Daily Norseman
The Minnesota Vikings knew there’d be bumps along the way. Kevin O’Connell knew, too.
And maybe the fourth quarter from last Monday’s shocking win over the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field helped delude Vikings fans away from what I think we all knew in the back of our minds, as well.
For all intents and purposes, this is J.J. McCarthy’s rookie season, and there are going to be bumps along the way.
On Monday night, there were flashes. Yes, the first three quarters were downright abysmal, but the fourth quarter had that glimmer of a Vikings quarterback affirming “I AM HIM” for the first time since Brett Favre’s maiden voyage with the team.
There was none of that on Sunday night against the Atlanta Falcons.
The numbers hardly do it justice. The Vikings lost 22-6, but it could just as well have been 220-6. The offense was stagnant, aside from the last play from scrimmage in the first half when McCarthy found Justin Jefferson for 50 yards which directly led to half the team’s points just before the…well, half.
That play alone — in an instance where many, if not most coaches would have simply taken a knee and gone to the locker room licking their wounds — accounted for the following:
Blech.
Let’s give the defense some credit. Facing a quarterback with only marginally more experience than McCarthy — Michael Penix Jr. came in with four career starts to J.J.‘s — the Brian Flores-led bunch made the southpaw look like a rookie in his own right. He completed 13-of-21 passes for 135 yards without a score or an interception, and in general looked out of sorts for most of the night.
The crowd helped a lot with that, especially early on when he was having trouble getting the playcalls in from the sidelines, as well.
Numerous Falcons drives stalled in big spots. And while this game had the makings of a revenge game for one Falcon — Penix getting one over on McCarthy, who beat him for the National Championship 20 months ago — the spoils didn’t go to the most likely Atlanta player.
Hell, not even the second-most likely, which would have been Kirk Cousins. The camera panned to Cousins a few times during the game — fewer than I’d have anticipated, really — and he had the same exact look on his face each time.
Instead, it was Parker Romo — filling in for the sidelined Younghoe Koo — who got the last laugh, nailing all five of his field goal attempts to give the Falcons a comfortable lead before Tyler Allgeier plunged in with the clincher, and the game’s first/only touchdown with 3:22 left in regulation.
To be fair, the Vikings had no answer for Atlanta’s two-headed running attack of Bijan Robinson...
