In order to further educate ourselves on all things Vikings, we were doing a little reading this morning on McLeod Bethel-Thompson, the purple's third string QB and therefore the EARTH'S SAVIOR.

Information-gathering being the potential wormhole that it is, this eventually led us to Sage Rosenfels -- we had forgotten, it seems, that Sage was attempting to make it with the Vikings as recently last season before MBT won the third QB job late in the preseason, more or less handing the full slate of games to Christian Ponder.

This post is titled "The curious career of Sage Rosenfels," but it could also be called "Sage Rosenfels and the infinite sadness," or some such thing.

Rosenfels was never a great NFL quarterback, but he was a perfectly functional backup QB who, when called upon, could start for a team in a pinch. He arrived in Minnesota in 2009 under much the same circumstances as Matt Cassel arrived this year -- a guy who had a taste of both starting and coming off the bench was looking for a good, open competition for playing time on a team that needed QB depth.

Rosenfels' resume wasn't as lengthy as Cassel's, but both were coming onto teams that won 10 games and went to the previous year despite shaky QB play (T-Jack and Gus in 2008, Ponder in 2012).

Rosenfels, of course, had his entire life changed when the Vikings -- instead of letting that competition play out -- went and got the ol' Gunslinger, Brett Favre, in 2009. Don't get us wrong: this was absolutely the right move, and Favre was brilliant that year. Even after the 2010 meltdown, we would absolutely relive the Favre era 100 times out of 100.

But what we hadn't realized is that Rosenfels didn't just get lost in the shuffle a little ... a QB who came to the Vikings with plenty of time left (age 31) thinking he had a legitimate chance to be a starting quarterback NEVER THREW ANOTHER NFL PASS.

His career numbers don't amount to a whole lot of action in the first place -- basically a full season's worth of passes spread over many years. He has a 6-6 career record as a starter. He threw 30 TDs and 29 INTs. He had a passer rating of 81.2. He announced a couple months back that it was over, that he was retiring.

Maybe he got about all out of his career that he could have wanted. After all, there are worse things than practicing, holding a clipboard, not taking any real hits and still getting a paycheck.

Still, we can't help but think about how one move -- getting traded to the Vikings -- that seemed like a career-maker ended up essentially being a career-ender.