Archive for January, 2010

Bryant McKinnie has spent the entire afternoon telling anyone who’ll listen on Twitter that he dropped out of the Pro Bowl voluntarily, as a result of nagging injuries, before getting booted for missing most of the week’s practices and meetings. “I was trying to push myself to play in this game and I thought my body would start feeling better the later we got in the week,” reads McKinnie’s multi-tweet explanation.  “So yesterday I called my agent and said I don’t think I will be able to play.  He called and got in touch with the trainer, the trainer called [...]

Bryant McKinnie said he was honored to be selected to the Pro Bowl team, the same as every other NFL player who gets selected to the Pro Bowl team. Many of those other guys probably don’t mean it either, but at least they bother showing up to practices and meetings the week leading up to the game.  Bryant however did not, which is why today the Vikings left tackle was booted from the NFC roster. We should’ve perhaps gotten a hint that McKinnie wasn’t entirely serious about his commitment to the Pro Bowl from all the tweets he posted this [...]

Five days out from the Vikings‘ stunning overtime loss to the Saints in the NFC Championship game, the fallout is continuing to fall, and a lot of it is coming down on the NFC Champs. A couple days ago, NFL V.P. of officiating Mike Pereira said the referees made a mistake not calling a penalty on Bobby McCray for hitting Brett Favre low on the play where Favre was injured while throwing an interception to Jonathan Vilma.  Had McCray been hit with a flag there, the Vikings may very well have driven the ball down and scored, though they would’ve [...]

If you thought Fran Tarkenton would stay quiet about Brett Favre‘s Super Bowl dream-ruining interception against the Saints…you thought wrong. Fran doesn’t know how to stay quiet, especially when some radio station like 97.5 The Fanatic in Philadelphia invites him to come on the air (via Sports Radio Interviews).  As you might have already guessed, Fran’s remarks about Favre’s failure are a bit on the negative side: Well before that [interception] I think the Vikings were clearly the best team. They held this New Orleans offense to under 300 yards. They made Drew Brees look ordinary. He didn’t even throw [...]

Laying out the top 10 ways for the Vikings to improve themselves this off-season, so maybe next year, instead of making it to the brink of the Super Bowl, they can actually, you know, make the Super Bowl… Eric Bieniemy has been the Vikings running back coach since Brad Childress took over in 2006.  In 2007, the Vikings drafted Adrian Peterson, and put him under Bieniemy’s tutlage.  In each of Peterson’s three years since becoming Bieniemy’s pupil, his rush yardage has decreased.  His fumble total actually went down from 9 in 2008 to 6 in 2009, but then the NFC [...]

Brett Favre was brought to the Vikings to exorcise the ghosts of failures past.  Far from succeeding in this endeavor, Brett has instead invited a whole array of new and frightening specters into the Purple’s haunted house. We already had enough goblins and ghouls cackling in our attic:  Pearson’s push-off, the Herschel Walker trade, Gary Anderson‘s miss, 41-Doughnut.  Thanks to Brett, we may now add The Interception to the roll-call of spooks. If the world were an ’80s comedy starring Bill Murray, we could call the Ghostbusters to come rid our house of its supernatural invaders.  Unfortunately, ghostbusting exists only [...]

Once again, the Super Bowl will go down without the Vikings.  The final 10 Points of the season… 1.  Memo to Viking fans who wish to do nothing but bash the referees:  You are making fools of yourselves.  That interference call against Ben Leber was probably a bad call but so what?  Had the Saints lost, they could’ve screamed and yelled forever about the roughing the passer call against Anthony Hargrove, or even the earlier unnecessary roughness call against Bobby McCray where he ran Brett Favre over at a point where Favre was basically a blocker.  Actually, if you add [...]

Way too much insanity to sort out now.  Suffice it to say, the Vikings had ample opportunity to take control of the game in the second half, but failed to do so, largely because of turnovers. And then there was that final “drive” of regulation, which will now take its place among the most infamous moments in Vikings history.  A 12-men in the huddle penalty caused when Brad Childress got cute with a substitution package pushed the Vikings back, setting up the Brett Favre interception that would send the game into overtime. The bad luck would continue into overtime, when [...]

The Vikings‘ plan against the Saints surely included scoring early and taking the crowd out of the game. On their first possession, the Vikings did indeed drive the ball down the field, scoring a touchdown on Adrian Peterson‘s 19-yard run, and greatly reducing the enthusiasm of the Superdome crowd. The Saints, unfortunately, got the crowd back in it on their own opening possession, when Drew Brees hooked up with Pierre Thomas for an electrifying 38-yard screen pass TD. The game looked like it might degenerate into a shootout, but after one more score from each club, the defenses began making [...]

The Vikings momentarily quiet the raucous Superdome crowd on Adrian Peterson‘s 19-yard TD run.  Nice tackling, Darren Sharper.