Purple Drain–Another Vikings Nightmare
Joe Oberle
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“Was it all just a bad dream?” That was my first thought upon waking the morning after that nightmarish NFC Championship game in which the Vikings were manhandled by the Philadelphia Eagles. The Vikings had been so close to doing something that no team has done before (playing a Super Bowl in their home stadium), but when you look at the scores alone in Minnesota’s last three halves of football—they were outscored 62-19—they appear so very far away.
Those are incredible numbers for the top-ranked defense during the regular season. How do you go from the best in the league to the worst in the playoffs in two games time? It’s seems unfathomable to me, but I must say, we have seen this before.
As a person who has witnessed the Vikings stink it up in NFC title games in the past (the most comparable, of course, is 41-Donut in 2001) and in four Super Bowls where they lost by double digits in every one (I even recall thinking that losing by 10 points to the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1975 wasn’t that bad out of misplaced rationalization), I have felt this pain (that is now starting to morph into a little anger) before. I never thought this year’s team would make me feel the way I do.
After the game, I listened to some players on KFAN and thought I heard a player say, “they wanted it more than we did.” How is that possible? How in a real way is that concept even remotely possible with a home Super Bowl staring you in the face? A week after the football gods granted your team the greatest reprieve in the history of the sport, and you spat back in their faces while puking on yourselves.
Alright, alright, I am getting a little wound up. But I was looking forward to a Vikings Super Bowl and now must watch Tom Brady’s New England Patriots (yes, they somehow did it again) and the Carson Wentz-less Philadelphia Eagles. I care about this game as much as I did about the Buffalo Bills-Washington game I witnessed back in 1992—and that wasn’t a whole lot.
The bigger concern is how Harrison Smith, the All-Pro free safety turned into Wasswa Serwanga? How did Trae Waynes revert to form? How did 15-year veteran Terence Newman get beat like it was his first year in the league? How did the entire defense make Nick Foles and his receiving corps look like Kurt Warner and the “greatest show on turf?”
They didn’t want it as bad as the Eagles? What? Really? (That quote must have been another nightmare, since I can’t find it on my tape. But I am still going with it.)
The Vikings definitely wanted it. They had all been thinking about it over the past few weeks, ever since they clinched a playoff berth. They wanted it, but they may have wanted it too much, and forgot they still had to do something about it.
I have long been a preacher of the notion that emotion in this game is what often sets one team apart from another (having watched the Vikings being woefully emotionally unprepared in past Super Bowls will do that to you) and it really appears to be another case of the same. They are not 31 points worse than an Eagles team with Foles at the helm. They just aren’t. So, we must look at how they prepared for this one, and the words coming from the head coach are not that encouraging.
“I am not going to grade the players tonight,” Mike Zimmer said in his postgame press conference. “This is not a time to criticize one player. If you want to criticize people, criticize me, I don’t care. I could have called a lot better game, obviously. I am going to point the finger at me before I am going to point it at the players.”
Zimmer also told KFAN that he “didn’t do a good enough job getting them ready,” which, in my book, puts him in the great company of Vikings coaching legend Bud Grant. Grant was a great leader and head coach, but it was said about his teams, certainly the first Super Bowl team that lost to the Kansas City Chiefs following the 1969 season, that they weren’t emotionally ready to take on a team from that upstart AFL league. It didn’t appear that Zimmer had his charges ready to go in this one.
I will point a finger at how the Vikings got to their emotional readiness in this game. The emotional high of two Sunday’s ago, certainly affected them all week. Everybody was calling them “a team of destiny,” which is something that rubbed me the wrong way right off the bat. Player don’t necessarily believe that stuff and their clips and everything else, but it can creep in.
The thing that boggles the mind is when you jump out to a 7-0 lead on the first drive of the game, you would think your confidence would be riding high. But then two demoralizing turnovers changed momentum, confidence and everything else, and the Vikings emotions ground into the dirt—and their played showed it. The idea that Zimmer’s defensive players don’t try to win the game with one play and don’t get out of their lanes went out the window, and the game became one bad play after another for Minnesota.
This is not to say that the Eagles weren’t the better team, yesterday. They were—without a doubt. They didn’t flinch for long after the Vikings opening score, but they did look disorganized on that drive. But the Eagles dug in and caused the pick that turned the game around. I just contend that the Eagles aren’t 31 points better than the Vikings. The Vikings became someone else in that game yesterday—and I am afraid they became the Vikings teams of the past in which they got to a big stage and found it was bigger than they had anticipated.
I am not suggested a coaching change here. If Zimmer is the modern-day equivalent of Grant, bring it on (or bring it home, or whatever). I would take that in a heartbeat. But only if the team learns from their past mistakes and figures out a way to be prepared for these big games. I truly expect them to return next season. I expect them to be in a battle for the NFC North and to make the playoffs—what Zimmer and Rick Spielman have built is too good not to be. But I really need them to figure out how to prepare for the big stage and playing to their capabilities rather than falling on their face.
That is the only way things will change.
P.S. Teddy Bridgewater told reporters today that he should be starting somewhere next season, so buckle for a great offseason of intrigue and (quarterback) controversy. That is what the Vikings do best.