Tag: sports

Sure, the more one thinks about how the Vikes gift-wrapped the game and gave it away, the more irritating it is. But the angst, pain, and general soulsickness doesn’t even come close to comparing to 1998, 1975, or 1983. As hard as it may be for younger Vikings fans to understand, this loss doesn’t even rank in the top ten. And as Chev reminded me, I never expected anywhere nearly as much out of Favre as he delivered this season. After all, this is how I answered when I was asked before the season if I was excited about Favre becoming a Viking:

“All I know is that as a Vikings fan, I never feared Brett Favre. Never. Sure, sometimes he’d beat you with a lightning strike from that cannon arm, but just as often – more often – he’d beat the Packers with an untimely interception.”

Upon reflection, I’m shocked that he didn’t do it more often this year. The reality is that Favre is the anti-Manning, the anti-Elway, the anti-Two Minute Tommy Kramer. For an elite quarterback, he’s actually a relative choke artist dating back to the Green Bay Super Bowl loss to Denver. I’m glad we had him this year and I hope we have him the next year, but I’m not at all surprised that he would turn out to be the goat, insofar as any Minnesota player can be said to be the goat. In my opinion, none of them were. AD, for example, had either the best three-fumble or worst three-rushing TD game in playoff history.

I thought game itself went pretty much how I broke it down, barring all the crazy fumbles and the inability of the Minnesota defensive line to actually sack Brees. I’ll go over each aspect later, but obviously the thing that I got most wrong was giving the Saints a +1 advantage for coaching. It should have been a +3, enough to swing the balance in New Orleans favor. The true goat of the game is Favre’s fellow choke artist Brad Childress. While he did a pretty good job surmounting his natural tendencies over the season, under pressure he reverted to his terrible tendency towards hyper-controlling micromanagement. The strategy on that last drive was terrible from the start; the seeds of the problem were planted before that dreadful timeout called after Chester Taylor’s first down at the Saints 37. There were actually FIVE big coaching mistakes at the end that cumulatively cost the Vikings the game:

1. Calling timeout. The Saints were visibly reeling after the Taylor first down put the Vikes in field goal range. AD probably could have gone off tackle and into the end zone, not just merely gained the 10 yards to make the field goal a gimme for Longwell, if Childress hadn’t given them the chance to regroup. When the opponent’s morale is shaken, that’s the moment to strike and the very last thing you should do is give them time. Military leaders have known this for more than two thousand years, so why don’t football coaches?

2. After the timeout, the Saints stacked the line since Sean Payton knows that Chilly is from the Schottenheimer/Turner school of playing not to screw it up. I was SCREAMING at the screen for a play-action pass to the FB in the slot or a WR on a buttonhook. Naturally, they ran it up the middle twice for no gain, which makes one wonder if anyone on an NFL staff ever pays any attention to history. That play was straight out of Schottenheimer’s “how to lose a playoff game” book. You don’t play to win the conference championship on a 51-yard field goal. You simply don’t. It’s stupid.

3. The 12-men penalty. This is the one that everyone is talking about. Yes, it’s stupid. But no, it’s unfortunately not as surprising as it should be considering how the Vikings sideline was described as “chaos” at the end of last year’s playoff game against the Eagles. The penalty was inexcusable and it was entirely on the coaching staff.

4. The interception. Yes, it was a classic Brett Favre choke; there is absolutely no question that he should have run the ball. As a second option, he should have thrown it to the receiver who was in man coverage eight yards past the line of scrimmage. But it shouldn’t have been news to Childress that his quarterback is Brett Favre, who tends to throw amazingly idiotic interceptions at critical moments like those. Every serious Vikings fan has known this self-destructive flaw of Favre’s for years, so why didn’t Childress call the play accordingly? The roll-out call was actually fine, but if you haven’t given explicit orders to a) run if they give you an opening and b) not throw across the field, you’re just not doing your job correctly.

5. Griffin’s injury. Why is your #1 cornerback (given Winfield’s injury), on the kickoff coverage team? Would they have given up 50 instead of 40 if he wasn’t?

