By Brian Murphy
DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS
From The Drunken Clam to we hardly knew ye J.J., Week 3 in Tampa Bay – A.K.A Minneapolis South -- was all about decisions made, decisions not made and decisions that should’ve been made
TAMPA, Fla. – Perspective comes at you fast when that Florida sun smacks you across the face Monday morning during an extra-long soak in whatever happens to be bubbling in the backyard hot tub of this year’s Airbnb.
It’s God’s flashlight tapping the driver’s-side window demanding your license, proof of insurance and a viable explanation for how the Vikings are 3-0 and in the crow’s nest of the NFC North. With an offense that moves like a chuckwagon in a blizzard, a quarterback wildfire that grows by the hour, and a ravaging defense that may see coordinator Brian Flores spontaneously combust as if he were Spinal Tap’s latest drummer.
And now we don’t have J.J. McCarthy to kick around anymore after Minnesota traded their exiled franchise quarterback to a Giants team desperate to spin one man’s trash into another’s gold.
Monday’s latest tectonic shift in the quarterback room stamped the exclamation mark on an absurd Week 3 “road” victory and the lather-rinse-and-repeat postmortems that followed. Couldn’t even shake off the three-day hangover and make it through airport security without the long arm of Vikings drama reaching up with a clenched fist and reminding everyone there is no safe space in Eagan.
The systemic and organizational failures that led to McCarthy being jettisoned to New York only 2 ½ years after trading up to seize their Holy Grail will go down as the most toxic transaction to plague a club that has made plenty at that paramount position.
The blast radius of McCarthy’s derailing injuries, glaring lack of self-awareness and 10 middling starts was massively destructive.
It cost them long-term security with a late-blooming Sam Darnold, who was summarily dismissed after 14 victories only to win a Super Bowl 12 months later in Seattle.
It forced coach Kevin O’Connell to manage McCarthy like a delicate flower and make chicken salad with whoever could throw a pass on a given day.
Left Justin Jefferson with table scraps to burnish his elite resume.
Ultimately cost general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah his job.
And it has robbed Vikings fans of competent quarterback play the last two seasons, with the Kyler Murray reclamation project quickly swirling down the drain of another suspect acquisition.
All of which will be autopsied and litigated in the court of public opinion and social media, which ensures it will all be rational and easily wrapped up by the time Minnesota takes the field against hapless Miami this Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.
Lest anyone forget, the Vikings are undefeated behind Flores’ blitz-crazy band of playmakers who are quietly stalking the 1985 Bears and 2000 Ravens among the NFL’s greatest defenses. It’ll take a Super Bowl berth to get behind that velvet rope, but this unit’s statistics and savagery are carving a straight path to legendary status.
If only one of their quarterbacks could put one foot in front of the other.
Murray is running out of Week 1 re-dos before Carson Wentz becomes the most important man in Minnesota yet again, assuming the creaky veteran can survive the physical treachery he courts whenever he’s under center.
Chief among the nagging questions is how long Murray or Wentz will be without Jefferson, who left early against the Bucs with an ankle injury that left the offense standing on one leg.
Life in the NFL news cycle can be a daily game of whack-a-mole, but you have to stand back in awe at how the Vikings seem to be in the middle of the loudest headlines out there. A hurricane of sourced leaks, hard truths and uncertainty will howl throughout the week before the skies part for the winless Dolphins and conveniently leave 4-0 sitting on the table.
None of which should cloud the weekend that was for this unpredictable team and its well-traveled fan base, which included our annual guys getaway that invaded Tampa Bay for the first time in 20-plus years. It was my sixth sojourn (all victories, BTW) with these fellow 50-somethings, a dynamic group of great dudes who have mastered the heavy logistics of lodging, ground transportation, bar-hopping and gameday buffoonery.
Not without the blind spots, though.
Consensus-building among the 10 or so regulars remains an “opportunity for growth” as HR might soft-spin it. Steering a cabal of successful professionals, financially independent free agents and alpha males during a three-day furlough from domestic responsibilities can be like herding kindergartners from the bus to the breakfast line.
There are shiny objects to chase, credit cards left behind, phones that die and clarion calls that go unheeded. Side hustles and detours with little to no notice. Ideas fly, execution fizzles, sideways decisions are made and all of it is recounted during the morning debriefings around the coffee maker that are worth the price of the journey.
A guy you were talking to Friday night might disappear and not resurface until halftime Sunday, no questions asked.
Never start a conversation with, “Hey, why don’t we …” unless you want a half-dozen open-ended alternatives with no means to get there, no accommodating of hygiene habits or lack thereof, and no idea where half the group is at any given moment.
Suggestions for a great seafood dinner die on the vine of frozen pizzas at 2 a.m.
Someone left three tabs open at the same bar. Another directed us to the ride share lot outside the stadium without telling everyone it was practically in Orlando.
Somehow the guy who booked the house and shared the address and entry code with everyone last week could not remember or access them not one night but two, scuttling a pair of Ubers and spawning two rounds of early morning phone calls to find the mothership.
And you haven’t felt a crowd turn so fast than when this same ring leader marched into a townie bar in St. Petersburg Saturday night and grabbed the microphone from the hand of the woman on stage thinking he was merely interrupting her karaoke of Dolly Parton’s “9-to-5”, not hijacking the lead singer of the house band as she was singing about female empowerment.
Guessing the local barflies at The Drunken Clam on 46th Avenue don’t appreciate that kind of irony. Certainly not Peter, Cleveland or Quagmire.
