vikings/nfl
Dan Wiederer began covering the Vikings in 2011, enthusiastically delivering insight on the team across the Star Tribune's print and digital products. Prior to joining the Access Vikings team, he spent seven seasons covering ACC basketball at The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer. He also covered the Chicago Bears in 2003 and 2004. Follow him on Twitter @StribDW.
Mark Craig has covered football and the NFL the past 20 years, including the Browns from 1991-95 and the Vikings and the NFL since 2003. Since 2008, Craig has served as one of the 44 Pro Football Hall of Fame selectors. He can be followed on Twitter at @markcraignfl.
Posts about Vikings road games
Vikings will play Steelers in London on Sept. 29, 2013
Posted by: Chris Miller Updated: October 16, 2012 - 4:58 PM
The Vikings will play the Pittsburgh Steelers at Wembley Stadium in London on Sept. 29, 2013, the NFL announced today.
The game would count as a Vikings home game.
Here is the Vikings' release:
As part of the NFL’s International Series, the Minnesota Vikings have been selected to host the Pittsburgh Steelers at London’s Wembley Stadium on September 29, 2013.
Announced during NFL owners’ meetings today, the Vikings-Steelers matchup will be the seventh game in the NFL’s London International Series and the first in the league’s historic step to play two international games during the 2013 season. The Jacksonville Jaguars will also host the San Francisco 49ers at Wembley Stadium on October 27, 2013.
“This is a unique opportunity for the Vikings organization to highlight our brand on an international level,” said Vikings Owner/President Mark Wilf. “Playing in London provides exceptional exposure to the team, as well as Minnesota’s impressive business community and tourism industry. We are honored to represent the NFL on a global level, and we look forward to playing in front of our international fan base.”
With a 5:00 p.m. UK kickoff (Noon CT), the Sunday game will be the Vikings first regular season matchup in London and the team’s first appearance in the UK in over 30 years. The Vikings previous trip to London was a preseason game against the St. Louis Cardinals on August 6, 1983, a game the Vikings won 28-10. Since the Vikings inception in 1961, the team has played four international games, all exhibition matches and all Vikings wins. The team’s last trip abroad was in 1994, a 17-9 exhibition victory over Kansas City in Tokyo.
“This is a great chance to leverage the popularity of the NFL and the Vikings to promote our region as one of the best in the world for business,” said Greater MSP CEO Michael Langley. “Our mission is to promote the Minneapolis-St. Paul region globally, to attract new investment and jobs. We can use the Vikings International Series game as an opportunity to build our region’s brand and to meet with global investors and decision-makers to sell our region and state.”
“At Meet Minneapolis, we are constantly focused on highlighting Minneapolis as a tourism, event and travel destination,” said Meet Minneapolis CEO Melvin Tennant. “With a new stadium opening in 2016, a Vikings game in London will provide a great opportunity to introduce a global audience to this market and encourage international events to consider Minneapolis, City by Nature.”
MINNESOTA VIKINGS INTERNATIONAL GAMES
Year Location Opponent Result
1983........................... London......... St. Louis Cardinals........... W 28-10
1984........... Goteburg, Sweden............... Chicago Bears........... W 28-21
1993.............................. Berlin.................. Buffalo Bills............. W 20-6
1994............................. Tokyo........ Kansas City Chiefs............. W 17-9
Colts slip past Vikings 23-20
Posted by: Dan Wiederer Updated: September 16, 2012 - 8:43 PMINDIANAPOLIS - Maybe this is where the projected Hall of Fame journey gathers momentum — in the final minute of a tie game with the No. 1 pick of the 2012 draft doing what the Colts expect him to do for a decade or longer.
Game-winning drive? Hey, Andrew Luck just wanted to give it a try, handling the moment with such tranquility you’d have thought he was out walking his dog.
Luck sure didn’t seem fazed by the pressure. Not the figurative kind that had heightened after Indianapolis blew a 20-6 lead in the final 10 minutes Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium. And not the literal kind either, the heat coming from the Vikings’ defense as they tried to steal yet another improbable victory.
Instead, in the final half-minute, Luck delivered two consecutive 20-yard completions to Donnie Avery and Reggie Wayne. Just like that, in 19 seconds, Luck propelled Indianapolis from its own 20 into position for Adam Vinatieri to kick his game-winning 53-yard field goal.