The fumbles were infuriating, but they weren’t the reason the Vikes lost. They were the reason the Vikes didn’t win by 17. A few of the penalties were ridiculous, especially the phantom pass interference call at the end, but the refs were shaky all night and they would have been irrelevant if Childress hadn’t pulled a Denny Green. The dropped interception was bad, but that, too, should have been irrelevant.

The reason the Vikings lost was a frightened, micromanaging coach trying to play it safe instead of playing to finish off the opponent and win. I expect Childress will probably learn from the experience – given his contract extension, I certainly hope he will – but that’s little consolation now. Anyhow, I can’t fault the Saints for accepting Chilly’s Gift, and I’m pleased to see them finally get the chance to play in the Super Bowl instead of the NFC East teams of whom I am so thoroughly sick. And let’s face it, this game looked suspiciously like playing for the right to play sacrificial lamb against the Manning-machine. Even so, I’d like to congratulate the New Orleans Saints and their long-suffering fans on their NFC Championship and wish them the best of luck in upsetting the Colts.

I’d like to see the Jets upset the Colts. But I don’t think they will. I’ll be live-commenting the Vikings-Saints game and will post it after the game, but until then this will serve as your Conference Championship open post.

I don’t have any problem admitting that the Prince song is horrifically bad. It’s no Skol Vikings, let alone Men of Football Fame, which happens to be one of the all-time great fight songs. But I quite like the fact that he wrote it anyhow. It’s the sort of irrational thing that an enthusiastic football fan should do.

I’m not afraid of the Saints. If the Vikes were playing at the Hump, I’d be even more confident than I was last week against Dallas. This lack of fear is no disrespect to Drew Brees; I was furious when Culpepper was injured and the Vikings didn’t pursue Brees after the Chargers decided to jettison him in favor of Rivers. Brees is an excellent quarterback and he is protected by a very good line that only allowed 20 sacks all year. But besides home field advantage, the QB and OL combination are probably the only significant advantages for New Orleans. Consider the breakdown:

QB – slight advantage New Orleans -1 (Favre has been incredible all year, but there is no other shoe with Brees.)
RB – solid advantage Minnesota +2 (This would be the right time to show up in a big way, AD.)
WR – push. I like Rice better than Colston this year.
TE – slight advantage Minnesota +1 (+2 if Shockey can’t go. Shiancoe has been reliably great and Favre has loved throwing to the TE since the days of Chmura and Franks.)
OL – slight advantage New Orleans -1

DL – solid advantage Minnesota +2 (+1 if Edwards can’t go.)
LB – slight advantage New Orleans -1 (Vikes miss Henderson.)
DB – push despite INT difference (Yes, Sharper is a ballhawk but we know him; he’s not as good as this year’s stats indicate.)

Special teams – Kluwe and Morstead are practically identical, Longwell is better than Carney or Hartley, Harvin and Roby both average 27.5 yards on 42 returns, and Reynaud’s average is more than 2x Bush’s. Much to my surprise, the slight advantage is to the Vikes. +1

Home field in a dome: Slight advantage New Orleans -1. This is why I was so upset about those stupid losses to Chicago and Carolina.

Coaches: Slight advantage New Orleans -1. But Chilly is improving. Last year, this would have been minus two. Maybe a minus three. I suspect having Favre pushing him to be more aggressive has helped, then again, having a quarterback who can actually see an open receiver and throw the ball to him would tend to open up the playbook a little. I LOVED the dagger at the end of the Dallas game for two reasons. One, 1975. Two, the Vikes have tended to slack late all season.

On paper, it adds up to a slight advantage for Minnesota, so my conclusion is that the Vikes will hold on for a six-point win that isn’t quite as close as it looks on the final scoreboard. The Saints are a very good team led by an excellent quarterback, but if there is one thing we know from past playoffs, it’s that a strong pass rush can throw off even the very best quarterbacks. The focus is all on the quarterback duel, and no doubt the fourth quarter will be full of aerial pyrotechnics, but don’t be surprised if All Day shows up and takes over.

