The loss to Miami on Sunday takes away a lot of the glamour of the Bears game next Sunday.
The game doesn’t mean anything, because the Vikings can’t make the playoffs, but with victories over the Dolphins and the Bears, the Vikings would have finished 8-8 for the season and the fans would have had a little more interest in Vikings football.
Now Sunday’s battle will be for one of those teams to stay out of last place in the NFC North.
This Vikings team has just got to find a way to maintain leads and add to leads instead of letting teams just walk all over them after they get ahead.
When you take a 14-0 lead against the Lions at home, and you take a 14-0 lead against a Dolphins team that had given up 63 points in two previous losses, you expect to win the game.
Coach Zimmer and his staff are going to have to find a way to cure this weakness, something that Coach Leslie Frazier encountered last year as well.
Sid Hartman has been a major voice on the Minnesota sports scene for several decades. He writes a column four days a week, and has a weekly radio program on WCCO830 at 9:30 a.m. Sundays. He also can be heard at 7:40, 8:40 and 9:20 a.m. on weekdays.
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