the Buccaneers, signed on with the Vikings and looked like a fresh answer for a team desperate to find one.
Instead, the timing and the setup were all wrong.
After Minnesota got thumped 35-10 at home by a one-win Carolina Panthers team in Week 6, head coach Leslie Frazier made the move to Freeman before the Vikings’ Monday night trip to face the New York Giants in Week 7. It was a bold call, but also a risky one: Freeman had barely been in the building, and Minnesota handed him the job anyway.
The debut started slowly. On his first offensive drive against New York, Freeman completed just 1 of 4 passes for nine yards, and the Vikings punted.
Through the first half, he was 7-of-16 for 74 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. That wasn’t pretty, but it still felt like a quarterback settling in after a rushed introduction.
The second half was where everything fell apart.
Minnesota had eight offensive drives in the third and fourth quarters with Freeman at quarterback and didn’t score on any of them. The Vikings asked him to throw 37 passes after halftime, and he completed only 13. New York rolled to a 23-7 win, and Freeman’s final line was brutal: 20-of-53 passing for 190 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, and a 40.6 rating.
That was the end of his starting run in Minnesota. Freeman didn’t start another game for the Vikings that season, and he became a free agent in 2014.
His career kept moving after that, with stops with the Giants, Miami Dolphins, Indianapolis Colts, and the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes. He did get another start with the Colts in 2015, and Indianapolis won that game.
Freeman’s time in Minnesota was not a success, but the Vikings also didn’t exactly set him up to thrive. He was barely familiar with the playbook when they put him in the lineup, and they still had him attempt 53 passes in a game where Adrian Peterson was on the field.
Even if Freeman had played better against the Giants, he probably wasn’t going to become the long-term answer for Minnesota. But his rough stretch was one more ugly chapter in an already rough 5-10-1 season for the Vikings.
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