As for the other game, I’d like to see the Jets knock out the Colts. You have to respect Peyton Manning, perhaps even fear him, but you don’t have to like him. And you certainly don’t have to respect the decision of the Colts’ brain trust to throw away the quest for perfection. The football gods can’t possibly permit Indianapolis to win the Super Bowl this year and a loss to the Jets would be the most fitting retribution.

TMQ just doesn’t get it:

Why was Favre even still on the field with Minnesota ahead 27-3 with five minutes remaining? It seems pretty obvious Brad Childress wanted to pad Favre’s stats. Why was Favre not only still throwing but play-faking at the two-minute warning, with Minnesota leading by 24 points? Bad sportsmanship, which always comes back to bite you. It’s not just that Minnesota’s bad sportsmanship makes the Vikings hard to root for.

1975, TMQ. Drew Pearson. Roger Staubach. First, an illegal reception on fourth-and-20; the receiver had run out of bounds and was ineligible. Second, the referee swallowing his whistle when Doug Sutherland was tackled – not held, tackled – right in front of him on the Hail Mary play. Third, Drew Pearson committed the most obvious case of pass interference in NFL history.

I’ve calmed down a little now. But this was my immediate reaction to the “bad sportsmanship” when the Vikings kept playing after the Cowboys refused to stop calling time out.

Favre… Shiancoe… 34-3! TAKE THAT DALLAS! TAKE THAT DREW PEARSON! TAKE THAT YOU OFFENSIVE PASS INTERFERING BASTARD!

That’s for Nate Wright.

I don’t actually dislike the Cowboys. They’ve been my second-favorite team since I was a little boy. But when it comes to the playoffs, I am one of thousands of stone cold Minnesota fans who have never forgotten that the Cowboys not only stole a Super Bowl from the Vikings, they murdered Fran Tarkenton’s father!

I totally agree with the Eagles fan at ProFootballTalk who said the only thing he was upset about was that the Vikings didn’t go for two.

Chad the Elder is a true Vikings fan. He knows the drill:

I don’t get the impression that many true Vikings fans are all that confident that their squad will beat the Cowboys. Sure you hear a lot of false bravado on local talk radio stations and some of the younger cadre of Purple fans may honestly believe their team is Miami bound. But deep down the fans who have been around for a while, the ones who can all too clearly still recall the playoff and Super Bowl losses, know that when it comes to the Vikings letting us down it’s not a matter of if but when. The Vikes very well might defeat Dallas this week. All that will do is postpone the inevitable letdown.

What best describes this attitude? Some might say cynicism, others fatalism. I would say it’s more of a stoicism, taking the definition of the word commonly used today rather than the philosophy itself. We accept our destiny but continue to carry on anyway, impassive in the face of eventual defeat. It’s almost as if Viking fans have taken on the persona of Bud Grant, a man well-versed in hiding the pain of crushing losses…. So on Sunday we’ll put on our grim game faces, utter a stern “Skol!,” and await our fate.

I didn’t bother posting about yesterday’s games because I wasn’t interested. The Saints and Colts won, as I expected, although the Ravens put up a better show than I would have thought. I’m not afraid of Dallas; the hype always favors the NFC East team and there is a reason teams that go 12-4 and 13-3 usually win. New Orleans shellacked an Arizona team that was clearly better than Green Bay, the team that all the NFL chatterboxes were saying everyone should fear to face. Dallas looked good in twice beating a Philadelphia team that was crushed by New Orleans this season, but the Cowboys are a good team, not a great one.

The Vikes should win. But we’ve known them to fail to close the deal before.

By the NFL:

The National Football League has been careful not to suggest that the aim of its current effort to obtain a finding that, for the purposes of selling hats and shirts, the 32 teams are a “single entity” that cannot conspire with each other in dealing only with Reebok and shutting out companies like American Needle. However, the transcript of Wednesday’s oral argument before the Supreme Court suggests that, if push comes to shove, chief NFL outside counsel Gregg Levy (a finalist for the position of Commissioner in 2006) believes that the league is a single entity, for all of its relevant business purposes.

