DETROIT -- The Vikings were officially eliminated from playoff contention Monday night with a 21-3 loss to the New York Giants.
While their postseason hopes realistically evaporated weeks ago, the Vikings were embarrassed and angry over their performance Monday.
The offense was an absolute mess, mustering only 164 total yards, and the defense allowed two 100-yard rushers. We will have plenty on the end of Brett Favre's consecutive games streak online and in the paper later, but here is a sampling of the mood inside the locker room after the game.
"Hats off to the Giants, they came in and kicked our butts," defensive end Jared Allen said. "There's no excuse. How are you going to excuse it? It's our job to go play football no matter where it's at. Adversity set in and they responded to it better than us."
Said linebacker Ben Leber: "That performance out there is unacceptable to every guy in the locker room. I think that's why everybody is shocked right now, especially on defense to give up that many rushing yards. That's unacceptable. But we're going to come back and make it right. I don't care if we're out of the playoffs. We're going to make it right."
Said linebacker Chad Greenway: "I want to apologize to our fans. We have good fans back home. We have fans who made it all the way here. We have fans everywhere. They expect us to go out and play hard. I think we played hard. We just didn't play good enough to win that's for sure."
Tight end Visanthe Shiancoe literally had tears in his eyes as he talked about the performance and he became more agitated the longer he talked.
"That's embarrassing. We had a lot of energy coming into this game. People were energized. I can't put my finger on nothing for why this turned out this way. Our offense has to put up more points than three points. You've got to put up more than three points on the Giants. They're going to score. You've got to score too."
