Week 1: Captain Kirk (Cousins) Steers the Good Ship Skol!

It all begins again. 

In Week One, the Vikings embark on a long journey toward that glitzy new stadium in Atlanta, GA; and the team might very well be good enough to get there barring another year like 2016.

2017 saw the Vikings lose Sam Bradford and dynamic rookie Dalvin Cook by the fourth week of the season.  Other than them, the team stayed relatively healthy.  The end result was Stefon Diggs performing a miracle to exorcise the long-standing Bountygate demon and give the Vikings their first playoff win since then.  We won’t talk about the next week, though.

Indeed, the Vikings were unable to “bring it home,” but many people have suggested they could bring it to Atlanta.  After years of being mediocre, does anyone else enjoy the respect the Vikings get now from the sports media?  For a long time, I joked that the national perspective was “the Vikings are Adrian Peterson and no one else,” which was true, for the most part, except for the brief Favre era.  It is great that the Vikes actually get props and the conversation isn’t “well, the Packers are going to win the North, there’s no debate.” 

If the Vikings are supposed to be a Super Bowl contender, they have to come out and play like it in their home stadium, where they won 7 of 8 games in 2017.  I would go so far to say you can’t lose your home opener if you want to play in Atlanta in February.  I’m not ready to crown Jimmy Garoppolo king based off of a few wins last year.  If he gets the 49ers off to a 6-0 start or something like that, then maybe.

My prediction is that the Vikings make the playoffs again this year, and the only way they miss the playoffs is if 2016 repeats itself.  With the initial Kirk Cousins deal, we’ve got three years to make this Super Bowl thing happen.

Finally this week, there was a lot of talk after the Minneapolis Miracle that whatever “curse” had plagued the Vikings for decades, Stefon Diggs had stomped a mudhole in it.  If that’s true, than the Philly loss was “just a bad game.”  I said myself a couple of years ago that I thought the “curse” would end after 50 years.  Considering it started with the misplacing of the 1969 league championship trophy (Minnesota’s lone championship to date), that means…2019, when Super Bowl 53 is played.  Time to see if that prediction rings true.

Skol Vikes.    

Super Bowl Week: We didn't bring it home, and now we need a quarterback AGAIN???!

Well, that sucked.  I don’t really have many words for it; the NFC championship game was over from the moment Case Keenum threw that pick-six.  And now the Eagles are playing in what could have been “our” Super Bowl.  We never really had a chance.    

(Okay, maybe that’s a little over-dramatic, but I tried writing this post immediately after the game ended and it was an emotional diatribe about how the Vikings are always a bridesmaid but never a bride and were never going to even make it to the Super Bowl until I was dead and gone.  Writing all of it out was cathartic, but I chose not to save it.) 

It’s just as well the Vikings fell short of “bringing it home.”  No one had ever done it, and now the team no longer has to worry about being the first.  Let that duty fall to…oh man…the 28-3 catastrophe themselves, the Atlanta Falcons.  With our luck, that will wind up happening.  It would, however, be sweet, sweet revenge to win the Super Bowl there on what would be the 20^th anniversary of a certain sordid event in Vikings history.

I, personally, am ready for the big game, but I can’t help feeling like this would all be 100 times more exciting if the Vikings had made it.  Then again, I’m enjoying the relaxing feeling of knowing there’s no chance for the Vikes to go 0-5 in the Super Bowl all-time by losing to Tom Brady.  Better to lose in the NFC Title Game than to think you’re all that, only to fall hard.

The next task for the Vikings will be choosing a starter; which feels like the opening moments of any Pokemon game.  Will they choose Bradford, Bridgewater, or Keenum?  Or, will they keep one of them for depth purposes and go out and catch a wild Kirk Cousins?  From the sounds of it, he’ll give us a chance if he feels the offer is right.  He obviously feels the situation is right.  Personally, I feel like he has huge potential to thrive in an offense with a healthy Dalvin Cook and plenty of weapons plus a defense that will hopefully return to form next year and get him back on the field shortly after he leaves.  That is, of course, if he wants to come here. 

None of this will come to a head until free agency, so that will be the next time this blog gets updated.  Until then, Skol on.     

NFC Title Game: To go boldly where no (host) team has ever gone before!

So, it’s time to put the miracle in the rear-view.  Now there’s a phrase used in everyday life.

The 2017 Minnesota Vikings have already made history after one playoff game.  If you believe that there is a curse specifically targeting the Vikings, they may have destroyed it with the Minneapolis Miracle only to encounter another one: something called the home field curse.

As we all know, no team has ever had home field advantage in the Super Bowl, and no matter how hard the NFL tries to play it (AFC being designated the “home team” as per usual rotation), if the Vikings make it, they will be the home team.  There’s no way around it. 

The other part of the “home field curse” is that no one had ever made it past the divisional round of the playoffs in the year their city hosted the big game; something the Vikings have already done thanks to Case Keenum and Stefon Diggs putting the Saints’ season through a table Dudley Boyz style.  The Vikings already conquered one part of the curse by being one of the few host teams to make the playoffs in the first place.  This is uncharted territory.  

Minnesota’s opponent on Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles, are not a victim of this curse, because Philly has never hosted a Super Bowl.  But they, like the Vikings, have also never won one.  That is the best thing about the championship games this year; three of the four teams have never won a Super Bowl, and one of them automatically gets that shot regardless of results.

The Eagles are definitely powered down without Carson Wentz, but I would not sleep on Nick Foles.  The Vikings defense will have to be up to the task of stopping Philly’s ground game and making them a one-dimensional team.  The Eagles only scored 15 points against Atlanta, but they seemed to make all of the right plays at the right times.  Meanwhile, we needed a rookie to falter at the worst possible time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  Mike Zimmer said “there is no damn curse.”  If that’s true, I expect a win on Sunday.

There isn’t much more to say except I really hope this isn’t the last Vikings Cavalcade this season to review one game and talk about the next one. 

I hope to begin the next post with “THE VIKINGS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!!” 

I also hope to be able to start a Skol chant in public whenever I feel like it.  It’s all up to you now, Vikes.