MINNEAPOLIS — OK, so it wasn’t their best effort of the season, but in front of 63,854 spectators — including thousands of Winnipeggers — the Minnesota Vikings drilled the Detroit Lions 27-10 at Mall of America Field on Sunday afternoon.
With the win, the Vikings improved to 8-1. The Lions fell to 1-8.
The Vikings were handed a load of penalties (there were times when this thing looked fixed), many of which, head coach Brad Childress had little trouble questioning. In fact, a roughing the passer penalty against Ray Edwards, caused Childress to call out the official who made the call.
“I said to the official, ‘Ray never hit the quarterback on the head and he didn’t tackle him low so where did he tackle him that would result in a penalty?’,” a frustrated Childress explained. “The official said, ‘He (Edwards) launched himself at the quarterback and hit him high.’ And I said, ‘Where does it say in the rules that you can’t launch yourself at the quarterback?’ When I looked at the replay I noticed that Ray didn’t make contact at all. That wasn’t a very good call.”
It didn’t help that the Vikings lost a couple of fumbles, one by Adrian Peterson near the Detroit goal line, but Minnesota’s Sidney Rice did pitch-in with a career-high 201 yards receiving (on only seven catches) while Peterson did rush for 133 yards (100 in the first half) and scored two touchdowns.
The win gave Minnesota its best start since 1998 when the Vikes went 15-1 and then lost the NFC championship game to Atlanta.
Vikings quarterback Brett Favre (in his 300th consecutive start) completed 20 of 29 passes for a season-high 344 yards with one touchdown pass to backup tight end Jeff Dugan. Meanwhile, Rice’s 201-yard game was the fourth 200-yard receiving game in team history. It was just nine yards short of Sammy White’s team record (210 against Detroit in 1976).
“Wde were coming out of the bye and we were loose,” said Childress. “Maybe we were too loose. We have to tighten things up and play better next week against Seattle. It’s all about improving. We still need to improve.”
THE NOTEBOOK: The Vikings have won 15 of their last 16 games with Detroit… Minnesota was just 3-of-11 on third-down and had 13 penalties for 91 yards, which kept the game close until the fourth quarter… What a great game for Ray Edwards. The Vikings defensive end/linebacker had five tackles, two sacks and a forced fumble… There were 63,854 people inside the Metrodome (the 121st consecutive sellout in Minneapolis) and they were all breathing the same air. Obviously nobody really cared about H1N1… It’s shocking that 16 teams failed to draft Percy Harvin before the Vikings selected him. As Favre said yesterday, “He runs like a runningback, he’s built like a runningback and plays like a receiver. He’s one of the best players I’ve ever seen.” And yet 16 teams passed on him. What does that say about scouting in the NFL?