The 1997 Season

Note: 1997 was the first season that I wrote down thoughts the entire year. Therefore, the 1997 season summary will come in multiple additions to my blog. Today's 1997 entry will be Week 11, at Detroit thoughts.

Week Eleven: at Detroit

In the living room the clock sang, Tick-tock, three o’clock, game’s over, time to get moving, time to get up from the couch, three o’clock!, as if it was afraid I would never move again.

The afternoon house lay empty save for one human and two dogs sprawled motionless in front of the television. The clocked ticked on, repeating and repeating its song into the emptiness. Game’s over, time to get up!

I finally moved, getting to my feet, my dogs following. I was angry. I did not even try to adjust my blood away from anger by attempting to remain calm. I stomped across the room by judgment, not by sight because I was blinded by fury. I could tell by the tails between my dogs’ legs that I must be broadcasting my anger throughout the house. I tried to calm down for their sake.

The television then burped that the Indianapolis Colts had won their first game of the year by defeating the Green Bay Packers, and I went back to being angry. A chance to be alone atop the division squandered.

Considerable poetry has been written about what happens when love for a team turns to anger. Psychologists could explain the cause as well as the effect, the mechanism of displacement. Energy has to go somewhere, and if one channel is blocked, another will be found.

Not that I have definitely rejected the Vikings as so many bandwagoners will do this coming week, and certainly my emotion for my team has not suffered a transformation.

Call it reorientation. I have never let myself believe that the Vikes would run the table the rest of this season. But my ego has been damaged and consequently the team will have to provide some justification, some assurance, that they will not fall into a tailspin with three very tough games approaching.

This, the sixth season of Minnesota Viking head coach Dennis Green’s high-hearted quest to reach the Super Bowl, has become more intense and perhaps more essentially heroic than the preceding ones.

This season, the Viking team has had to come to grips with a merciless opponent: itself. No longer as four-time playoff losers but as a team at 8-3, the team has learned to reshape itself out of its own inner resources, for there must not only be an end to a Super Bowl-winning season but also a beginning of team togetherness.

When there has been honor and winning, it has been shared. When there has been shame and losing, it has been faced. This balance is important for it takes as much strength of heart to share the one as to face the other.

Today, however, was a day of shame. Knowing that it was important to win all remaining division games to stay in contention for the division title and home-field playoff games, the Boys in Purple came into the game resting on their laurels and past victories instead of showing up to play the game.

The scene at Detroit today was one of unobstructed desolation. Dismal Viking faces struggled to show signs of life here and there, some with the pathetic air of striving for the type of enormous comeback seen previously this season.

But again and again the team found itself betrayed at odd times and in odd places. Kick-off returns to mid-field were followed by three-and-outs. The Lions, too rugged and too emotional to let the Vikings back in the game, suggested that the Vikings were no more than the desiccating remnants of the Les Steckel season.

And over all this loomed a ghastly final score.

Now and then, there will come soft rains.

Jottings from Detroit

Who’s the most valuable Viking free agent to sign next year? In my opinion it’s head coach Dennis Green. If the Vikings let Green go, look for Oakland maverick owner Al Davis to acquire Green and for Green to bring free agents John Randle, Todd Steussie, Robert Smith and Jake Reed along with him. If the Vikings keep Green and this year’s crop of free agents, it won’t get any easier after the 1998-99 season as Cris Carter, Ed McDaniel, David Palmer, Korey Stringer, Orlando Thomas, Corey Fuller, and Robert Griffith become free agents.

Joe Schmidt will be airing an hour-long pre-game show prior to Monday night’s Viking-Packer game. The beginning segment is not to be missed as yours truly takes on a Cheesehead in heroic games of one-upmanship including the trading of barbs, thumb-wrestling, head-bashing, and electric football. We taped the segment this past Wednesday night. Who comes out on top? All I will say is they had to bring in a back-up Packer fan after I wore the first one out!

Posted by maasx003 at October 26, 2004 07:34 AM