Book announcement!

"Making of a Miracle: The story behind the Minnesota Vikings' improbable 2017 season" written by Matthew Coller is now available

Hello everyone! Very exciting announcement in the Purple Insider world. My first book, “Making of a Miracle: The story behind the Minnesota Vikings’ improbable 2017 season” is now available!

You can buy the paperback or Kindle version by clicking here

The book goes behind the scenes of the 2017 Vikings team, looking at the close-knit locker room and the stories of their bond (many of which you may not have heard before). Making of a Miracle starts in training camp and takes you all the way through the end of the season, hitting on every crazy thing that happened along the way — from Case Keenum’s rise to the what-ifs to the strange events that made the Miracle possible.

Put it on your list or make it the perfect holiday gift for your Vikings fan family members or friends :)

I can’t thank all of the Purple Insider subscribers for all their support since we launched.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

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Keenum, Shurmur rise to the challenge

—November 23, 2017—

The NFL is built for close, exciting games. Parity drives the league. But the quirky thing about the Vikings’ 2017 season is that they rarely played in close games. By Week 11, only two contests were decided by seven points or fewer: the loss to Detroit in Week 4 and the win over Chicago the following week. But in Weeks 10 and 11, Case Keenum’s ability to guide the Vikings in tight games would come to the forefront against formidable opponents on the road. 

On Thanksgiving Day, the Vikings headed to Detroit to take on the 6-5 Lions, who were fighting for playoff position. Jim Caldwell’s team was as dangerous on offense as the Lions had been in years. They would go on to finish the season seventh in points scored and quarterback Matthew Stafford posted his career best 99.3 quarterback rating. 

The Vikings’ last three contests against Detroit were cursed matchups. 

At home in 2016, they lost in crazy fashion when kicker Matt Prater tied the game with seconds remaining from 50-plus and then Golden Tate shook off Harrison Smith and somersaulted into the end zone for the win. And then on the road in Detroit, Sam Bradford threw an interception that set up a Prater game winner. If you recall, the first game against Detroit in 2017 was not only a loss but the contest in which Dalvin Cook suffered a season-ending injury. 

The Vikings had every reason to be nervous. It was a week after a big win against the Rams and Everson Griffen’s status was unclear because his wife was set to give birth any day. Long-time Vikings fans would have been extremely concerned about a classic “letdown” game. 

Timing was not on Griffen’s side as his wife went into labor early in the morning and he watched his child be born on FaceTime. When he sacked Stafford, Griffen pulled up his shirt to reveal the message, “I just had a baby boy, what should we name him?” 

And Keenum decided that he wasn’t going to let the recent Lions curse continue. He opened the first quarter with two touchdown drives and a 13-0 lead in an eyeblink and then threw the best pass of his magical regular season on a 22-yard dime to Kyle Rudolph in the end zone as he was being hit to put the Vikings up 20-3 at halftime. 

With Stafford it’s never over until it’s over and early in the fourth quarter it appeared the curse might continue. For the first time, the Vikings’ defense showed a sign of weakness, allowing points on four straight drives to bring Detroit within four, 27-23. 

Stafford’s fourth quarter touchdown to Marvin Jones raised some eyebrows. There was a very unusual miscommunication and Jones went up over Xavier Rhodes—who had previously been the Vikings’ version of Darrelle Revis (or Deion Sanders for you millennials) throughout the 2017 season—and grabbed a Randy Moss-esque touchdown pass. Rhodes stayed down on the play. He wasn’t sidelined long by his injury but it appeared to nag him for the remainder of the season. 

The Vikings hadn’t really taken a punch like that in quite some time. What made 2017 different from the season long-time fans expect is that they overcame it. And in 2017 a major part of that process was offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur. 

The Vikings hired Shurmur in 2016 as their tight ends coach after he had been the offensive coordinator for Chip Kelly in Philadelphia and briefly their interim head coach. At the time, the hire seemed like a too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen situation because his West Coast roots, which could be traced back to Bill Walsh, did not gel with Norv Turner’s downfield passing system that required deep dropbacks. 

When Teddy Bridgewater got hurt and the Vikings traded for Sam Bradford, they appeared to take on a lot of concepts that Bradford knew from his time in Philadelphia and St. Louis with Shurmur rather than play a Norv Turner style offense. But coming out of the bye week in 2016, they bizarrely shifted back toward Turner’s long developing downfield routes and Bradford got sacked and sacked and sacked. Turner resigned after a miserable loss in Chicago. 

