Vikings Watch Playoff Hopes Fade Away in loss to Bears

The Minnesota Vikings defense ended up being the reason for a playoff crushing defeat at home to the Chicago Bears.
Final: Chicago Bears 33 Minnesota Vikings 27

Minnesota:
QB:
K. Cousins 24/35 271 yds 7.7 avg 2 TD 1 INT 98.6 rtg
RB:
D. Cook 24 car 132 yds 5.5 avg 1 TD 20 long (5 rec 27 yds)
A. Mattison 1 car 1 yds 1.0 avg 1 long
WR:
J. Jefferson 8 rec 104 yds 13.0 avg 26 long
T. Conklin 3 rec 57 yds 19.0 avg 1 TD 30 long
I. Smith Jr 3 rec 37 yds 12.3 avg 21 long
C. Beebe 2 rec 21 yds 10.5 avg 12 long
A. Thielen 2 rec 11 yds 5.5 avg 1 TD 8 long
K:
D. Bailey 2/2 FG (24, 22) 3/3 XP
DEF:
C. Dantzler 1 INT
T. Davis 1 sack

Game Summary:
I will be honest, I didn't get to watch the game. So this is more musings from the highlights and the box score. From what I can tell, the main shortcoming for Minnesota this game is the defense became an achilles heel again. For a while it showed signs of turning around. But it is quite obvious that there are just too many vets and even rookies banged up to even put a competent defense on the field. This is unfortunate because the offense has actually been playing pretty decent lately. 
To make it clear: Cousins did not lose the game for the Vikings today. He may have missed on a few opportunities, but he was not the reason we lost today. It was squarely on the defense. The offense did have a hail mary shot at the end, which ended in an interception. But in general from what I can tell the defense just did not come through today, and at this point its more about who will the Vikings bring back next year on this mess that they call a defense.

Playoff Update
This most likely will be the last playoff update of the year given the Vikings are extremely unlikely to make the playoffs at this point. With the Vikings losing to the Bears today, they lose the tiebreaker they had over them and lose a spot in the hunt. Also since Arizona won today, that pushes it even further away from the Vikings' grasp. 
For the Vikings to make the playoffs at this point they would need to win both of their games remaining (at New Orleans, at Detroit) and have Arizona lose both and have Chicago lose both of their remaining games. The odds of that happening is 2%. This means that the Vikings season is basically over from a playoff standpoint. The only thing left now is to try to spoil other teams like the Saints team that we will visit on Christmas Day.

Injury Report
RB Alexander Mattison played today for the first time in a few weeks.
TE Kyle Rudolph did not play today for the second consecutive week due to a calf injury.
LB Eric Kendricks did not play today for the second consecutive week due to a rib injury.

Up Next
With the playoffs out of the picture, the Vikings look to play spoiler when they visit New Orleans on Christmas Day (12/25). Kickoff is at 3:30 PM CT on primetime Fox.

​#skol