CHICAGO – For their performance in the first three months of the 2021 season — blending spellbinding moments with stupefying collapses — the Vikings were sentenced to four games fighting for their playoff lives, watching scoreboards and calculating tiebreakers against the rest of the NFL's middle tier.
On that account, the Vikings' 17-9 victory at Soldier Field was a victory they could not do without: It got them to 7-7, and back into a tie for the NFC's final wild-card spot. They will need more victories, however, and they might not find another opponent as willing to give them one as the Chicago Bears were on Monday night.