PJD’s Week 15 Recap: How To Become The New Lions

I don’t know, maybe that’s not fair. The Lions of yesteryore have and were completely awful. I mean, they are the only team in the modern era to have gone 0-16. That’s super bad! No one else has done that in recent history. Lions, you’ll always have that! So, no, the Vikings aren’t THAT bad, but boy oh boy, did they look pretty bad on Sunday when they ended up losing 14-16 to Detroit. A Detroit team that now leads the NFC North division. Blech.

The Vikings started out pretty swell, which is why this game is a bit of a head scratcher. They scored the first 14 points of the game to go up 14-0, playing solid defense and competent offense, on the road no less! And then the turnovers started.

Teddy Bridgewater threw two pretty ugly interceptions that turned the game around a bit, and the Vikings never seemed to fully recover. To their credit, I guess they didn’t fully implode, either? That’s good, right? The Vikings came out in the second half and even sustained like an 11:00 minute drive, lasting on the field at least three times longer than you last in bed. For someone so young like Bridgewater, who hasn’t built up stamina (we get the joke yet?), that’s pretty impressive. But, they could never capitalize.

Three missed field goals by Blair Walsh did the team in. OK, one of them was a 68 yard attempt that actually had the distance, but was wide left. The others were just bad, however, and made him and the entire special teams unit look bad. That is noteworthy.

The Vikings totally should have won this game though. Run down the stat line any which way you want, and the Vikings pretty much dominated in most every area:

I mean, aside from the glaring red section that says we basically gave the Lions points, the Vikings were the better team and played the better game in almost all facets. 360 total yards? Over 300 yards passing? From a Vikings quarterback?! How does that even happen?

Oh well. The Vikings were already eliminated from the playoffs when Sunday rolled around, thanks to some weird mathematics I refuse to understand. So this game didn’t really mean a whole lot. I guess, if you want to cheer against the Packers, then seeing the Lions win and the Packers lose means the Pack are out of the driver’s seat for the division, which is pleasant. But that’s about it.

The Vikings can still finish 7-9 or 8-8 on the season, and frankly that would be a pretty impressive record considering where they were a year ago. A full season of “learning” for Teddy, another year of Zimmer defense, healthy players, and maybe better receivers? I think we make noise in 2015.