Pump the brakes on Vikings as Super Bowl contenders

The Minnesota Vikings are celebrating their win over the Buffalo Bills as if they won a Super Bowl. There's reason to believe that celebration is justified since that win was likely as close as the Vikings will get to a Lombardi Trophy this season.

There is no disputing that Minnesota has great playmakers led by the best receiver in football, Justin Jefferson. It's also a fact that the Vikings are by far the worst 8-1 team in years and have benefitted as much from good luck as from actually being good.

The Bills rushed out to a 17-point lead against Minnesota before the Bills gave the game away on a first down fumble from their own 1-yard line with under a minute remaining. As Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders suggests, there's no reason to believe the Vikings are better than Buffalo just because of a fluke, fumbled snap they had no influence over.

"Those fumbles are almost always recovered by the offense, and I give no credit to the defense on those plays because the defense had nothing to do with a bad exchange," said Schatz.

Per Football Outsiders, the Vikings are by far the worst 8-1 team since 1981. The gap between Minnesota and the 2014 Arizona Cardinals, the team with the next-worst DVOA for an 8-1 team, is greater than the gap between the Cardinals and the tenth-worst team by DVOA, the 1985 Los Angeles Rams. 

Entering Week 11, the Vikings rank 17th in DVOA, sandwiched between the Jacksonville Jaguars (3-7) and Atlanta Falcons (4-6).

The team will likely go as far as QB Kirk Cousins can take them and nothing in his history -- including this year -- suggests he's primed to level up and lead a team to a Super Bowl. He has his worst completion percentage (64.1 percent) and passer rating (87) since the 2014 season and his touchdown rate (4 percent), yards per attempt (6.7) and QBR (47.7) are his worst since 2013.

Minnesota gets another chance to prove doubters wrong on Sunday against Dallas (6-3). Per Oddschecker, Dallas is a one-point road favorite. A win for Minnesota will go a long way to shaking off the perception of the team as overachievers. With a loss, they'll be exactly who we thought they were.