SKÖLIOSIS Week 9 —Ravens 34, Vikings 31
Hello Darkness My Old Friend
Daylight saving time was Sunday Morning, a tradition started by Benjamin Franklin apparently to conserve energy, but more likely because he hates Minnesota Vikings fans and wanted to extend our misery by making Sunday one hour longer. He was one sadistic son of a bitch that Benjamin Franklin.
As much as I am not a fan of Daylight saving, I came into Sunday morning trying to look at the positive in that we were getting an extra hour for the day. But true to form, instead of letting us have that hour to do healthy productive Sunday activities, the Vikings smelled opportunity and decided to steal back the extra time treating us all to a third overtime game at the midpoint of the season. An overtime session where they proceeded to lose again as usual. It's as if the Vikings were not satisfied with darkness rolling in an hour earlier, so they took matters into their own hands treating us to another excruciating loss bringing darkness to our day several hours ahead of schedule. Related, it’s also quite possible the Vikings marketing people are evil geniuses who planned out the entire backbreaking 2021 season in advance.
The Tell-Tale Purple Heart
However, the Purple did miss a prime opportunity to really mess with us this week. This would have been a great week to have Kirk Cousins guarantee a purple victory in Broadway Joe Namath fashion, surprising fans with his newfound confidence and swagger only to realize our opponent was also wearing purple. Had the Vikings pulled it out, Kirk could have strutted around his post-game interviews with a victory and a bold prediction delivered, possibly igniting the teams confidence. Or when we lost, which of course we did, Cousins could have done a verbal check down clarifying that the Baltimore Ravens are also purple, and that’s what he meant. I mean, if Aaron Rogers can pull a little verbal slight of hands, why not Kirk? Speaking of the “immunized (and whatever that means)” Rodgers, his press conference had a very Alec Baldwin in Malice “I AM GOD” vibe to it, did it not?
Which to be fair, love him or hate him, this is the same arrogance and unwavering belief in himself that makes Rodgers so great on the field. An arrogance that apparently gets you a .666%-win percentage. And while the number of the beast may be a little unsettling, it’s nearly 200% above Kirk's. Perhaps Rodgers has made a deal with the Devil.
Maybe that’s why Cousins is so content to keep losing, as a man of faith he’s just trying to stay as far away from that dreaded and demonic .666% winning percentage as he can. Because Kirk certainly wouldn’t want his dad, who may or may not have been the inspiration for the vampire preacher in Netflix’s Midnight Mass, to be upset with him.
Similar to our purple, the Baltimore purple have also played in several close games, including 3 OT games of their own. However, unlike our Vikings, the Ravens have managed to come out the other side with a 6-2 record versus our 3-5 start. Yes, on this Sunday our purple were out purpled by Baltimore’s purple & black. The Ravens namesake, Edgar Allan Poe, would have loved the macabre nature of this Vikings season and its ability to slowly extinguish the beating of our purple hearts.
That beating we hear coming from beneath the floor boards isn’t the sound of our own guilt, it is the sound of our Vikings getting beat as the offense continues to sputter in the second half and Kirk Cousins continues his assault on the all-time record for quarterback check downs in critical situations. Check downs that come in crunch time, when we need him most.
Can We Please Just Get Lopsided
While we give Cousins a ton of grief, it’s also time to call out our offensive coordinator Mr. Klint Kubiak. Good teams and well coached teams play better down the stretch. They make half time adjustments, and adapt as the game goes along. But the second half has been the Achilles heel of our Vikings season so far as the they’ve struggled to score touchdowns in the second half of games the last five weeks.
This Sunday was particularly unsatisfying as the Vikings were gifted a turnover by their defense giving them the ball at midfield in OT, only to proceeded to do a quick three and out. By this point we all know the recipe by heart: two anemic running plays followed by a third down pressure where Cousins more or less throws the ball away to avoid a sack. On third down. In sudden death overtime! While across the field, the other purple’s quarterback, Lamar Jackson, ran for over 100 yards breaking the will of our defense in the process.
You said, “Go slow”
I fall behind
The second hand unwinds
Time after Time.
- Cindy Lauper
“Time after Time” could very well be the Viking theme song for 2021. Close your eyes and picture Cousins singing this to offensive coordinator Kubiak at their weekly special support group for people with hard K syllables leading to accidentally getting spit on when people say their names—a support group that includes the likes of Kirk Cameron, Colonel Klink, Captain Crunch and Kliff Kingsbury. Although we’re told Kingsbury rarely attends, because he actually has a life.
