Re-run
So that happened.
Defeat -> Jaws of victory -> Vikings -> Snatch!
The Red Sox of the NFL strike again, managing to get oh so close and once again amaze us with their ability to lose in new and unimagined ways. Our biggest rival’s greatest player ever joins us to be thwarted by a 12 man in the huddle penalty to push us out of field goal range? Wow…didn’t see that one coming.
I’m very sad, natch, but am handling this one in stride, much unlike the disaster of 1999. It’s just who the Vikings are. If they were different, they wouldn’t be the Vikings. It’s just their way…you don’t know what it’s like when we’re alone together.
Besides, since 1999 I lived through the W presidency, and two financial crises (and two respective turns of unemployment), and the health care reform and Haiti disasters of the last two weeks served to provide some immediate perspective as well. So I’m not completely distraught, and I’m not disowning them like I did for a few years after 1999, either. I’m owning them, wearing them like a battle scar, a badge of…not honor…but a badge of something.
The Vikings are like sun spots, managing to lose NFC championships in stunning, painful, head-shaking fashion every 11 years. 1988, dropped pass in the end zone. 1999, the best Vikings team ever lost as the only field goal kicker ever to make every kick in a season missed a relatively easy kick indoors. 2010, well, we’ve covered that. And don’t forget about that one year we needed to beat an awful Arizona team in the last week just to make the playoffs and we let them score a last second touchdown on something like 4th and 25 from midfield. I’ve got money on an excessive celebration penalty in 2021.