Soaring back into 1st

VIKINGS 37
JETS 17

It's been a bumpy road to be sure, but 7 weeks in the Vikings are right back where they should be: 1st place in the NFC North.

Today's game at times almost felt like a rerun of last week. Ugly 1st half, followed by a dominant early 3rd quarter to pad the lead, followed by an inability to fully stick the dagger in. We still have not seen that complete performance by the Vikings this year.

It looked like we were going to get another dominant road performance by the offense. 1st drive right down the field. Kirk to Adam. We lead. But then the offense really struggled the rest of the half. They were gifted great field position over and over but only had 3 more points to show for it by halftime, although Bailey had 3 stolen from.him by a wicked wind. But the run game was being stuffed again, and Kirk missed on a couple throws that could have made this an early rout. Jets have a solid defense, but it was frustrating.

2nd half was much better. The run game got explosive. Thielen got his 100 yards. Kirk daggered it on a deep ball to Aldrick Robinson. Even with the bumps, 37 points on the road against ANYBODY is impressive. I still wish D-Flip would work around the bad OL more. Kirk isn't super mobile, but he's not a statue either. Get him out of the pocket more.

The resurgent defense did its job again. They rattled a rookie QB. Sam Darnold threw 3 picks and could have had a couple others. They had 1 drive in the 1st half where they kinda gashed us, but that was pretty much it. I was worried that with Linval out the Jets might run all over us but that never came close to happening. It was cool seeing backups like Kearse, Hill and Weatherly play so well.

They did go into that sort of soft prevent defense again once the lead got padded. It drives me nuts. Why change what you're doing when what you're doing is working? And it requires more snaps from your defensive starters, which again led to injuries. Now, the Barr injury is hopefully not that bad and hopefully Rhodes only sprained an ankle, but even that could take them out for the Saints game.

Sneaky MVP of the game may have been Matt Wile. His punting bailed us out a couple times today. Fans love bitching about the punter everytime he doesn't have an 80 yard punt, but sometimes these guys do matter.

So it was a good day. And I'm glad rooting for the Patriots was worth it. I would have preferred the Ravens make a damn PAT, and that Miami beats Detroit, but the big ones worked out. The Vikings sit in 1st for at least a week, and very much control their own destiny.

Which is news, I'm sure, to all the media geniuses and fake fans who insisted the season was over after the Rams game and were calling for everybody to be fired, and were proclaiming the Kirk Cousins deal the worst ever. I had to tap out on the reddit thread today cause of the toxicity(in a game we led almost the whole way), and the 1500 postgame show was a clown show of whiny media nitpicking. I'm sorry you aren't getting your 2010 season sequel. You're just not. This is a pretty good team.

And the NFC remains wide open behind the Rams. The Saints have needed 2 of their wins gift wrapped by opposing kickers. The entire NFC east is a mess. The Vikings, if they can beat the Saints next week(which will be very tough if we're so shorthanded on D), will be the clear #2 in the NFC, and big favorites in the division.