There is an old sports axiom, "I don’t care who wins, I just want a good game." I think it's fair to say that at this point of the season, most of us Vikings fans would say eff that! We just want a blowout. We want things lopsided. Like Sloth from Goonies face is lopsided.
Truth be told, we don’t even care which side of his lopsided face we are on. Winning side or losing side, it really doesn’t matter. Vikings win 52-3—GREAT!!! Vikings lose 49-0—okay, we can live with that too (and probably salvage a little of our Sunday). We really don’t care. Just spare us from these weekly heartbreakers. All we’re asking for is one week off. Hell, at this point we’ll settle for Shannon Doherty’s lopsided yet beautiful face. How amazing would a 9-point victory or a nice little two score differential feel? Just give us anything that doesn’t come down to the last 2 minutes or overtime. Yes, we’d love us some lopsided. At least for one week. Cindy Laupsided. Pretty please!
Searching for W’s
On the other side of the ball, it’s hard to put too much blame on the defense. Sure, they gave up 34 points. But this is a defense that played without Patrick Peterson, Harrison Smith, Danielle Hunter and was tasked with containing the always electric Lamar Jackson for five full quarters.
Instead we were treated to a whole new cast of characters that were all new faces and had us wondering if the Vikings are so desperate for wins that they are just signing guys off the street with W’s in their names. In addition to Xavier Woods, we now have a Watts, Willekes, Wonnum and Nwangwu. When spoken back to back, Wonnum Nwangwu sounds a lot like the sound of an Australian didgeridoo. An instrument that certainly would have the Viking’s Gjallarhorn in its 23andMe family tree.
While we’re not sure if the Vikes were deliberately chasing W’s, Kene Nwangwu was a pleasant surprise making some great special teams plays including an attempt to break our second half touchdown curse with a kickoff return. D.J. Wonnum jerseys will be flying off the shelves manifesting the mantra Vikings fans have been telling ourselves all year, “You can’t Wonnum all.”
Met Dreams
At this point, with the Vikings season in obvious peril, it’s time to start thinking about a contingency team to cheer for. May we recommend the Buffalo Bills, a team that somehow seems to be everything our Vikings should be.
The Bills are the cool outdoor cold weather team with a blue collar swagger and a gunslinger quarterback that dives head first for first downs. Yes, please! The Bills even stole our beloved Stefon Diggs, the only player to provide Vikings fans any sort of winning catharsis with the Minnesota Miracle, the closest we’ve been to the ecstasy of winning a Super Bowl in the modern era.
The Bills even have a tailgate culture which includes purple zubaz, table diving, discarding beer cans by crushing them into hockey pucks and slapping them away with hockey sticks while snow ball fights and garbage can bonfires keep everyone warm. While we’re not sure exactly when the Bills stole the Vikings identity, it feels a lot like The Talented Mr. Ripley where Matt Damon’s character steals Jude Law’s character’s style and identity. And did we mention The Talented Mr. Ripley ironically was a remake of a French film from 1960 aptly titled Purple Noon?! So I guess we should have known the Buffalo Bills would become everything we wanted our Vikings to be, all we had to do was read the subtitles.
In Matthew McConaughey’s book Greenlights, he writes about the time he was in high school and he traded in his pick-up truck for a red sports car. At the time, McConaughey thought the sports car would make the girls flock to him even more than normal. All he had to do was lean on it, allowing the car to do all the work. Much to his surprise, McConaughey learned the girls actually preferred the old pick-up, because he was more fun with the truck, tried harder, and made more of an effort.
McConaughey eventually traded the car back for his truck, and the world was right again. McConaughey apparently also has mystical prophetic wet dreams, none of which we’ve been able to link to the Vikings 2021 season just yet.
Maybe this McConaughey metaphor can help us all understand the root of the Vikings’ issues. Maybe this franchise lost its soul when we left the Met—our beloved outdoor stadium. Back when the Purple People Eaters were feared, and we all tried harder. Back then, everyone was more involved. The team, the fans, the entire state of Minnesota—we had to come together just to stay warm, and survive.
Back then Vikings fans embraced who we were. We leaned into our cold weather, our snow, and our ice. Now we just built this flashy US Bank stadium, that like McConaughey’s sports car has us not acting like our true selves each Sunday. As we watch a Vikings team content to just lean against the stadium, assuming the fans will keep coming to them. In hindsight, we should have built an outdoor stadium when we had the chance. Maybe like McConaughey’s old pick-up, it would have helped this downtrodden franchise get its mojo and identity back.
