Say what you will about the Vikings’ 21-13 win against Carolina on Sunday, but you do have to say that if Mike Zimmer could program his dreams, Sunday’s game would be about what he would dial up. To wit:

1) The Vikings allowed only 232 yards to the Panthers, sacked the quarterback five times, and returned a fumble for a score. 2) The offense ran only 42 plays, and 23 of them were running plays - and they averaged 5.9 yards per carry. 3) Kirk Cousins threw two interceptions, showing that quarterbacks are untrustworthy and flighty, and confirming everything Zimmer believes about offense.

It also functioned as a peek into the Vikings’ future, assuming that Cousins - at some point - won’t be back, and Minnesota will have to start over at quarterback. Bryce Young was a pretty good picture of a a first-year NFL quarterback; he held the ball too long, tried to run away from guys who were faster than him, and generally was flummoxed by the Purple defense.

Young ended the day with 204 yards passing, no touchdowns, and a fumble that turned into six points for Minnesota - although, this being the Vikings defense, he also completed 25 of 32 passes. Ed Donatell lives inside this defense’s heart, even if Brian Flores is now the man in charge.

This game means nothing for the greater context, of course, except that it proves the Panthers are awful and that the Vikings are not bad enough to be quite that bad. Cousins made one very dumb throw at the goal line that turned into a pick-six, which by itself was almost enough to sink the entire game. It’s still going to be a long year for Minnesota, but maybe not the longest year ever.

There will be plenty to say about the Twins this week, as they gear up to potentially win a playoff game for the first time in 19 seasons. The only thing to say about their series in Colorado was to note that they came closer to intentionally forfeiting a game on Sunday than I can remember seeing.

I want to write this down so we remember it: Sunday’s season finale, an entirely meaningless game in the standings, went to extra innings. (The last thing the Twins would want is extra innings, so of course that’s what happened.) They failed to score in the top of the 10th or the 11th, and - not wishing to use any more pitchers - they threw outfielder Jordan Luplow on the mound for the 11th.

Luplow probably isn’t going to be on the postseason roster, though his ability to hit left-handed pitching at an average clip might make him the only Twin who can do so. He definitely isn’t a pitcher; near as I can tell, his entire pitching career consists of one mop-up inning with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2021.

He was an all-conference kicker and defensive back in high school, so perhaps he’s just generally versatile.

Anyway, after allowing Brenton Doyle to steal third base, he managed to huck a 63.5 mph baseball - I cannot in good conscience call it a “fastball” - through Ryan Jeffers’s wickets to allow the winning run.

While I would never suggest that Jeffers gave anything less than maximum effort, and definitely would never intentionally let a pitch go through him to end the game so that the Twins could get on a plane and go home, I will say that if you took a thousand junior-high catchers and set a pitching machine to reproduce the game-ending wild pitch, I suspect that you would get at least 900 successful blocks.

The Twins start the playoffs on Tuesday, and if they don’t win a game, Twins fans may burn Target Field to the ground.

I wrote the Star Tribune’s game story for Minnesota United’s 1-1 draw with San Jose on Saturday, so if you would go read that, it would be great.

There’s a lot of Allianz Field angst these days - there were plenty of boos at the final whistle from the Wonderwall, which had just had to watch the Loons’ ninth draw in 16 league home games this year. MNUFC has played 20 home games in all competitions this year, and has just four regulation victories, plus another couple of wins in penalty shootouts.

They simply cannot find the net with any regularity at home. Teemu Pukki scored again, his fifth goal in his last six games, but he also had one other chance that he simply couldn’t fail to score from, and a third where a half-decent first touch would have left him with another golden opportunity.

In those 16 MLS home games, the Loons have scored four goals goals once, and three once, and otherwise have scored one or zero goals in every game.

That’s the story of their season, right there.

The Gophers football team beat Louisiana 35-24 on Saturday, winning on homecoming against a team that the ratings say is, um, one of the top 100 teams in college football. We used to call them Louisiana-Lafayette; I’m not sure when they graduated to just being known as “Louisiana,” to be honest with you.

Minnesota trailed 17-14 at halftime, forced the Ragin’ Cajuns to punt just twice all game, and was outgained 349-347. The difference, I guess, is that Louisiana threw two interceptions and the Gophers only threw one, and Minnesota converted on fourth down three times in three tries.

Winning by small margins against a Sun Belt team is not really what we wanted to see from the Gophers this year.

Gophers volleyball dropped another one on Saturday, losing a disappointing four-set match against Penn State. It was a slow start for the Gophers at home, as they got whupped 25-14 in the first set, and from there it was just uphill; they fought back to win the second set, and lost the fourth 28-26, so they were thisclose to pushing the match to that short fifth-set tiebreaker.

It’s becoming pretty clear that Wisconsin and Nebraska are the class of the Big Ten in volleyball, and Penn State might be the best of the rest. The Gophers are in that second class, good enough not to get run off the floor, but not good enough to seriously compete for conference or national honors.

Keegan Cook has his work cut out for him, over at the Pav. Competing in Big Ten volleyball isn’t easy, and it’s not going to get easier as the conference expands.

TODAY’S SLATE

Nothing! It’s “stress about the Twins playing Toronto” day.

ON DECK

TWINS vs Toronto, Game 1, 3:38pm Tuesday, ESPN
LOONS at LAFC, Wednesday
WILD at Chicago (preseason), Thursday
TIMBERWOLVES vs Dallas (preseason), Thursday
GOPHERS VOLLEYBALL at Maryland, Friday
GOPHERS WOMEN’S HOCKEY, at RIT, Friday and Saturday
GOPHERS FOOTBALL vs Michigan, Saturday
GOPHERS MEN’S HOCKEY vs Bemidji State, Saturday, somehow this is an exhibition?
VIKINGS vs Kansas City, Sunday