There is an old saying, “You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you.” This timeless quote is attributed to a gentleman by the name of Jim Butcher. Apparently Jim is exactly the type of guy with a unique set of knowledge of how NOT to get mauled by Bears—info the would come in handy Week 5 for our Purple. I mean if anyone would know how NOT to get “butchered” by a bear, it would probably be Jim Butcher right? In an attempt to know more about this fellow I dove down the Jim Butcher Wikipedia rabbit hole to learn Jim Butcher is a sci-fi writer that writes wizard books? Damn you Wikipedia – maybe sometimes it’s better to just leave stuff to our imaginations.

As it would turn out, wizard nerd Jim’s quote felt appropriate Week 5 as our Vikings didn’t really need to outrun the Bears. Rather the Vikings just needed to outrun (or out play) the Bears struggling young QB Justin Fields who, related, seems next in line to get butchered by the Bear organization.

All this seemed to bode well for our Vikings as shutting down the young Bears QB seemed a rather achievable task. Especially given that going into week 5 there were social media posts on the Tiki-ty Toks and Insta-grammy’s circulating with a variety of amusing anemic Bears offensive stats, e.g. “Justin Fields has LESS completions (34) than Cooper Kupp (42) has receptions,” or “the Bears receivers corps as a WHOLE have less receiving yards than Tyreek Hill alone,” etc. etc. Not exactly confidence inspiring for the 2nd year Fields.

Well, we don’t know about you fellow skittish Vikings fans, but for us here at Pulltab Sports, we view all these embarrassing opponent stats as harbingers for disaster. This is Sköliosis after all, so we file all the information about why we should easily beat a team in a folder titled “reasons for the unexpected loss to hurt more.” Like masses of birds falling from the sky for no reason, or schools of dead fish washing up on beaches—these sorts of stats give us Viking fans a particular kind of pre-game anxiety where we just KNOW we are being set up for the most humiliating kind of pain. Seeing those Justin Fields stats was like watching a serial killer roll out the plastic wrap across the floor before unfurling his unique dismembering utensils in methodical fashion. All we can do is sit wide eyed and helpless, duct taped to our recliners, thinking, “oh boy, this is going to hurt.”

But then something weird happened as we braced ourselves for the oncoming pain.

The Vikings came out rolling.

Complete Cousins Control

For the entirety of the first quarter, and most of the first half, the Vikes weren’t just rolling. They were perfect. They were flawless. The offense, behind Kirk Cousins apparently in Teen-Wolf mode, his alter ego presumably known as just “Cuz” or “Kid Cuz” or something implying he isn’t one of those boring play-it-safe kind of check-down-manage-the-game quarterbacks anymore.

No, Cuz is the kind of guy that surfs on the top of a moving purple bandwagon while air guitaring and effortlessly tossing 17 consecutive completed passes and leading the Vikes to a 21-3 lead. Cuz was setting records out there, passing Minnesota icons like Tommy Kramer for most completed passes to start a game. It was almost as if Cuz wanted in on the social media action, hoping to get a half time Tik-Tok posted that he had more completions in the first HALF than Justin Fields has had all year. Meanwhile Fields himself had only 2 completions in the first half to this point. Heck, even Justin “JJ2K” Jefferson had almost as many completions as Fields after a fun trick play that implied Kevin O’Connell has started introducing the offense to some of the deeper tracks of his playbook.

For a quarter and a half, all was perfect in the world. Until it wasn’t.

This is Sköliosis, and these are our Vikings. Eventually, those harbinger birds started flying into our plate glass windows reminding us, it’s NEVER EASY being a Viking fan.

Pain Probability – High

For those of us tracking stats online during games, one of the more taunting features is the “win probability” graph during games. One would think these A.I. tools would be smarter. However, it appears sports Wall-E uses the same algorithm to calculate these win probability odds for all the teams, which doesn’t exactly seem “intelligent” artificially or otherwise. At the very least it seems there should be a “but it’s the Minnesota Vikings” formula which factors the purple’s uncanny ability to make every game interesting. Or maybe this Skynet system knows EXACTLY what it’s doing. It’s probably all part of the robot revolutions plan to crush humanity – starting by breaking the spirits of us Minnesotans who are clearly its biggest threat. One has to wonder if these graphs are meant to capture the moment us Vikings fans are at our most vulnerable, preparing the universe to activate its plan to see how much anxiety we can handle:

First an unreal Beckham-esk one handed catch by Darnell Mooney to get Fields his 3rd completion of the day and give the Bears offense life . . .
Second the inevitable call from announcers pointing out the Bears have not converted a 4th down conversion all year, before, of course, they proceed to do exactly that. Damn you in-game harbingers . . .
Third – we’ll have Teen-Wolf Cuz suddenly gets overly aggressive and instead of checking down to the wide open CJ Ham, force a pass for an ill-timed INT . . .

