Here we are with Super Bowl XLVIII. There's been 37 of these things since the Minnesota Vikings were last in one of them. They've come close a few times. For some reason, they get, oh so, close every eleven years. In 1987, Darrin Nelson was inches from a touchdown pass that might have forced overtime against the Washington Redskins in the NFC Championship game. 1998 was supposed to be the year. Rookie receiver Randy Moss ignited the highest scoring offense in NFL history. The Vikings were 15-1 on the season and everyone's favorite to cruise to the Super Bowl. Gary Anderson missed his only field goal of the entire season in the NFC Championship game. A field goal that would have clinched the Vikings return to the Super Bowl. The Atlanta Falcons won in overtime. 2009 should have been the year when Brett Favre jump-started the passing game and led the team to the NFC Championship game in New Orleans. The Vikings dominated the game but a mind-numbing penalty and an errant Favre pass left the game tied after four quarters. Another overtime. The Vikings never saw the ball in that overtime and the New Orleans Saints went to the Super Bowl. There were other NFC Championship games in the 37 years but they were mostly disasters. 37 years is a long time to wait for a Super Bowl return and it's fairly likely that the wait will stretch, at least, a year or two more.
When I discovered the Minnesota Vikings it was a pretty common occurrence to see them in the Super Bowl. Almost to the point of it maybe being tiresome to some people. It happened enough that quarterback Fran Tarkenton could go on Saturday Night Live, talk about the Vikings return to another Super Bowl, and joke about their inevitable defeat. The Minnesota Vikings have been to four Super Bowls. They went to three in a span of four years. They were the Buffalo Bills before some of the Bills even thought of playing football. Super Bowl IV, VIII, IX, XI. If not for a Roger Staubach "Hail Mary" touchdown pass, Super Bowl X might have been theirs as well. Just getting to a Super Bowl is a pretty awesome accomplishment. Some players never even see that. Some truly great never even see that. Some have said that losing a Super Bowl is worse than not getting there. I'm not so sure about that but then I haven't been on the field for one. I do know that you have to be in the Super Bowl in order to win the Super Bowl. Watching the Minnesota Vikings play in a Super Bowl is a wonderful thing. Losing four of them brings about some very different feelings and a whole lot of questions. Those questions start with, "what went wrong?" The Vikings were a dominant team from 1969-76. The defense was one of the best in NFL history. When Tarkenton returned to the team in 1971, the offense started to catch up with the defense. The first thing that went wrong with the Vikings in those Super Bowls was that they played four truly great teams. In Super Bowl IV they faced the Kansas City Chiefs. This team was loaded, especially on defense. Quarterback Len Dawson, defensive linemen Buck Buchanan and Curley Culp, linebackers Willie Lanier and Bobby Bell, corner Emmitt Thomas, kicker Jan Stenerud, and coach Hank Stram are all in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Receiver Otis Taylor, tackle Jim Tyrer, and safety Johnny Robinson should be. In Super Bowl VIII they faced the Miami Dolphins. The next year they got a Pittsburgh Steelers team that was about to take over the decade. Two years later, it was the Oakland Raiders. The Steelers and Dolphins of the 1970s are among the best teams in league history. The Raiders aren't far behind. The Vikings didn't lose four title games to a bunch of slappies.
Besides facing a very strong opponent, there was another common thread through all four of the Vikings Super Bowl appearances. They didn't look ready to play the game. They certainly didn't look like the team that stormed through the regular season and dominated opponents in the playoffs. The 1969 Vikings team led the NFL in scoring as well as defense. This was a terrific football team yet they were dismantled by the Chiefs. They even defeated the Chiefs 27-10 in the first game of the 1970 season. That was too little too late as the Super Bowl is the only one that truly counts. The Vikings lost to the Chiefs 23-7, the Dolphins 24-7, the Steelers 16-6, and the Oakland Raiders 32-14. Judging by the final scores, Super Bowl IX against the Steelers was the closest that the Vikings came to pulling out a win. The score was actually 9-6 in the fourth quarter. Score-wise, this was a close game. The Vikings defense played fairly well but the offense did nothing but get in their own way. The Steelers defense got in their way as well. The Vikings only score came on a blocked punt. In all four of these championship games, the Vikings played nothing like the team that earned the right to play in them. Why? I think that a couple of things played a significant role. Both involved coach Bud Grant. He was a fantastic football coach. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, led the Winnipeg Blue Bombers to four Grey Cup titles, led the Vikings to four Super Bowls, 158 wins in the NFL, 290 wins in professional football. Great stuff. He was a stickler for routine. The team arrived at games at a certain time. The pregame routine was always the same. The Vikings even practiced standing at attention for the National Anthem. Everything was scripted. Everything was done the same for every game. The schedule was so important. The Super Bowl is the one game in which control of the team is completely taken away from the coach. It's even worse in today's constant media shitstorm. The routine that guided the Vikings through a terrific regular season and postseason was tossed aside for the Super Bowl. This may not seem like much but everyone has a little "creature of habit" in them. When a routine is thrown off maybe everything comes off of the rails a bit. Over the years I've heard some former Vikings players mention this as something that might have thrown them off for the big game. Another reason for the Vikings Super Bowl stumbles is based more on speculation than fact. In the NFL Films 30 minute highlight show for Super Bowl VIII, Don Shula talked of several adjustments that he and his coaches made to deal with the Vikings ferocious defensive line. I've heard Raiders offensive linemen Gene Upshaw and Art Shell talk of adjustments that they made in Super Bowl XI to deal with those same ferocious players. In both games, Alan Page, Carl Eller, and Jim Marshall were handled fairly completely. Larry Csonka ran wild for the Dolphins. Clarence Davis did the same for the Raiders. I've never heard of the Vikings making similar adjustments for the teams that they were about to face. The Vikings basically approached all four games intent on using what got them there. That tactic can work. It always seemed to work for Vince Lombardi and his Green Bay Packers. If you're not going to throw anything new at an opponent, you still have to be able to adjust when that opponent isn't cooperating. The Minnesota Vikings never did adjust in any of their Super Bowl opportunities.
The most frustrating thing about each of the Minnesota Vikings Super Bowl losses is that the team that played in those games wasn't the team that got there. Something happened. When the Vikings finally get back to that big game, I hope that history doesn't repeat itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment