11th-Hour Observations Before the Season Starts

Welcome back to Vikings Football, my Purple People!

 

Quick check: how many new alcoholics do we have this season? Come on…just a showing of hands…save the introductions for the AA meetings we’ll all be in starting February or so…

 

…but, anyway, it’s definitely been another storied offseason for our insanely embattled team and its fans. Heartbreaking playoff loss? Check. Draft surprises? Eh, not too many. Dumb non-football-related injury? Totally. Months of QB speculation? Almost off the charts. Preseason injury potentially scrubbing the season?

 

Yeah, we could’ve done without that one. Teddy has been such a positive for the team as a player and a leader that I know we all felt deflated as hell with the news on our young signal-caller and it seemed to get worse with every update on his knee. Watching Hill and Stave after that was worrisome at best, and facing the prospect of a season with a past-prime backup QB and a couple of kids had many of us already looking at 2017. This was the brutality of Vikings’ fan realities, wondering how our D and running game was going to save our asses yet again.

 

Then, Rick decided to throw us a major curve, trading for Sam Bradford at what was the 11th hour…and we have a whole new whacko kind of drama unfolding! Vikings fans, let’s face it…some broken parts of our personalities seem to LIVE for this stuff!

 

I see the addition of Bradford as the ultimate whacko move of Spielman’s career. Sure the Burt Fahv-Rah acquisition was maybe the most hyped and ridiculous event in recent Vikings history, but wow…trading for a former 1st overall pick that has been injury prone, and whose career has been similarly hampered by some truly mediocre teams?

 

WE HAVE NO DAMNED IDEA WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN THIS SEASON. VIKINGS FAN NIRVANA!

 

Face it, we kinda love the abuse.

 

On the eve of our first regular-season game, I’m already shaking my head and chuckling at what’s ahead. Sure, most of the media has Hill starting tomorrow, but we’ll see Sam under center as early as next weekend…and we could be seeing an improved 2009 situation, folks:

 

we have the D and the coaching that we DIDN’T have, back then.

 

I’ll get this out of the way: after watching a ton of Bradford footage over the past week, I think he could actually be exactly at the level we wanted Teddy to achieve this season. Sam takes more chances, but he also has more arm…and his recent stats came from a Philly team that couldn’t seem to haul in a pass even if the balls hit the receivers right in the gut. With Diggs, CJ, and Rudolph, Bradford has a chance to repair his career and the Vikings have a real chance to be right back into the Super Bowl conversation.

 

How quickly can Sam get the playbook and the player timing sorted out? This question might be the biggest in the NFL right now, even beyond dumbass National Anthem protests by millionaires complaining about the very police guarding their games. If…IF…Sam and the offense click quickly, the Vikings could conceivably have more wins than last year, defend their position as division champs, and make a real case for the team’s first Lombardi trophy…

 

…if, if, if, if….

 

Hey, it’s why they play the games, right? The games aren’t simply decided with the line from Vegas, it comes down to packs of athletes playing out battlefield strategies while running over each other for some inflated pigskin. They’ll run into each other, throw each other around, and occasionally do mid-air acrobatics for an inch, a yard, a score.

 

I’m confident, but I’m also laughing at the sheer, pure Vikings-level amount of chaos heading into this season. I don’t think it’d be the same, really, if our team went into a season without things being at least slightly bizarre.

 

I love this fuggin’ team, it’s always entertaining. I don’t see us as cursed, I see the Vikings as that slightly unhinged but still beloved friend that gets you into all the fun trouble…and without whom, life would be pale as hell.

 

I know I’ll be laughing, screaming, cursing, snarling, and pounding on a table in a bar full of strangers…and likely within the first quarter.

 

Life is grand.

 

SKOL VIKINGS!!!!!