SKÖLIOSIS WEEK 666—Vikings 34, SCARE-olina 28.
Now we’re getting into the thick of it. Week 6 of the NFL is when the football season officially hits its stride. We have developing storylines, we know which teams appear to be good and bad, we can see which players are getting their names in the mix for MVP or Rookie of the Year, and which coaches are already finding themselves on the hot seat. Or perhaps they let young women that aren’t their wives sit on their hot seat (Looking at you Urban “Michael” Meyers). Yep, Autumn has arrived, the pumpkin beers are flowing, hockey season has started, and playoff baseball is in full swing while our Vikings continue to double down on their identity as pacifists, completely incapable of navigating an easy path to victory. Kiss your relaxing Sundays goodbye, as this Vikings season is proving to be a House of Horrors not for the faint of heart.
The Walking Dead
Sunday’s game against the Panthers had all the makings of a classic 80’s horror movie. Similar to Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers, we had an opponent that walked slowly everywhere, but still managed to catch up with our sprinting Vikings. An opponent that suffered multiple apparent deaths, only to never actually die. Week after week, Vikings fans are forced to keep reliving the cliché horror movie ending where the victims think they have slayed the masked serial killer and start to celebrate prematurely. Only to watch as each Sunday the Vikings inevitably turn their back on the not-so-dead hockey masked clad opponents as we in the audience watch helplessly as the killer rises from the ground, machete in hand, ready for more. Leaving us all yelling at our TVs late in the 4th quarter on Sunday as the Vikings were up 28-17—“TURN AROUND, THEY AREN’T DEAD YET, THEY ARE RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!” Only to watch helplessly as Carolina, despite an offense that had more drops than a Costco-sized bottle of Visine, storm back late to tie the game and push the Vikings to the brink and another overtime. Luckily, we have . . .
The Predator
WR3 K.J. Osborn, whom we have already professed much love for this season, went full Predator to help finally put this game away for good. K.J. has the moxie this team needs this season, so much moxie we’re told Osborn wears Moxie-Pads instead of the standard football pads most players wear. Regardless of what kind of pads Osborn wears, he discards them with some serious panache. His walk-off TD catch, helmet heave and camera snarl were Predator level epic. We can only hope the camera man was covered in mud like Schwarzenegger during this confrontation, or sadly he’s likely no longer with us.
Actually how amazing was the filming during this entire game? Has NFL Films officially ditched the huge shoulder cameras in favor of using Apple iPhone’s in portrait mode now? Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. We used to think video game graphics didn’t look real, now they’ve made the actual broadcast look like a video game. We’re also very much in favor of how K.J. disrobes his gear after every game. We love the reckless abandon of just tossing your equipment thirty feet in the air over your head like a kid tossing his books out the school bus window on the last day of school. That’s just K.J. being K.J. Also, you know things are turning up when the Vikings appear to have enlisted a coach to just catch Osborn’s equipment whenever he tosses it into the air. This development should be a positive for the purple. We know nobody wants to work anymore, but you have to admit Chief Equipment Catcher would look pretty cool on a business card.
Ghost of Chris Hovan Past
The Vikings defense continued to improve and really played 3.75 quarters of great football. The Vikings had 3 turnovers and 4 more sacks on Sunday. With the first sack apparently by the ghost of Chris Hovan? Upon further inspection the sack was actually by second year player James Lynch out of Baylor. But we haven’t ruled out that Lynch was at least partially possessed by Chris Hovan on the play. This is the first we’ve heard of this James Lynch character, but count us all in on him. Just look at this guy, he could definitely give Kyle Rudolph a run for his money on the list of Vikings players that actually look like they could have been real vikings. Safe to say that Lynch’s beard has probably soaked up a lot of pumpkin beer in its day. Scratch that, this guy probably wouldn’t be caught dead drinking a pumpkin beer unless he was slurping it out of the bowels of a quarterback with a side of Fava Beans.
The rest of the Vikings sacks came from the law firm of Barr, Watts, Kendricks & Tomlinson. While Danielle Hunter and Everson Griffen were held without a sack, they could be found chasing around Darnold most of the day. Overall it seemed like the Vikings defense had the Panthers offense frazzled for most of the game. We even saw Beshaud Breeland shockingly start things off with an interception on the first play of the game to set the early tone for our defense. We can only hope this means Vikings fans will get trick or treated to more of Breeland’s fan defiant tweets this week. For anyone trick or treating in Breeland’s neighborhood, we’d strongly recommend going with the “trick" versus the “tweet" based on what he put out there last week.
Stranger Things
All that said, while the defense looked pretty good Sunday, we need to keep in mind this was a Carolina offense without their primary threat Christian McCaffrey and an error-prone Sam Darnold playing quarterback. After Robbie Anderson dropped his 37th pass of the game, one could only wonder how much Carolina was missing Cam Newton’s read option runs on off days like this. But after watching Cam’s vaccine video release where he looked like the spooky preacher from Poltergeist 2, it seems Carolina is better off rolling the dice with Hopper from Stranger Things.
We can see Cam Newton in his creepy outfit faced pressed against the US Bank Stadium glass pulling one of these...
Speaking of Stranger Things and stranger stats, by half time of the game Sunday, Beshaud Breeland had as many catches from Sam Darnold as any Carolinas receiver while Kirk Cousins had more touchdown saving tackles than he did touchdown passes.
Also, can we talk about how awesome Patrick Peterson has been thus far this season and how truly frightening the next few weeks might be with him now on IR?
The Invisible Man
At halftime the score was 12-10 Vikings, with our defense in firm control and our offense once again sputtering. Terry, Howie, Strahan and Jimmy were clearly unimpressed with the offense and questioned Kirk’s elite status, at the very least whether he was worth his 3 year $84 Million dollar contract that pays him like an NFL elite QB.
Meanwhile Fox was pumping a promo that Terry was giving away $100,000 dollars of his own money for some Pick 6 contest - which sounds awfully fishy. Is Bradshaw just senile and Fox is giving away his cash? Is he in some sort of Brewster’s Milions challenge and needs to unload all his money as quickly as possible? Did he lose a bet? So many questions, so little time.
Okay, back to Kirk. The halftime crew together mutually recognized that Kirk puts up big stats but after 10 minutes were unable to think of a single signature win Cousins has produced beyond the one playoff victory against the Saints two years ago. With Sunday’s win Kirk had another big stats day, while not exactly a signature win given the caliber of the opponent. More importantly, Kirk is now just one game away from having a PERFECT .500 lifetime winning percentage clawing closer to an actual winning record in the NFL. Cousins has a chance to get to 57-57-2 with a win in two weeks on Halloween Night—a Primetime Sunday Night Game on NBC. Kirk’s primetime record is 6-13, however, he is 3-2 on Sunday nights!!! Here’s hoping Captain Kirk can win his 3rd game in a row with a win against the red hot 5-1 Dallas Cowboys. Maybe if does he can pull an Aaron Rogers and yell a “I still own you!” in the direction of Sunday nights as they appear to be the only place he has an above .500 record.
With that enjoy the bye week. Get outside, get healthy, and enjoy an uneventful Sunday. Happy early Halloween all! And if anyone knows which neighborhood Terry Bradshaw lives in, let us know as that sounds like the place to trick or treat this year.
