If there’s one thing that we learned from the Vikings’ 31-28 win over Atlanta on Sunday, it’s that winning - in the NFL - is actually very easy, and anyone can do it.

Consider that the Vikings started a rookie quarterback who was not expected to play a snap this year, on the road… and when he went down with a concussion, they were forced to play a quarterback that they’d traded virtually nothing for, a quarterback who’d been turfed out by a 1-7 team that is tanking, who hadn’t taken a single snap in practice yet and who admitted after the game that he didn’t know the full names of most of his receivers (though, given that he’s an engineer and given what I know of engineers, I’m not sure we should expect him to ever learn other people’s names).

Consider also that they started the game without their left tackle and All-Pro wide receiver, and during the game they lost their best running back and their third-best wide receiver and, for stretches, their starting tight end.

By the end of the night, all three quarterbacks that started the season on the roster were hurt, plus four other starters on the offense, and the team was staring down a four-point deficit with just two minutes to go, on the road, against a team that was leading its division. And their new quarterback, Josh Dobbs, had already taken a safety and lost two inexplicable fumbles, a real throwback to the Daunte Culpepper days.

Of course Dobbs drove them down the field in 90 seconds and threw the game-winning touchdown pass. Why wouldn’t he? Winning is easy!

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The Loons have until December 1st to decide which contract options they’ll pick up this year, which is the first step towards building next year’s roster. They also have three weeks from today to make “bona fide” offers to players who are out of contract, though that is obviously less pressing.

The issue, of course, is that they don’t currently have anyone in a top-level soccer role - no coach, no technical director, no GM, no nothing. So all speculation on the roster is a little difficult, given that they’ve turned the page on everyone who brought in the current group.

With this in mind, here’s my notes on which players have contracts, options, or nothing at all for next year - along with some guesses at who the club might keep.

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There are losses, and there are bad losses, and then somewhere down past there, you’ll find the Timberwolves’ 127-113 loss in Atlanta on Monday night.

The Wolves led 79-60 at half. They led 86-65 with nine minutes to go in the third quarter. But somehow, they turned that 21-point lead into a 14-point loss, one that involved a 60-20 run by the Hawks.

60 to 20! Over a period of 19 minutes, the Wolves GAVE UP SIXTY POINTS and at the same time ONLY SCORED 20 POINTS.

Either one of those stats would be utterly abhorrent, but put together, it has to be one of the worst 19-minute stretches in NBA history.

This seems to keep happening to the Timberwolves; no second-half lead is ever safe with them, and at some point, you have to think that they make changes. I don’t know what those changes are, but to me, this starts with head coach Chris Finch, who never seems to have a plan to stem the tide. Every time the camera cuts to him during one of these disasters, he looks like a man who forgot to tie up his boat, and is now watching it slowly drift out to sea.

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It is exceedingly rare, I would say, that the Gophers - taken as a whole - have an awful weekend, and the football team is not a part of it.

The football Gophers beat up on a bad Michigan State squad on Saturday, winning 27-12 by handing the ball to sophomore Jordan Nubin 40 times, thus increasing his season total of carries to 46.

Nubin, the younger brother of all-conference safety Tyler Nubin, rushed for 204 yards and two touchdowns, and the rest of the Gophers did just enough to not lose. Minnesota’s defense gave up a touchdown to MSU, something that not every other team can say, but even though Minnesota repeatedly stumbled - turning the ball over three times, and trailing for most of the first half - in the end, they came out with the win.

It was the first in a three-game stretch of games against awful teams, for Minnesota; they now get Illinois at home, and Purdue on the road, and losing to either would be like blowing a three-touchdown lead to Northwestern. (thousand-yard stare)

And that was the good team!

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No matter how much you wanted Kirk Cousins out of Minnesota, removed from the helm of the Minnesota Vikings… No matter whether you wanted the Vikings to see where the 2023 season goes, or to burn it all down and aim for draft day… No matter how oddly high of an opinion you might have of backup quarterback Jaren Hall…

There’s one thing I think we can all agree on, regarding what is likely the end of the Cousins Era in Minnesota, after the quarterback tore his Achilles on Sunday in Green Bay:

Not like this.

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The Vikings beat the 49ers on Monday night, 22-17, in one of those games that is extremely stressful but - if your favored team wins - also extremely fun. Minnesota should have put away the favored 49ers about six different times, but managed to kick poorly and throw passes in the red zone poorly, all of which contributed to the game being way closer than it should have been.

From texting with friends, it seems like two things were true last night, although I seemed to be the one who believed the second one more strongly than anyone:

1. Kirk Cousins was really good last night.
2. Cousins nearly ended up killing his team last night.

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MLS gets more unbalanced every season. This year, teams played just six games against the opposite conference (seven, in the case of a few Western Conference teams), and 28 against their own conference (again, some Western Conference teams played 27, which is why the standings are sorted by PPG).

We did this last year before the playoffs, and so I figured it was time to do this year’s version, too.

WESTERN

• The surprise here is Sporting KC, which was one of the best teams in the West in conference games, just four points behind Seattle. SKC snuck into the playoffs on the final day, but between this and their recent form, they’re a dark-horse pick in the West.
• Vancouver and Real Salt Lake made the playoffs comfortably, thanks to their results against the East. Against the West only, both would have been out of the playoffs.
• St. Louis City also dropped a bit, given that they earned 12 points against the East, as did Vancouver - and Austin, which was undefeated against the East.
• Stop me if you’ve heard this about the West, but there’s no real separation here.

