Murphy: Hold on tight, Vikings fans
When the dust settled on another crazy game, all of the sudden the Vikings are looking... good?
By Brian Murphy
Watching the 2021 Vikings is not so much an entertaining escape from life’s travails but an exhausting endurance test of the soul. Like having a cavity filled without anesthesia. Or your auto mechanic mumbling “transmission” in his initial diagnosis.
Nothing is simple with this utterly confounding but suddenly confident team, now in the driver’s seat of the NFC Wild Card race only two weeks after having their toes tagged at the morgue.
Sunday’s raucous 34-31 victory over arch nemesis Aaron Rodgers and the division-leading Green Bay Packers was undecided until the clock struck zero, because of course. Naturally, it came down to a knee-knocking 29-yard field goal by kicker Greg Joseph, whose ice water proficiency also can melt at any moment inside 40 yards.
Minnesota knows no other way to play except on the razor’s edge, dragging the fan base kicking and screaming into primal therapy each week like John and Yoko climbing the walls at Abbey Road.
It took 10 games for a signature win, but, man, what a time to deliver. Consecutive triumphs over the Chargers and Packers stabilized the freefalling Vikings (5-5).
They are perched all alone as the No. 6 seed in the seven-team NFC playoff chase after New Orleans and Carolina respectively faceplanted. With brutal four-game stretch against contenders is in the rearview mirror. And a crystal-clear offensive identity that essentially boils down to “Get Justin Jefferson the damn ball!”
The Vikings are not only alive, they are well. A potentially dangerous club getting healthy and heating up at the perfect time, with Rodgers banged up, Green Bay looking vulnerable and smoother sailing ahead on the schedule.
If they can survive until January.
“You know how they say, ‘Sunday is fun day?’ It’s not, at all,” said an emotionally wrung out Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer, who looked in desperate need of a stiff drink or a lie down.
Six games decided on the final snap will do that.
After Joseph’s kick sailed through the uprights and U.S. Bank Stadium collectively exhaled, a FOX slow-motion camera caught Zimmer screaming “Yeah, motherf-----!” at Eric Sugarman. The unsuspecting head athletic trainer was just a stand-in for fate.
Everyone might as well lean into the chaos and catharsis at this point. There are no blowouts or empty-the-bench exercises with this crew. The clock is irrelevant. Anything can happen in the final two minutes of a half, fourth quarter or in overtime.
Minnesota is the only NFL team this season to have a lead of seven or more points in every game, yet nine of its games have been decided by one score. Even after Kirk Cousins delivered the go-ahead touchdown to Jefferson with 2:17 remaining, Rodgers immediately countered with a 75-yard strike to Marquez Valdes-Scantling to tie the game 31 all.
Overtime beckoned. Again.
But Cousins, who is hammering-and-tonging his way up the money quarterback mountain, led the Vikings on another clutch drive to set up Joseph’s dagger. Cousins has stepped up big in a season of reckoning.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Purple Insider to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.