Packer Fans Get a Dose of Viking Fan Heartbreak
By Dan Zinski
The Packers just lost the NFC championship in about the most painful way you could imagine, falling to the Seattle Seahawks in overtime despite seemingly having the game won. I’m not sure too many Viking fans feel too sorry for all the grieving Packer fans in the world right now, but considering the Vikings’ long history of big game meltdowns, maybe we should.
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After the NFC title game flops in ’98 and ’09, both games the Vikings had a chance to win before losing in overtime, maybe we should feel a little more compassion toward our Cheesehead brothers and sisters.
Not that the Packers haven’t suffered their own failures over the years, but what happened to them today against Seattle: that was on a whole other level. They were up 16-0 and looked like they had Seattle dead to rights. Even late, after Seattle finally got on the board with a TD, the Packers looked like they had the game in hand.
But as Viking fans have learned over the years, you can never be sure of anything.
Viking fans all remember the moments that contributed to our team’s meltdowns. Missed Gary Anderson field goal. Taking a knee. 12 men on the field. Across-the-body INT.
The Packers now have their own little treasure chest of horrors to discuss for years to come. Brandon Bostick failing to catch Seattle’s onside kick and Ha Ha Clinton-Dix failing to defend Seattle’s two-point conversion pass will shoot to the top of the list.
Packer fans will also spend a lot of time discussing two early drives that should have ended in touchdowns but only resulted in field goals, drives where Mike McCarthy elected to go for three instead of rolling the dice on fourth-and-short situations at the goal line.
There will be so much second-guessing and finger-pointing and blame-placing. Viking fans know what that routine is like. To this day, Dennis Green still gets crushed for taking a knee. Mike Morris still gets ripped for his high snap to Gary Anderson. Brett Favre still gets destroyed for trying to throw across his body and being picked off by the Saints.
It’s not fun having those memories. Of course, it’s a lot easier to deal with that stuff when you have four Super Bowl wins in the bank like the Packers do. And those four Super Bowl wins are the reason a lot of Viking fans probably aren’t feeling Packer fans’ pain right now as much as they could.
Failing in the big moments sucks that much worse when you have nothing but a history of failure to fall back on. Packer fans at least have known the ultimate thrill of victory. For that reason…yeah, screw them.