One action, times four – punt, punt, punt, punt – made all the difference.

Fourteen plays by Cleveland spanning four possessions put Minnesota's offense in position for a game-winning drive Sunday in London at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium against the NFL's No. 1-ranked defense.

Carson Wentz and the crew, albeit shorthanded and prone to self-inflicted harms, took care of the rest.

It certainly was a plot twist on a day that included sloppy moments from the Vikings (and the Browns), but a 21-17 win in Week 5, outlined by adversity, is an inspiring result for a team 11 days into a road trip.

Head Coach Kevin O'Connell praised Minnesota's pursuit of victory as relentless. Team captain Jonathan Greenard expected "another grimy game, just because of how we played [last week versus] Pittsburgh."

Cleveland's rookie quarterback Dillon Gabriel had 25 seconds but no timeouts after Wentz connected with Jordan Addison for the decisive touchdown. Gabriel moved the Browns to the Vikings 49 before Jeff Okudah called "game" with a tackle of Jamari Thrash, who was hurrying to stop the clock out of bounds.

Gabriel, a 24-year-old third-round rookie and the first NFL quarterback to make career start No. 1 in an international game, became the 17^th Browns first-time starting QB since 1999 to lose in his debut game.

He finished 19-for-33 passing with 190 yards, two touchdowns and no turnovers, and a 94.3 rating.

"I think he did pretty good," Greenard assessed Gabriel's performance. "He didn't do anything for them to lose the game, so I think that's the ultimate part, where I'm pretty sure they told him, 'Listen, just take what they give you. Don't make, don't create negative plays. Don't try to do too much. Don't be a hero.'"

At halftime, Paul Allen posted on X: "Come to London for football and a soccer match breaks out."

The first two quarters qualified as a slog all right.

Eleven total penalties were committed; the Vikings and Browns punted seven times, combined for 17 points and a 23 percent conversion rate on third downs (3-for-13); and they netted 333 yards of offense.

Gabriel played like a point guard, distributing the ball effectively to six different players in the first half. He averaged only 4.9 yards per attempt on his initial 21 passes but completed 13 (61.9 percent) for 102 yards, including an easy flip to the flat for fellow rookie, tight end Harold Fannin, Jr., for an early 7-0 lead.

That ice-breaker happened on the heels of Vikings running back Jordan Mason coughing up the ball at Minnesota's 47, and a series of strong Browns rushes, namely a prancing 32-yarder and a punishing one for 9 by Quinshon Judkins, who ran with spikes on his pads for 60 minutes (110 yards on 23 attempts).

Greenard called the failure to slow down Judkins, whom he likened to Nick Chubb, as "unacceptable."

"We've got to stop giving up the big runs," he said. "But I think, ultimately, in the midst of all of that, we have to still kind of stay in the moment and not let that be it, because obviously we had a big stop to kind of shut them down and obviously get the ball back to our offense. But it's a matter of just getting off blocks – communication, homing in on, focusing on the technique, understanding how guys are gonna run things on us. … It's kind of like our Kryptonite in this defense. But I don't like Kryptonite. We're gonna figure it out somehow and just make plays and do a little bit more to get [ball carriers] on the ground."

Gabriel connected with another one of his tight ends, veteran David Njoku, for a simple 9-yard TD to bring the Browns back from a short-lived 14-10 Vikings lead late in the third frame. That score capped a 13-play possession that used 8:06 (Cleveland also had a "shorter" 14-play drive – 2:21 – for a field goal).

Cornerback Byron Murphy, Jr., was manned on Njoku in the slot when the ultra-athletic tight end beat him off the line with an inside release. Several plays before that, Njoku hurdled linebacker Ivan Pace, Jr.

Greenard pointed out other teams are focused on beating Minnesota's pass rush with quick throws.

"That's just kind of been the M.O., is getting the ball out, you know, just making sure that they don't take a sack," Greenard explained. "Somehow these quarterbacks don't want to go down whenever I wrap them up. They want to just either dirt the ball or get out of there – but that's the game plan. You don't want to take any negative plays against us, because obviously that just plays right into our hands."

Even without doing some of the "little things right," such as winning the turnover battle (Minnesota lost that with two fumbles and no takeaways) and stopping the run (the Browns averaged 4.4 rushing yards on 32 attempts), the Vikings defense made enough plays in the game to give the offense a good chance.

"There were moments in the game where I thought the connectedness and just the team that's been bonded together through some unique circumstances over the last 10 days, but long before that as well, it showed itself," said O'Connell, determining that there was "no flinch" even when both sides committed errors. "I'm excited we were able to battle and go finish the way we needed to, but there's still a ton of improvement that has to happen for our football team. And like I said, it starts with me."

In the first half, Dallas Turner promptly tackled Gabriel in the backfield on a zone-read keeper. On the next snap, Harrison Smith made a clutch tackle when the nimble quarterback tried scrambling for the first on a third-and-long. On the subsequent series, rookie d-lineman Tyrion Ingram-Dawkins was schemed free and grabbed his first career sack. One play after that, O'Connell successfully challenged a 17-yard pass from Gabriel to Jerry Jeudy, who was really a non-factor, with only two catches for 15 yards.

Later on, Pace cleaned up Gabriel for a third-down sack after backup running back Zavier Scott fumbled on the Browns side of the field near the top of the fourth quarter. Pace's takedown extended Minnesota's league-leading streak of games with 2-plus sacks to nine (their last with fewer than 2.0 was Week 14 in 2024 against Atlanta). Pace was one of five Vikings defenders credited with a tackle for loss.

Although the Browns o-line, and Judkins, put together a plethora of chunk runs, those four drives in a row toward the end of the game loomed large; Cleveland managed a single first down in that sequence.

Defensive Coordinator Brian Flores' adjustments were "nothing crazy, nothing magical," noted Smith, who made five tackles. "He's always very level-headed and clear and tends to get the most out of us.

"It's pride. It's individual pride. It's collective pride," Smith added. "I think there's moments in games where it's time to kind of be selfish, in a good way, and I think that's what we did in the second half."

After an historic overseas journey, leaving footprints in separate foreign cities in consecutive weeks for the first time in NFL annals, the Vikings will fly home with a win and a bye week on deck to recover and get ready for as tough of a stretch as one can imagine, beginning in Week 7 when they host Philadelphia.

"K.O. was always making the point, all week, if you want an excuse you're going to find it. You go looking for it, and you're gonna find one," Greenard said. "We didn't let that affect us. Obviously we took an 'L' in Dublin, came back down here and was like, 'Listen, we've got to get back right going into this bye week.'"

The reigning Super Bowl Champion Eagles will face Minnesota – and meet a special "invisible presence."

"I'm not sure anybody's had a trip like this, but it's definitely on the podium for the longest I would believe," O'Connell said. "What I would tell you is this, you know, there's moments throughout a season that might not always be in alignment with the reactionary world of our game being the most popular game on the planet, and I understand, and our team understands certain aspects of things that get discussed and talked about and the narratives that get formed, but our locker room is cleansed of that.

"Our locker room is just about the right stuff. It's hard to explain. We call it the invisible presence, and it's something that needs to be built and carved and shaved to each individual team every single year, but it's important, and it's something that matters. And I'm sure there's going to be people that listen to that and think that's the strangest thing they've ever heard. But so be it, it matters to the Minnesota Vikings."

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