MINNEAPOLIS — The Vikings will head to London with a 2-1 record and two division wins at home. They needed virtually every second of Sunday's game against the Lions to get there.
Down 14-0 in the first half, the Vikings rallied to tie the game, then fell behind by 10 again. But after they stopped Jamaal Williams on the Lions' sixth fourth-down attempt of the day — and Lions coach Dan Campbell decided on a field goal attempt instead of a seventh attempt — Kirk Cousins hit K.J. Osborn for a pair of 28-yard completions, finding him wide open in the end zone for a touchdown with 45 seconds left that gave the Vikings a 28-24 win.
It is the first time since 2017 the Vikings will end September with a winning record, and the rally brought them back from another game that looked like it could spiral out of their hands.
The Lions gained 174 yards on three game-opening possessions during which Jared Goff had no trouble finding completions underneath the Vikings' zones. Austin Seibert's 48-yard field goal bounced off the right upright, but Detroit scored touchdowns on its next two possessions.
The U.S. Bank Stadium crowd began booing the Vikings after Goff found T.J. Hockenson for an easy TD early in the second quarter.
The Vikings came back with a touchdown drive that ended with Kirk Cousins hitting a wide-open Adam Thielen for his first score of the year, as Justin Jefferson motioned across the Vikings' backfield and Thielen crossed the back of the end zone undetected.
Then, after Josh Metellus tackled Hockenson a yard short of a first down, the Vikings got their first fourth-down stop of the day on their fourth attempt, with Eric Kendricks breaking up a pass for Hockenson. The stop produced a drive that ended with Dalvin Cook's game-tying touchdown just over a minute before halftime; Cousins found Thielen for a 6-yard completion on a fourth down to keep the drive going.
In the third quarter, the Lions drove for a go-ahead field goal with the help of another fourth-down conversion, where Goff slipped away from Dalvin Tomlinson and Za'Darius Smith before finding Josh Reynolds for 16 yards.
On the Vikings' next drive, the Lions sent seven rushers after Cousins on a third-and-12; Cousins threw incomplete, Greg Joseph missed his second long field goal of the day and the Lions drove for a touchdown that made it 24-14.
The lead appeared like it might be insurmountable, especially after Cook lost a fumble on a play that also saw the running back go down with a left shoulder injury.
The Vikings drove 73 yards for a fourth-quarter touchdown, though, with the help of back-to-back penalties on Lions cornerback Amari Oruwariye. Alexander Mattison, who'd become the Vikings' lead back after Cook's injury, broke three tackles on a six-yard TD run that pulled the Vikings within a field goal.
Detroit drove to the Vikings' 30 on its ensuing drive, but the Vikings' defensive line spilled into the Lions' backfield on fourth down, stopping Williams for no gain and giving Cousins a chance to get the ball back. That drive would end with an incomplete pass to Thielen, as the receiver asked officials to flag Oruwariye for the sixth time in the game, but the Vikings would get one more chance after Campbell's final fourth-down decision of the day was a peculiar one.
He'd gone for it six times on fourth down, and the Lions had converted four of them, when he decided not to go for a fourth-and-4 from the Vikings' 36 that could have ended the game. Instead, Campbell sent kicker Seibert out for a 54-yard field goal. He missed wide right, and Cousins needed just two throws to Osborn, against former Vikings cornerback Mike Hughes, to win the game.
Josh Metellus, starting in place of the injured Harrison Smith, intercepted Goff on the Lions' final drive to seal the win.
