Vikings blame surprising issue for communication problems in loss

The Minnesota Vikings lost in somewhat bizarre fashion to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday, and they blamed a surprising culprit for hindering their comeback attempt.

Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell and quarterback Kirk Cousins both admitted that crowd noise was a hindrance on their final offensive drive. The Vikings ran 23 seconds off the clock after making it to the Chargers’ six-yard line with 35 seconds to go, burning a lot of valuable time. Cousins admitted that the Vikings wanted to speed things up instead of spiking the ball, but the home crowd was celebrating a previous fourth down conversion too loudly for him to hear O’Connell’s playcall.

“Just couldn’t hear him with the noise,” Cousins said, via Kevin Seifert of ESPN. “Just ended up calling a play, and the play I called was the same play he was trying to get to.”

This usually is not a problem for home teams, as fans are encouraged to be quieter when their offense is on the field. Ironically, this is usually more of a problem for the Chargers, and the Vikings actually benefitted from it against them a few years ago.

The Chargers wound up winning 28-24 after Cousins threw an interception on a tipped pass after the communication issue.