Souhan: Thielen, not Patterson, seizes key role in Vikings' final game

Adam Thielen played football his whole life, starring at Minnesota State and becoming known as "Mr. Mankato" during NFL training camps, so he could do what he did on Sunday: Catch a touchdown pass to win a game for the Vikings in his home state and toss the football to his girl.

In the third quarter of the Vikings' 13-9 victory over Chicago, the Bears failed to cover Thielen, and Teddy Bridgewater hit him in stride for a 44-yard touchdown. It was the longest catch and first receiving touchdown of Thielen's brief NFL career.

Thielen had more trouble getting through the end zone than into it. After scoring, he started jogging the width of the field, holding the ball in his right hand, only to have Bears cornerback Kyle Fuller knock it away. Fuller was penalized. Thielen was peeved.

"I wasn't real happy about that," he said.

Thielen turned, glared, retrieved the ball, and chucked a wobbly pass into the stands that Caitlin Graboski, whom he plans to marry in May, easily grabbed.

"She has better hands than I do," he said.

That would make two in the budding Thielen family who have better hands than Cordarrelle Patterson.

But he wouldn't have gotten to play much at receiver if not for the recurring failures of Patterson, his best friend on the team and the Vikings' most worrisome offseason project.

In the third quarter, Bridgewater threw a pass slightly behind Patterson, who was playing primarily because Jarius Wright reinjured his back. Patterson bobbled the pass into the hands of Fuller. Patterson looked uninterested in pursuing Fuller, and spent most of the rest of the game on the bench. He was not targeted with another pass.

"I've got a plan for this offseason for him, and hopefully it works," Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said. "But it's going to be up to Cordarrelle."

It happens in all sports, but in football it seems to happen more suddenly. One player falters, another takes his place. In a testament to the strangeness exhibited on NFL fields during Week 17, Chad Greenway spent what might have been his last game with the Vikings injured on the sideline, while Audie Cole, the last linebacker on the depth chart, made 14 tackles. Patterson lost his job, while a seventh-round pick (Charles Johnson) and an undrafted player (Thielen) feasted on his playing time.

"That's how the NFL works," Thielen said. "Everybody who is at this level has been going through it since grade school. It's competition."

"I have high goals," Thielen said. "I want to be a big part of the team, and I want to win games."

That's probably what Patterson wants, too, but he has a strange way of showing it. He has become an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in the jersey of nothing more than a bad football player, while Thielen has at least occasionally seized the day.

"I think his story is good for a whole bunch of players around the nation," Zimmer said. "When he gets the opportunity, he takes advantage of it. It's hard work. It's being intelligent. You don't have to tell him to do things harder, you don't have to tell him to line up differently. He gets it. That's big."

In the context of an eager kid from Minnesota State, those words are poignant.

In the context of a first-round draft choice who has played his way out of a job, those words are an indictment.