Week Eight Player Of The Game Award: ‘Is There One?’ Edition

Vikings Griffen
Image courtesy of Vikings.com

Yes. I’m well aware that the Bears deserve any game balls awarded. I’m well aware that few Vikings players did well on Monday Night. Still, here at Vikings Territory, we take tradition very seriously (we told Austin he couldn’t wear his color rush uniform to work), and our tradition is to try and award this thing every… single… week.

This week is one of the toughest in recent memory, I struggled to even make nominations, so I’ve allowed for a slight variation from the norm in the poll below. “None” is actually an option this week.

Here are the winners so far in 2016:

WEEK ONE: Eric Kendricks

WEEK TWO: Sam Bradford

WEEK THREE: Everson Griffen

WEEK FOUR: Xavier Rhodes

WEEK FIVE: Adam Thielen

WEEK SEVEN: Cordarrelle Patterson

You all have yet to award this to the same player twice in the first six games, so let’s get to the nominations to see if that finally changes.

STEFON DIGGS

He didn’t go without miscues of his own in this game, but Diggs was by far the most productive member of the offense on Monday night. He ended the evening with eight catches (on 13 targets) for 76 yards and the lone touchdown for Minnesota.

JEFF LOCKE

Hey, everybody, if you are going to give Locke credit for his turnaround season, this would be a great week to do it! Locke saw a ton of action, punting a total of seven times for an average of 44.1 yards. A nice bounce gave him one that went for a whopping 71 yards, while a Trae Waynes mistake caused a touchback on his most beautiful punt of the evening. Three of his punts ended up inside the 20 yard line and only three were returned.

EVERSON GRIFFEN

The Vikings only hit Jay Cutler six times in this game, and Griffen accounted for half of those. He also got the lone sack for this defense. He ended up with five tackles on the night, with a few nice hustle plays getting rightfully noticed by the broadcast crew, and was one player I can honestly say never looked like he quit.

XAVIER RHODES

Alshon Jeffery caught four passes and snagged a touchdown in front of Trae Waynes. Minus the score, that’s a pretty quiet night for the superstar, and a majority of the credit belongs to none other than Xavier Rhodes. Rhodes is credited with five tackles and, more importantly, three defended passes. He had a couple of slip ups, every corner does, but he has pretty much continued his streak of abusing the opposition’s top wide out.

NONE

Not convinced by anything I wrote above? Go for it. Vote “None.”

OTHER

Feel like I missed a worthy nomination? Feel free to clock “Other” and let us know who you’re voting for via the comments section below.

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