Ouch.

I mean, seriously. Effing Ouch.

We should know better but it doesn’t change the fact that it still hurt.

You’d think we would be used to the pain by now. That our calloused purple hearts would have so much scar tissue that the pain would just bounce off. But somehow our Vikings continue to find new and creative ways to inflict emotional pain to us year after year. As it turns out, we have a column dedicated to it.

Somewhere there is a Mount Olympus of Football Gods, and apparently there is a God who absolutely hates Minnesotans. Unfortunately, this Minnesota hating God is also a Bill Belichick caliber level evil mastermind that is brilliant at toying with us Vikings fans. A Minnesota football hating God who year after year seems to come up with brilliant game plans to build us up before tearing us down in the cruelest of ways. And the worst part is, we keep coming back for more. And somehow, we never see it coming. Or maybe it's that we do see it coming, but we lie to ourselves, always pretending this time will be different.

We lie to ourselves because we assume that we are due. That eventually, our glory is coming. The football gods owe us! Year after year, we answer that knock at the door, hoping the Amazon driver has delivered our Lombardi trophy only to find another bag of flaming poop on our doorsteps.

Yet, we keep answering the doorbell, like old man Clemons in “Billy Madison,” continually opening the door to find yet another flaming bag of crap that we naively stomp out with our boots despite the protests and warnings of friends and family. Somehow surprised to find the flaming bag was filled with excrement again!

It’s not that we are totally oblivious. We try to mentally prepare ourselves for it. We wrap our souls with extra protection, telling ourselves we’re just enjoying the ride and that "whatever happens happens.” We are “playing with house money,” after all.

Well, we’re here to tell you SCREW THAT!

It hasn’t really been a fun ride. This Vikings season was week after week of getting out of the car and falling on our knees, kissing the ground, glad to be alive and off the ride for at least another week until the next purple carpool the following Sunday. Holding on for dear life as we beg the driver to pull over so we can vomit on the side of the road.

This week I even went so far as to try and hedge my emotional bets by placing a $500 bet on the Giants. That’s right, I was going to buy the win. But somehow even the gambling gods played better defense than our Vikings as I was stuffed out on that too. Then again, maybe that’s exactly why we lost. Maybe the problem is too many fans like me that don’t truly believe. Maybe Vikings fans hesitate at the precise moment when we’re supposed to jump all in. Maybe fans like us, as Buddy the Elf would say, need to sing the SKOL chant "loud and clear for everyone to hear!" or Santa’s purple sleigh won’t have enough team spirit to fly.

Or is this thinking just another trap, like one of those online phishing scams where the person tries to get you to fall completely in love with them before bilking you for everything you got. Or maybe it’s a Purple Ponzi scheme where week after week the Vikings send us dividend checks without ever making a real investment. And the suckers we are, we see such good returns we can’t help but push the rest of our chips in. Yes, I’m Madoff as Hell, and I’m not going to take it!

Let us ponder the frustrations of the end of another Vikings season without a Super Bowl:

The Check Down – Downtown

Speaking of bad checks . . .

The truth is, Kirk was doing remarkably well this year at avoiding his old check down habits. He was Kirk Thuggins, wearing his chains and trusting Justin Jefferson to come down with catches while always giving his receivers a chance. Until . . . it mattered most.

It’s 4th and 8 with the season on the line, and Kirk fell back into his old habits and dropped a 3-yard pass to TJ Hockenson, his new security blanket he had been leaning on increasingly more over the last several weeks of the season. Maybe Kirk just feels more comfortable throwing into single coverage versus trusting JJ2K to continually defy the odds, or maybe he just wanted to prove that his success this year wasn’t all Justin—that he could be break out on his own and make a killer solo album. Good luck Garfunkel.

Either way the Vikings season ended on a check down. We’ve had the Double Doink, the Minnesota Miracle—and now we have The Check Down – Downtown. And just like that our season ended on a backwards K. We didn’t even take a swing. If Kirk was Eminem in “8 Mile” he would have had vomit on his sweater and quit after Mile 6.

But this loss isn’t on Kirk. He did not play terrible by any means. In his defense, there has to be immense pressure to go out there knowing you pretty much have to score every time or you’ll probably lose because your defense can’t make a stop. So, in Defense of Kirk Cousins, let’s put the blame where the blame belongs.

Easy Ed Donatell(o).

The coach named after the worst of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the one that coincidentally wore the purple mask. Donatello the Ninja Turtle was of course named after the famous Renaissance artist Donatello most well-known for his sculptures of the biblical hero David.

