Vikings-Chargers gets weird, even in their first ever matchup
Vikings-Chargers gets weird, even in their first ever matchup
Two teams with strange histories have played strange games over the years, starting with their first matchup in 1971
By Collin Giuliani and Matthew Coller
Follow Collin’s terrific NFL history YouTube channel here
The Minnesota Vikings and San Diego/Los Angeles Chargers are two teams looking in the mirror. Both franchises have successful histories that have been marred by strange events that have kept them away from championships. So it stands to reason that they would have bizarre matchups during their 14 times playing against each other.
A few highlights:
— When they played in 1981 Vikings QB Tommy Kramer threw for 444 yards, sixth most in team history, outdueling Dan Fouts in a 33-31 win.
— The disaster Les Steckel era started off with a 42-13 loss to the Chargers.
— In 1999, Jeff George and Jim Harbaugh dueled at the Metrodome combining for 767 yards and the Vikings scored 28 points in one quarter.
— You will certainly recall the 2007 contest in which Adrian Peterson broke the single-game rushing record and Antonio Cromartie returned a missed field goal for touchdown.
— Donovan McNabb threw for 39 yards in an opening loss to San Diego in 2011.
— In 2019 Vikings fans took over a soccer stadium that was playing host to the Chargers during construction for their new venue.
These clubs should have known from their first matchup that things were never going to be normal when they get together. In 1971 the Vikings entered as one of the strongest teams in the NFL and the Chargers were sputtering but an injury and very odd decision played into a shocking San Diego upset.
Here’s the story of the debut Vikings-Chargers matchup and how different football was back then…
In the early 70s football only vaguely looked like it does today and one of the biggest ways things have changed is with concussion awareness. Today it’s very clear: if you have a concussion your day is done and you’re not going to go back into the game. Back then? Shake it off. It was just a headache. But on December 5, 1971, when the Vikings took on the Chargers at San Diego Stadium, the lack of concussion protocol would play a role in deciding the game.
Entering Week 12 of the 14-game season the Vikings were one of the best teams in football. They boasted a 9-2 record, which was the best in the NFC and while there is no such thing as seeding back then, as playoff matchups were predetermined by division, the Vikings were sitting pretty atop the NFC Central, one-and-a-half games up on the Detroit Lions for first place. However, they didn’t have a whole lot of room for error. They could win the division if the right results bounced their way or still potentially be in jeopardy of being a wild card with a late-season collapse.
On paper the Chargers seemed like a super easy matchup for the Vikings. Minnesota was 13-point favorites and there were two main reasons why: First, the Chargers were just flat out terrible. They were 4-7 through their first 11 games and were coming off of two straight losses, including an embarrassing 31-0 shutout loss at the hands of the Cincinnati Bengals where they turned it over six times and mustered up just eight first downs. Second: Minnesota’s defense was a cut above everyone else in football. Through 11 games the Vikings allowed just 89 points. Outside of a Week 2 game against the Chicago Bears, the Vikings had not allowed more than 13 points in any game this season, shutting out three opponents in the process.
While there were many fantastic players and future Hall of Famers on this defense, like Carl Eller and Alan Page on the defensive line and the legendary Jim Marshall, the main player in our story is safety Paul Krause.
Throwing against Minnesota was a tall order and Krause was a big reason why. Krause finished his career with 81 interceptions, which was the all-time record for most career interceptions in NFL history, and is a record that still stands to this day. In 1971 he was having one of the best years of his entire career. Over Krause’s last four games entering this one against the Chargers, he had five interceptions. In the team’s last game, a 24-7 win against the Atlanta Falcons, quarterback Bob Berry threw three interceptions and two of them went to Krause. He was an absolute ball hawk and there’s a reason why he would eventually be named a Pro Bowler later in the season.
However, things quickly went awry for the Vikings not even three plays into the game when Krause got kicked in the head. When he got kicked in the head, he felt dizzy and had a serious headache. Today we know that this is a clear-cut sign of a concussion, and in today’s NFL there is no way that Krause would have continued to play. But this was 1971, a completely different landscape. Instead of keeping Krause out of the game, the coaches decided to send him back out there — strangely only to serve as the holder for kicker Fred Cox on field goals.
This concussion was bad enough that Krause did not remember a thing. After the game he could not recall holding the ball on the field goal attempts and could not recall playing in the game itself. It should not come as a surprise that kicker Cox missed both of his field goal attempts during the game, which was the only game all season where he did not make a field goal, and it was just the second game where he missed two kicks. Cox had been on fire, going 10-for-12 in the previous six weeks, which was great back then as an 83% field goal percentage was well above the league-wide average of 58%.
Had Cox made the field goals the game might have played out differently. In the fourth quarter the Chargers were only up 20-14 but things went off the rails when the Chargers returned an interception for touchdown to put the game on ice in a shocking 30-14 upset.
With Krause out of the game quarterback John Hadl played highly efficient football going 20-for-29 with 165 yards, two touchdowns, and a passer rating of 91.9. Numbers like that against this Vikings defense were almost unheard of. It was the first time the Vikings allowed 30 or more points in a game since December 1, 1968. The Vikings allowed 55 passing yards to the Falcons the previous week and 56 passing yards to the Packers a few weeks before that, and they had a game earlier in the season against the Buffalo Bills where they allowed eight passing yards. Yet Hadl, with Paul Krause not out there, just sliced and diced the Vikings up, making their defense look mortal for maybe the first time all season.
Ultimately the loss did not end up impacting the Vikings’ final results. They went undefeated the rest of the way and hosted Dallas in the playoffs — a game that they lost 20-12. Even if the Vikings’ first game against the Chargers did not have had any crazy ripple effect in the long run, it was a strange game with an incredibly odd twist that cost the Vikings. That would be the case nearly every time they played going forward. You can bet that Sunday’s matchup will have it’s own wacky spin.
STORY SOURCE: https://www.newspapers.com/image/185144997/?terms=chargers&match=1