Final score: Colts 23, Vikings 20.
This is the easy story, the one about the promising rookie who stepped up in the clutch and made sure his encouraging afternoon didn’t sour.
“He doesn’t get rattled,” said his coach Chuck Pagano. “He sees the field. He understands the offense extremely well. He knows exactly what he’s getting because he puts the time in … There’s no panic to the kid.”
Yes, Luck showed all sorts of calm, savvy and athleticism, especially on his first throw of that final drive when he spun, rolled left and put a dart into Avery’s sternum. But to truly understand how Luck recorded his first NFL victory, it’s only proper to contextualize the day by documenting all the costly mistakes the Vikings made, a grab bag of blunders so deep that the classroom sessions at Winter Park promise to be intense this week.
Above all else, there were those 11 penalties committed by nine different Vikings for 105 yards.
Few proved more costly than the 15-yarders committed by Andrew Sendejo and Jared Allen in the third quarter, gifts which allowed the Colts to prolong a 14-play field goal drive. That produced a 20-6 Indianapolis lead.
Sendejo was flagged for roughing Colts punter Pat McAfee, even though replays show the contact may have been minimal or non-existent.
Three plays later, Allen dived and tackled Luck as he crossed the sideline on a meaningless 1-yard run on third-and-16.
“I still don’t think it’s a penalty,” Allen said. “They can say what they want … I didn’t even hit him with my shoulder pads. I hit him with my arm. This is football I thought.”
Three times Sunday, the Colts put together scoring drives of nine plays or longer, including a 13-play, 80-yard stampede on their opening drive. There was also the touchdown they scored with 7 seconds before halftime when, on third-and-3, Wayne easily steered through the Vikings’ Cover 2 zone to snag a 30-yard touchdown pass.
The postgame fingers pointed at linebacker Erin Henderson for failing to drop deep enough in the coverage.
“That’s something we’ve talked about and something we’ve worked on,” Vikings coach Leslie Frazier explained. “We put him in that spot, and we’ve just got to execute our assignments. We didn’t on that play.”
But expecting Henderson to hang with Wayne by himself is risky business. Plus, the Colts might never have had the ball for that score if Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder had not badly missed on a third-and-6 throw to a wide-open Percy Harvin on the previous series.
Yep, the Vikings were left to recap Sunday’s failure with so many of the neatly packaged explanations they ran into the ground a year ago.
“We did some things today that really hurt us, where we hurt ourselves,” Frazier said.
“That’s the NFL,” cornerback Antoine Winfield added. “Like last year, we lost a lot of close games. We have to tighten it up.”
Sure, there were a few bright signs. Harvin, for example, delivered 12 catches for 104 yards. Ponder (27-for-35, 245 yards, two TDs) also hung tough, producing two fourth-quarter touchdown drives that again displayed his ability to rally after adversity.
If you’re big on silver linings, maybe that was encouraging.
“I’m not into silver linings,” Allen said. “It’s like taking your sister to the prom. We have to win football games. It doesn’t matter how you win them, where you win 'em, we’ve got to win. And this is a game we should have won.”
First Vikings preseason game is in 118 days
Posted by: Chris Miller Updated: April 13, 2012 - 11:30 AMThe Vikings' preseason opponents were announced earlier this month, and the times and dates for the games were firmed up today.
The Vikings will play at San Francisco on Friday, Aug. 10 at 8 p.m. (Central time).
Back-to-back home games follow against Buffalo (7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 17) and San Diego (7 p.m., Friday, Aug. 24).
The preseason ends with a Thursday night game at Houston on Aug. 30 at 6 p.m. Central time.
The regular season schedule's dates and times will be announced on Tuesday night. The team will have home and away games with Green Bay, Detroit and Chicago. It will have road games at Seattle, St. Louis, Washington, Houston, Indianapolis and home games with Tampa Bay, Arizona, San Francisco, Tennessee and Jacksonville.
The Chris Cook question
Posted by: Dan Wiederer Updated: November 13, 2011 - 3:49 PMVikings cornerback Chris Cook has gotten breaks before and people still believe in him ... in this Sunday story.
Mark notes the Packers face long odds to go unbeaten in his Sunday column.
Reusse found a faraway fan who was right a couple of years ago.
And Sid, as always, got Ryan Longwell's view of the Packers-Vikings rivalry, talking about the quarterbacks.
