VIKINGS PLAY COLDER THAN THE LAMBEAU TEMPS

There wasn’t much chance that the Vikings would win tonight’s game against the Green Bay Packers. Adam Thielen was put on injured reserve, Kirk Cousins was out after testing for Covid, and Michael Pearce was out due to illness as was Cam Dantzler. That goes without mentioning that the Vikings just haven’t played well this year. Defensively the game started off interesting at least with the Vikings getting some stops to hold the Packers to a few field goals. Aaron Rodgers actually seemed a little frustrated by what he was seeing on the field. The Vikings offense led by Sean Mannion was less than inspiring. Dalvin Cook was going nowhere on any runs with the Packers just playing the run daring the Vikings to even think about throwing the ball. One dimensional would be an oversimplification to describe the Vikings offense. Throughout the game you got to see exactly why Mannion is a backup quarterback. After Green Bay went up by 20 points the Vikings were nice enough to add a field goal before they went in at halftime. Moral victory achieved! No shut out.

Click here for a video recap of the game.

The Vikings came out in the second half with Paul Allen and Pete Bercich and every fan out there hoping that Head Coach Mike Zimmer would make a few adjustments. One was that Kene Nwangwu would field any kick that came near him the endzone would return it regardless of how deep it was. The other was that they put in rookie quarterback Kellen Mond simply to see if he could provide any kind of spark to the offense, and to just see what the kid can do. Nwangwu had his chances and took a few out of the endzone. Mond didn’t get to come in until later in the 4th quarter when Mannon banged his hand up and got in a series, but then Mannion came back in. To show how bad the Vikings offense was Mannion lead the rushing with a 14 yard run, Cook only had 13. The best catch of the game happened when the ball deflected off tight end Tyler Conklin and back to center Garrett Bradbury who caught it and ran for 17 yards as no one realized what was happening. Mannion hen hit KJ Osborn for a touchdown for moral victory number two! We scored a touchdown. That would be the last victory for the Vikings of the evening as they were officially eliminated from the playoffs and Green Bay locked up a first round bye in the playoffs.

What will tomorrow bring for the Vikings? That is the big question running through a lot of people’s minds. There is still speculation that Mike Zimmer will be let go as soon as the Vikings plane touches down in Minneapolis. Personally, I feel Zygi Wilf will wait until after the final game of the season next week, but with a primetime loss like this it might spur them to make the decision early. Will Kirk Cousins play next weekend? Maybe. If he is still out due to Covid because he is unvaccinated, we might see Mannion again. Will Kellen Mond get the start next week? Another maybe. Since the Vikings are out of the playoff race the Vikings may put the young man on the first team reps this week and just see what he brings. He completed a few passes tonight when he got in, but he also almost through a pick 6 if the ball hadn’t bounced off the defender’s hands. Vikings fans are in full off-season mode now with most hoping they lose next week to improve their draft status instead of winning a meaningless game. I know losing sounds like a bad idea, but in this case it doesn’t help to win especially if the thought is that the Vikings will be making a fresh start with a new coach and maybe a new General Manager if Rick Spielman is also let go in the offseason. Next week the bleeding finally ends and the healing starts as we look forward to next year. Again.