Vikings-Lions is an end and a beginning
Two 14-2 teams meet to decide the NFC North and also their playoff paths.
Is it the 272th game of the NFL regular season or the first game of the NFL playoffs? Yes. Both can be true, just as the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings have been.
This is a league run by fanatic capitalists who, in this case, espouse raging socialism. Wealth is redistributed every day, through the salary cap and the inverted order-of-finish draft and a schedule that favors the downtrodden. But the NFL never approaches the ideally unanimous 9-8 or 8-9 finish. It is now on the verge of producing a 15-2 team and a 14-3 team in the same NFC North. The Lions and Vikings are currently 14-2 as they prepare for Sunday Night Football in downtown Detroit. In celebration, NBC will send its entire studio crew to Ford Field, along with every cast member of Law & Order through the years, the assembled Chicago fire, polices and rescue departments, and maybe even Chevy Chase.
No NFL game has ever matched teams that have combined for 28 wins, and no regular season game has meant more for teams who are already in the postseason. This is not just a jostle for playoff position. If it were, some of its leading men would be sitting out. The rewards and risk are enormous, especially from a psychic sense. Unless you’re older than 67, you weren’t alive the last time the Lions won an NFL championship, and their whole season has been a warmup Super Bowl party. The Vikings’ fans are even giddier, on Cloud 9 ½ maybe, because Minnesota did not make the playoffs last year, shipped quarterback Kirk Cousins to Atlanta, and put its faith in rookie J.J. McCarthy, who then blew out a knee in training canp. The QB left standing was Sam Darnold, a washout with the Jets and Panthers.
The winner will be the No. 1 seed on the NFC side of the playoffs and will play host to all its NFC postseason games. It will also sit out next week and get healthier, which is paramount for the Lions in particular.
The loser will fall to the No. 5 seed and will have to play next week, and not at home. If Tampa Bay beats New Orleans and the Rams beat Seattle, the Bucs will be the No. 4 seed and will welcome either Detroit or Minnesota to the Gasparilla coast, and the Bucs have already beaten the Lions this year, in Week 2. Playing Tampa Bay means having to block Vita Vea, cover Mike Evans, and shake the blessed assurance of Baker Mayfield, none of which is a picnic.
But if the Rams lose to Seattle, they drop to No. 4 and will play the Detroit-Minnesota loser in SoFi Stadium. For both the Vikings and the Lions, Sean McVay is the one who knocks.. McVay’s Rams have beaten Minnesota this season, and they lost at Detroit by six in overtime. That came in the opener, nine months after the Rams lost a Divisional Playoff game at Detroit, 24-23. They have won nine of 11 games.
The other, far less likely possibility is that the Bucs somehow lose to a New Orleans team that has made nobody happy but orthopedists, and that Atlanta beats Carolina to win the NFC South and takes over the fourth seed. Even so, the Falcons are no peanut butter cup, not with rookie Michael Penix at quarterback and with Bijan Robinson running wild.
The Vikings and Lions played in Minneapolis on Oct. 20, and the Lions were leading 28-17, until they weren’t. The Vikings’ ability to duck and dodge kept them in position, and then Ivan Pace ran David Montgomery’s fumble back 36 yards for a 29-28 lead. Amid the Skol chants, Jared Goff set his jaw and hit 14-yard passes to Jahmyr Gibbs and Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Jake Bates followed up with the field goal that won it, 31-29. It’s the only one-score game the Vikings have lost this year, as opposed to eight wins, although it’s hard to spike the ball over such conquests of Jacksonville (12-7), Arizona (23-22), Chicago (30-27) and the Jets (23-17).
The Lions’ two losses were 20-16 to Tampa Bay and 48-42 to Buffalo, both at home, the latter of which served as Josh Allen’s MVP campaign video. They have topped 40 points six times and had held opponents to 14 or fewer points six times, before they began bringing out the gurneys for Detroit’s defense. Elite edge rusher and State Farm ballerina Aidan Hutchinson broke his leg, and defensive linemen Alim McNeill, Marcus Davenport, John Comisky and Kyle Peko and linebackers Alex Anzalone (who practiced Wednesday) and Derrick Barnes have also missed time with month-to-month injuries. In Hutchinson’s five games, Detroit had 15 sacks. In the 11 since he was hurt, Detroit has 19. Not coincidentally, the Lions’ secondary has been progressively shaky, although Kerby Joseph often fixes that with one of his nine NFL-leading interceptions, including two at San Francisco Monday night.
