MINNEAPOLIS — If you blinked, by golly you might have missed it.

Jonathan Greenard zoomed off the left edge and tomahawk-chopped Caleb Williams' right arm, springing the ball loose onto the turf like a bouncing Skittle when a bag is ripped open with reckless abandonment.

It's the type of everlasting image we've seen throughout this ceaselessly rewarding Vikings season.

Greenard's third strip-sack of 2024, and 11^th sack overall, was cradled and returned 17 yards to Chicago's 39 by Blake Cashman. It set the foundation for Justin Jefferson's eighth receiving touchdown.

And it nearly resulted in a defensive score.

"Hey, don't be knocking my speed now!" Cashman fired at teammates humorously chirping him. "Obviously, I was stumbling forward, and when I got my balance back, I got smacked by [Travis] Homer.

"It was a great play by J.G.," Cashman continued. "We harp on it every week – this defense is built around, you know, it's a must that we take the ball away. I wish I would have ended up in the end zone."

The effort was a special example of Minnesota's defense collaborating with its offense on Monday Night Football, and one of many luminous moments for the playoff-bound Vikings, in their brilliantly white "Winter Warrior" uniforms, as they bulldozed the Bears, 30-12, for their 12^th win and seventh in a row.

"A strip-sack is the best feeling in the world," Greenard said with big eyes afterwards in the locker room.

"I'm gonna be on [Cashman] all week for that one," he added jokingly. "I haven't seen Cash' get laid out like that. [Usually], he's laying people out, so I've got to get on him for not finishing the touchdown."

Greenard's double-whammy sack with 7:42 left in the first quarter cemented Minnesota as the only defense in the NFL this year with a takeaway in every game – and the first defensive unit in franchise history to force a turnover in its first 14 games to start a season since the 1992 club pieced together a streak of 16.

It also convincingly set the tone for a divisional matchup dominated by the Purple – er, White – defense.

Head Coach Kevin O'Connell applauded Vikings defenders for flying off the edge.

"I think that we were really disciplined, but it just felt explosive," O'Connell said about the pass rush as a whole. "I felt that [Defensive Coordinator Brian Flores] did a nice job changing up some of the rush patterns and sending some different guys and just changing things up and allowing our guys to – what I thought was a pretty sticky kind of night on some of those weighty downs in coverage to make [Williams] hold it and move off the spot."

What a difference three weeks makes – and the opportunity to correct mistakes.

Williams was contained to 18-for-31 passing with 191 yards and gained only 3 rushing yards. The tallies paled in comparison to what he managed in Week 12, when he clipped 32 throws for 340 yards and tacked on 33 with his feet.

"We watched the film last time, and he was out there looking like a magician," Camryn Bynum noted. "So today was like, 'Let's not let him look like that,' and really, there wasn't anything that changed. It was just everybody 'Do your job.' On the back end, you stay tight to the receivers and make them hold the ball and then in the front, we keep him in the pocket as much as possible [and] get quick pressure on him."

"You've got to show up under the lights!" Joshua Metellus exclaimed. "The energy in the building was great. We had some good plays on defense – a lot of good run stops. That was just fueling the fire."

Minnesota allowed 100-plus yards on the ground for the third consecutive game, yielding a net of 113, but was stronger at the point of attack; Chicago rushed 29 times for an average of 3.9 yards per carry.

"They did a good job of just sticking to it," Metellus said. "But we did a good job of making the plays when we needed to – getting them in second-and-long, third-and-longs, exactly where we wanted 'em."

"Really should have been a goose egg in our eyes," said Greenard, admitting his fault on an offsides penalty early in the series that Chicago posted its first three points (Andrew Van Ginkel also was offside on that one).

All in all, it was a wire-to-wire erasure of a Bears team that recently gave the Vikings some fits.

On two instances in the first half, including on the game's initial series, Minnesota extinguished D'Andre Swift on fourth-and-1 rushes. And on both occasions, the Vikings capitalized; they turned a short field into a 52-yard field goal by Will Reichard for their first points and netted three more after salting the end of the first half with a 13-play, 58-yard drive that offset one of 11 plays and 60 yards for the Bears.

"I gave [Jerry] Tillery a game ball because it's never perfect for me [watching] it from the sideline, but I just felt him, the penetration and getting in the backfield," O'Connell commented, referencing Tillery's involvement on the first, tone-setting fourth-down stuff. "It doesn't show up as a turnover in the stat sheet, but I certainly look at it like that. I thought that was a great example of what our defense has been all season long, which is incredibly resilient, and they rise up in those moments, those weighty moments, whether it's rushing the passer, coverage on the back end, or short-yardage situations like that."

With 14:35 to play, Chicago converted its first third down of the night on a 20-yard pass to Keenan Allen. The shutout by the Vikings defense in the first half and 30-plus minute o-fer for Chicago's offense in the third-down category was the first occasion of both since Week 15 of the 2017 slate against Cincinnati.

"That's one of the biggest things we stress," Bynum said. "Everything's important, but third down is really where you win games, and there's so many stats that talk about when you get a certain percentage of success on third downs, it leads to a win. And to be as successful as we were today, that leads to a loss."

To grasp the Bears' futility on offense, consider this: Chicago's lone touchdown was made possible by a blocked punt and generous starting field position at Minnesota's 27. But even then, Williams was beleaguered by four incompletions before finally connecting with Allen for a 16-yard TD on fourth-and-10.

Rookie outside linebacker Dallas Turner joined in on the defensive fun with 8:53 remaining, bending so low on a pass rush that his knees scraped the turf before he scrunched Williams for a nine-yard loss.

He doubled down on the sentiment that a strip-sack like Greenard's is nonpareil in the eyes of edge rushers.

"I agree with him on that," said Turner, whose sack, like his teammate's blasting of Williams, happened on third down. "If you truly like the game of football, you can take a lot from [watching Greenard]."

If there's such a thing as home-field advantage – there absolutely is of course – Greenard uses it as well as anyone. He raised his home sack total to nine in seven games, excluding the "home" London contest.

"When you get a guy like that – and the other four that rush – we put ourselves in prime position every time," Metellus said, dubbing Greenard a "game-changer."

The production is the byproduct of a harmonized scheme and group of players that goes about its business each practice and game with an eagerness to execute and unsettling attitude for improvement.

Among the defenses he's played with, Greenard remarked, "Honestly, I'll go ahead and say it's the top."