When Minnesota and Detroit met on Oct. 20, the Lions took a 31-29 victory over the Vikings on a 44-yard field goal by Jake Bates with 15 seconds to play. If the teams’ Sunday night rematch to decide the No. 1 seed for the NFC playoffs comes down to a kick, Minnesota will be counting on its own rookie.

But Will Reichard will enter the game after missing three times on Sunday in the Vikings’ 27-25 victory over the Green Bay Packers, although only two counted against him.

“I think the biggest thing from a kicking standpoint,” Minnesota special-teams coordinator Matt Daniels said, “is it’s important that you’re really poised through the noise, eliminating extra thoughts that are kind of going through my head and really trying to stick to just a one-thought process. What is the one thing that I’m really focused on? One thing that I’m telling myself? That way my process remains the same regardless of what the situation is.”

Daniels said Reichard did that against Green Bay at the end of the first half. The Packers tried to ice the kicker with a timeout with four seconds remaining in the second quarter, and Reichard’s kick went wide right on a 55-yard field-goal attempt. But Green Bay was offside on the play, and Reichard connected on his 50-yard do-over.

Reichard had a 57-yard attempt hit the crossbar in the first quarter before hitting a 25-yarder in addition to the 50-yarder in the second quarter on Sunday. In the fourth quarter, Reichard’s 43-yard field-goal attempt hit the left upright, but the Vikings held on for their fifth victory this season by three or fewer points.

A sixth-round draft choice from Alabama on April 27, Reichard opened his NFL career by making his first 14 field-goal attempts, including four of 50-or-more yards. He scored from 58 and 57 yards, the second- and third-longest field goals in franchise history.

In Minnesota’s 21-13 victory over the Indianapolis Colts on Nov. 3, Reichard missed both of his field-goal attempts, then went to injured reserve because of a quadriceps injury.

Since returning from a four-game absence, the former Hoover High School standout has made 7-of-10 field-goal attempts, including going 3-of-4 from 50-or-more yards.

Daniels said Reichard is “perfectly fine and healthy” since recovering from his injury.

“Will’s a guy who’s always putting the team first,” Daniels said on Tuesday. “It’s always, ‘Ah, I let my team down.’ He never wants to do that, especially as the games get – they’re all important, right? Stakes get higher week in and week out. Pressure, obviously, continues to mount up, and so as we get into these more tighter games, as you’re building to it, every point is going to truly start to matter here, so we got to understand that.

“And he fully understands that, so when he does miss those type of kicks, he understands what the result is and how it can kind of effect the turnout of the game. It doesn’t weigh on him from a mental standpoint, but he does kind of feel it.”

Reichard has remained perfect on extra points, going 38-of-38 this season.

The Vikings and Lions will square off at 7:20 p.m. CST Sunday at Ford Field in Detroit in the last game of the NFL’s 2024 regular season. NBC will televise the contest.

Each team has a 14-2 record. The winner of the game will earn the NFC North title and the No. 1 seed in the conference playoffs. The top seed comes with a first-round bye. The loser will become the No. 5 seed in the NFL playoffs and will start the first round on the road against the Atlanta Falcons, Los Angeles Rams or Tampa Bay Buccaneers, depending on what happens on the final Sunday of the regular season.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.