(Photo courtesy: www.gamedaygold.com.)
It’s Monday Morning quarterback, a roundup of what the football experts are saying about the latest Vikings contest. In this case, Sunday’s shellacking of the St. Louis Rams — which allowed Minnesota to stay in the NFC playoff race.
With Adrian Peterson’s 212-yard performance, most wordsmiths naturally focused on No. 28. Let’s start with the Star Tribune’s Jim Souhan, who wrote: “Peterson is making oxygen debt a communal experience. When he runs, people on couches across Minnesota gasp for breath.”
A better line from Jim Klobuchar over at MinnPost, regarding Peterson, especially during that 82-yard touchdown run: “Adrian Peterson running free and on a mission makes most defenders suspect that he spent time on another planet.”
Ted Glover, in his weekly stock market report for the Daily Norseman blog, writes: “It will be a crime if Peterson doesn’t win the MVP award.”
Former Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy agrees with Glover. In his Yahoo! Sports column, Dungy says AP should be the MVP if the Vikings make the playoffs. In his words: “Perhaps the most amazing about Peterson’s season is that he’s doing all of this in an offense without a legitimate threat at quarterback.”
Of course, the game wasn’t won by AP alone. Everson Griffen’s pick six was a huge touchdown for the Purple. As Pioneer Press writer Tom Powers put it, the Vikings “got power boosts from several unexpected sources.”
As for an out-of-town opinion, let’s go to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where writer Joe Strauss wisely observed after the Rams were battered in that second quarter by Peterson and Griffen: “To quote the late, great crooner Don Meredith: ‘Turn out the lights. The party’s over.'”
