Monday, January 18, 2010

For the Fans

On Sunday, the Vikings played their last game in the Metrodome during what has been a dream season. Brett Favre quite likely played in his last game ever in the Metrodome during what has been a dream experience.

I see the Vikings' late touchdown pass as a bow to the fans: a thank you, and a last chance for the Thunderdome crowd to show its appreciation.

It's possible that Sunday is the last time the Minnesota Vikings will ever make their fans happy. I don't think they ran up the score, but came out for their bow.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:33 PM

    That's an interesting take on the last touchdown. Very optimistic, but I still disagree. I think Childress was running up the score to show up all the people who picked the Cowboys to win.

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  2. Anonymous12:48 PM

    You forgot to say "Red-Hot" Cowboys. Joe, thanks for pointing that out early last week. I cracked up all week long at how often I heard and read that phrase. It was as if they had changed their name from the Dallas Cowboys to the Red Hot Cowboys. It was so endlessly used it was comical. Thank you Vikes very much for giving all of us fans the last laugh...

    Heet.

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  3. Anonymous8:15 PM

    The last touchdown was very unnecessary. The Cowboys were a beaten team with no desire to do anything except get out of the Metrodome. Even Paul Allen, in his call of the game sounded ashamed of the play call on 4th down. The entire game was a bow to the fans, the last touchdown pass was simply Farve finally getting his chance to stick it to the Cowboys, and Childress' chance to lay an even bigger beating on an old foe from his NFC East days.

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  4. Avattoir8:53 PM

    Until the idiom-challenged Chilly and the over-personalized Favre come to embrace a single explanation, I think there are 4 candidates, none of which excludes any other, or indeed all others:

    [1] The PPGJ offering.

    This would vindicate Brookings, and the hint with which Little Bum Phillips opened his post-game remarks [which took but a single open-ended question from a reporter to cause him to retreat from]. PPGJ is able to point to support in remarks at Chilly's counterpart. He could have added a similar belligerence from Shiancoe, who caught the TD, so might know something. None of them specifically mentioned the Hail Mary pass from the Vikes' Jurassic period, but it heavily featured in the week-long pre-game Dallas hype.

    [2] That old bitch Karma.

    If Brookings thought the Vikings' side knew the Cowboys' side knew the day was lost, then he drew that conclusion against some awfully compelling evidence. The Cowboys used time-outs on each of the two plays before the 4th down call. Given all the circumstances, it's pretty difficult to criticize the Vikes for concluding the Cowboys may have gone to the Dark Side: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

    [3] History.

    Regular watchers of Favre pressers this year will know that somehow he's always been able to raise the precisely-correct context and historical significance while always humbly seeking confirmation from the assembled reporters ["So, given we're now, 6 and 1 or 7 and 1? Yeah, 7; that's what I thought, but you guys always know that kinda stuff."]. Yesterday more than once he raised that the 3 TDs that Rice caught constituted "the record". That record is one of a vast number held by some other guy named Rice, most of which are beyond the reach of mere mortals. Add to this that Favre almost got the 4th in Rice's hands on the previous series and that Shiancoe does not appear to have been Favre's first option on the play that actually scored.

    [4] Planning Ahead.

    This might seem a stretch so please bear with me:

    If both teams "knew" both that the game was over and the other side knew it and knew they knew it etc.; and if some operating consciousness on the Vikes side happened to be alert enough to the synchronicity of the general atmosphere in the Dome and the two Cowboy time-outs; then it did provide a unique opportunity to acclimate the Vikes offense, if only for one play, to something approaching what it might be like in NOLA next Sunday.

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