DESTINY AWAITS
Vikings don’t want to waste their miracle and not return home to play the Super Bowl
PHILADELPHIA — Without being dramatic, you’re looking at a guy who had a harrowing last day in Minneapolis.
And it literally started the moment he got out of bed.
Moving the covers, he didn’t realize he’d slept with his phone. It flew to the hardwood floor, landed with a smack and stopped working.
Try taking the SIM card out and re-inserting, he was told. How do you do that, he thought.
He brought it to the nice lady at the hotel’s front desk. She removed the card — and fumbled it to the ground. “Oh no,” she said. Do you realize how much of one’s life is carried on a SIM card?
After an extensive search involving numerous people, the card was located, re-inserted and all was good with the phone, which was then used to call an Uber ride to the Vikings training facility.
To let you know how frigid it was in Minneapolis last week, later that night a gentleman saw the guy you’re looking at about to leave the hotel when he said, “you’re not going outside, are you?”
A guy’s gotta eat, he was told.
“I’m from Alaska,” the gentleman said, “and I’ve never been in cold like that.”
Anyway, en route to catching up with the Vikings, the Uber driver had mentioned the roads were quite slick earlier in the morning.
“They’re not bad now,” he said, only moments before catching a patch of black ice and losing control of the vehicle as it was going down an off-ramp.
Fortunately, he was able to swerve just enough to miss a big pole, but he hit a couple of smaller ones. Not enough to stop the car, how- ever. It kept sliding hard toward another big pole. And the path was not changing.
Suddenly, a broken phone didn’t seem like such a big deal.
The passenger in the back crouched behind the seat and closed his eyes, certain something very bad was about to happen.
At the last second, the wheel turned, the next big pole was avoided and the car came to a stop by crashed into the snow, curb and another smaller pole.
Serious injury, or worse, was dodged.
We wound up in nothing worse than the “fender bender” Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette had in Florida on Tuesday.
And Uber even refunded the fare.
Yes, I’m also very lucky to have a great job, and I’m very much looking forward to covering the Super Bowl back in Minneapolis in just fewer than three weeks, even if it doesn’t warm up by then.
But it would be better if the Vikings could swerve past the Eagles and make it there, too.
Nothing against Philadelphia, but the atmosphere at U.S. Bank Stadium for Sunday’s divisional playoff had to rank right up there with that of any sports event ever. With the Vikings in the Super Bowl for the first time in 41 years, it will certainly rise to unfathomable proportions.
If the Eagles represent the NFC, well, so much for the chilling goose bumps that come with 65,000 people chanting “Skol!” and clapping their hands over their head.
The Eagles and the Patriots/Jaguars would still be a good game, but everybody whose team is already out of the picture has to be rooting for the Vikings at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday.
Their story has turned them into he darlings of the unaffiliated.
“Why wouldn’t you like us?” linebacker Eric Kendricks said, smiling.
A question asked multiple times of players the
day after the “Minneapolis Miracle”: For everything to fall into place on Stefon Diggs’ last-second 61-yard game-winning touchdown, wouldn’t it almost be a waste for the Vikes to come up short when they are close to becoming the first team to ever play for the NFL championship on its home field?
“After something like that,” cornerback Xavier Rhodes said, “the only thing you can do is believe it’s destiny.”
At the same time, the Vikings can’t count on divine intervention helping them past the Eagles. Just because the football gods were on their side one Sunday, doesn’t mean they won’t flip allegiances the next.
Maybe it’s the Eagles’ turn to be helped out with a little luck.
“We’re just continue to play how we’ve been playing, same process that got us here ... why change?” Rhodes said. “It’s going to be a tough game. They have a tough defence, we have a tough defence. It’s going to be a game. They’re going to fight to get to the Super Bowl. We’re going to do the same.”
This is a similar situation to the one the Ottawa Redblacks were in about three months ago. As hosts of the Grey Cup game, they had great pressure to be in it. The players denied that all the way up to their playoff against the Saskatchewan Roughriders — then admitted it was so after they lost.
But in the Vikings’ case, after avoiding playoff death like no team ever before, there’s even more pressure to go at least one more step further. They owe it to themselves. They owe it to destiny. Whether they say so or not. “It has nothing really to do with what happened (Sunday),” receiver Adam Thielen said of the team’s desire to continue on. “It’s just the opportunity of getting to the NFC championship game. You don’t get that opprotunity every year. We know how hard it is just to get to the playoffs in general ... to get to the NFC championship, you just never know if you’ll have that opportunity again.
“We just really want to make the most of it. “
You’re looking at a guy who hopes they survive, too.