And just like that, our 21 to 3 lead is a 22 to 21 deficit.

Karma O’Connell

Lucky for us, Coach Kevin seems to have tapped into a better Karma level for the 2022 Vikings. The NFL’s Crucial Catch tie-die gear many of the Vikings were wearing seemed to compliment Coach Kevin perfect as he’s clearly a hugger not a yeller.

Maybe this kinder and gentler approach has the Purple tapping into their Purple Chakra and harnessing their higher power. The new and improved Vikings seem to have traded the “Zim” for a lot more “Zen.”

Kirk Cousins is on a 3 game win streak with 3 game winning come-from-behind wins to boot. A year ago, the Vikings finished with 14 one possession games, losing 8 of those and winning 6 of them. The 2022 Vikes clearly have picked up where Zimmer’s team left off with 3 of their first 5 games coming down to the wire. Unlike Zimmer’s team however, we’ve won all of them so far. So what’s different?

Bear Hunters and Dantzler Bears

For starters we have Danielle Hunter back, who we lost early last year with a torn pec muscle. Just like Bears don’t like Butchers, they also don’t like Hunters – who as usual, was hunting their QB Sunday. Danielle should have to wear an orange vest out there. It’s no wonder the camera crew and sideline announcers can’t help but creepily gush over Danielle’s arms. One has to wonder if Danielle primarily hunts using “thirst traps” via posing Instagram pictures of his biceps/guns. Does he get QBs to slide into his DM’s Adam Levine style, trapping them right where he wants them. We’re not sure if getting them into the sack is the same as getting a sack – but whatever Hunter is doing was working Sunday as he registered his 2nd sack of the season. Side note – are the 99’s on his jersey supposed to represent two flexed biceps? This seems very possible.

Cameron Dantzler’s continued improvement is another welcomed change from last year. Dantzler Bear is clearly thriving under Kevin O’Connell’s regime with 3 big plays Sunday. A well-acted flop to draw a penalty and negate a long Justin Fields scramble, a quick read and tackle to stop a potential 2-point conversion on the Bears last TD, and of course the game winning walk-off strip fumble to win the game. Not to mention the heady play to slide and go down immediately afterwards, preparing the Vikings for victory formation. Also, kudos to Dantzler for perhaps recognizing that the victim of his strip fumble was a former Viking teammate – Ihmir Smith-Marsette. It’s almost like Dantzler knew that since Ihmir spent time on the Vikings, he “knew how to lose” —making him the perfect wounded gazelle to take advantage of.

Homebodies

All this said, let’s keep things in perspective. We’ve played 3 home games, 1 neutral site London game, and 1 away game. We needed a double doink, a strip sack of an ex-Viking, and a typical Detroit coaching blunder to get 3 of those wins. And in the only true away game, we got embarrassed on primetime television. So the road is going to get tougher, and the Vikings marketing seems to know that – taking advantage of bragging about our 3-0 division record while they have the chance.

Or more likely, it’s another devious ploy from the A.I. machine working to sucker us in deeper. Just remember that somewhere right now there is some A.I. generated playoff probability or Super Bowl probability tracker inching higher and higher towards 100% - capturing Vikings fans hopes and dreams and waiting to pounce and bleed us out slowly. We know how this goes. Power Rankings start putting us in the top 5’s. The Skip Bayless’s and Stephen A. Smith’s and Colin Cowherds are all gonna start calling the Vikings contenders. And just as we start to believe it, pushing our chips into the center of the table, things will start to fall apart. Little by little, death by a thousand paper cuts.

Or…maybe it won’t. Maybe Karma Kevin has us on an entirely new journey. Or maybe that’s the whole point of tapping into our Purple Chakra and finding spiritual growth. Stop worrying about the outcome. Stop focusing on the destination. Just stop and learn to enjoy the ride. And if the Bear gets to close for comfort, let’s just push Jim Butcher in front of it. Cause he sounds like a nerd anyway. Thinks he knows so much about Bears. Stick to wizards, Jim. From now on, we’re gonna let Karma Kevin and Cameron Dantzler show us how to beat the Bears.