Colin Cowherd dials back his prediction for the 2022 Vikings

About a month ago or so, FOX Sports radio host Colin Cowherd made a few waves when he predicted that our Minnesota Vikings would “double their win total” from 2021. This is insane, of course, considering that the Vikings went 8-9 in 2021 and there’s pretty much nobody that expects them to go 16-1 this season.

Well, Cowherd has reportedly revised his prediction a little bit, but it still has the Vikings winning an impressive number of games in 2022. According to a recent episode of the Purple Daily podcast, Cowherd is now saying that the Vikings will win 13 or 14 games and should be the #1 choice “to bet the over on” this season, referring to their win total. At most sportsbooks that I’ve taken a look at, the over/under for Vikings wins this season is around eight or nine, so a 13 or 14-win season would obviously crush that.

(Thanks to Jordy McElroy at The Vikings Wire for finding this clip.)

Now, I’ve searched high and low for the clip of Cowherd saying this, and I can’t find it anywhere. . .I don’t listen to his show every day and it isn’t in any of the clips that are captured on the show’s YouTube page that I can find. So, we’re doing this via what I like to call the REO Speedwagon method because we heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend.

It seems that there might be a little bit of momentum gathering for national media types to get behind the Vikings a bit this season. If you take a look at the Football Outsiders page for the Minnesota Vikings, their team chapter on the purple from this year’s Football Outsiders Almanac. . .out now if you’re into that sort of thing. . .is prefaced with the words “Yes, it’s weird how much our projections love this team in 2022.” I have not read the Almanac for this year yet, so I’m curious as to why the projections love our favorite team so much. We’ll get more into that in the near future.

As always, you can read what you want into the national media potentially getting behind this team and decide whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Given this team’s propensity for looking their worst when the spotlight is the brightest, I think I’d kind of like the “experts” to leave our team alone for a bit. But, the expectations for the Vikings in Kevin O’Connell’s first season in charge appear to be on the rise, whether we like it or not.