Re-watched the 1998 NFC Championship game.........Gary Anderson isn't to blame

[tony d]

That Vikings team was a very good team. For my money one of the better regular season teams to not win a Super Bowl.

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

Cunningham tried a long bomb to Moss prior to overtime on 2nd down. He threw it too far. At that point they had two time outs with 30 seconds left and were at around their own 30. Two or three quick little chip passes and you are in field goal range again. It is doubtful Anderson misses two in a row if he gets the chance. The fans' reaction says it all when they took a knee. It was not a winning move.



Exactly. Maybe that is a tale of two franchises. You had the greatest QB in history playing in his first Super Bowl (although Brady wasn't Brady yet of course) and they roll the dice and go for it. Brady even got told by Drew Bledsoe to just "sling it" and he sort of did. Then you have the Vikings playing it safe. One played to win, the other played NOT to lose. The latter is deadly in sports. I remember Madden repeatedly saying during the game the Patriots ought to just "take a knee". Super Bowl winning coach or not, he was wrong.

As for the situation with the Anderson field goal attempt it went like this: 3rd and 6 on the Falcons 21. Cunningham scrambles and then throws it away and the clock stops. Prior to the 2 minute warning. Anderson had kicked 122 consecutive field goals at the time. I think every coach would have had him come in, I would have too. They actually did pretty good clock management prior to that field goal bleeding lots of time off the clock. I wouldn't have punted it and I don't think anyone would have thought to do so, even to pin them deep. You are on the other teams' 21 yard line with a 7 point lead, regardless you are in the driver's seat. You can't lose that game, I don't care if the game is being played on the moon.



Ouch..........but yeah...........or at least their coach was.

Maybe. But pre Brady Minnesota was the better franchise even with no titles.

I'm NOT a stats guy but statistically if you have the top offense i'd do it. 4th and 6 is no slam dunk but you're up 7, get it and the game is probably over. But with a TD against you don't lose. Yes a 38 yarder should be made, indoors, but kicks are random. Bad snap, hold, what have you. The only thing i'd factor in is how good was the Minny D that year?

 

[YEM]

I dunno...the kicker has one job, everyone else on the team did a [relatively] good job-you had a 38 yard field goal to go up 10 & basically guarantee a Super Bowl appearance? The reason why that loss follows around Anderson is because he was perfect during the regular season...

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

But there could have been a bad snap or bad hold. That's out of the kicker's jurisdiction.

 

[Big Phil]

Maybe. But pre Brady Minnesota was the better franchise even with no titles.

I'm NOT a stats guy but statistically if you have the top offense i'd do it. 4th and 6 is no slam dunk but you're up 7, get it and the game is probably over. But with a TD against you don't lose. Yes a 38 yarder should be made, indoors, but kicks are random. Bad snap, hold, what have you. The only thing i'd factor in is how good was the Minny D that year?

Fair enough. Yeah the defense was good that year too. Keep in mind, their defense allowed 30 points this game too. Not very good. The thing with the Anderson kick and one of the reasons it may have gone wide left is that there is a Falcon rushing very rapidly to the right of Anderson who was pretty close to blocking it. Anderson might have tried to hook it a little left to make sure the kick isn't blocked and perhaps he over-compensated a bit.

 

[Brodeur]

That's a whole lot of word to say something everyone knew already.

I guess you can't post about conspiracies now so you need something to rant about...

I appreciated the recap, unfortunately I missed a lot of sporting events between 1998-2002 due to college so I (wrongfully) thought Anderson bore more of the burden. Sadly the How I Met Your Mother episode might've caused that.

 

[The Garden]

I didn't know Anderson missed a game-clinching field goal, I assumed he missed a game-winning or game-tying field goal. It's definitely not his fault.

Interestingly, I don't think it was the norm back then to go for the win at the very end of a game. In the Patriots Super Bowl against the Rams, New England got the ball with 1:21 left in a tie game and no time outs. John Madden keeps saying that they should just let the clock run out, and he was very impressed by what the Patriots did. Today 1:21 with no time outs is forever.

 

[Harry22]

I agree with you that the Vikings choked offensively in overtime but still when your kicker that has not missed all year misses a relative easy FG (inside the 40 in a dome) it deflates you. The whole team was shocked and the Falcons took advantage of it.

 

[Harry22]

I didn't know Anderson missed a game-clinching field goal, I assumed he missed a game-winning or game-tying field goal. It's definitely not his fault.

Interestingly, I don't think it was the norm back then to go for the win at the very end of a game. In the Patriots Super Bowl against the Rams, New England got the ball with 1:21 left in a tie game and no time outs. John Madden keeps saying that they should just let the clock run out, and he was very impressed by what the Patriots did. Today 1:21 with no time outs is forever.

Madden said he didn't agree with the Pats at first then after 3 plays said he kinda likes what the Patriots are doing haha. The biggest difference between the Patriots and Vikings is that the Patriots had nothing to lose. No one expected them to even make a game out of it against the Rams, they played loose and it paid off. The Vikings played not to lose and played scared in overtime.

