Hoo boy. As you can probably guess from the title, the Minnesota Vikings weren’t at their best from 2000 to 2010. Sure, there were moments: The Randy Ratio, drafting Adrian Peterson, luring Brett Favre. But it took an ownership change and moving on from Mike Tice and Brad Childress for the Vikings to clean things up.
We’re talking about the Love Boat. The Whizzinator. Randy Moss going off on caterers. There were moments: Gus Frerotte‘s 99-yard bomb to Bernard Berrian, Peterson juking defenders out of their shoes, and Favre to Moss. But they’re caked with chaos and dysfunction. Luke Braun brings us from Denny Green’s final days to Bountygate in Part VI of his documentary.
From Luke:
After losing in 1998, the Vikings began their agonizing decline. Marred by tragedy and scandal, by 2002 they were a laughingstock. In a way, they were the laughingstock that a healing nation needed in that period of history. Even as they pulled their act together after the circus sideshow that was the 2005 season, they still did it in funny ways. They embraced the 40-year-old icon of their bitterest rival. Suddenly, a fun-but-frustrating decade became all fun. And then, in a sickening twist that many still haven’t fully processed, things became all frustrating.
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