GLENDALE, Ariz. — Tears meshed with eye black on his cheeks as Joshua Metellus discussed brotherhood.
Harrison Smith paused to collect himself, outspoken about not wanting to reveal emotion on camera.
And Blake Cashman stoically described this season as better than anything he dreamed of as a boy.
Leaders of Minnesota's hard-charging, history-making defense shared in disappointment Monday night at State Farm Stadium after the Vikings were bounced by the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card finale.
They lost, 27-9, in a "sh— way to go out," Cashman said. But, also, they reveled in what they achieved.
"This team is one of the best teams I've ever been on," Metellus declared.
After wrapping his debut Vikings season with 11 tackles, Cashman smiled: "When I think of the little boy in me growing up and what I envisioned … this beats that – what I was able to experience this year."
Of course, the pain of the first-round exit will be fresh for a while.
"We put a lot of time and work in, so, to not get the rewards of that, it hurts. That's why you see a lot of grown men showing tears and a lot of emotions," Cashman detailed with an artful balancing of his feelings. "Football is one of those games where it's true, you do put your blood, sweat and tears into it."
Smith expressed, fighting to contain his waterworks: "When you've played as long as I have, you don't feel great every day. But playing, especially this year, in this defense, was some of the most fun I've had."
The brutal truth is Minnesota's usually complementary brand of football no-showed when it was supposed to carry the group to its next opportunity to go 1-0; the defense, for the only instance in 18 games this season, failed to force a turnover; the offense was snake-bitten by sacks and poor execution.
"I loved the aggressive nature at which we tried to play the game," Vikings Head Coach Kevin O'Connell said. "Looking back on the previous matchup and playing true to our style – they just made some plays against it, and that's what's going to happen when you're playing against Matthew Stafford. Like I said, I know that guy pretty well. He made some plays, and those are ones that as an offense you have to go out and try to respond and try to make a few. Got to give our guys better plays and try to find a way to be consistent, put the ball in the end zone and show our defense and our special teams that we can respond in those moments. That's when the negative plays [were] a weight on our whole football team."
Again, the truth: It's difficult to play a reciprocating style when both sides handicap themselves.
Such was the case for Minnesota, nullifying a large turnout of Purple supporters in the second playoff game in history relocated to a "neutral" field and first since the 1936 NFL Championship between Boston (now the Washington Commanders franchise) and the Green Bay Packers.
With wildfires putting Los Angeles' welfare in jeopardy, the Rams played particularly unified.
First-play passes of 27 and 23 yards doubled in devastating the Vikings defense and sparking 65- and 77-yard Rams scoring drives on their first two possessions, providing them a sudden 10-point cushion.
The pass defense never really patched its holes.
Stafford clicked right away, starting 11-for-12 with 124 yards and a touchdown. In that span, Los Angeles' offense totaled 142 yards on 14 plays, for an impossible-to-win-against average of 10.1. In the first half, the 36-year-old Stafford went 14-for-20, with 154 yards, including touchdowns of 5 and 13, and no sacks.
Six Rams players were targeted and recorded a catch in the first two frames, but, amazingly, none were named Cooper Kupp, which underlined Stafford's effectiveness in distributing the ball to the open man.
Kupp finally got involved with 9:20 left in the third quarter and made the wait worth it for the Rams, deftly hauling in a back-shoulder throw on a deep route that annulled lockstep coverage by Shaq Griffin.
That connection counted as a game-long gain of 29 and set up the Rams for a field goal and 27-3 lead.
The Kupp catch salted Minnesota's wounds, because its defense started to show signs of life on that series; Ivan Pace, Jr. racked up five yards on a couple tackles for loss and Andrew Van Ginkel had a sack.
Unbelievably, it was the first sack of Stafford in six-plus quarters pressuring him this season. Later on, Blake Cashman got him, as well, when Stafford tucked the ball and ran on what looked like a busted play.
"We needed to come in and start fast. When you get behind the 8-ball, it's a whole new game – a play here or play there, that's just the name of the game," Van Ginkel said, adding his thoughts on Stafford. "He's played in a lot of big-time games … and seen every look. He's a tough quarterback to go against."
Although Vikings defenders hurried Stafford on several attempts and even dropped him to the grass, they didn't present a sustainable resolution to his bullet progressions or passes into tight windows.
View game action photos from the Vikings at Rams Wild Card round matchup at State Farm Stadium.
