It’s not about the Vikings, it’s about a Viking

The Vikings lost 27-24 in overtime to Cincinnati last Saturday, a game that featured enough astonishing mistakes to fill a hundred hours of post-game call-ins. Kevin O’Connell calling an absolutely woebegone quarterback sneak in overtime, one that involved the smallest player on the roster trying to push the quarterback forward behind a famously undersized center, watching it fail, then calling the exact same play again, is probably the one that will live the longest in the memory.

But. The more I let this game settle, the more I realized that talking about the Minnesota Vikings this year - and, I’m starting to realize, every year - is not really a monologue about a team. In today’s NFL, talking about the team really means just talking about the quarterback.

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When I was a kid, the Vikings played a Christmas-week game against the Pittsburgh Steelers that was the most hilarious bad game I can remember. The boxscore says that it was 42 degrees and windy, but that’s not what it seemed like at the time: what I remember is that it was about forty below, with howling winds, though I concede that this has more to do with my memory than anything. (I found the highlights, which show at least that everyone involved was wearing long sleeves.)

It was truly a disastrous game. Sean Salisbury fumbled two snaps, Mike Tice (!) blocked a Steelers field goal, and Minnesota’s game highlight might have been an 84-yard punt by Harry Newsome. But the Vikings got two field goals in the fourth quarter from Fuad Reveiz, which was enough to beat an entirely hapless Steelers offense*, which was being led by the immortal Bubby Brister; Minnesota won that game, 6-3.

*Unbelievably, both of those teams won division titles in 1992, though both also got creamed in their first playoff game.

I never thought I’d see another game that bad, in the NFL, where both teams were so entirely lost that neither one could find the end zone. But Sunday… Sunday, the Vikings played in what might have been the worst NFL game of the decade.

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If you get on Snelling Avenue up by the state fairgrounds, and you drive south, you cross the broad expanse of railyards that slices the middle of the Twin Cities in two. Over in this part of town, it divides the fairgrounds from Midway, and the bridge across the vast train-dotted wasteland has a speed limit of 45mph. If you’re headed south, you have to be on guard; at the end of the bridge, the speed limit suddenly drops to 30, and you go from what looks like an interstate highway to what looks like any other St. Paul neighborhood, in the space of one short downhill stretch. And so at all hours, the key feature of the area is scores of cars, trying to slow from about 55mph to something near 30.

Should you glance to your left, though, what’s tucked off to your left is Hamline University. You can’t see much of the campus from Snelling Avenue; you pass a few stately-looking buildings, back in the trees, and one glassed-in newish building that’s right on a Snelling corner, but mostly the university itself is a bit removed from the traffic, certainly for those who are focusing on the flashing sign that informs southbound drivers that while the speed limit is 30, they are currently going 51.

There’s one exception, one that looms up on your left, as you jam on your brakes going south, a stately brick edifice with a barrel-vaulted roof, looking for all the world - as you try to stop for the sudden red light that’s appeared in front of you, look out! - like a miniature Williams Arena.

This is Hutton Arena. And after driving by it three thousand times, on the way to Loons games or the airport or just somewhere generally in St. Paul, I finally had the good sense to go visit it.

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The Minnesota Wild have now won four games in a row, all regulation wins, by a combined score of 18-5. This came on the heels of a seven-game losing streak, at the end of which the team fired Dean Evason and hired John Hynes as coach.

Now, perhaps the tweaks that Hynes has made - which seem to include slightly more aggressive power-play coverage, and more offensive involvement from the defensemen - have really been game-changers. But the simpler explanation is this: man, the Wild must have HATED Evason.

This is not exactly a unique situation. This happens approximately three times a year in every hockey and soccer league on the planet; there seems to be something about “put the ball/puck in the net” sports that sometimes requires a change in the manager’s office to unlock the team. (I would love to know whether, say, handball teams have this same trouble.)

But the truth of the resurgence is probably summed up in this quote from winger Marcus Foligno, on what the difference is: “Guys away from the puck working twice as hard.”

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There are, I think, two immutable rules of expanded sports playoffs; I can think of no exceptions.

1. When any league announces expanded playoffs, there will be bellyaching. Too many teams make the playoffs! The regular season is worthless now!
2. When the actual expanded playoffs roll around, they will draw record viewership.

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Minnesota sports fans aren’t exactly strangers to days where everything seems to go wrong, but even by their bruised standards, Monday has to go down as an exceptional day.

In the afternoon, the Wild - mired in a seven-game losing streak - officially fired head coach Dean Evason, mostly because he was the only person in the organization that was allowed to be fired. In the evening, the Vikings lost 12-10 to the hapless Chicago Bears, a game that felt like a three-hour representation of what it’s like to have a brain injury.