They didn’t appreciate these yokels in Vikings jerseys seizing the vibe, which went from shaboozey to dread in seconds.
Fortunately, I followed the group to the neighboring Japanese restaurant and the best meal of the weekend. Platters of shrimp-fried rice and sushi went down nicely with the bottomless saki that buried the needle into the red.
One great decision, though, does not prevent the inevitable bad ones from being made.
A newly made member returned from the bathroom and decided to grab an ancient war mask off the wall and don it like a stunt double from “Shogun” only to discover it was an heirloom from the old country of the Japanese family who owned the joint.
With diamond-sharp timing, the horrified waitress informed the comedian he was now responsible for covering the tab. Roars of laughter combined with the realization among this party of seven that she was serious and everyone but Gallagher was going to walk out with our wallets intact.
It’s all fun and games until the check comes.
Besides, nothing can take away the sublime beauty of a Gulf of Mexico sunset taken in from the best patio seats at The Undertow. We dropped anchor at noon and people watched like one can only do in Florida.
I’d say the official uniform of St. Petersburg Beach was thong, but that would only reinforce how irrelevant this crew of married fossils is to modern mating rituals. Feels like my 20s were actually in the 1950s.
Since hopping aboard this train in 2021, we have traveled to Los Angeles, Washington, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, Dallas and now Tampa. The Vikings have won each and every trip in the some of the ugliest ways possible.
A 3-0 joke in Vegas, followed by four field goals in a 12-7 win at Jacksonville and McCarthy’s Griddy into oblivion last year in Dallas to Sunday’s root canal at Raymond James Stadium.
Technically, the Vikings were the away team when they defeated the Buccaneers 23-16. In reality, there were so many purple-clad Vikings fans Skoling, guzzling and pillaging Tampa Bay throughout the weekend that it became Minneapolis South.
I’m terrible at head counts, but it felt like there were 40,000 Vikings fans at Sunday’s steamy game, and the rest were there because they had to be.
A 4 o’clock kickoff on a hot day demands hydration, pacing and hunting for shade, whether it was Sir Death’s tailgate barbecue just east of the stadium or the slivers next to the pirate ship on the concourse of the north end zone.
By the third quarter, half of us retreated to our purchased seats in the 300 section above the press box, where the mashup of Bucs and Vikings fans spent the next 90 minutes collectively moaning over every three-and-out and penalty flag that was thrown.
Which was only every waking minute.
I lost track of how many punts there were. Maybe a thousand. I don’t know how many fair catches. They averaged six an hour. Hooper!
At least the Vikings seized their opportunities when Myles Price housed his 86-yard return for a first-quarter touchdown. To his credit, Murray connected with Jordan Addison on a couple of bombs, including prescient touchdown in the first half.
Let’s face it, though. This is Flores’ team and his moment for however long O’Connell keeps his head buried under the hood of his broken-down offense. Minnesota is only going as far as B-Flo’s defense carries it. Right now, it’s on a rocket ship to the moon.
Scripted chaos and ferocious ball hawks combined with reckless abandon and a jammed accelerator have Flores and his crew practically foaming at the mouth on every defensive possession.
Wave after pass-rushing wave sieging from all corners have left Jordan Love, Caleb Williams and Baker Mayfield battered, befuddled and pretty much boring. And that’s just in 2026.
Minnesota’s defense was surging down the stretch last season, and despite offloading veterans and plugging in younger, more experienced replacements, it appears more ferocious than ever.
Flores may be suing the NFL for racial discrimination and retaliation in federal court, but he is taking out his wrath on every offensive coordinator, quarterback and offensive line that stands in his way. The league is loathe to settle any case against The Shield until its wolfpack of trial lawyers plucks that chicken clean, so B-Flo ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.
It’s been five years since Flores filed his lawsuit. Appeals have already reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to force the case into private arbitration at the NFL’s quest.
Pretrial discovery is burning through billable hours, with team owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell on deck to give sworn depositions, and a jury trial on the docket for 2027.
The standoff has created a power vacuum where Minnesota continues to leverage the talents of the league’s top defensive coordinator while owners weigh how much dirty laundry is worth airing in public before writing Flores a fat settlement check and putting him back on the head coaching carousel.
Meanwhile, you can’t play in a reality-adjacent playground forever.
The carefree fun of Friday and Saturday night’s free-for-alls only make the process of process of attending an NFL game feel like more of an ordeal.
Don’t get me wrong. The Shield has the purest entertainment drug on the planet, and I’ll gladly empty my wallet and abuse my body to get the requisite fix.
But navigating Raymond James Stadium during the game, and trying to secure an Uber back to the mothership afterward left me pining for the days of paper tickets, curb-to-curb arrivals and departures and $5 beers. Back when movies didn’t have sound.
It’s the kind of trip where you can’t wait to get home but don’t want to leave yet. Which means one more decision to make before the gang scatters on various itineraries.
I consider the options. Do a cost-benefit analysis after melting my debit card at the stadium bar. Ask who’s in, who’s out. Why hasn’t anyone ordered a car yet? Wait, how many are going? No, I don’t want to hop in and go smoke cigars at Ybor City at 10 a.m.
Just take me to Waffle House.
Brian Murphy is a former Pioneer Press columnist who has been contributing to Purple Insider since 2021.
“…may see coordinator Brian Flores spontaneously combust as if he were Spinal Tap’s latest drummer.” Your literary wit always makes me smile! Well done, Murph, well done. 😎
Brilliant, as usual, Brian.