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It has never been easy being a Minnesota Vikings football fan

By Chuck Hunt - Editor | Jan 12, 2025

I know. I just wrote about the Minnesota Vikings last week. I should be writing about something else this week, right? But I cannot stop myself. It must be done.

If you don’t care a whit about the Vikings (and I am somewhat jealous of people like that) then quit reading now and do something else. If you are sick of talking about the Debacle in Detroit, and you are finally healing from the deep depression you have been in, then maybe you should also go find something else to read in this issue. There are a lot of obits this week, but that can depress you as well.

You know, I truly thought that that Sunday night game on national TV would be a close, hard-fought, exciting contest that would probably come down to the end, with the Vikings winning, or losing, right at the end of the game. After all, they have been having close, one-score games for two seasons now.

I knew Detroit was a very good team. But so are the Vikings…or so I thought.

Then I remembered that it was a big game. It had been moved to Sunday night so every football fan in the world could see it. It was being hyped almost as much as a Super Bowl game. First time ever two 14-2 teams meet in the last game of the season.

All that was the kiss of death for the Vikings. It always has been, it seems.

Whenever they play on national TV, they just don’t play well. There were those four Super Bowl appearances, where they never played up to their potential and lost every one of them. For those of us old enough to have endured all four of those, we are not surprised when the Vikings let us down in the big games.

But Sunday in Detroit was worse. Every facet of the Vikings team collapsed. The quarterback, sure, but also the offensive line, the receivers, the running game, the vaunted defense and even the kicker, all had meltdowns.

People watching across the country, who do not follow the Vikings, were probably saying, “How the heck is this team 14 and 2? How have they even won one game, much less 14 games?”

Despite all that, the game actually should have been close. But how does a supposedly good team get inside the red zone four times and not score a touchdown?

If they had, the game would have been very close and probably decided in the last few plays, just as I had thought it would.

Instead, the Vikings got chewed up and spit out by a bunch of Lions. Let’s face it, they got their butts spanked…on national TV.

It was hard to endure. Some folks told me they quit watching in the fourth quarter. It was definitely a huge topic of conversation everywhere in Minnesota and beyond on Monday.

Yet, there is a ray of hope for those of us who are die-hard fans.

After all, unlike those Super Bowl losses, this utterly embarrassing performance in Detroit was not the end of the season for the Vikings. They are still in the playoffs. They are going to continue to play – at least one more game. They will face the Los Angeles Rams, one of the two teams they have lost to this year, on Monday night, in a nationally televised game again.

And the Rams will not have home-field advantage as the game will be in Arizona due to the tragic wildfires in L.A.

Could the Vikings break the curse and win the game?

And if they do, they will go back to Detroit the next week to face the Lions again. For the third time this season. And we all know how hard it is to beat a team three times in one season. Revenge would be oh, so sweet.

So, a glimmer of hope. Can they do it? Yes. Will they do it? Not sure.

Will I watch them on Monday night? You bet. Will I root and cheer and wear my lucky Vikings socks and jersey? Of course.

Will I get my heart broken again? We can only hope not.

All I want is that, win or lose, they play hard and don’t have a melt down again.

Just playing better than they did in Detroit would be some atonement. Winning the game against the Rams would at least be something to cheer about.

And, if they do the play the Lions again, I at least hope that, win or lose, they look like the great team that they are.

As for me, I will try very hard not to write about the Vikings again next week in this space. But I can’t promise anything at this point in time. I will just have to wait and see what happens on Monday.

In the meantime, all I can say is a fan is a fan through good times and bad.

SKOL Vikings!