- Oct 16, 2026
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SportsMafia Wire graphic. Team logos and player headshots via ESPN.
The Minnesota Vikings improved to 6-0 with a 16-10 victory over the Indianapolis Colts in Week 6, relying almost entirely on a dominant defense while their offense remains among the league's worst.
Kicker Will Reichard has scored 63 points this season, one more than the rest of the roster combined. The team has managed just 10 offensive touchdowns. Quarterback Kyler Murray threw for 150 yards and one touchdown against Indianapolis, while Colts quarterback Daniel Jones managed 108 passing yards with one interception and four sacks.
Defensive coordinator Brian Flores has built an historically elite unit. The Vikings blitz on 71.8% of dropbacks, 28 percentage points more than any other team, and generate pressure on 47.1% of snaps. They blitzed 85.2% of the time against Indianapolis, the highest single-game rate since 2013, holding the Colts to 48 second-half yards. Opponents average 12.3 points per game. The defense ranks third among 480 team-seasons since 2011 in EPA per play at plus-0.195.
Minnesota's minus-0.148 offensive EPA per play ranks 31st, worse than the 2015 Denver Broncos' minus-0.063 mark. Those Broncos, with 39-year-old Peyton Manning throwing 9 touchdowns and 17 interceptions in 10 games, won Super Bowl 50. Fourteen teams have started 6-0 since 2013; all reached the playoffs and seven advanced to the Super Bowl, though only Denver captured the title.
"I was serious when I said he should've won Coach of the Year," one observer noted of Mike Tomlin's 2019 Steelers, who went 8-8 with the 31st-ranked offense and missed the playoffs.
Source: CBS Sports - Mon Oct 26, 7:30 AM ET
Written by the SportsMafia Wire desk in our own words from the original reporting (AI-assisted, checked against the source).