Sid Hartman: Perhaps Vikings were due for a dud

Looking back on Sunday night's loss 30-17 to Arizona, Vikings coach Brad Childress believes the Cardinals had a lot of incentive to play one of their best games of the season.

"They certainly hadn't forgot our 35-14 win over them last year and the week before [without quarterback Kurt Warner] they had lost to Tennessee [on the last play of the game]," Childress said.

What Childress didn't mention was that a year ago as a member of the Jets, Brett Favre threw six touchdown passes against the Cardinals in a 56-35 New York victory.

And the 38-year-old Warner, who sat out against the Titans because of a concussion, ending a streak of 41 consecutive starts, certainly wanted to be up to the challenge of facing the 40-year-old Favre, who on Sunday played his 283rd consecutive game, breaking Vikings great Jim Marshall's NFL record.

The Cardinals also had another incentive when Seattle beat San Francisco earlier Sunday, assuring Arizona of a three-game lead in the NFC West if they could win.

Still, none of those reasons should be an excuse for the Vikings playing the way they did. But maybe the Vikings were due for a game like that after playing so well all season.

Yes on the same Sunday that the Vikings lost to the defending NFC champion Cardinals, the underdog Raiders went into Pittsburgh and beat the Super Bowl champion Steelers, while the Patriots bowed to an ordinary Dolphins team in Miami. So anything can happen in the NFL.

And not only did the Vikings lose to the Cardinals, but they suffered a number of key injuries as well. Obviously, the biggest was to E.J. Henderson, who might be the best middle linebacker in the league. He broke his leg and is out for the season and will be replaced by rookie Jasper Brinkley, who has not started a game.

This was the most physical game of the year, according to Childress. Not practicing on Wednesday were running back Adrian Peterson, wide receiver Percy Harvin, safety Tyrell Johnson and right tackle Phil Loadholt. Johnson left Sunday night's game and was replaced by rookie Jamarca Sanford; Loadholt also missed part of Sunday's game but returned.

The Vikings had 13 players on the NFL injury report, compared to the Bengals' six, though their list includes three who are definitely out for Sunday's game.

Wants extension Believe me, there is nothing to the rumors that Gophers football coach Tim Brewster is a candidate for the Kansas job.

There also was an earlier rumor that Brewster had applied for the UNLV job.

Brewster believes he will have his best team next year with a roster made up of last year's and this year's recruiting classes.

Brewster sincerely believes he has done a good job and deserves an extension and that with only two years left on his contract, recruiting will be hurt if he doesn't get it.

Brewster said his agent hasn't talked as yet to athletic director Joel Maturi about an extension.

Jottings It's somewhat ironic that Iowa State and Minnesota will finally get together and play in the Insight Bowl because Maturi and other Gophers athletic directors have been trying to get the Cyclones on the football schedule for years without any success. Iowa State's reason for not playing the Gophers was because the Cyclones already play Iowa every year, and they wanted to play only one Big Ten team on their nonconference schedule.

The Gophers lost a couple of outstanding football players who had previously said they would play for Minnesota. Four-star running back Josh Huff from Aldine Nimitz High School in Texas has decided to stay close to home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and attend Texas Christian after previously committing to the Gophers in October. Defensive back Antoine Lewis from Proviso East High School in Maywood, Ill., switched from the Gophers to Purdue.

Charlie Strong, the assistant head coach at Florida who was hired as the new Louisville coach on Wednesday, was the last candidate interviewed for the Gophers job before Brewster was hired three years ago. At the start of the season, the Bengals were the least experienced team in the NFL, with 3.77 years of experience on an average.

Asked about the successor to backup catcher Mike Redmond, who won't return to the Twins, General Manager Bill Smith said: "Drew Butera and Jose Morales both played most of the year in Triple-A and then we've got a young man named Wilson Ramos coming up behind them that played in Double-A that's one of our better prospects. Butera is playing in Puerto Rico, Morales will be playing in Puerto Rico, and Ramos is playing in Venezuela. So, all three of them are playing. Ramos is doing very well down in Venezuela, I think he's hitting close to .400 and he's got a bunch of home runs and RBI." Smith added about Ramos: "He missed some time during the season with a hamstring problem ... so it's good for him to try to make up those at-bats."

It appears Ray McCallum Jr., the outstanding basketball player from Detroit Country Day who visited here and had interest in Minnesota, is going to play for his dad, the coach at the University of Detroit. So now the Gophers are concentrating on Cory Joseph, the brother of Gophers guard Devoe, and they have a good chance of landing him, although he is being sought by a number of schools.