EASTERN

• Atlanta led MLS with 14 points against the opposite conference; Cincinnati and Orlando City were just behind, with 13.
• Toronto earned just two points against the West, but that wasn’t exactly out of line with the rest of their year.
• Cincinnati is still head-and-shoulders ahead of the pack in the East; there’s another real drop-off between New England and the rest.

Congratulations, of course, to your conference Supporters’ Shield winners: Cincinnati and Seattle! I assume Cincy is going to head back to the airport for another celebration.

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Minnesota United’s 2023 season is over; I covered Saturday’s 3-1 loss to Sporting Kansas City for the Pioneer Press, so please read that instant reaction as well.

As it happened, I covered the final five games of the season for either the Pioneer Press or the Star Tribune, so while I’m always pretty plugged in to what’s happening with the Loons, this is probably the most in the weeds I’ll get. So, while the season is still warm, here’s my quick recap of the storylines I’ll remember about this year:

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It’s only game 3 of the Minnesota Wild season, but the Wild were already making the key stop for the year on the Marc-André Fleury Probable Retirement Tour, with a visit to Montréal. Fleury grew up in Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, which is not exactly next door to Montréal in the same way that, for example, Cannon Falls is not exactly next door to St. Paul - it might not be a suburb, but it’s close enough, for the purposes of a game like this.

So Fleury got his first start of the year, in front of 90 family and friends, and - delightfully - got to play the hits. He won 5-2, stopping 27 shots - including 13 in the third period. He also got to make one save with an athletic toe-poke at the post, and another by stacking the pads and windmilling somebody who was alone in the slot. Fleury was named the game’s first star for his troubles, mostly so that the crowd at the Bell Center Centre could give him a nice ovation after the final horn siren.

The Canadiens are supposed to be absolutely hopeless this season, which naturally - this being the NHL - meant that they started the year with a win and an overtime loss. In this one, though, they were pretty bad; Minnesota opened the scoring by getting two shorthanded goals on the same power play, which should happen pretty much never. Brandon Duhaime and Connor Dewar, also known as Dewy 1 and Dewy 2, got the goals; the Wild ended up pouring it on with three power-play goals, two by Joel Erikkson Ek and one - finally - from Kirill Kaprizov.

At one point in the second period, the shots were 23-5 Minnesota, which tells you about how this game went. This is probably not where Montréal coach Martin St. Louis wants me to note that the Wild were also playing with just 11 forwards; an injury to Alex Goligoski and a total lack of salary-cap room meant the Wild had to not only play Dakota Mermis on defense, but play with one forward missing. They made up for this by playing Kaprizov for 22 minutes and Mats Zuccarello for 19, which I guess is not a bad replacement strategy.

Having now played a man short, the Wild get to call up a player (that’s making less than $875,000) and not have him count against their cap, so presumably we’ll see Sammy Walker or Adam Beckman tomorrow against Los Angeles.

Tuesday Night College Hockey

The Gopher women’s hockey team beat St. Cloud State 2-1 on Tuesday night, which seems a little strange, given that college hockey outside of the Northeast is pretty much strictly a weekend event. That said, the more I think about it, the more I think it’s not exactly the worst thing in the world; the game was on the Big Ten Network, which doesn’t have much to show on weeknights at this time of year, and it’s not like SCSU had to make a long trip home after the game.

Ava Lindsay got the most important goal for the Gophers, who led 1-0 for most of the second and third periods; Taylor Stewart got an empty-netter to mostly seal the game, though SCSU scored with five seconds left to make it 2-1.

Amazingly, goaltender Skyler Vetter very nearly put the puck in her own net off the ensuing faceoff - the puck went straight to her from center ice, she stopped it with her back to the cage and just stood there, giving a flying Huskies forward a chance to whack the puck off the side of the net before time expired. Disaster avoided, just barely, and the Gophers managed to hang on for the win.

Timberwolves Reserves 138, Maccabi Ra’anana 111

In a preseason game that might as well have been a Summer League game, the Wolves’ practice squad defeated an Israeli second-division team. Luka Garza had 30 points, and the Wolves played nine guys, exactly four of which I had heard of before tonight. Draftee Leonard Miller had 22 points and 15 rebounds, too.

ON DECK

Thursday

WILD vs. Los Angeles, 7pm, BSN

WOLVES at Chicago, preseason, 7pm, BSN

Friday

GOPHERS VOLLEYBALL vs Rutgers, 7pm

Friday-Saturday

GOPHERS MEN’S HOCKEY at North Dakota, 7pm/6pm, FOX 9 / FOX 9+

Saturday

GOPHERS FOOTBALL at Iowa, 2:30pm, NBC
WILD at Columbus, 7pm, BSN
LOONS at Sporting KC, 8pm, Apple TV

Sunday

GOPHERS VOLLEYBALL vs Michigan State, 2pm

Monday

VIKINGS vs San Francisco, 7:15pm, ABC and ESPN

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The Vikings’ 19-13 win over Chicago on Sunday was dreadful, yes, but it was also dread-filled. As the Minnesota offense sputtered and coughed, without Justin Jefferson. As the Vikings defense got turnovers, but couldn’t get off the field on third down. As walking typographical error Tyson Bagent - whose last game was a 19-for-34, no-touchdown, two-interception performance against the Colorado School of Mines - drove down the field in the fourth quarter, my soul was filled with absolute dread.

The Vikings won, and the dread for Sunday’s game lifted, but the rest of the season - and especially the next few weeks - should bring it back.

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