You know the biblical David were talking about. The one known for slaying a GIANT named Goliath. That’s right, Donatello's David slayed GIANTS. While Easy Eddie’s D did help the Vikings defeat the New York Giants once earlier this season, that victory appears to be as much of a fluke as getting lucky with a slingshot. The first meeting with the Giants had timely turnovers and a game winning kick by a guy named Joseph on Christmas Eve, so Eddie D likely had a few biblical miracles on his side that day. This time Easy Eddie didn’t sling a rock at all. Those D-Fences you see people holding in the stands turned out to be swinging gates come playoff time as Easy Ed stuck with his soft coverage approach.

Where Do We Go from Here?

There’s no way around it, this was a tough loss at the end of a magical season. But if you look back, Minnesota sports fans should have seen this coming because the 2022 Vikings were a carbon copy of the ’21-22 Minnesota Wild.

Do the math. Last year’s Wild had the pixie dust, the overachieving, and the come from behind victories in dramatic fashion. It was a magical season. But you know what the problem with magic is? It’s not real. The St. Louis Blue showed the Wild this in the first round of the playoffs last year, and the Giants proved it to the Vikings on Sunday.

If you’re a Wild fan and a Vikings fan—the writing was on the wall. All the way down to New York Giants offensive linemen chugging beers on the jumbotron at the Islanders Vs. Wild game in New York last Thursday. We should have known right then and there we were in trouble. It had an eerie similarity to the St. Louis Blues rolling into the subzero Winter Classic in Hawaiian shirts and shorts.

If you decide to look forward after this devastating loss, it would seem many of us Vikings fans are sure to jump on the Buffalo Bills bandwagon. Does this make any sense? Of all the playoff teams remaining, why would we move on to cheering for the Vikings doppelgänger in Buffalo. The Bills have Stefon Diggs and Dalvin Cook’s twin brother and Case Keenum and ex-Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier coaching their defense. How can this possibly be a good idea!? We’re leaving our deadbeat dad of a franchise to jump onboard with a team that also has lost 4 Super Bowls and seems to be equally adept at breaking their fans hearts and appear to be as cursed as our Purple?!

What does it say about us that our Plan B team is basically the exact same as our Plan A team? Is it that misery loves company? Is it that we only accept the love that we think we deserve? Do we have a type? Or maybe we just like the role of being the victim?

I don’t know. But at least we have our Sundays back until next football season. Or should we call it the next Season of Pain?

A few outtakes to finish. These are actual texts received on Sunday from Vikings fans:

NEXT YEAR WE’LL GET 6 YARDS ON 4th AND 8.

UNDEFEATED IN ONE SCORE GAMES UNTIL TODAY – TYPICAL.

I’M ACTUALLY GLAD WE LOST, BETTER THAN LOSING IN THE NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME. LESS STRESS.

And my personal favorite:

BEING A VIKINGS FAN IS THE WORST DECISION I’VE MADE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

Perhaps it was the perfect ending. The Vikings were 11-0 in once score games, before immediately losing their first one score game in the playoffs. Sound familiar? Maybe a bit like 1998 when the Vikings went 15-1, and had kicker Gary Anderson who never missed a kick all season, until the one time that it mattered most in the NFC Championship, when he missed a pedestrian 39 yarder? History repeats itself.

Really, where do we go from here?

Did we just miss our window? It doesn’t exactly feel like we have a dynasty brewing that is going to be good for the next few years. Our team feels old and hanging on by a thread. Detroit is coming on strong. The Packers started to figure it out at end of year. The Vikings are like World Cup Soccer or the Olympics where we only can count on playoffs every 3 to 4 years, so now we’ll probably have to wait a few before we get back.

By contrast, teams like the Giants, Bengals, Jacksonville, the Niners, Buffalo—even if they lose in the playoffs this year, they are on the up and up and will be back the next several years. It feels like Coach Kevin came and squeezed everything he could out of an older group. Maybe that’s what he does? He got everything he could out of Matt Stafford and Cooper Kupp and now a year after winning the Super Bowl looks like used up old horses that were rode hard and put away wet.

Who we draft for next year? A young QB stud to back up Kirk?. It would be nice to at least have the future to look forward to. Clearly, we need to strengthen our O-Line. As well as probably our entire defense. Is it just that the players were old, or was it just the system? Is Danielle Hunter only good in Zimmer’s system? Does Harrison Smith have anything left in the tank? Can we squeeze one more year out of Patrick Peterson?

It doesn’t help that so far Kwesimodo’s first draft class was not the least bit impressive unless his goal was drafting a bunch of NFL glass figurines. His Top 2 picks Lewis Cine and Andre Booth Jr. were out for the year with injuries, so who knows about them? Ed Ingram struggled on the offensive line - and we can’t even remember the names of the other guys.

So, yeah. We started SKÖLIOSIS because being a Vikings fan is bad for your health. We had no idea it would be this hard. I guess they call them the “Sunday Scaries” for a reason.

As the true Vikings fans like to say the moment the Purple are eliminated, “It’s now safe to enjoy football season!”

We’ll see you next year! Until then, stay safe out there.