N/S The Vikings Are In The Wrong Side Of History (2 Viewers)

[jasonsw]

I’d say it was all worth it for ‘09. The Super Bowl, the win against the Vikings, and the meltdown in Minnesota.

The Vikings getting pop face embarrassed the following games was always nice

 

[Saintman2884]

They did. They actually crushed the 13-2 Niners in Candlestick. It was the first time Walsh ever benched Montana.

The next week they were a dropped pass by Darren Nelson from, I believe, beating the Redskins.

That would've tied the game at 17-17, and maybe Washington drives down the field to kick a late-game winning FG, or in OT, but there's no guarantee that even if Minnesota ties the game or Darrel Green doesn't knock away that pass from Nelson when he was pumped up on a paint killing cortisone shot, they go on to win it and advance on to another SB appearance.

I would argue, as a NFL historian, that the Vikings best chance to make another SB appearance(but winning it is murky) was their 1998 epic season when a young, phenom in Randy Moss caught anything or everything and couldn't be stopped and Randall Cunningham showed how dominant of a QB he couldve been in Philly with a decent OC teaching him. Their 1998 squad's defense, despite having some Pro-Bowlers and eventual HOF John Randle, was overall, kind of a tad above-average and if they'd won, I can't say for certainty, they would've defeated a great Denver team that wanted to go out and win one last SB for John Elway. Their 2009 team, even if they'd had beaten us, I'm not sure survives getting diced away by Manning's Colts in his typical surgical fashion. Remember, in the lead-up to Super Bowl 44, we were like what is it, almost 9 or 10 point underdogs. The Vikings 1998 team was better than their 2009 squad in several key components but even still, were they a comparable, competitive enough squad that could've hung and maybe beaten their AFC counterparts in the SB?

.Crazy, interesting thing about Minnesota right now is that their current team, if you replace Kirk Cousins with lets say, Justin Herbert, then that offense becomes really scary and dominating and becomes of a potent threat to advance further in the playoffs then however far they'll go with Cousins. Kirk Cousins might get you to the Division Round if your WC opponent is a mediocre, average team in a mediocre division, but he'll lose once he faces better teams with punishing defenses, and more well-rounded rosters like Philly, SF, or Seattle.

 

[Saintman2884]

Oldest franchise of all the four major pro sports that hasn’t won its league’s highest championship. It’s really remarkably bad.

At least Minnesota can say they've actually been to a Super Bowl in the modern NFL era(post-1970 AFL/NFL merger), the Cleveland Browns, despite winning so many NFL championship under Paul Brown and Blanton Collier, have made it to 3 AFCCG's and lost back-to-back (1986-87) in painful, almost inventive agonizing fashion marked by a combination of bad, terrible in-game coaching decisions, sheetty, awful luck, and just being outmanuevered in general. The Browns have only made the post-season twice in the past 20 years. At least Vikings fans can look forward to their teams actually winning during the regular-season almost yearly and fielding good, halfway competitive teams, if Cleveland can win 8-9 games a season, that's almost synonymous with winning a division title and makes their fans deliriously happy.

As far as people exclaiming about how many NFL championships Browns won under Paul Brown, Otto Graham, and Jim Brown, thats great, not too many people from the Browns last title win (1964) are actually still alive and most modern NFL sports fans don't regard or revere anything won in the pre-1966 AFL/NFL SB era as really memorable. The Kansas Chiefs actually won 3 AFL titles, are they the same as their three SB Championships, do they even count for anything anymore other then just obscure, historical stats?

 

[Alan12]

Couldn’t have happened to a whinier fan base.

**** ‘em

 

[boutte]

I remember way back in the pre-historic days when Fran Tarkenton and company went to four Super Bowls in the stretch of about 7 yrs or so. I think Joe Capp was the QB for one of them. I still don't understand how they didn't win at least once. Those were some really great teams. The Purple People Eaters were one of the all time great defenses. And Tarkenton is one of the best QBs I ever saw. As you can probably tell I was a fan of the team even though I didn't like Tarkenton much.

Then 2009 happened and now I throw my head back and laugh.

 

[boutte]

At least Minnesota can say they've actually been to a Super Bowl in the modern NFL era(post-1970 AFL/NFL merger), the Cleveland Browns, despite winning so many NFL championship under Paul Brown and Blanton Collier, have made it to 3 AFCCG's and lost back-to-back (1986-87) in painful, almost inventive agonizing fashion marked by a combination of bad, terrible in-game coaching decisions, sheetty, awful luck, and just being outmanuevered in general. The Browns have only made the post-season twice in the past 20 years. At least Vikings fans can look forward to their teams actually winning during the regular-season almost yearly and fielding good, halfway competitive teams, if Cleveland can win 8-9 games a season, that's almost synonymous with winning a division title and makes their fans deliriously happy.