After Shurmer took over, his play-action, quick-passing system (with a fair amount of deep shots mixed in) played to Bradford’s strengths. Turns out they also worked in Keenum’s favor.

Throughout the year players raved about his willingness to include them in the process. Their ideas were heard, their skills were maximized and future Cleveland Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski would come to greatly respect Shurmur’s philosophy on offensive scheme and play calling. Shurmur always seemed to have the right answer in every big situation. Every button he pushed was the right one. 

That all came to fruition against the Lions. On second-and-14, he dialed up a quick screen to Stefon Diggs that took the Lions completely off guard and went for 37 yards and put the Vikings into field goal position. 

The play also included a brilliant block by quick guard Nick Easton, who made his way into the secondary to clear the way for Diggs. The Vikings took the 30-23 lead on a field goal and then Rhodes came up big with an interception that appeared to seal the game. 

Here’s when you knew 2017 was truly different: Kai Forbath’s field goal was initially blocked and run back for a touchdown but referees ruled that Darius Slay was offside. They ran out the clock from there and improved to 9-2 on the year. 

A near miss, the kick

—January 14, 2018. 3:01 remaining in the fourth quarter—

The Vikings were playing from behind the Saints for the first time. 

The question with Case Keenum all year was whether the Vikings could win a game that was on his shoulders. After all, he was a journeyman having a magical year, not Drew Brees. But all he needed was one Brees-like throw to get within Forbath’s range and he came through. With the ball on the Minnesota 36, Keenum and Adam Thielen both saw something. Keenum dropped back and Thielen broke outside on a fade route against rising star corner Marshon Lattimore. Keenum floated the ball up in the air over Thielen’s shoulder and he ripped through Lattimore’s hold (which he was flagged for) and brought down the pass for 24 yards and a first down in Saints territory. 

The connection between Keenum and Diggs/Thielen could never really be explained, even by the players when we all asked over and over. They just seemed to know what each other was thinking at all times. You never saw receivers throwing their hands up in frustration or Keenum pointing after a throw as if he was looking for a different route. They were locked in like a basketball team that moves the ball brilliantly around the floor. 

Funny though, Keenum nearly gave the game away several plays later. When we think about the “what-ifs” of the Vikings’ and Saints’ all-time great playoff game, the final play of this drive goes forgotten. After gaining five yards on a short throw to Kyle Rudolph, the Vikings faced a third-and-5 with 1:40 remaining. The Vikings were a single first down from running down the clock and kicking a field goal but Keenum went for broke. He got pressured in the backfield and flung the ball wildly in the air in Rudolph’s direction about 25 yards down field. 

Imagine what was going through Mike Zimmer’s mind. Not again, not again, not again. It was just like his interception earlier in the game, just like his fluttering pick in Washington. The nightmare scenario. 

As the ball came down out of the sky, Rudolph reached for it and Saints safety Marcus Williams came flying in, having broken on the ball as soon as it was released. But Williams arrived a millisecond too late and the pass fell incomplete. 

If he picks off that pass, this book isn’t written and who knows how many other things are different in Vikings land. 

Instead, the Vikings trotted Kai Forbath onto the field for a 53-yard field goal. 

Forbath was the type of kicker who walked to the beat of his own drum. He would wear dark sunglasses and penny loafers on flights, looking like a Michael Jackson costume. He was quiet and sometimes had a beard that looked like his only friend was a volleyball. But the guy could kick. 

Of course, the potential game-winning play in the playoffs resting on the leg of a kicker was Shakesperian. 

Forbath arrived in Minnesota after the Vikings cut Blair Walsh, who melted down in 2016 following a missed 27-yard field goal against Seattle in the 2015 playoffs. The Vikings were very lucky to find a journeyman kicker in Forbath who had an 84% field goal percentage prior to signing with the Vikings midway through the 2016 season. 

He had been marvelous at field goals (but for some reason struggled with extra points). Despite the fact that his long kicks were low, wobbly line drives, he made 7-of-10 from 50-plus during his career as a Viking. 

The curses of Blair Walsh and Gary Anderson were resting heavy on Vikings fans’ minds as Forbath lined up for the go-ahead kick. This can only go badly, right? This is Minnesota.

But somehow Forbath delivered his typical 50-plus line-drive bomb and it cleared the crossbar to put the Vikings up 23-21. 

He should have been the hero. Forbath should have been carried off on his team’s shoulders. Under normal circumstances, they would have taken a photo from his kick and put it up somewhere inside the building to be memorialized forever .

But there was so, so, so much more to come in this game. 

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Again here’s the link to buy paperback or Kindle version

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