Let’s take these one at a time.

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It gets dark early these days, and so it’s natural that our thoughts turn to the relative deep, dark winters of our sports teams. Minnesota’s pro squads span the gamut these days, from the entertaining to the deeply distressing. But which of them is the most forlorn? A ranking, in order of least to most despondent:

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I have gone a couple of weeks without mentioning much about the Minnesota Gophers. The football team managed to lose twice in that period, but it was the first of the two losses - a disastrous, blow-it-at-the-end loss to Illinois - that really was the one that did it.

That day was the end. By the time the Gophers had Illinois down to their backup quarterback, and fourth down, with the Illini’s backs entirely up against the wall, you could almost have argued that Minnesota was the favorite to win the Big Ten West. Every other West team (save Iowa) had lost that day, and the Gophers seemingly had things under control: finish off the Illini, beat a bad Purdue team the following week, and later beat Wisconsin, and - assuming the awful Hawkeyes lost once more - the Gophers were going to the Big Ten title game!

Where they’d get utterly stomped, where they’d be at the mercy of Michigan or Ohio State, but at least they’d be there. At least the Gophers might, finally, have an accomplishment, in the Big Ten.

I’ve waited my entire lifetime for the Gophers to get their name on any list of Big Ten football accomplishments. They haven’t won a conference title since 1967, haven’t played in the Rose Bowl since 1961, haven’t had any sort of national-title ambitions since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House.

Even after the conference split into two divisions, starting in 2011, the Gophers haven’t even been able to rise to the top of a much smaller heap; they’ve played 13 seasons in the Legends or West division, but have never managed to earn the consolation prize of a division title, and a considerable beating in the conference title game.

And when they blew that game against Illinois, in classic Minnesota Gophers fashion, it felt like the perfect way to sum up the end of an era.

For nearly 60 years, the Gophers haven’t won anything in the Big Ten Conference. Now they have no chance to ever do so again.

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I was at the Xcel Energy Center on Sunday night, to see the Wild play the Stars - and to see what turned out to be maybe the worst hockey game I’ve ever been to.

Minnesota lost to Dallas, 8-3. To lose to Dallas, ever, is galling enough - I’ll never forget, and it will always matter to me, and my fondest wish every season is that the usurpers go 0-82-0.

Watching Sunday’s game, though, was pretty much torture. The Wild took a dumb penalty 50 seconds into the game, it took the visitors seven seconds to score on the resulting power play, and the rout was on.

By the end, the Wild should have been offering refunds, to those of us who’d been unfortunate enough to pay our own money for tickets.

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I’m afraid to write this post about the Timberwolves.

Two Mondays ago, Minnesota busted out a pretty classic loss at Atlanta. The Wolves led by 19, then gave up a second-half run to the Hawks, including a 19-minute stretch in which they were somehow outscored 60-20, and ended up losing by 14. I was pretty down on the Wolves, and coach Chris Finch, after the game, and I was hardly the only one.

Since then, the Wolves have:

1) Destroyed Denver, at home, becoming the only team this season to beat the Nuggets, and doing it by 21; 2) Handling a terrible Utah team, winning by 28; 3) Beaten Boston, at home, in overtime, becoming the first team to beat the Celtics all year; 4) Run away from New Orleans, with the Pelicans missing half a basketball team due to injuries, with relative ease.

Not only is that four straight wins, it’s two each of two types of wins: both impressive wins over good teams, and reasonably routine wins against bad teams.

Last year’s Wolves couldn’t pull that off. Last year’s Wolves had a decent record against the league’s best - they went 14-13 against the other seven West playoff teams, and 8-8 against the top eight in the East - but were terrible against the league’s worst. Against the four teams in the league that lost 55 or more games, Minnesota managed to go just 5-7, including losing 2/2 against 17-65 Detroit and 2/2 to 27-55 Charlotte.

Even more impressive than the wins, too, is that the Wolves have an actual swagger about them - especially defensively, where they’re the number-one team in the NBA by a wide margin. Minnesota is giving up 100.1 points per 100 possessions; second-place New York is closer to 11th place than they are to Minnesota.

So far, the Wolves are actually defending the three-point line, and woe betide the opposing offense that attempts to get to the basket. They’re actually rebounding well (fourth in defensive rebound percentage) and no team is forcing opponents into a worse shooting percentage.

Not to mention, they’re putting on an offensive show, too.

Are you excited yet, Wolves fans? (shoots double thumbs up)

(Lowers voice to speak to people who’ve been Wolves fans for decades) Okay, everybody, are you panicking yet?

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