As far as people exclaiming about how many NFL championships Browns won under Paul Brown, Otto Graham, and Jim Brown, thats great, not too many people from the Browns last title win (1964) are actually still alive and most modern NFL sports fans don't regard or revere anything won in the pre-1966 AFL/NFL SB era as really memorable. The Kansas Chiefs actually won 3 AFL titles, are they the same as their three SB Championships, do they even count for anything anymore other then just obscure, historical stats?

The real Browns are in Baltimore.

 

[Judge_Smails]

I remember way back in the pre-historic days when Fran Tarkenton and company went to four Super Bowls in the stretch of about 7 yrs or so. I think Joe Capp was the QB for one of them. I still don't understand how they didn't win at least once. Those were some really great teams. The Purple People Eaters were one of the all time great defenses. And Tarkenton is one of the best QBs I ever saw. As you can probably tell I was a fan of the team even though I didn't like Tarkenton much.

Then 2009 happened and now I throw my head back and laugh.

I remember Tarkenton losing to the Raiders and all the highlights from him in MN and at UGA. He was good on some strong teams, but Manning was a lot better QB on bad teams.

I loved those Vikings teams though, Chuck Foreman, Ahmad Rashad, Blount, and all the rest of that D. Bud Grant made all those great players better, but their offense betrayed them in every SB they played in.

 

[Saintman2884]

I remember Tarkenton losing to the Raiders and all the highlights from him in MN and at UGA. He was good on some strong teams, but Manning was a lot better QB on bad teams.

I loved those Vikings teams though, Chuck Foreman, Ahmad Rashad, Blount, and all the rest of that D. Bud Grant made all those great players better, but their offense betrayed them in every SB they played in.

Interestingly enough, although it doesn't get mentioned too much or discussed by most NFL media these days, Tarkenton actually played and made some mediocre-to-bad NY Giants teams from 67-71 look halfway decent although he had only one winning season with them at 9-5 in 1970, with a couple of .500 7-7 seasons mixed in-between. He was an original member of the inaugural Vikings team in 1961, but his scrambling style never got over and led to a bitter feud with Vikings HC Norm Van Brocklin, who favored a more dropped-back pocket passing-oriented styled QB and after 1966 season, Brocklin had Tarkenton traded to Giants because he felt their feud was counter-productive to team's success (in actuality, it was Van Brocklin's coaching that was really the problem). The late 60's-early 70's Giants were kind of a mediocre, older version of their early 60's championship teams, still good occasionally but kind of falling apart and Tarkenton eventually demanded a trade back to Vikings after the 1971 season because he criticized the Giants FO, team management, and their unwillingness to make the team competitive.

To be a Giants fans during the 1970:s was a painful, difficult experience because the FO was perceived as cheap, bottom-feeder, they were playing in an old, antiquated Yankee Stadium and played in 2-3 stadiums between 1973-76 before they moved into New Jersey and into Giants Stadium in 1976. "The Miracle at the Meadowlands" was just the final straw in a near-decade long pursuit of futility, mediocrity, terrible drafts, and inept HC's.

Bud Grant is and was a legendary HOF HC who belongs in Canton, but in every single SB his Vikings played in, the opposing AFC teams way out-coached, out-prepared, and dominated TOP and especially in regards to the Chiefs, Dolphins, and Raiders games, their O-lines just manhandled smaller, not as big Vikings linemen and LB's. Vikes might've won against Steelers if they hadn't turned the ball over so much, and conceived a better gameplan. By the time one gets to Super Bowl XI, Grant knew this was likely be his "Purple People Eaters" last chance to win a SB, because most of the team was aging, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall, Alan Page, and Tarkenton would either be retired or traded away within 2-3 seasons. Phil Villapiano of Oakland Raiders has always said that Minnesota, by the time they got around to facing them in 1976, was a near-broken down machine, the team's chemistry, attitude, cohesion was way too tense, Kenny Stabler wrote in his autobiography that he felt that Fran Tarkenton blamed too many people for his team's failures then owning them up as team leader. Some teams, under some HC's, despite them achieving almost superhuman goals and making multiple SB appearances, and become perennial playoff contenders for over a decade, just have this mental block or fugue that prevents them from going further and winning it all. That was certainly the case for the late 60's-early 80's Vikings, mid-late 80's Denver Broncos under Dan Reeves, and Marv Levy-led 1990's Buffalo Bills.

 

[Saintman2884]

I remember Tarkenton losing to the Raiders and all the highlights from him in MN and at UGA. He was good on some strong teams, but Manning was a lot better QB on bad teams.