Chargers' second half too much
Posted by: Mark Craig Updated: September 11, 2011 - 9:51 PMGame coverage and sidebars and notes are going up soon at startribune.com.
Here's the early game story from tonight ...
SAN DIEGO – The Vikings slinked out of Qualcomm Stadium, kicking themselves all the way back to Winter Park for blowing a 10-point halftime lead, Percy Harvin’s season-opening 103-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and a rare opportunity to beat a Super Bowl contender on the road.
A lot of good things happened, but the bottom line ultimately leaves the Vikings with a 24-17 loss to the Chargers, not to mention the only 0-1 record in the NFC North heading into Sunday’s home opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“I thought we controlled the game,” quarterback Donovan McNabb said. “But we just let it go. It was a tale of two halves.”
McNabb will take the brunt of this week’s fan frustration. His first pass attempt as a Viking was intercepted and turned into a 6-yard touchdown drive. And he threw for 39 yards, which even he called “embarrassing” after the game.
But cheer up, Donovan. There’s plenty of blame to go around.
The defense played better than the offense and was on the field 15 minutes longer. But missed tackles, untimely penalties and slow reaction to checkdown passes to running backs helped the Chargers score 17 unanswered points in the second half.
“It just feels like we kind of gave it all away,” defensive end Jared Allen said.
The Chargers took their first and only lead of the game on a 19-yard touchdown dump pass to fullback Matt Tolbert with 5:01 left in the game. Cornerback Cedric Griffin’s 15-yard penalty for a late hit out of bounds early didn’t help.
Three minutes later, San Diego sealed the victory when defensive tackle Fred Evans jumped offsides on third-and-2 with 2 minutes left. That was the Vikings’ fifth penalty of the fourth quarter, ninth of the game and the third time a defensive lineman jumped offsides on the Chargers’ game-sealing drive.
Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers was under pressure and out of sync in the first half, but regrouped and completed 18 of 23 second-half passes for 193 yards and a touchdown. Many yards came after the catch because of missed tackles.
The Chargers’ first drive of the second half was helped when Antoine Winfield, one of the best tacklers in the league, missed a tackle that allowed running back Ryan Matthews to catch a pass and move 37 yards to the Vikings’ 17-yard line. Four plays later, Tolbert ran through strong safety Jamarca Sanford’s missed tackle at the 3-yard line en route to a 7-yard touchdown run that closed San Diego’s gap to three points.
“It’s frustrating because I think what hurt us is missed tackles, which you can’t have,” Winfield said. “I missed three or four out there myself. You can’t do that against the No. 1 offense in the league [from 2010].”
The Vikings’ defense had still played well enough to win when the Chargers closed to within three points. At that point, it was fading quickly because of San Diego’s lopsided edge in time of possession.
It was at that moment that the team’s brand new offense needed to chip in or the game was going to go south in a hurry. The offense responded with one first down as the team’s pass protection issues continued.
McNabb had only 2 yards passing in the second half. With better protection, he might have answered San Diego’s opening touchdown of the second half with a 63-yard touchdown to Bernard Berrian. Berrian beat his coverage and was open, but McNabb was hit as he threw a deep pass that cornerback Antoine Cason went harder for and tipped away.
The offense had its moments in the first half. Adrian Peterson ran for 74 of his 98 yards rushing in the first half. His 46-yard burst to the San Diego 3-yard line set up McNabb’s three-yard touchdown pass to Michael Jenkins. The Vikings led 17-7 at that point.
The Vikings, however, fizzled after halftime and became predictable. Five of the six first-down calls in the second half were runs. One of them was a 2-yard loss by Joe Webb, who was inserted as a Wildcat quarterback after Peterson had back-to-back runs of 5 and 7 yards.
“It was kind of run, run, pass,” Jenkins said of the second half. “We were kind of predictable for them on third down. That made it tough because then they were able to bring some pressure and get after us.”
Considering how well the offenses in Green Bay, Chicago and Detroit played in Week 1, the Vikings have to be concerned. Especially after Harvin spotted the offense a 7-point lead by becoming the first Viking to ever return the first kickoff of a season for a touchdown.
“You want to be able to have some explosive plays in the passing game, especially when you have Adrian Peterson in the backfield,” coach Leslie Frazier said. “We’ll take a look to see what we can do to improve that. I think we can improve that. We’ll have to.”
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