The key moment in the exchange between Levy and the Court comes at page 47 of the transcript, when Justice Sonia Sotomayor poses this question to Levy: “What decision could the sports teams make that would be subject to the antitrust scrutiny under your definition of the permissible range of the joint venture activities? It seems to me that if the venture wanted to make sure all the teams hired secretaries at the same $1,000-a-year salary, that under your theory, that’s okay, because it’s a joint venture.”

In response, Levy didn’t say, “We are taking that position only as to matters relating to the promotion of the league,” which is what he basically said in the NFL’s written brief. Instead, Levy said, “Your Honor, my view is that the — the NFL clubs are not separate sources of independent power. As a result, they are a unit. They are a single entity and it’s –“

At that point, Justice Sotomayor cut him off.

“So to the answer to my question is, there is — you are seeking through this ruling what you haven’t gotten from Congress: An absolute bar to the antitrust claim.”

Perhaps the Wise Latina isn’t quite as dim as I’d expected her to be. And if the NFL is seriously attempting to parlay its antitrust exemption for broadcasting into a broader one covering everything from player salaries to logo gear, it is insane. As an NFL fan, I’m hoping this does not turn out to be yet another example of an extremely successful organization sowing the seeds of its own destruction through foolish greed and overweening arrogance.

If I were an NFL owner, I would pull Levy off the case immediately. And it’s worth noting that when it serves the NFL’s interest to argue the contrary, it claims precisely the opposite:

“The question is whether Minnesota law permits Pat and Kevin Williams to be suspended for a first positive test, and whether Minnesota law allows punishment to be imposed on an employee who uses an over-the-counter substance on his own time. Among the league’s arguments is that the Vikings, not the NFL, employ the players.”

Baltimore gets off to a dominating start in the first quarter. It really doesn’t look too promising for New England today; they just look hapless. Given the way Dallas and the New York Jets finished off their Week 17 opponents, Green Bay has to be feeling pretty confident. Dallas looked good and the Vikes will certainly have to show up to beat them, but they didn’t look like a team to be particularly frightened of either.

It’s racist, pointless, and stupid:

Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Carroll has agreed on a deal to take the job. According to Schefter, the only hangup is that the Seahawks can’t make the hiring official until they comply with the Rooney Rule by interviewing a minority candidate. Of course, at this point, if the Seahawks do interview a minority candidate solely to comply with the Rooney Rule, they would be making a complete mockery of the Rooney Rule. Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier has reportedly decided to sit for an interview after being assured that Carroll doesn’t have the job yet. Perhaps after reading Schefter’s report, Frazier will change his mind.

I hope he does. Frankly, I’m a little tired of black Minnesota defensive coordinators getting hired to be head coaches and win Super Bowls elsewhere. I wanted the Viking front office to fire Denny Green and promote Tony Dungy before he left for Tampa; I not only would have preferred Tomlin to Childress but would frankly have settled for David Chapelle in preference to Childress at the time. Now, the team has greatly improved under Childress and he appears to have stopped trying to prove that The Tarvaris Jackson Experiment is a starting NFL quarterback, so I can’t honestly say that I’d prefer the unknown quantity that is Frazier to the known strengths and weaknesses of Chilly.

But I do wish we could have some success without losing every doggone defensive coordinator who helps make it happen. Anyhow, it’s a ridiculous rule and it would be amusing to see the teams mock it more openly than they already are by interviewing black comedians, Hispanic gang leaders and young Asian violin prodigies. This is, by the way, your NFL playoff post… is there even a single individual here who likes Cincy today? Well, I think the Bengals and the Cowboys will make it through.

No fantasy, so I’ll just point out that The Thunder defeated the AZ Hammeroids for the VP-AFL championship. Congratulations to the Thunder and they will be joining new VPFL champion Clay, Nate, the White Buffalo, and me next season.

The NFL games will be weird this week, as they always are, but here’s hoping the Vikes can get their act together and finish off the Giants while the Cowboys take care of the Eagles. I’d like to see the Vikings draft a QB prospect while keeping Brett Favre around for one more year.