I loved those Vikings teams though, Chuck Foreman, Ahmad Rashad, Blount, and all the rest of that D. Bud Grant made all those great players better, but their offense betrayed them in every SB they played in.

I also believe that like with Detroit's Billy Sims, if Chuck Foreman had played at a Pro-Bowl caliber for 4-5 more seasons into the early-to-mid 80's then he did, he would be enshrined in Canton today.

Similar logic also applies for Chuck Muncie but as Saints fans over the age of 50-55 know who remember the awful 1-15 1980 season, most of Muncie's problems lied with what he was snorting up his nose during the week, on the sidelines, or during weekly practices. By his own admission, he came to the Saints in 1976 out of California as a drug addict. He began taking recreational drugs in college and sort of started his cocaine habit while still in college.

 

[Saints 4 life]

 

[GeauxSainz]

Couldn’t have happened to a whinier fan base.

**** ‘em

This x1000. We live rent free in their heads. Pathetic.

 

[Saint Jack]

This x1000. We live rent free in their heads. Pathetic.

It is comical how true that is. Went to Minnesota one time with a Saints shirt and I was seen as bad as Packers or Bears fans.

 

[GW93]

Kind of mind-blowing that, in spite of nearly 20 years ruling the AFC east, the Patriots are only ahead of the Dolphins by one one-hundreth of a percent.

Pats were a pretty crappy team, with 1 or 2 exceptions, before the Brady/Belichik era. Phins had Don Shula for 20 years.

 

[Saintman2884]

Pats were a pretty crappy team, with 1 or 2 exceptions, before the Brady/Belichik era. Phins had Don Shula for 20 years.

Actially, they were a pretty decent-to-good team, a constant perennial playoff contender for the first part of the 1960's, from 1976-1988, they only had one losing season(albeit, it was a pretty awful,.terrible 2-14 season where they played a notorious NFL history game against the equally awful-then Baltimore Colts in a contest called the "Blunder" or Stupor Bowl" in IIRC, Week 15 or 16 of the 1981 season. But aside from that one bad year, for over a dozen years, New England was a solid, above-average team that had good GM's, drafted usually good-to-great players who had multiple Pro-Bowl careers, some, like John Hannah, IMHO, Stanley Morgan, were HOFers. They had a lot of winning seasons but didnt appear in the postseason as much as they should've and that was largely due to how dominant, and powerful Shula's Dolphins teams were from the early 70's-mid 80's where they owned the AFC East.

40-45 years ago, the AFC East was regarded as one of the toughest, most competitive divisions in the NFL and there were more then a few teams where a 9-7, 10-6, or 9-5 Pats team had to settle for either second place, or barely miss the post-season. I would argue, however, that one major stumbling block that explains why the mid-70's.and 80's Patriots didn't achieve more was due to the Sullivan family who owned them. Even by 1970's-80's NFL ownership standards, their wealth was modest, by comparison and they were always financially cash-strapped and made questionable, or bad business decisions like funding the Jackson 5's 1984 Victory Tour which was badly-organized, badly-mismanaged, promoted by scandal-plagued, crooked boxing promoter Don King who kept berating and insulting Michael Jackson so much that at one point, MJ threatened to sue King and Sullivans and almost pulled out of the concert tour, several times. The tour amassed a large amount of money, but Sullivan's lost more then they earned, and before the tour even began, they used Foxboro Stadium as collateral for a bridge loan to fund the concert dates.

Anytime you have a successful playoff-caliber NFL team that sells out home games for years, they should be awashed in money yet under Sullivans, Pats rarely made a profit compared to other Boston-area sports teams the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. Also, old Foxboro Stadium was, a bare-bones stadium that didnt age well and by the late 80's, was considered antiquated, broken-down, and financially insolvent. Also, for most of the Pats existence pre-Brady/Belichick, even though they fielded competitive teams, they had to compete with older, more established Boston-area teams like Celtics, and Red Sox who have (and probably still do) have larger, more passionate fan bases.

Can you imagine an organization that reaches the gold standard of the Celtics? They are the NBA's version of New York Yankees, except classier, nicer, and more respected by their peers than the Bronx Bombers. (Before the NBA came back to New Orleans in 2002, I grew up rooting for the Celtics, those 80's superstar squads made me and millions of Americans fall in love with pro basketball over again).
Before Robert Kraft bought the team in 1994, it might be more accurate to describe the Patriots team history as sometimes good-tp-great, but under-achieving due to them having so many winning seasons but without the requisite post-season success that tends to come with it. Even before Brady/Belichick came along, New England had a pretty strong run under Drew Bledsoe: led them to 4 postseason appearances, winning AFCCG in 1996 and appearing in Super Bowl XXXI, thats not what I'd label a mediocre, crappy or sheetty team/franchise.