Week 18: Wild Card; on to…uh, Minneapolis!

Welcome to the Division Champion edition of Vikings Cavalcade!  

I was pretty ecstatic Sunday night.  At least, I felt that way after the Vikings properly defended a play that may or may not have happened on time (in slow motion, Rodgers appeared to get the play off in time, but it’s extremely bang-bang and would have almost certainly been carefully reviewed had the Packers scored). 

In a way, ending the game like that was the perfect way for Minnesota to win the NFC North; Vikings fans were extremely upset when the Lions forgot how to play defense on the Hail Mary awarded to Green Bay after what I like to call “the Phantom Facemask.”

After losing to Seattle a few days later, the Vikings fell behind Green Bay in the division race, seemingly for good; and it burned fans up that the division turned on what we thought was a screwy sequence at the end of that Thursday game (and that THEY got to win like THAT and all WE got was a beating from the Seahawks).  

How appropriate, then, that the Vikings showed the Lions how it was done; knocking down one final heave from one of the best quarterbacks in the game today.

After years of Packer dominance (with the Bears winning in 2005, 2006 and 2010 and the Vikings winning previously in 2008 and 2009), does this win signal a changing of the guard?  Or will the teams trade the title over time?  That seems the more likely route, unless Green Bay reverts to 1970s form anytime soon, which won’t happen as long as they have a HOF quarterback behind center. 

My, what a long way we have come from Week One, where most of us shut the television off in disgust and said “Playoffs?  You kiddin’ me?  I just hope we can win a game!”  Well, 11 wins later, here we are.  We get a rematch against Seattle; not a favorable matchup, but we also aren’t missing half of our defense this time.  And speaking of those other guys, I’m not so sure Green Bay got the “easy” matchup, either. 

Kirk Cousins is red-hot right now.  The Redskins are no cupcake, in my opinion.  Yes, they probably are an easier team to beat than Seattle, but not if Cousins has all day to pick apart that defense.  We had a 17 point lead on Green Bay in the third quarter with hardly a contribution from Teddy.  If the Redskins get going, watch out!

It’s just a nice thought at this point, but if the Vikings can get past Seattle and Arizona and Carolina follows the trend of bye-week teams losing immediately, TCF Bank Stadium would be able to go out with a bang hosting the NFC Title game.  I just hope Green Bay has lost by that point, because after the way it ended for them last season, I’m not sure if I want an angry Aaron Rodgers slinging the ball around on the second-biggest stage of them all.  That is, unless our defense could shine again, and have an exact repeat of last Sunday’s game.

Mike Zimmer might not consider it a signature win, but it was.  The Vikings won two Sunday Night Football games in a row (literally) after losing so much under the lights in recent years.  Furthermore, when the people doubted the team after bad losses, the Vikings always seemed to answer the bell and bounce back with a win or a closely-contested loss to show they hadn’t lost their edge. 

Some people doubt the Vikings again as they welcome Seattle.  I say let them doubt, and let’s see if the Vikings can get the last laugh.  It’s the playoffs, where “any given Sunday” goes from oldest cliché in the book to sudden reality.  It’s time to stop being pessimists and believe in this team. 

Bring it on.

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.