No Miracles Required

VIKINGS 27
CARDINALS 17

It was snowing on the way to the purple palace today. Normally snow on October 14th would make me mad, but today it just added to the atmosphere. And it reminded me of the last time it was snowing on a Vikings gameday. 9 months ago today. The Minneapolis Miracle game.  It felt like a good sign.

And it was. The Vikings had some bumps today, but no miracles were needed to ultimately handle the Cards and go to 3-2-1, in a season that all the media geniuses were proclaiming over just 8 days ago. It was 2010 redux, they said. Idiots.

I had hopes for a major breakout win today, a win that was finally the perfect version of these Vikings. I didn't quite get that, but who cares? Perfection doesn't exist. Any game that goes in that left column is good enough, more so than ever in this wacky season.

The defensive improvement we saw against Philly carried over. This defense was flying all over the field today. It was easily their closest to dominance they have had since the 1st half of the Saints playoff game. Josh Rosen had no chance to pull a Josh Allen. He hit a couple big throws, but was mostly rattled all day long. Hunter got another sack. Anthony Barr had his best game of the year. Mackenzie Alexander had maybe the best game of his whole career. Harrison Smith was all over the place. Anthony Harris got a big pick. The whole unit had a brilliant goal line stand when the game was still very much in doubt, and also held on downs a couple other times. They've been very bend but don't break this year, but today they barely bent.

And the only reason their performance didn't seem even better was that 10 of the 17 Arizona points were handed to them by the offense, 3 on a short field, and 7 on a Kirk fumble.

The offense put up 27 points, so no real complaints there, but it was a weird game for them. Finally the running game got going. Tay Train broke a few long ones. Even Mike Boone broke one. Kirk had that fumble, and a pretty bad pick that I think might have been an attempted throwaway. He also had an insane number of batted passes. And for some reason we had like 3 false starts. But Adam Thielen had another insane game.

Thielen is going to have to start being talked about as an MVP candidate. I mean, receivers never really get that kind of consideration, and you have 2 QBs currently dominating for unbeaten teams so it's not actually that possible, but Thielen is dominating out there like no Vikings WR since early Moss. He is UNBELIEVABLE. He has to be on pace to at least threaten the all time single season records for receptions and yards.

The passing game's overall sloppiness today is on the o-line. They had been pretty decent the last 2 weeks, but really struggled today. And the offense struggled again to really drive in the dagger. Once that game got to 27-10 I felt like it was completely over, and it mostly was, but these being the Vikings they had to at least make the fans worry a little. The defense only gave up 1 touchdown, and I never felt like Josh Rosen was going to get 2 more scoring drives, but the offense should have been set up perfectly in the 2nd half to put the game away completely and they didn't. They kind of went away from the running game, and gave up a few sacks. It didn't bite them today. It didn't bite them back in week 1. But it feels like the kind of thing that could cost them a win or 2 down the line.

Sucks that Mike Hughes tore his ACL. He had flashed a couple times this year. But maybe it can be a help to him to just sit back and watch and learn the rest of the year. CB is the 2nd hardest position after QB to play as a rookie.

The Vikings defense took so much shit for its play in September, but I look around the league and I'd still take what we have. The Jaguars got 40 laid on them in Dallas. The Bears got lit up by Brock Osweiler. Any defense can be had. Any offense can be shut down. Win the games any way you can.

Vikings are 3-2-1 despite as much shit going against them as just about any team in the league. The Bears are not going to run away with this. And if the Vikings handle their business in New York next week, they should be sitting in 1st place, since the Chicago club that just gave up 31 to Brocktoberfest has to contend with the Hatriots.