![\"\"](\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/Viking_Head.jpg\" "\\"Viking_Head\\"")
In the late game on Sunday night the Vikings played host to the Green Bay Packers. These two teams meeting in prime time would already be a good set-up, but when you take into account that neither team has been living up to its expectations — both of them are looking up at Chicago at the top of the division — and that the matchup might well be a “must win” to keep any playoff hopes alive, you have potentially fascinating stuff to watch.<\/p>\n
Minnesota has had a fraught history with kickers over the least 20+ years. The first game between the Packers and the Vikings this season ended up as a tie, at least in part because the Vikings kicker missed four<\/em> field goals (he wasn’t the team’s kicker for long after that). Vikings fans were starting to feel a certain anxiousness after current kicker Dan Bailey missed two<\/em> last night. At halftime, head coach Mike Zimmer told a sideline reporter that he was planning to go for it on fourth down in the second half, to avoid depending on the kicker. (He must have just been venting his frustration, as he did let Bailey attempt a kick during the third quarter, which Bailey made.) Of course, if he’d made those kicks, the game would almost exactly have matched my prediction for the outcome (I said it’d be 31-17 and it was actually 24-17.)<\/p>\n Even great players have plays that look awful, like this one<\/a>: “a pass to Stefon Diggs was interrupted by Adam Thielen getting blocked into Diggs after the catch. Diggs went backwards, and wound up losing ten yards to set up a 2nd-and-20. (It was way uglier than that makes it sound.)” That was, thankfully, not at all typical of either player’s night. The team also broke out a new TD celebration for the evening:<\/p>\n