Murphy: There's never been a Vikings-Lions game this big
Brian Murphy, who grew up in Detroit, opines about a Week 18 game with playoff position on the line
By Brian Murphy
Using Lions, Vikings and Playboy in a sentence feels like a parlor game gone mad, but back in 1975 a magazine editor mused about the Lions being poised to end the Vikings’ dominance.
The mother of all hot takes was bold-typed in an orange box strategically placed over the midsection of August Playmate Lillian Müller:
“This Year’s Champs – Vikings or Lions? Pro Football Forecast in this issue.”
A high school buddy from Detroit texted the cover shot from the Playboy collection his late father-in-law had left behind right as FOX cameras showed Sam Darnold being shoulder-hoisted and feted in yet another victorious Vikings locker room after their 27-25 defeat of Green Bay.
He wanted to know what I thought about Sunday’s Showdown in Motown, where the NFC North winner and postseason alpha will be crowned in a winner-take-all finale for the ages.
All I wanted to know was who thought so highly of the 1975 Lions, a team that finished 7-7 following a 7-7 mark in 1974 – second-place finishes to NFC Central powerhouse Minnesota, which was coming off consecutive Super Bowl appearances?
With my buddy traveling and nowhere near his storage bin, I went hunting Monday for a copy of this particular issue to see what Playboy knew about the Lions that the rest of humanity had somehow missed.
To read the article, of course.
One visit to a used book store and there it was. Buried on page 110, just past the centerfold of the former Norwegian model and actress, whom you may remember as the vixen in Rod Stewart’s video “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” and as the seductive gym instructor in Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher.”
Writer Anson Mount’s opus predicted a Super Bowl X clash between the Raiders and Rams that ultimately became Pittsburgh over Dallas.
Mount, Playboy’s sports and religion editor, had written the “Pigskin Review” since 1957 and was hailed by the magazine as “America’s foremost football forecaster,” according to his 1986 obituary.
Mount wrote the Vikings were “the most stable and unchanged team in the league. It all adds up to another year when the Vikings will dominate their division.”
There’s some low-hanging fruit.
Minnesota breezed to another Central Division title only to be bounced from the playoffs by the disputed Roger Staubach-Drew Pearson “Hail Mary” touchdown connection for the Cowboys in the waning seconds.
Meanwhile, Mount lauded the Lions passing game and quarterback Greg Landry. But he called their running backs and offensive line “principal disaster areas” and went on to criticize the defensive line, “which, though spirited enough, is scrawny by NFL standards.”
All Mount could muster for the Lions was faint praise for Rick Forzano, whose brief tenure left him in Detroit’s ash heap of failed head coaches.
“Best omen for an improvement is the fact that coach Rick Forzano, one of the class mentors in the league, is now in his second season and the entire Lion organization is more together than it’s been in two decades.”
None of which answered whether the 1975 Vikings or Lions would win it all. All just a rhetorical tease to match Müller’s pose.
Fifty years later, we finally have the real thing.
With Week 18 at Ford Field featuring historic stakes between the Lions and Vikings in this decidedly one-sided rivalry, the peacocking and posturing within my conflicting social circles are scorching a digital echo chamber about playoff magic that has eluded both markets for generations.
Tangled up in Honolulu blue and silver wishes and purple and gold skepticism makes interesting bedfellows for someone who has been waiting for the Vikings to end their Super Bowl drought and wondering whether the Lions will ever make one.
Forget the wild-card intrigue and which afterthought is going to emerge from the NFC South. The road in this conference to Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans runs through Minneapolis or Detroit – day, time and place to be determined after the prime-time heavyweight bout tailor-made for flex scheduling.
The Vikings and Lions have earned their showcase and label as Super Bowl favorites through dominance and sheer will. Detroit has been wearing their badge since pushing the 49ers to the brink in last season’s NFC championship game and weathering a withering rash of injuries while Minnesota ascended to the top this year while most of the NFL wasn’t looking.
These two forlorn franchises have been passing through the night for 65 years. They’ve never played in the postseason and I dare you to find a consequential one among their 126 regular-season games. Five forgettable Thanksgiving Day matchups. One of these teams might as well be in the AFC South.
The Vikings are 80-44-2 (.643) all-time against the Lions. That includes a 13-game winning streak from 1968-74. Stretch that out to 1985 and Minnesota was 27-7. Between 2000-10, the Vikings won 20 of 22 matchups.
Since the Lions came out of hibernation under coach Dan Campbell, they have won four straight and five of the last six since 2021, including a spine-tingler Oct. 20 at raucous U.S. Bank Stadium.
Strutting out of Ford Field with the division flag between their teeth means the Vikings will get a valuable week off as the No. 1 seed. The only postseason road trip they would take is to the Big Easy for the Big One.
Playoff byes are gold. Teams that watched the wild card round from their couch won seven consecutive Super Bowls between 2013-19. Since the league added a seventh playoff team in each conference, Tom Brady’s 2020 Tampa Bay Buccaneers are the only wild-card team to win it all.
Confidence is soaring in the Minnesota locker room and coaching ranks, for obvious reasons. Head coach Kevin O’Connell has his team laser-focused on the evolving tasks at hand each week, with total buy-in from the roster’s studs, stalwarts and stand-bys, who are feeding off each other’s energy and preaching the same shared mission.
“We’re laying it on the line every single week with everything we absolutely have,” O’Connell said. “And the best part of it is all we need is all of what we are.”
This year’s champs -- Vikings or Lions?
Damn straight.
Brian Murphy is a former Pioneer Press columnist who has been contributing to Purple Insider since its inception. Follow him on Twitter/X at MurphMedia_
December 28th, 1975 is burned into my Viking psyche forever. That was the most balanced Viking team of that era and the ref missed the push off. A few plays later an incensed and drunk Viking fan hurled an empty whiskey bottle at ref Armen Terzian, striking him on the head. The Bloomington Police eventually identified and arrested the bottle slinging perp.
Ah, such prose as … “weathering a withering rash of injuries”! But you are right that the Vikings @ Lions game on Sunday night will be a game we will always remember watching. It’s the perfect last game of the regular season.