The Morning After Pill - Week # 15

First off, I'm sorry it's taken until Wednesday to finally post this week's "Pill", but I have had too much going on. Between Christmas, buying a house, getting married, and of course work, there just isn't enough hours in the day. Anyway, no sense in really recapping the beatdown the Vikes gave the Arizona Cardinals last Sunday, so how about we just recap the aftermath of the game.

Just read this morning that Tarvaris Jackson was named NFC offensive player of the week, not bad for a guy that was benched after two games this season. Hard to argue with his 11 for 17 performance including the first 4 TD Pass performance in FOUR years for the Vikings. Chilly hasn't officially announced a starter for the Falcons game but I think T Jack deserves the nod.

How about a quick shout out to Adrian Peterson too. He broke the franchise single season rushing record with his 165 yard performance against the Cardinals. By Tuesday he was announced as a starter for the NFC Pro Bowl team for the second straight year. The Vikings tied the New York Football Giants with the most players from an NFC team (The Jets led the league with 7 players). Not bad when you consider all the people probably voting in the New York market. Joining AP in Hawai'i are Jared Allen, Antoine Winfield (I can hear Viking Jim now...OH.....IO), Steve Hutchinson, and of course Kevin and Pat Williams.

Speaking of Big Pat, looks like the Vikes will have to wrap up the division and maybe start the playoffs without a huge part of the run stopping Wall. Pat injured his shoulder in the Cardinals game and is expected to be out 2-6 weeks. Not great timing considering the Vikes are playing the #1 and #2 rush offenses in the entire league the next two weeks (Falcons and Giants).

Finally, the best news of all! The Vikings' magic number is one. As in ONE Vikings win or ONE Bears loss wraps up the NFC North for the Beloved Purple. Aside from that the Vikings still have a shot at the #2 seed in the NFC. Here's the scenario:

The battle that will be going on at Giants Stadium this weekend between the Giants and the Carolina Panthers will go a long way in determining the seeding. Both teams own records of 11-3, two games better than the Vikings' current mark of 9-5. A win by Minnesota on Sunday will raise their mark to 10-5, and one of the teams in the Giants/Panthers matchup will fall to 11-4. The winner will go to 12-3 and be locked into the #1 seed in the NFC.

Should the Panthers be victorious in that matchup, the game between the Vikings and Giants in Week 17 will be for the NFC's #2 seed. If the Vikings won that game, they and the Giants would both be 11-5, but Minnesota would get the higher seeding due to that head-to-head victory.
If the Giants win next week, it would get a little more complicated.

In that scenario, not only would the Vikings have to beat New York in the season finale. . . and they might be resting players, given that they'd be locked into home field throughout the NFC playoffs. . . but we'd also have to hope that the New Orleans Saints would be able to muster up a victory over the Panthers that afternoon, too. In that scenario, both the Vikings and Panthers would be 11-5, and Minnesota's 20-10 victory back in Week 3 would give them the advantage.
Oh, and a victory over the Giants would give the Vikings a victory over the three other NFC division champions this season. So that would be a nice little thing to hang our collective hats on, too.

Getting that first-round bye would be even more huge in light of the injury to big #94. Can the Vikings pull it off? Well, they have to wrap up the North, first, but hopefully that part of the equation will be solved by supper time next Sunday.