Minneapolis – The Vikings went 0-for-September, falling Sunday 28-24 to the Chargers. The disappointing loss started with a fumble lost on Minnesota’s opening possession and ended with an interception that bounced off Vikings tight end T.J. Hockenson and Chargers safety JT Woods.

It included plenty of wild moments in between, with a heavy dose of blitzing by Minnesota that failed to hit home on Justin Herbert enough times and a double pass touchdown thrown by Keenan Allen to Mike Williams.

The Vikings moved the ball on multiple drives but seemed to take one step forward and two steps back with gains being followed by penalties or negative plays.

Quarterback Kirk Cousins played another strong game, with three more touchdown passes. He moved past Tommy Kramer (159) on the career touchdowns list among all Vikings and also for second all-time and tied Dave Krieg for 20th on the NFL’s all-time leaderboard.

Minnesota was just 1-for-4 on trips to the red zone.

“Disappointing to be 0 and 3. Disappointing to lose the way we did. Left too many plays out there. You gotta score touchdowns in the red zone to win in this league,” Cousins said in his opening comments at the podium Sunday. “Chargers did a good job, they made plays. And proud of the way guys battled. I think we’ve got a lot of playmakers on this team. Thought Justin [Jefferson] was his usual self. Thought T.J. was great. Thought Jordan Addison was big time. He’s going to become a big-time player in this league. Thought K.J. [Osborn] was outstanding. So I’m just going to continue to be a point guard distribute to those guys and try to get better doing that every week. But we’ve dug ourselves a hole and we got a long way to climb out.”

The fumble on the opening drive — after the Vikings had again moved into scoring territory — let quite a bit of air out of the building and provided an instant momentum transfer, with the Chargers quickly marching 79 yards for a touchdown.

Minnesota was even until the final play, but it also could have been much better…

The Chargers fumbled four times but only lost the ball one time, with Jordan Hicks recovering the ball.

Keenan Allen put the ball on the ground at the L.A. 43-yard line (Akayleb Evans was credited with the forced fumble) but recovered it in the second quarter.

Danielle Hunter knocked the ball away from Herbert during a sack, but the QB recovered the ball at the L.A. 31, allowing the Chargers to punt on fourth down and flipping the field with a 52-yarder that was by far JK Scott’s best boot of the day. (The following drive ended with Jefferson’s 52-yard touchdown, but perhaps the momentum could have swung even more?).

Harrison Smith also forced a fumble by tight end Gerald Everett in the fourth quarter, but the ball landed out of bounds a few plays before Herbert’s most glaring mistake of the day — an underthrown pass bounced off Evans’ hands and into Joshua Palmer’s hands for the go-ahead touchdown.

The Chargers aren’t reputed to have rabbit’s foot luck as a franchise, but the bounce of that football, combined with the final pass for the Vikings deflecting to Murray, shows how snakebitten the start of this season has been.

But it could have been worse…

Alexander Mattison was ruled down before the ball came out on a 2-yard loss from the Chargers 3-yard line (the play stood as called after review).

Then, Osborn stretched the football across the goal line on his 36-yard touchdown. He made it inside the pylon, but seeing the ball bounce away on his landing brought back memories of Week 2.

Bottom line…

In six quarters of football, the Vikings have lost the ball inside the opponent’s 3-yard line in the waning moments of three separate halves. They have to stop doing that if they’re going to dig out of this hole.