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