Purple Destiny
How can you tell when a team has suffered a Tough Loss? First, some context...
The Vikings suffered a Tough Loss yesterday. What makes some losses tougher than others? Well, for starters, there needs to be a lot on the line. For example, if a win in a game can bring a team a Division Championship and the opportunity to host a home playoff game, while a loss can send them home for the next seven months.
That was yesterday's situation. It was, in every way, a Big Game.
Now, let's say that this team, the Vikings in this instance, has to go on the road, but they have the good fortune of playing a team (the Cardinals) with one of the worst records in the league and a lame-duck coach (meaning that the players have little incentive to show the outgoing staff anything). Not only that, but the team they are playing has given up the most points in the NFL, while also scoring the fewest points, a rare feat not accomplished by any NFL team in the last five years.
Oh, and the Cardinals are starting their backup QB. And the Vikings just routed a very good Chiefs team the week before. That's the kind of setup that would lead to the Vikings being 7.5 point favorites going in. The Vikings had momentum and history on their side, not to mention an overwhelming talent advantage. They were, quite simply, expected to dominate.
To review, we have identified two elements of the Tough Loss: High stakes, and high expectations. The final element? You could choose several, from bad officiating (not an excuse available to the Vikings yesterday) to bad gameplanning to bad bounces, but nothing wrenches guts like improbable final plays. Ding, ding! We have a winner!
So, then, how can you tell when a team has suffered a dreaded Tough Loss? When the game is over, and the players simply drop to their knees and backs and roll around on the ground. They might also slap the ground, or court, or field. That's how you know a team has suffered a tough loss, and all you had to see to know how tough a loss it was for the Vikings yesterday was look at the number of white-clad players literally wallowing on the field after the final play.
It was, in short, one of the toughest losses I have ever seen a team endure.
And they got what they deserved.
I won't go into it, really. The playcalling was awfully conservative, save for the times when the Vikings decided to be aggressive and go for it on fourth down. There were, once again, too many penalties. And they played down to their opponent, but when you're sporting losses to the Giants, Chargers, Raiders, Cardinals and Bears, that's really not too much of a surprise any longer.
Where do they go from here? The immediate speculation is that the odds of coach Mike Tice returning are "50-50", while any listen to the talk-radio meltdowns happening last night and today would put Tice's chances at something like 1 in 1,000 of getting a vote of confidence from fans.
It's a tough call.
Look, some good things have happened for this team. They had a great draft, and they went from a 6-10 team to a 9-7 team. They did improve, and they still don't have the talent they need on the defensive side of the ball. Tice is engaging with the fans, media and players, and most importantly the players all seem to enjoy playing for him.
But so what? Players don't need to love their coaches to win for them. The dustbin of NFL coaching history is filled with nice guys with losing records.
But there are too many troubling issues for this team that have had a direct impact on their success, and Tice has his hands (or should have his hands) all over each of them. The Vikings lead the league in penalties, usually taken as a sign of the overall quality of coaching. The Vikings have shown a consistent ability to make the wrong decisions on when to go for a field goal vs. when to go for it on fourth down. In the case of yesterday's game, the problem wasn't so much the decision to forego an attempted FG in the first half, as it was the play call on fourth down, a lame roll-out designed to get the ball in the hands of a backup TE.
At a minimum, I expect a change of offensive coordinators. The Vikings have a premier passing attack, a great offensive line, and three good to great running backs. And yet, this team never stuck with anything long enougn to establish an identity. Of Michael Bennett, Onterrio Smith and Moe Williams, none was allowed to play a couple of consecutive drives to establish a rhythm. They managed to turn three good backs and a great line into a nearly invisible offense.
So much talent, and so little idea of how to use it. And, of course, it doesn't help that the premier examples of the talent (Randy Moss, Daunte Culpepper) are either inconsistent or tentative.
Yesterday's game was so Vikings. You just have to follow this team to understand how appropriate it all was. It was their destiny to lose in such a fashion. And of course, as a parting turn of the knife in the backs of Viking fans everywhere, the Green Bay Packers and their 70,000 fans watched in Lambeau, as the Packers directly benefitted from the Vikings' collapse. Now they host a playoff game next week, while the Vikings still roll around on the ground somewhere.
Good riddance to the 2003 Vikings, one of the strangest teams I ever watched in any sport.
10:50:17 AM 
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