The long and short of Minnesota’s 31-28 OT loss to New Orleans Sunday night can be summed up by the greatest post-game rant ever by the last Vikings coach to take the squad to the NFC Championship Game only to lose, Dennis Green: Now (hits the microphone) if you want to crown the Saints, then crown their ass! But they are who the Vikings thought they were! And they let ‘em off the hook!
This morning I got a voicemail from best friend in New York. He was watching the game with his six-year-old son. After Garrett Hartley kicked the winning field goal to end this debacle, he melted down. Welcome to pain, kid. Welcome to life as a Vikings fan. Revel in the bitterness.
I admit I was wrong about picking the Vikings to lose 41-doughnut. Even though I jumped on and off the Brett Favre bandwagon, he certainly didn’t make the team worse this year. And Adrian Peterson still has the ability to scintillate and exasperate, even if he quietly was demoted to being the secondary weapon of the Minnesota Vikings’ arsenal.
Still, this hurts. I’m a guy who believes it’s championship or bust. I’m even pissed off about the Timberwolves not making the NBA Finals this year, because the goal of every NBA team should be to win the NBA Finals every year, right?
Stunningly, there is a lot of heartbreak, shock and sadness in Vikings country over their choke job
What I haven’t heard from the disappointed Purple Faithful is any sense of anger. There has been a lot of despondency but no one seems to be truly pissed off about this loss and this type of loss. Minnesota racked up 475 total yards of offense. The defense kept the Saints to only 257 – and remember that’s through four quarters and an overtime – and held quarterback Drew Brees to only 197 yards on 17-of-31 passing. And they still lost. The Vikings : Al Gore :: The Saints : George W. Bush.
Why? Of course – turnovers. Five of them total. And three of them by the two leaders of this team, the two offensive table-setters that got them to this point and were oh-so-close to guiding the Vikings into a Super Bowl for the first time since 1976. Ironic that the team’s two best players are the ones most responsible for the franchise’s fifth consecutive NFC Championship defeat.
What is very shocking is that, at least from hearing local sports-talk radio, more people are blaming Adrian Peterson. Reframing the nickname his father gave him when he was a baby, he was fumbling All Day – two this game (with a third credited to Favre that really was his fault), nine for the year, 22 in a career that is still reaching its peak yet quickly being overshadowed by a reputation for coughing up the football at the worst times. It was his lost fumble against the Bears (officially his 13th for his career and his sixth this season) that led to their upset at Chicago, which cost them home-field advantage and meant that tonight’s game was being played at the end of the Mississippi River, not the beginning. And it was he who failed to secure the ball at the New Orleans 4 with a minute left in the first half, giving back momentum Minnesota took when Reggie Bush muffed a punt. Instead of being up by seven or at least three, both teams entered the half tied at 14.
What Vikings fans who blame this on Peterson need to remember is that he also carried the ball 25 times in total and ran for 122 yards and three touchdowns. He provided the balance that kept the Saints guessing all game. He fumbled two more times, but the Vikes got them back, so who cares? And while that fumble sucked, they still had 30 minutes to do something about it. Nonetheless, from what I hear, the fans will from now on peg Peterson as unreliable with the ball.
While All Day is getting slammed more than he should in the Twin Cities peanut gallery, Favre is virtually escaping his questionable transgressions scot-free. For all of his brilliance leading the Vikings onslaught up and down the field (he went 28-for-46 for 310 yards), he regressed back to being the Reckless Gunslinger when the team needed his good judgment the most. Favre tried to shoot the ball to Sidney Rice in triple coverage, which was easily intercepted by Jonathan Vilma.
And then … oh, God, it’s going to hurt to write this … the play that will forever encapsulate this hope-dashing defeat in Vikings lore. On 3rd and 15, just outside of kicker Ryan Longwell’s range and with 19 damn seconds to go, Favre rolled out to his right. He had Bernard Berrian waltzing down the far sideline. He had all this open space right in front of him to slide into and get Longwell back in range. Hell, he had a sideline to throw at in case he needed to bail. But no, he thought he was all-knowing and all-powerful … you know, how Brett Favre usually thinks in these situations. A pass intended for Sidney Rice was instead picked off by Tracy Porter; Longwell doesn’t even get the chance to shank the field goal. Steve Hutchinson calls the coin flip wrong, and the New Orleans Saints are going to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history.
Yet from the knee-jerk reactions tonight, Favre was a warrior who brought the team back to tie the game after taking a nasty shot to the back of the knees on his first interception – which, by the way, he threw well before getting hit, so you can’t blame the pick on Saints pressure. That neck-breaker of a pick directly eliminated any chance for the Vikings to win this game and reach the Super Bowl and lose
There is a lot of blame to go around, and not just to Favre and Peterson. That stupid 12 men penalty before the Favre interception was a colossal blunder by both players and coaches because that took them out of field goal range. Berrian and Percy Harvin also fumbled. Special teams allowed huge gains on kickoffs and punts. And the defensive line was unable to knock down Brees with any regularity.
It’s times like these where I feel that it’s better to get blown out of a title game. When you lose by a field goal, you can point to so many turning points in a game and say to yourself, “My God, if only he didn’t drop that easy pass, of if he didn’t hit the QB on the helmet,” etc. Fluky crap like a referee’s pass interference call on Ben Leber and a booth review of the Pierre Thomas leap on fourth down, both in OT, play larger roles than they would when you’re down, say, 41-0. But if you have to point out a statistic that led the Vikings to this crushing defeat, yeah, it’d be those damned turnovers.
And now, the questions. You get the feeling that your two best players, Favre and Peterson, are good enough to take the Vikings to this point in the season but no farther because they both have that Achilles heel (decision-making and fumbles, respectively). They both should take the bulk of the blame for this loss, equally. And if Favre drags out his retirement drama like he did this past offseason, more people will blame him for losing the NFC Championship Game. Meanwhile, Peterson will no longer be given any latitude for his fumbleitis, and he’ll make former fans hold their breath with every handoff.
As for those with Purple Shame
And because Sunday’s disaster means the Vikings won’t get the stadium they want, I still think I’m right.