This is not the ideal situation when you need to keep Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison out of the end zone, and Minnesota’s offensive line bubble-wrapped Darnold against Green Bay’s pass rush last week.
What happens when the Lions get the ball? Touchdowns, usually. They won when Goff threw five interceptions at Houston on Nov. 10. Goff hasn’t been picked since, and he has 11 touchdown passes in his past three games.
His nominal opposition on Sunday will be safety Harrison Smith, edge rusher Robert Greenard and all-around defensive back Josh Metellus. But Goff and offensive coordinator Ben Johnson will really be loading up against Brian Flores, the Vikings’ defensive coordinator and, in 2020, the Dolphins’ head coach. And that’s where the sub-story of this game begins.
Goff had been the Rams’ quarterback in 2018, when they won the NFC Championship in Sean McVay’s second season. But McVay slowly became disenchanted with Goff, and those feelings accelerated on Nov. 1, 2020 at Miami.
Sacked by Emmanuel Ogbah, Goff coughed up the football and Andrew Van Ginkel ran 78 yards for a Miami touchdown. Sacked by Shaq Lawson, Goff fumbled again, and Kyle Van Noy took it to the Rams one-yard-line, from where Myles Gaskin scored for a 28-7 lead. The Rams lost, 28-17, and Goff had a passer rating of 65.9, having thrown 61 passes and completed 35. He was too flustered by the pass rush to get the Rams where McVay thought they should go, and after the season the Rams traded him to Detroit for Matthew Stafford, and won the Super Bowl the next year.
In his second season with Minnesota, Flores has been the most influential defensive coordinator in football, along with the Chargers’ Jesse Minter and the Eagles’ Vic Fangio. Offenses score on a league-low 30.7 percent of their possessions against the Vikings, but they turn it over 16.5 percent of the time, tops in the NFC. The Vikings also have 31 takeaways, again best in the NFC, and a league-high 22 interceptions. And that stringy-haired guy who keeps showing up around the ball? That’s Van Ginkel, one of several tidy, quiet player acquisitions during the Vikings’ supposedly fallow off-season.
As Detroit kept adding to its weapons cache, Goff became a more settled quarterback whose efficiency is almost bizarre. He has completed 71.7 percent of his passes, surpassed only by Tua Tagovailoa, but he augments that with 8.7 yards per attempt, second to Lamar Jackson. He, too, is protected well, but he has a much better approach against pressure. He also has a coach, Dan Campbell, who believed in him when many NFL people felt he was just a trading pawn.
How will Goff handle Flores’ blitz-happy game plans, in which pass rushers descend from the ceiling? So far, pretty well. In the first Minnesota game Goff was 22 for 25 for 280 yards, no picks, two scores and four sacks. In the first Minnesota game last year, he was 30 for 40 for 257 yards, no interceptions, one sack, one touchdown and 257 yards. In the second Minnesota game last year Goff was 23 for 32 for 320 yards, two scores, no interceptions, one sack and five explosive plays, including a 70-yard TD to St. Brown. Note that Minnesota was not as healthy last year and Nick Mullens was quarterbacking in relief of Cousins. Also note that Detroit won all three of those games.
The final key, beyond the constants of turnovers and special teams,, is the Detroit running game. Montgomery is on injured reserve. He and the blurry Gibbs gave the Lions a double-whammy ground game, with Montgomery known as Knuckles and Gibbs as Sonic. Gibbs gets the Lions’ share of the run plays now, which could be an immediate boost and a cumulative drag.
This is probably the most kinetic football event in Detroit history. As of Thursday, the lowest get-in ticket price on StubHub was $446, and the cheapest lower-bowl ticket was $700. One shudders to think how playoff-ticket prices would balloon at Ford Field, but Lions’ fans just want to find out. Win this one and you never have to pack a bag until, and unless, you get to the Super Bowl. Lose it, and buckle up for a rocky road.
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Shameless Plug
For those who live in and around Long Beach, CA, you’re encouraged to check out a premiere at Long Beach Playhouse. It’s called “Ted Turner And The Last Roundup,” written by yours truly and featuring two top-shelf actors, Noah Wagner and Amanda Karr. It’s about Captain Outrageous himself, in his Montana cabin, looking back at all he did and wondering what it all meant.
Go to LBPlayhouse.org for tickets. Showtimes are Jan. 10-11-12 (8 pm, 8 pm and 2 pm) and the same for the next weekend, Jan. 17-18-19. I hope to see you there.
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