This Booger Is Not Pleased with the Vikings
Dustin Baker
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The Philadelphia Eagles gashed the New York Giants on Saturday night 38-7 — a familiar score from bad Vikings lore — enabling a flood of anti-Vikings sentiments to hit social media.
The Giants disposed of the Vikings in the Wildcard Round last Sunday, 31-24, thanks to a porous Minnesota defense that has since begun overhaul with the firing of defensive coordinator Ed Donatell.
This Booger Is Not Pleased with the Vikings
The Vikings loss was particularly embarrassing for three reasons:
- The Vikings were at home, and division-winning teams should take care of business at home.
- Minnesota won 13 games in the regular season and then looked foolish in the postseason.
- The Giants weren’t an incredibly talented team.
New York taking care of Minnesota also accentuated and enhanced season-long “the Vikings are frauds” narratives, as advanced stats insisted all regular season that Minnesota wasn’t very good. An overachieving unit in head coach Kevin O’Connell’s first year, the Vikings went 13-4, while oodles of analytical metrics claimed Minnesota should be around a 9-8 team or so.
Well, ESPN’s Booger McFarland was one of the personalities Saturday night who was wildly unimpressed with the Vikings, mainly because the Giants looked so pitiful. McFarland tweeted near the end of Eagles-Giants, “Shame on the Vikings defense for making us think the Giants offense was remotely good.“
McFarland, a former defensive tackle, played nine seasons in the NFL, mostly with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and won a Super Bowl with Jon Gruden and the gang in 2002. He retired after the 2006 season and became an NFL analyst in 2014.
The theory is this: the Giants thoroughly flogged the Vikings defense last weekend and therefore taught the masses they could be prolific on offense. Then, they encountered a real defense sponsored by the Eagles and were blatantly outplayed. Through implication, Minnesota was a terrible team because it propped up the true nature of the Giants — a meh football team that had its way with an ever more meh football team in the Vikings.
One popular Vikings-themed Twitter account, Vikeologist, replied to McFarland’s tweet, “Actually watch games instead of highlight reels and box scores. Anyone could have told you it was a mirage because the Vikings defense is, in fact, that terrible.”
Twitter’s Lucas Hlavacek also replied to McFarland, “I feel like if you actually thought the Giants offense was good, you haven’t been paying any attention to the Vikings defense. Shame on Booger for getting paid to not pay attention to the league.”
McFarland kept tabs on the Vikings all season, tweeting in November about the team’s quarterback when Minnesota had an 8-2 record, “As good as the Vikings record is and no matter what it ends up being, there will always be a Kirk Cousins question and now there is an Oline question.”
After the Vikings loss to New York, McFarland also defended Cousins, who failed to convert on a 4th and 8 situation that ended the game. He tweeted, “If u are blaming Kirk Cousins for the Vikings loss. U are an idiot, simple as that.”
McFarland’s Buccaneers teams were 4-2 (.666) against the Vikings during his playing career.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs every Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sal Spice. His Vikings obsession dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ and The Doors (the band).
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