The Minnesota Vikings have played a lot of close games this season.  In fact, all but one of their games was decided by 8 or fewer points, and the average margin of victory — regardless of who won the game — has been just 5.15 points.

It’s clear that Vikings games have been very competitive this year. But how competitive? One measure would be to measure the margin of victory by the winning team — regardless of who won the game — in all Vikings games. As noted above, that’s 5.15, which you probably think sounds really low. And it is in fact the lowest average margin of any team in the NFL this season through 14 weeks:

The 7-6 Bills are on the far other end of the spectrum. Buffalo has won games by 40, 35, 28, 25, 22,, 18, and 15 points; that’s an average margin of victory of a whopping 26.1 points per game. In their six losses, Buffalo’s opponent has won by 26, 7, 6, 4, 3, and 3 points. All told, in the 13 Buffalo games, the winner has had an average margin of victory of 17.85 points.

You might be wondering: if the winning team in Vikings games has an average margin of victory of just 5.15 points per game, how does that compare historically? I looked at all teams from 1960 to 2020. And during that time frame, the 1982 Bucs (in the strike-shortened 9-game season) and 1995 Colts had the lowest average margins at 5.6 points. The table below shows the 50 smallest average margins of victory in a team’s games, regardless of which team won: