I wonder if I’ll even be able to watch this game later today: the Winnipeg CTV affiliate station usually carries the Vikings games on Sunday, but this promises to be a very low-audience meeting. If it’s not viewable in my area, I’ll have to depend on the team’s game highlights which are usually posted on their website the next day. How bad is this matchup? At the Daily Norseman, Eric Thompson thinks that it’ll be such a quiet game, you won’t even hear the boos:
The Minnesota Vikings vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers game on Sunday is NOT a marquee matchup. Who will win on Sunday? And more importantly, who will care?
If the Minnesota Vikings and Tampa Bay Buccaneers play each other on Sunday and nobody gives a sh*t, does the game make a sound? When a 2-5 disaster visits a 1-5 dumpster fire and nobody can be bothered to care, can you still hear the boos?
We’re only seven weeks into the 2014 NFL season and the two metaphorical trees of the Vikings and Bucs seem to have already fallen in the forest. This was supposed to be a year of improvement and hope for both teams. The Vikings had a new coach to clean up the woeful defense, a promising new rookie quarterback, five starters returning on the offensive line, and the league’s best running back still in his prime. The Bucs had a new coach of their own that has already proven himself in the league, a veteran free agent quarterback that lit it up last year, and enough pieces on both sides of the ball to make a lot of experts choose them as a dark horse playoff contender before the season.
And yet here we are with both teams looking undead before Halloween. Minnesota’s new coach and quarterback are scrambling to learn on the job with the star running back exiled from the team and the offensive line in shambles. Tampa Bay has already benched Josh McCown and suffered two of the NFL season’s most embarrassing blowouts through six games. (The only saving grace for the one-win Buccaneers? The NFC South has been so lousy this year that they’re still only two games out of first place.)
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The scapegoat in recent weeks for the Vikings has been Matt Kalil & The Turnstyles, which unfortunately isn’t a 50’s doo-wop cover band. The offensive linemen were scapegoats with good reason — they were an atrocity against Green Bay and Detroit. But they actually weren’t that bad last week in Buffalo. And “not terrible” is a gigantic upgrade for that unit, especially considering the mid-game injuries suffered by John Sullivan and Vladimir Ducasse. So why did the offense still muster only 16 points even though the defense forced four Bills turnovers? Quite frankly, Teddy Bridgewater wasn’t nearly consistent enough with his decisions and throws to make the offense run efficiently.
