Vikings

With Minnesota trailing New Orleans by a point in the closing seconds of their 2018 playoff meeting, Stefon Diggs took the ball and, rather than going down, threw a lateral to Cordarrelle Patterson, who carried it in for the winning score. The play is still known simply as the Minneapolis Miracle, and it fits a franchise that has made a habit of coming agonisingly close.

The Vikings joined the NFL as an expansion side in 1961, a year after their founding, and took the field in purple, gold and white. Between 1967 and 1977 their defensive front earned a nickname of its own, the Purple People Eaters, built around Alan Page and Carl Eller, both of whom later went into the Hall of Fame.

The club has one NFL Championship to show for that era, a 27–7 win over the Cleveland Browns in 1969. What followed it has become part of the team's identity: four trips to the Super Bowl, under coaches including Bud Grant, and four defeats, then six consecutive NFC Championship game losses starting in 1978. Fans have their own name for living through it, Purple Therapy, and the phrase has stuck longer than any of those runs did.

Zygi Wilf has owned the franchise since 2005; Kevin O'Connell took over as head coach in 2022. Games against the Green Bay Packers are still billed as the Border Battle, and U.S. Bank Stadium, where the Vikings now play, holds 66,202.

Four Super Bowls reached. Four lost.