On Sunday night, the Vikings received a surprising amount of screams, not the ones that usually happen on Halloween. Viking fans weren’t trying to scare their team, they were sending a message.
They expect more. You can’t blame them.
Minnesota’s 20-16 defeat to Dallas at US Bank Stadium will forever be remembered by Viking fans the day Cooper Rush made his first NFL pro in four years and beat Kirk Cousins.
It was not just a loss. This was a milestone. On the Washington soccer team, there is Clint Longley, who replaced Roger Staubach and led the Cowboys to an unlikely Thanksgiving victory in 1974. The Vikings now have Rush, who will replace early favorite MVP Duck Prescott and, in effect, end the Vikings season. on Halloween night.
Rush completed 24 of 40 assists for 325 yards and two touchdowns, including the winner of the game on Amari Cooper in the corner of the end zone with 51 seconds left. The Cousins and Vikings have managed a couple of late rallies this season, beating Detroit on a last-second field goal and Carolina in overtime, but they didn’t come close on Sunday. The final transmission was chaos.
Cousins finished 23 of 35 assists for 184 yards and touchdowns in his 111th start in the NFL.
Dallas may have a top-notch offensive line and athletic opportunistic defense, but if he expects too much to assume that Cousins, who raised $ 21 million and owed $ 35 million in 2022, will outplay a quarterback who made just three passes in goal until Sunday. … regular season game – is it over?
It’s possible that some of those Sunday exclamations could have actually been the many Dallas fans who greeted Rush – “Coooooop!” But there was no doubt when the Vikings, facing third and 23rd of their 35 in the fourth quarter, called Alexander Mattison a draw.
They were jokes. The fans are tired of it.
“If you’re not disappointed, you probably shouldn’t be a player on this team,” said receiver Adam Thielen, who caught the Vikings touchdown and ended up with six team tackles at 78 yards.
The cowboys arrived with Prescott in street clothes – a clear sign that this late-night game, which is broadcast on national television, meant less to them than it did to the Vikings – and it did. Whatever happened, Dallas (6-1) would still have a solid lead in NFC East. The Vikings (3-4) began a stretch of four difficult games that could make or break their season, and that was a bad, if not fatal, start.
They were given a gift when Dallas, when it was necessary to fry a larger fish, detained Prescott due to the stress of the calves. Turns out it didn’t matter.
The Vikings have well-paid stars all over the field, on either side of the ball – Cousins, Thielen, Daniel Hunter, Eric Kendricks, Dalvin Cook, Justin Jefferson, Anthony Barr – but rarely play as a team with well-paid stars. over the field on either side of the ball.
Hunter was lost to a shoulder injury in the first half and never returned – he is due to undergo an MRI on Monday, Zimmer said – and the team is left without their best corner-back, Patrick Peterson, who is injured in reserve with a hamstring injury. But there was enough talent on the field to defeat the decapitated snake. The default setting for this command is… um.
The Vikings’ defense played a few important steps, including stealing and clearing the ball from head coach Xavier Woods, but allowed the Cowboys to drive 75 yards in two minutes for a winning touchdown. The secondary was rude; shudders at the thought of what Prescott would do about it.
Winners of three of the four who returned to 0.500 and finished their week of farewell, the Vikings were happy with their team getting into the game, and when Detroit and Chicago stumbled, they should have been the only Green Bay competition in the NFC North. … Now it turns out that Packers (7-1) have no competitors.
The loss was so shocking that Zimmer could not explain how it happened or even what would happen next. Minnesota will play in Baltimore next Sunday, then against the Chargers in Los Angeles, then return home to face Green Bay. If something doesn’t change dramatically, jobs could be lost.
When asked how his team can channel their frustration into something positive, the eight-year-old head coach replied: “Good question. I think it takes time to think and understand what we can do differently, because today it was a heavy loss. ”
