Vikings Need Good Greg on Sunday
Ted Schwerzler
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For the second week in a row, Minnesota Vikings kicker Greg Joseph missed. Of course, that’s going to happen, but when the sole purpose of your role on a football team is to make kicks, misses will always be scrutinized. What the Vikings need on Sunday is a game of perfection.
This season the Minnesota Vikings raced out to a 13-4 record and set themselves up for a home playoff game because of it. They will play host to the New York Giants on Sunday afternoon, and it will be the second time in the past month that they have hosted Brian Daboll’s squad. The last matchup, Minnesota’s final regular season home game, ended with a franchise-record kick. As great as the moment was for Greg Joseph, no one involved wants that to be the needed outcome again.
Last week against the Green Bay Packers it was apparent that conditions at Lambeau Field were suboptimal. For many players on both sides of the ball, slipping and falling appeared to be a routine occurrence. The Vikings emplored their players to wear seven-stud cleats for better traction, but plenty of them thought they knew better. Despite the embarrassment from the final tally, there were multiple individual performances that left something to be desired.
After Joseph banged home his career-best 61-yarder against the Giants, he was on a run, nailing 20-of-22 field goals across an eight game stretch. He had made 13 straight extra-points and looked to have changed fortunes from a start that didn’t look pretty. Of course, against a division rival, it all went awry.
Joseph did make both of his extra point attempts, extending that streak to 19, but he missed a pair of field goals. Neither kick was more than 50 yards, and for a professional kicker, that should be near automatic range. Potentially the field cause problems, but that’s not something Joseph will be able to point to in the next four win-or-go-home games. Playing on a grass surface notorious for terrible conditions at Soldier Field, Joseph missed the opening extra point before righting the ship on five kicks the rest of the way.
Minnesota should be confident going into their matchup with the Giants. It’s a team they already beat, and despite needing a ridiculous field goal to do it, they were never out of the game despite a truly lackluster performance. The offensive line will be a focus as Kirk Cousins needs backups to step in and protect him, but plenty of certainties should already be assumed from both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. Far too often Vikings fans have had their hearts ripped out on missed kicks, and avoiding that fate this time around is a must.
Joseph will get to kick from the known surface that is U.S. Bank Stadium in round one, and if the Seattle Seahawks can pull an upset, he should have the opportunity in round two as well. Getting in a place of automatic results again needs to be how he ends the year, and with only four games to go, it’s Joseph’s leg that has the ability to determine plenty of outcomes.
For a franchise that has been burned by kickers so frequently, and especially so during recent memory, it would be great for Joseph to put a two-game sample size behind him and lock in the rest of the way.
Ted Schwerzler is a blogger from the Twin Cities that is focused on all things Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. He’s active on Twitter and writes weekly for Twins Daily. As a former college athlete and avid sports fan, covering our pro teams with a passion has always seemed like such a natural outlet.