MOTOWN BEATDOWN

LIONS 31

VIKINGS 9

Everything was on the line for the Vikings on Sunday night in Detroit. The NFC North title. Home field advantage in the playoffs. And a chance for not just a signature win, but one of the biggest wins in regular season history.

Well, so much for all that. The moment proved far too big for this team, particularly its Cinderella quarterback, and so a 14 win team will spend the playoffs on the road, after a kind of unfathomable 31-9 shellacking by the now back to back division champion Lions.

The optimism for this game on the Vikings end stemmed both from the very good, clutch play by Sam Darnold the last 6 weeks, and the fact that the Lions defense has been decimated by injuries. Many starters out, and just 6 days earlier they let the tattered remains of the 49ers put up 28 points even with a couple turnovers and missed field goals. Surely the red hot Vikings could at least score with the Lions. 

That's the NFL though. Sometimes you know exactly what will happen, until you don't. 

The final score was horrible, but this game was there to be had in the first half. The Vikings defense came to play. They forced a couple punts, stopped the Lions on a 4th down, and Ivan Pace had a terrific tipped interception deep in Detroit territory. And the mighty Lions had just 10 points at the break. 

But the Vikings trailed, due to a horrific choke job performance by Darnold, enabled by the (I'm not so sure anymore he is) coach of the year.

The whole story took place in the redzone.

After punting on the first couple drives, we got some excellent field position and one big pass to Jefferson got us inside the 10. After a short Akers run though, Darnold misfired on a pair of throws to set up 4th down. We went for it. I agreed with that cause at the time it still felt like a game where you needed to get sevens not threes to have any chance. But Darnold threw incomplete and we got nothing.

The Lions were pinned deep, and we should have had a safety when Jared Goff threw a pass in the endzone that hit a lineman. The refs were very pro-Lions, which in a closer game would have enraged me more. But a few plays later, Ivan Pace got a terrific tipped pass interception immediately setting us up with another 1st and goal. 

But again we failed. Darnold missed back to back wide open touchdowns, and we kicked a field goal. 

After stopping the Lions on a 4th down we again got into the redzone, and again came away with just 3. 

It was almost halftime and despite the blunders we were only a point down. But then Will Reichard made a massive mistake, sending the kickoff out of bounds. The Lions got the ball at the 40, and of course hit one pass and stole a field goal that should never have happened.

Still, all was not yet lost. The Vikings have played better in the 2nd half many times this year. And when Cam Akers broke a 58 yard run and set us up with another 1st and goal, we were in position to grab the lead. 

But yet again we failed. And yet again we went for the 4th down with a horribly erratic QB rather than take the points. I know threes don't win this game ultimately, but we are up 12-10 at this point if we just took the points. 

The Lions were not impressive and kept giving us chances. On the very first play after the latest turnover on downs, Goff lofted a deep ball that Harrison Smith easily picked off around midfield. 

Still our offense couldn't snap into competence. We only got close enough for a long field goal, and still trailed.

The danger in playing a team like the Lions and squandering scoring chances, is that you're not going to hold them off forever.

The dam finally broke. The 3 Lions drives after the score went 10-9 were all touchdowns. The first was more methodical and ate up half the quarter. Then we stupidly tried a long Reichard field goal, which he missed. Bring back Parker Romo. On the next Lions drive, Gink had his hands on a potential pick six but couldn't hold on. Detroit then quickly zipped to another TD. 

The offense never pulled out of it, punting quickly on the next drive, and the Lions easily drove to Jahmyr Gibbs's 4th TD of the game which settled things.

I don't blame the defense much. They did what they could for 3 quarters, but it had to be demoralizing to watch the offense piss it all away. There was a whiff of quit to that 4th quarter, but the game was lost anyway.

The blame for the debacle falls on Darnold, who played the worst turnover free game I have ever seen by a Vikings QB. He was complete trash, but he wasn't alone. The OL, after playing so well against the Packers, was overwhelmed by the Lions blitzing. Our receivers, whether being obviously held or not, showed zero fight and had a few big drops. 

And KOC again blew it by being so pass happy and ignoring the run. This can't continue. It should be instructive that the star of the game for Detroit was a running back. Darnold throwing 9 passes on 11 goal to go plays is madness when he is playing poorly. 18 of 41 for the game, a statline that is almost impossible to do in this league.

So the Vikings blew it, and deserve all the ridicule and mockery that comes with it. And they probably obliterated their chances to reach their first Super Bowl since 48 years ago this week. And made it that much more likely the Lions will reach the Super Bowl themselves. 

And barring a bunch of upsets there will be no playoff games at US Bank Stadium. Instead the Vikings go out to Los Angeles to play the Rams, in a rematch of the Vikings last loss prior to this game. I do think the Vikings are better off playing the Rams than Tampa. The Rams haven't played particularly impressive the last couple months, other than a big win over the Bills. Mostly they've won a lot of ugly games against bad teams. So this game is very winnable if the Vikings team of the 9 game win streak shows up. But if we get this version of Darnold again, forget about it. One and done.

A win would quite possibly send the Vikings right back to Detroit for the divisional round. A loss would be massively disappointing given where this fun ride looked like it could be going.