“I think Mike laid that out pragmatically, fairly and eloquently.”
Those are the words that Paul Allen, host of 9 to Noon on KFAN, used to sum up what felt like a college-level lecture by Mike Florio on the current state of the Minnesota Vikings.
During his weekly segment on the popular radio show, Florio spent a majority of his time tapping into the mindset of fellow Vikings fans as they approach the potential end of the Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman era:
“The Vikings fanbase has been waiting for 50 years for another team that shows up and wins, without excuses, without a freaky little you know bounce of the ball or a good call going this way.
I’ve mentioned this before, it reminds me of when Brad Childress was the coach, and it was West Coast offense, coupled with Cover 2 defense, which is all about keeping the game close until the very end, and you hope for a break, and you hope to win, and that’s a recipe for 9-7 or 9-8 as the case may now be.
I feel like there’s a lot of that still there. Let’s keep it close, let’s keep it close, let’s keep it close, and then we’ll try to make a break at the end of the game that helps it go away. The problem is that the other team is trying to do the same damn thing. I think the fanbase wants, and the fanbase deserves, a team that goes 14-3 like the Packers, that wins 37-10 in a late regular-season game. That gets the 1-seed.…I think Vikings fans have had enough of this sense that we’re gonna have a team that’s just good enough, and that we’re gonna be in every game. And we’re gonna have the lead in every game, and we’re gonna blow it most games.
To me, and I think back to when John Elway fired John Fox after a loss in the divisional round. I think there’s a sense [that] you can only take so much of the same thing. And there’s been too much of the same thing, really since 2009, the year that the Vikings were wire to wire great, and should have gotten to the Super Bowl…Since then I feel like the Vikings have been chasing and failing to achieve the level of greatness that causes you to be at the top end of the conference, not middle of the pack, hoping that a break goes your way this week or that week, here or there, and you end up making it by the skin of your teeth into the wild card round.”
Very few have so concisely and correctly assessed a situation as Florio has here. The Minnesota Vikings are fortunate to have a very good ownership group and as the fanbase struggles through the end of the Mike Zimmer era hopefully that ownership group will strike gold with their next selection to lead the future of their franchise.
