Vikings opener eve: Why "Super Bowl or Bust" is a ridiculous mantra.

Heading to the purple palace tomorrow for the Vikings opener against Jimmy G and the Niners. It's the start of a season that has the highest expectations for any Vikings club in many years. Even the Favre years began more as question marks than with the team as a Super Bowl favorite. So this might be the most expectation-heavy Vikings club in 2 decades.

And with those expectations come a common refrain of "super bowl or bust."

Now, this is I think largely media driven, but a lot of fans form their opinions based on what the media says, so a lot of people out there have it in their heads than anything short of a Super Bowl win not just be a disappointment but an abject failure. This is SO wrongheaded.

Just from a mathematical standpoint, no one team is ever THAT big a favorite that winning a title is the only acceptable outcome. It ain't the NBA. The NFL is too random, too dependent on injuries and luck. There are tons of things that could happen to keep the Vikings from a title. We've seen most of them over the years. Some of these things are out of their control. If the Eagles don't come out of nowhere last year, they aren't a 13-3 team and the Vikings rule the NFC.

Only 1 team can win it all. Does that make all 31 other teams a failure? Oh it gets spun that way, sure, but it's bullshit. Canton is full of players and coaches who never won a title. Are they failures? Of course not.

"Super Bowl or bust" also implies that this is it. That 2018 is the Vikings last chance to ever win with this group of players. Wrong again. This team has been assembled very much to have a title window of MULTIPLE seasons. To win a title, it us almost mandatory to have a multi-year window. There have been teams that won it all at the beginning of their windows (Eagles included, assuming they were not a total one-off), but I can't think of a single team in the Super Bowl era that won a title while not also being a title contender for at least a few years. The only one that might fit that is the Joe Namath Jets. Otherwise you gotta be in the mix for.multiple seasons to really have a shot.

A huge part of why the Vikings haven't been back to a Super Bowl in my lifetime is that they have not sustained windows. From the time the 70s teams faded, they had the late 80's(where they were blocked by some of history's greatest teams year after year), the latter part of the Denny era(98, the 99 team that ran into a St. Louis buzzsaw, and the 2000 club that did not really deserve a title game berth and proved it) and the Favre era(which had a ticking clock on it from the moment he stepped off the plane).

And then now. Their window might have officially opened in 2016 if not for the cavalcade of injuries, but for sure opened last year. This is a club in its window, no question. A stacked roster, a QB entering his prime years. All with prime years left. This could be the team that ends the suffering.

It just might not be THIS team, and that should not be taken as a failure. This team could fall short in 2018 but win it all in 2019, 2020, 2021. The whole point of what they have done is build a team for the long haul. That's what makes this time as a Vikings fan so exciting. They have not sustained a high level of success in my lifetime. They never kept it going for any period of more than a year or 2. This is the first time I have ever felt like they are built to do that. And as long as they keep drafting at a high level the window can be as long as they want it. And no, the window is not just the 3 years Cousins is signed for. If he lives up to the hopes, he will be a Viking for a long time.

Now, a long championship window doesn't guarantee a title. The 70s Vikings, the 90s Bills, the 2000s Eagles and many others can attest to that.

But we got a real shot for greatness.