It is with a heavy heart, but no great sense of surprise, that I take to my keyboard to write about the latest failure of my beloved Vikings. The Vikings have fallen, tragically, to the New Orleans Saints in the the NFC Championship Game, 31-28. As a Minnesota sports fan since childhood, I am used to seeing heartbreaking defeats such as this one. The Vikings had the game won, despite repeatedly fumbling the ball in the second half. They were in field-goal range, time was expiring, and they had simply to execute a simple play, a run up the middle, to give their field-goal kicker the opportunity to win it. They were called for a 12-men-on-the-field penalty, knocked out of field-goal range, and then Brett Farve threw an unfortunate pass that was picked off. I do not blame Favre for this. I blame whoever the idiot was who was the 12th man on the field. The game was won before that play. Brett’s play wasn’t smart, but it should never have even happened. The team let him down. They let him down again in the overtime and the Saints won on a field goal to win it.

This was, essentially, the kind of painful ending I most feared and anticipated as a Vikings fan. This is what happens to us, every single time. It gets old after a while I tell you. I had even prepared myself for this eventuality before the game. I hoped they would win but did not consider it a foregone conclusion. I expected that things probably would go this way and determined that I would not let it get to me the way the loss in 1998 did. I even told myself that I liked the Saints and would pull for them if they turned out to be the better team and beat the Vikings fair and square.

I’m here to write, however, that there was nothing fair or square about that “victory”. The team I saw out there playing in the black and gold was a dirty team. They held all game long. They committed pass interference on almost every single play. And they beat up the QB after the ball was gone over and over again. They were called for none of it. As the game progressed and the refs continued to let the Saints get away with dirty, cheap, classless play after dirty, cheap, classless play, I could barely believe it. The Vikings defense shut down the Saints in the second half. The Vikings offense beat themselves with turnovers and brain-dead penalties. The Saints did not beat the Vikings, the Vikings beat the Vikings. All the Saints did was play a classless, dirty game filled with holds and cheap shots against an opponent who had them outmatched in every phase of the game from the middle of the third quarter on.

I had intended to cheer the Saints if they beat us, but seeing what kind of team they are, I can’t. That performance out there was the kind of trash I expect to see from the Cowboys. Dem Saints are no lovable bunch, they’re dirty, and they’re not the best team in the NFC.

I won’t be watching the Superbowl, but I’ll tell you this. If the Colts don’t beat themselves, there is no way in hell that Saints squad will do it. The Colts will crush.

I feel bad for Brett. The team let him down. Percy, Adrian, Bernard, they all fumbled when we needed go ahead scores. They ruined drive after drive, and then somebody screwed up and blew the game winning field goal with a 12-man penalty. Brett kept bringing the squad back after these miscues, over and over, limping around thanks to a couple of Saints late hit cheap shots, but in the end it is his mistake, not the many many others that preceded it, that the media will grab on to and beat him over the head with. How many times can a guy keep getting knocked down and expected to make up for other peoples mistakes before he makes one of his own? I don’t blame Brett for this at all, though some will. I don’t believe the Saints won this game (one of their touchdowns was even a lie, the runner was down at the two, they didn’t actually score enough points to win), although they’ll get to move on to get their asses handed to them by the Colts. No, this was just one of those things. A mess. A tragedy. A classless, dirty team that lost in every phase of the game will move on, and my beloved Vikes will go home yet again. Sigh…

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RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

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