Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
The Vikings are off to a fast start, or they have
successfully rebounded from a slow start to put themselves in the playoff
hunt. A seemingly ordinary game awaits
them at noon against an opponent they should beat if they can just take care of
business the way they have during this recent run of success.
That is, until the NFL, though no fault of its own, decides
that a game between teams that seem evenly matched on paper and have similar,
relevant records is the game that everyone wants to see. The Vikings go into the game and are blinded
by the lights, and get trounced in front of the entire nation; an outcome that
might not have occurred had the game stayed at its original time.
As much fun as it is to see the Vikings getting on the right
track and maybe even getting taken seriously again, the recent trend of
“flexing” games into primetime (that have gained importance
based on the week-to-week happenings of the NFL season) has not been
tremendously kind to our favorite team.
For the sake of this post, I’m only considering games that got flexed to
Sunday night. I don’t really consider
moving a noon game to 3:25 to be a “flex.”
(The Giants-Vikings MNF game in Detroit was not really a “flex,” either,
but more of a necessity move, so it won’t be detailed here).
In 2007, the Vikings had an 8-6 record and suddenly saw a
meaningful game against the Washington Redskins get thrust under the bright
lights of Sunday Night Football on NBC (in just the second year of SNF on NBC). The result: 22-0 Redskins at halftime and a
32-21 victory for Washington, whose players and coaches (and fans) were
mourning the murder of Sean Taylor at the time.
This game cost the Vikings a playoff berth because all the Skins had to
do was win in Week 17 to get in thanks to the tiebreaker over Minnesota.
The 2009 season, for all the good it brought Vikings fans,
featured one of these as well. The Vikes
faced Arizona, a team that had blossomed under veteran QB Kurt Warner (nearly
winning Super Bowl 43, the most recent at the time). The Cardinals steadily built a 30-10 lead and
won 30-17. It was just the second loss
of the season (10-2), but the Vikings won just two more games in the regular
season to get the #2 seed.
And we all know how that turned out.
The most recent Vikings game to get this treatment was the Philadelphia
game in 2010. There was nothing remotely
compelling about this game; The Eagles were good and we were trash. Brett Favre had been injured against the
Bears, a Monday Night game, and this game has the distinction of marking the
end of his legendary games-started streak. Apparently the game was flexed to Sunday night, but moved to Tuesday night because of a major snowstorm on the east coast. It remains one of the few Tuesday night football games in NFL history.
Fondly remembered as the Joe Webb game, a fun bright spot in
an otherwise dismal season, the Vikings managed to get a late-season win over
an Eagles team that would qualify for the playoffs the following week.
I guess in the long run, 1-2 in “flex” games isn’t so
bad…but the fact remains that national television stumbles are a big part of
Vikings lore. The diehard fans behind
Vikings Cavalcade hope that the Zimmer era can change that.
Although I personally don’t consider it a “flex,” earlier
this week it was announced that the Vikings-Packers game in Week 11 is now
“America’s Game of the Week” on Fox. If
the Vikings play their cards right, they’ll be 7-2 (best case scenario). The Packers could be 8-1 (also best case
scenario).
This will be, without a
doubt, the most meaningful Vikings-Packers clash since Week 17 of 2012,
regardless of record.
But I’ll save any more words about that game for Week
11. The big question I have is this; can
the Vikings shed this label of “eternal national stage fright?”
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