Today, Vikings fans, you should take a break from marinating in your hopeful angst to say thank you. That's right: Thank the team that torments your soul.
Today, the Vikings play another big game at the end of another fascinating season. If they lose, their record of futility in big moments will remain utterly the same.
They will have won one playoff game since 2009, with that win having been deemed a miracle. They will be without a road playoff victory since 2004, and their stated ambition of winning a Super Bowl with this coach, this roster, this defense, will seem more far-fetched than it did even a year ago.
There will be public discussions of the fitness of the general manager, coach and quarterback, and while changes will not be expected, the owners will have to start wondering, even if they won't admit it.
There is another way to look at this franchise. Call it the road less traveled.
Here it is: Super Bowl or not, this franchise has been relentlessly interesting for about a half-century now, ever since their first real game, and there is more value in that than in merely winning one Super Bowl.
In the first game in Vikings history, they upset the great Chicago Bears 37-13 at Met Stadium, setting up decades of unrealistically high and unfulfilled expectations.
Today, they'll face a Chicago Bears team George Halas could not have imagined, one with an Arena League offense, at U.S. Bank Stadium with a chance to make the playoffs. That this year's Vikings team is simultaneously interesting, promising, disappointing, talented and flawed is not surprising. That's how the Minnesota Vikings roll, even if the roll often ends up in a ditch.
