Week 17: Return of the Ted-i?

Here it is…week 17 is upon us.

The Vikings have returned to Sunday Night Football in an attempt to rescue the NFC North title from the clutches of the vile Green Bay Packers.

The Packers, fresh off the worst beating of the season (against a team the Vikings nearly pushed to overtime, by the way) need to regroup for a rematch that could result in them losing a treasure they have held for most of the season.

Vikings fans once again have a reason to feel confident, even if Week 11 was a disaster.  Packer fans…well, when you’ve ruled the NFC North since the NFC Central kicked Tampa Bay to the curb, you’ve got every reason to remain confident even when your team looks mortal for the first time since 2008.

Which side’s overconfidence will be its weakness?

It’s finally time for the big one.  All season, we’ve been waiting for the Vikings to beat a good team.  The win over Atlanta is as good as it got, as the Falcons at least were decent when we played them.  Eh, I’m going to count Kansas City as well.  Sure, they were down and out when we beat them, but it wasn’t by much.  The Vikings were the last team to beat KC…they are in the playoffs now.

But, every other chance they’ve had to beat a good team has gone badly with two close losses and a pair of not-so-close losses (Packer game wasn’t a rout; Vikes trailed by 6 in the fourth quarter). In other words, 10-5 is made up of roughly nine wins over mediocre teams, four losses to good teams and the still-inexplicable San Francisco loss that thankfully did not cost the Vikings the playoffs altogether.

Sure, we won in prime time, but this team still lacks that one win that would make people stand up and say, “You’d better watch out for the Vikings; they could win the NFC!”

They could get that win this Sunday.  Much like Week 11, even though Green Bay is wounded, it’s still Green Bay.  A win here would boost Minnesota’s stock exponentially.  Winning the division in Mike Zimmer’s second season would echo Mike McCarthy’s second season when the Packers did the same thing (though to be fair, McCarthy had Brett Favre that year).

The nice thing here is that the Vikings play next week no matter what.  Fans can relax, if only a little at the fact that Aaron Rodgers, if he bounces back here and the Packers beat us for the nine thousandth time in his career, cannot end our season and knock us out of the playoffs in Week 17.

Still, we want that win.  We want that division title.  We just want to beat the Packers, period.  It has 

been 3 long years since that magical game where Christian Ponder threw three touchdowns and 

Adrian Peterson ran through the Packers defense before Blair Walsh kicked us into the playoffs.  It has been so frustrating watching these games the past ten years.  They have been the better team consistently, but in 2015, I feel the Vikings are the more complete team, which made Week 11 all the more upsetting when we lost. 

Once again, Vikings-Packers serves as a measuring stick for the purple.  They’ve proven they can play with anyone else.  The team’s progress the past two seasons has been remarkable if you think about where we were in 2013.  It’s time to purge some demons of the past and do something that even Detroit and Chicago (both teams we swept, in case you’ve forgotten) managed to do this season…beat the Packers at Lambeau Field.

If we fail, it simply isn’t our time yet.  I think we know better than to be overconfident.

Week 16: The prime time curse is over (for now)!

Boy did Sunday night feel good.  Yes, the Giants had nothing for which to play.  Yes, Odell Beckham sat out the game due to his own stupidity the previous week. 

When they eventually got started offensively, the Vikings outclassed the Giants and looked like the far better team.  Aside from a couple of touchdowns given up when the game was out of hand, the Vikings defense played brilliantly and for once, they buried a bad team like all of the other good teams do, instead of struggling to win like earlier in the season.  Well, to be fair, they beat the Bears by 21 last week, too.

Sure, this barely counted as a “big win” for the Vikings (according to some people) due to the quality of the opponent, but try telling that to most Vikings fans.  Personally, I will gladly take any game where my team can hang 49 on the other team.  Teddy didn’t exactly light the Giants up like many thought he might, but you don’t have to throw for 350 and 3 when you can run the ball like the Vikings can at their best.

Perhaps the biggest reason for jubilation after Sunday night is this; the Vikings finally won in prime time.  The Arizona game was the first time in a while that the Vikings did not embarrass their fans under the lights, and, though playing a much inferior opponent this time around, I think it’s safe to say fans are more than happy with Sunday’s victory over the Giants. 

But…there is another.

The Packers still loom large in that week 17 matchup which has (not surprisingly) become the feature game of the week.  That’s right, the Vikings become one of the few teams to play in back-to-back SNF games since its arrival on NBC in 2006 (I’m guessing there weren’t many situations like this in the ESPN days since they didn’t have flex scheduling in those years).

But, that is another story for another day.  For now, let’s just enjoy the fact that we’ve made the playoffs for the first time since 2012.