Here Is A Story You Don’t Read Every Day

Matt Cassel is starting, some players are hurt, everything is correctable, the Wilfs are rich… yadda, yadda, yadda.  A lack of wins means a lack of interest in the same old storylines and the 2013 Vikings are certainly lacking wins.  The Minneapolis Star-Tribune‘s gossip department, or “the dish” as they prefer to call it, saw a Vikings player pass across their pages on Wednesday.

The author’s TMZ-style account of an incident involving defensive tackle Fred Evans can be read in full right here.  I warn you, however, the column is not journalism-quality and comes with plenty of assumptions and judgement.  Here is the Sparknotes version of what happened:

• A cab driver gave a man, another man, and an assumed stripper a ride from a strip club to a hotel the morning of December 2nd (after the Vikings beat the Bears on December 1st).
• The cabbie heard the first man talking about the game and the woman referred to him as “Fred” on a number of occasions.
• “Fred” and the woman were quite friendly with one another during the ride, according to the cabbie.
• When they arrived at the hotel the cabbie was not paid for the ride and he waited for some time.
• The cabbie called the hotel room multiple times.  On one occasion “Fred” hung up on him.  On another, “Fred” told him to hold on a second, but nobody came to pay him.
• At 4:04 a.m. the cabbie called the police, but he did not want to go through the court system for the $65 tab.
• Police brought a photo lineup to the cabbie and he was able to pick the real Fred Evans out of the bunch.
• The cabbie was able to contact the Vikings who then gave him the contact number of “the manager.”
• He called the manager and, while it took a couple of days, he was paid a total of $240.
• The cabbie is now happy.

Evans has been having one of the better year’s of his career with the Vikings, after Rick Spielman continued to give him chances, but an incident in a taxi cab ended his career with the Dolphins back in 2007 and you would think he’d have learned his lesson about these things.

The Vikings, having dealt with a recent rash of off-field incidents, can’t be happy to hear that another player is grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons, visiting strip clubs until the next morning, having the police called on him, and having to get “The Manager” involved.

At the very least, they can’t be too happy that we all know about it now.