Vikings

Kyle Rudolph: "We've Done This Once a Year"

Photo Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn (USA Today Sports)

Tight end Kyle Rudolph was the only player to score for the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday — a meaningless touchdown to prevent the Vikings from being shut out for the first time at U.S. Bank Stadium.

Rudolph, one of the longest tenured Vikings, said Sunday’s 27-6 loss to winless Buffalo felt like a handful of games from the past.

“Unfortunately, you go back and look at the last three years of football that we played, we’ve done this once a year,” he said after the game. “Go back a couple Decembers ago, we had to a chance of making the playoffs, then the Indianapolis Colts come in here and kick our butts. Last year in the NFC Championship Game everyone knows what happened.”

If he wanted to, the tight end could go back even further to 2015 when the Vikings were blown out 38-7 at home by the Seattle Seahawks. Four days after that game at TCF Bank Stadium, Minnesota hit the field against Arizona, the NFC West’s top team, and took the Cardinals to the wire before losing on a late field goal. It was a loss but an impressive showing.

They’ll need similar bounce back ability this week as the powerhouse Los Angeles Rams await them about 100 hours after the clock hit 0:00 on Minnesota’s embarrassing defeat.

“The best thing about this is we play in four days,” said Rudolph. “You don’t have time to sit back and think about how poorly we played today.”

The Vikings were 17-point favorites against the Bills on Sunday, meaning they missed the spread by 38 points, an unexpected result for a team that has the league’s best spread-covering percentage since 2014 (64.3 percent), per teamrankings.com.

Sunday was head coach Mike Zimmer’s sixth time losing by 20-plus points in Minnesota, including last season’s NFC Title Game fiasco in Philadelphia.

“I have not lost faith in this football team,” said Zimmer, “but it shows you every week is a new week. You’ve got to go out and play.”

Zimmer is 14-11 after a loss in his Vikings coaching tenure, but 0-4 after losing by 20 or more. Going on the road to face the undefeated Rams won’t be easy — then again, nobody gave the Bills a chance to beat Minnesota either.

“It’s the National Football League, everyone is really good, and you can lose a game at any point,” said receiver Adam Thielen. “It’s the same thing that we always talk about: You have to do certain things to win a game, and we didn’t do any of those.”


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