Mistakes were made
And Vikings know they must cut them out to reach Super Bowl
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — The lone Canadian in the large media scrum surrounding Xavier Rhodes had one question for the Vikings corner on Monday.
“Can you put yourself in were Marcus Williams' position?” he was asked in reference to the Saints safety who whiffed on a tackle that would have almost certainly made winners of the New Orleans in the NFC divisional round playoffs, “and explain how would you have played that throw to Stefon Diggs?”
Rhodes responded with a hard stare. Like he thought it was a setup.
“I mean, I’m not going to comment on that,” he said. “That's going to start something, I can tell you that right now.”
Moments earlier, in team meetings with coach Mike Zimmer, the Vikings were told they had to cut down on all their errors if they hope to get to the Super Bowl. Perhaps Rhodes took it to mean in interviews, too.
Zimmer, in fact, was referring to the breakdowns that turned a 17-0 lead for almost three quarters into a 24-23 deficit before Diggs’ last-second heroics. Among them were a bad interception off Case Keenum, a blocked punt, a sack that took them out of field-goal range and allowing a fourth-and-10 to be converted.
“Told them basically, we can’t make these mistakes in playoffs games (or) we’ll be going home,” said Zimmer, who obviously liked his team's game in the first half of the 29-24 victory. “There's always good and always bad in some of the games, but we made some critical errors in that game that could of got us beat. I thought it was important we watch the tape today, watch some of the mistakes, so we try not to do those things again.”
The Philadelphia Eagles are the last obstacle standing in the way of the Vikings becoming the first team to play the championship game on its own turf, and theirs will be a battle between the No. 1 and No. 2 defence in the NFC this season.
While they didn’t face each other this season, the Vikings lost 21-10 at Lincoln Financial Field in 2016 — a game in which neither offence could get much going with the play of the day being a 98-yard kick return for a touchdown by Philadelphia’s Josh Hill.
Sam Bradford and Carson Wentz were the quarterbacks then.
Zimmer said he has only done “very easy” work in prepping for the Eagles to this point.
“I’ve watched a couple of their games offensively now, but we’ve still got work to do ... will watch the game from last year, obviously,” he said. “At the time we played him last year, (Wentz) was a pretty young quarterback. They’ve got some great schemes. Some of the things they do are very tough to defend, so we'll have to work on that. And I know they've got a great defence.”