 

[Hall of Faber]

Nevermind. Way off based with everything I said.

 

[EpochLink]

One kicker who deserves all the blame on a championship game lost is David Akers. In the Cardinals championship game he missed a 20yd PAT to go up 4, I believe, with less than 5 to play and then kicked the following kickoff out of bounce.

Wonder why isn't remembered like Gary's.

Probably a couple of things:

1. This was the 5th NFC Championship game for the Eagles under Andy Reid.
2. They were not the high powered offense like the 1998 Vikings.
3. The 2008 Eagles were not fondly remembered like that Viking team was.

 

[Hall of Faber]

Probably a couple of things:

1. This was the 5th NFC Championship game for the Eagles under Andy Reid.
2. They were not the high powered offense like the 1998 Vikings.
3. The 2008 Eagles were not fondly remembered like that Viking team was.

I think it's mainly the 40/40 until it mattered that makes it the legend it is.

 

[EpochLink]

I think it's mainly the 40/40 until it mattered that makes it the legend it is.

A short PAT and a returnable kickoff is probably the most automatic plays in sports and to miss both back to back is mind blowing. Yet no know cared. He even got to keep his job.

Gary Anderson was still on the Vikings after 1998, he went to another NFC Championship game 2 years later although the Vikings got torched by the Giants.

 

[c9777666]

I'll throw another wrinkle- what if the Falcons/49ers game the week prior had gone differently? Vikings might have matched up better with SF than Atlanta.

 

[EpochLink]

I'll throw another wrinkle- what if the Falcons/49ers game the week prior had gone differently? Vikings might have matched up better with SF than Atlanta.

The lone memory of that game was Garrison Hearst breaking his ankle...that was awful.

 

[Roboturner913]

You'd be a heck of a lot of fun at parties talking football. The NFL network to this day is obsessed with that game and never tells the full story of it and just basically puts the load on Anderson. People forget the ins and outs of this game. I even forgot about some things since it had been so long since I watched the complete 4th quarter.

NFL loves its narratives and markets itself with those narratives. If pesky facts get in the way, who cares? They'll just keep repeating the narrative and eventually people will forget the nuances of what actually happened.

Hell even the Eugene Robinson thing I mentioned earlier is just a narrative, a story that grew legs and ran away with itself. The arrest, other than being a bad look, didn't really even have an effect on the game. Hell most people didn't even see the play Robinson gave up because Fox was a gong show of a network and was still in commercial when the play happened. I mean, they seriously scapegoated this one guy over a game that was 31-6 and then went garbage time for most of the 4th quarter.

 

[Reality Check]

If we made a list of greatest botched playoff kicks, Minnesota might have two in the top 5.

 

[Sports Enthusiast]

What was his longest kick that year? Boomer did a Championship countdown of conference title games. This was on it, they showed the kick on the side angle. The snap was perfect, I assume that the hold was too but with the writing on the screen that was kinda blocked. My only thought waa maybe the hold was botched and he got laces. It was a 39 yard kick and he was like what, 40? Somewhat easy kick but at that age in that situation 39 is long.

I feel like though you see kickers falter at an older age. Binateri had a bad postseason game, missed a decently short FG and an XP.

 

[Big Phil]

NFL loves its narratives and markets itself with those narratives. If pesky facts get in the way, who cares? They'll just keep repeating the narrative and eventually people will forget the nuances of what actually happened.

Hell even the Eugene Robinson thing I mentioned earlier is just a narrative, a story that grew legs and ran away with itself. The arrest, other than being a bad look, didn't really even have an effect on the game. Hell most people didn't even see the play Robinson gave up because Fox was a gong show of a network and was still in commercial when the play happened. I mean, they seriously scapegoated this one guy over a game that was 31-6 and then went garbage time for most of the 4th quarter.

I'll admit that the NFL can sometimes twist things to make the story sexier. This is why I brought up the Anderson thing. Or even another thing on the NFL network they constantly bring up is Leon Lett showboating in the blowout Super Bowl against the Bills and getting the ball stripped from him by Don Beebe. It was 52-17 at the time............who cares? Other than a great effort by Beebe it literally meant nothing. Nada.

However, it was rather early in the game when Robinson was on the field for that 80 yard touchdown. It was 10-3, then the 80 yarder to make it 17-3. This was still the 2nd quarter, so I think in that case it was legit.

I appreciated the recap, unfortunately I missed a lot of sporting events between 1998-2002 due to college so I (wrongfully) thought Anderson bore more of the burden. Sadly the How I Met Your Mother episode might've caused that.

I think the Anderson missed field goal was already in its notorious stage by then. What made it interesting is that there was a "club" in New York City that consisted of bitter Vikings fans. One thing to note, they referred to the game as the "1999 NFC Championship game". Just taking a guess the writers on the show weren't football fans.