Rams running back Kyren Williams aided Stafford's early-game aggressiveness by fooling tacklers with uncanny vision and arcade cutbacks, rushing in each half for 37 and 39 yards, with a solid average of 4.8.
Williams also caught three passes for 16 yards and had two receptions – one for six points – on the first Rams drive, which in hindsight was as ghastly accurate of a precursor to the rest of the night as possible.
"They found some similar spots there with some drive-starter kind of plays and that's the thing with Matthew," O'Connell explained. "We'll go back and watch the tape and on some of those explosives there's going to be a Viking within a step of him. His willingness to stand in there even versus some of those free-runners and put the ball up [was impressive] and they were coming down with a lot of those."
Certainly, there's no excuses. But there are facts relevant to Minnesota's demise.
The 14-win Vikings drew as tough of a card as they could, having to face a well-rested and feisty Los Angeles roster that was further motivated by well-deserved national support in the wake of heartbreaking destruction engulfing Southern California, on the back-half of a two-legger that tested Minnesota's conditioning and strength – the same Detroit-then-L.A. slate they dealt with in Weeks 7-8.
This encounter reaped newer versions of old mistakes.
The secondary was visibly leaky in zone coverage, only semi-sticky in man and allowed many explosives – four different Rams logged catches of 20-plus yards. Plus, pressure on Stafford was not frequent enough.
Also, there were mental lapses.
Jonathan Bullard jumped offsides when the Rams offense stayed on the field on fourth-and-1. On the next snap, Williams faked a handoff, trickled out and did a backwards somersault in the end zone paint.
Kamu Grugier-Hill was an eyelash away from blocking a Rams punt, and angrily attacked the grass on his hands and knees after missing a chance to shake the Vikings' cobwebs and potentially change the game.
Most notably, Cashman recovered an apparent sack-fumble by Jonathan Greenard and trotted in for six points, only to have the touchdown reversed via replay assist and the takeaway overturned to an incomplete pass. Los Angeles rubbed salt in that wound by tallying six on a sack-fumble that rookie edge rusher Jared Verse returned for a 57-yard score in the final minutes of the first half, taking a 17-3 lead.
"Referees just need some consistency," Greenard said with frustration. "I don't care, call what you want, but make it consistent so we can know how to play fast and know how to adjust to these things."
Things went from bad to worse with 1:32 until the intermission when Sam Darnold swallowed the ball on fourth-and-2 and was sacked at Minnesota's 39 for an 11-yard loss. The Rams scored a TD five plays later.
Mercifully, the bleeding stopped from a defensive standpoint in the second half.
Aside from a quarter-opening, 11-play, 55-yard jaunt that tacked on three points, Los Angeles netted 36 yards and punted thrice. Great – except Minnesota's offense failed to complement its defensive fixes.
"We've got to learn from it," Van Ginkel said. "Take it with every inch of our body, and learn from it."
In the end, the distasteful start on defense lingered, and players were limited afterwards to feelings of sorrow instead of increased excitement. For some, like Smith and Byron Murphy, Jr. the future is fuzzy.
Smith on Monday had nine tackles, a hit on Stafford and a pass breakup, and officially became the 11th Viking to play in 200 games, including playoffs. He joined all-timers Jim Marshall, Mick Tingelhoff, Fred Cox, Carl Eller, Scott Studwell, Ron Yary, Grady Alderman, Roy Winston, Randall McDaniel and Cris Carter.
"Hitman" may retire as a near-guarantee to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame one day.
And then there's Murphy, one example of many Vikings defenders to enjoy career seasons in 2024. He might leave when free agency opens, and ought to have a list of suitors after a six-interception campaign.
What then do we know for sure after a crummy start to the New Year?
That this team, and this defense played with joy and resilience during its rather improbable journey.
"Yes, we failed. We did not reach our goal," Cashman reinforced. "But we had a lot of success, and we had a lot of fun doing that, and it just sucks to come up short in a big game and lose in the dance."
O'Connell said the foundation of players who are "smart, tough, love football and love being great teammates" will be what the organization continues focusing on.
"We've got to find a way to match that foundation with our performance across the board as a team and a coaching staff," O'Connell said. "I think the important parts of building this organization and where we want to get to is acknowledging these moments and feeling these moments, but also never underestimating the power of the way we do things and why we do things the way we do."
Cashman concluded: "Everybody just had so much fun – not only getting to know each other, and growing our relationships off the field, but then on the field, as well. That's what sucks about this and that's what pulls on the heartstrings a little bit, because this team will never be the same as it was this year."
