As a dad with three young kids — all of them night owls to varying degrees — watching primetime Vikings games on TV requires a pregame plan.
The first half is typically chaos, as it was Thursday. My oldest daughter (7) decided she needed to accumulate a lot of "steps" as counted by her watch, and she proceeded to run laps around the dining room table (with her 5-year-old sister and almost 2-year-old brother following her) until she had reached 2,000.
As they were doing this, the Vikings seemed to be marching toward 2,000 points against the Steelers, building up a 23-0 lead. And that's the point at which a decision needs to be made.
My wife started in on the bed time with our son before the half ended; I decided by the time that it was 26-0 early in the third quarter that there was NO WAY the Vikings were going to cede control. I set the rest of the game to record so I could make notes for Friday's Daily Delivery podcast and started the bed time process with the girls.
If the game was closer, I might have started the process sooner in hopes of watching the fourth quarter live. But this looked like the varsity against the JV. Cruise control. I seldom think that about Vikings games, but this one was different.
Shame on me.
If this was school — old-school school — I would be forced to write "I should have known better" 100 times on the chalkboard.
Decades of history should have taught me otherwise; ignoring that, 12 previous weeks of recent history should have done the trick.
Of course the Vikings gave back almost the entire lead as our 5-year-old fell fast asleep. Of course the game came down to the final play. Of course I ended up watching that last Steelers drive on my phone while our 7-year-old outlasted me in a seemingly never-ending game of Uno.
These are the Vikings, and specifically these are the 2021 Vikings. They don't fool me often, but they got me somehow on Thursday.
And both of us probably need a new second-half plan for next Monday night at Chicago.
