The Blame Game

You gotta love the blame game.

As always, when a team loses in the playoffs, fans and writers and players start wondering who should take the blame, and nobody's safe. The officials are always the worst culprits, but coaches get their share, too. Injuries are always thrown out there. And it seems like people always want to lay blame on the feet of one player.

In the Vikings case, there are a lot of national writers trying to pin blame on their playoff loss on Brett Favre, or The Antichrist, as I formerly called him. His terrible throw at the end of regulation, they say, cost the Vikings a chance at winning. He was just reverting to his old "gunslinger" personality at the worst possible moment.

That's a load of bull.

I've spent a large portion of my life hating Favre. I've toned down the hate this year simply because I knew the Vikings couldn't win the Super Bowl without him. I'm happy to blame him for anything, including this terribly cold winter. But I can't blame him for this.

Joe Buck pointed out on the broadcast that he could have scrambled for the yards needed to get them into field goal range. While this is true, Favre hasn't scrambled for a gain on a pass play in years, and the fact that he was playing with a foot injury made him running the ball that much more unlikely. I'm sure scrambling was the last thing he thought of. He knew that they needed to gain some yards - did people really trust Longwell to make a 56-yard field goal right there? - and he got desperate in his attempt to get those yards. He made a mistake. It happens.

People trying to blame this loss on Favre - I'm talking to you, Wisconsin - are the same as people trying to blame the 1999 Championship Game loss on Gary Anderson. Yes, he missed at the wrong moment. But when he missed, the Vikings still had a 7-point lead. People always forget this, just like they always forget that Robert Smith ran out of bounds untouched three times on the drive leading up to that field goal, when staying in bounds just once probably would have caused the Falcons to run out of time. They also always forget that the Vikings tried to score in the final minute of the first half, only to fumble, leading to an Atlanta touchdown (people who bemoan the Vikings taking a knee at the end of regulation always forget this point). And most of all, people always forget that the Vikings had the ball twice in overtime, failing to score despite having an NFL record-setting offense, before Atlanta finally won it. It takes a team to win a title, and it takes a team to lose one.

After this year's game, I had somebody tell me that the referees blew the game for the Vikings. Really? You're going to think that? The only blatant bad call I saw was the pass interference in overtime on Leber, a call that was magnified by when it took place in the game. But the official who threw the flag was in a position where both players were running directly toward him, making it look like a trip. If he had had a side angle, he would have seen there was no contact. And even if that call is why they lost, there's no way the officials were trying to make sure the Saints won, as I'm sure many Vikings fans are trying to claim. Aside from the NBA, there is no vast conspiracy in pro sports to make sure a certain team wins.

No, the Vikings lost this game because they couldn't hold on to the damn ball. You don't fumble six times and expect to go to the Super Bowl. They also lost because they committed a stupid penalty at the absolute wrong time, the too-many-men penalty right before Favre's interception.

In the end, I think the game had the correct result. The Vikings and Saints were very close all year, and the Saints were always just a little bit better. I think a 31-28 overtime final shows that point nicely.