Perception kissed the Vikings gently on the forehead and awakened them Sunday morning as NFC favorites, NFL darlings and a warm-and-fuzzy Super Bowl feel-good story in the making. Then, after a 3-hour, 9-minute Philadelphia flogging, perception kicked the Vikings out the back door as a 5-1 fraud, an exposed pretender and a 5-11 flop in the making.
As usual, reality sits somewhere between the pitchforks and purple rose petals that have been thrown toward Winter Park.
Is there cause for concern? You bet. And it's as big as Jake Long, T.J. Clemmings and Jeremiah Sirles rolled into one giant Triangle of Pain for Sam Bradford.
But the knee-jerk reaction outside the walls of Winter Park shouldn't always be immediate and unconditional surrender while sucking one's thumb from the fetal position.
Essentially, for a lot of teams outside of New England, the modern-day title can be won by continuously climbing out of crater-sized setbacks, surviving inevitable attrition in a brutal sport and getting hot come Christmas. Eli Manning has stolen two of Bill Belichick's Lombardi trophies that way.
In 2007, Eli's Giants were 0-2, giving up 40 points per beating and had just lost 35-13 at home to the Packers. Then they went 13-4, with a Super Bowl win over Belichick's 18-0 Patriots.
Four years later, Eli's Giants started 4-2, went 3-5 over the next couple of months and finished 6-0 by beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Again.
The Vikings weren't the perfect 5-0 team Sunday morning. They were a team with a quarterback, two starting offensive tackles and a Hall of Fame running back on injured reserve. And, by the way, those who thought the Vikings were better off without Matt Kalil and Adrian Peterson had something to think about while watching Long's pass protection and the running game's inability to get two inches on third and fourth down at the Eagles 6.