After listening to Jack, Jake, and Wags discuss the Vikings kicking woes on KFAN with Justin Gaard live from the fair last Sunday, I started getting sad. So sad that I decided to write about it.
A new season of Minnesota Vikings football is upon us. The preseason isn’t looking great so far but who knows? Maybe this team will be good enough to have a kicker let us down in the worst possible way.Football is a game of grit and toughness. A game of 300-pound men beating the piss out of each other for 60 minutes. A game that many times comes down to a 158-pound man that has ONE JOB…kicking a football through two yellow posts that are 18′ 6″ wide at the end of the field.
It doesn’t take a historian to tell you that the Vikings have historically had issues with kickers. They have truly been the Achilles heel of the team and it’s tough not to think about Minnesota Vikings kickers when looking back at some of the saddest moments in Vikings, and Minnesota sports history.Gary Anderson
This South African beauty was the Vikings kicker from 1998-2002. He rocked the fuck out of that single bar face mask and was actually, for the most part, a pretty decent kicker for the Vikings. In 1998 he went a perfect 35/35 on field goals during the regular season. That 1998 team was fucking legit. Randall Cunningham, Cris Carter, Randy Moss, Jake Reed, John Randle, etc. They were absolutely STACKED, and after a 15-1 regular season, 7-year-old me was jacked and ready for a run. Not so fast…It wouldn’t be appropriate for the Vikings to have the season end on a good note with a great regular season like that.
I’ll never forget you Gary. You always looked good in that ridiculously unsafe facemask. Even if it was blowing one of the best chances the franchise had at winning a super bowl.
Ryan Longwell
Suck it Green Bay. Go ahead and say it…”ahhhh you guys only take our old players and they’re the only good ones you have.” Fucking right! Any decent person would hate to have to spend any amount of time in Green Bay and when you finally get to get the hell out of dodge you wanna stick it to the place you hate the most. Like I said in a previous blog, See you soon Aaron Rodgers.
Besides sticking it to the losers to the east of us, Longwell was a bright spot for the franchise’s special team’s woes. Before him, there were a couple of random grunts that were nothing special and Longwell wasn’t a lock, but I think any Vikings fan would have taken him over the bum we had following him…
Wide Left
January 16th, 2016. It was so god damn cold (wind chill of -25) and there was so much god damn hope. For the love of god, Bud Grant came out for the coin toss in a t-shirt! I’m such a bitch that I was wearing at least 6 layers and was still freezing my nuts off.
I honestly thought there was no way we could lose. No way those sea chickens could come to Minnesota in Arctic temperatures and beat us. And they didn’t. We fucking blew it. Or to put it better…Blair Walsh blew it.
Some losers will say you can’t put all the blame on Walsh for the loss. Which is partly true…the offense could’ve put up 40 while the defense shuts them out and we dance our way to the divisional round of the playoffs. Welcome to the real world. That shit never happens to Minnesota sports teams. When we have an opportunity to win a game by kicking a single 27-yard field goal…you gotta make it. Thanks for nothing Blair Walsh.
Kai Forbath/Daniel Carlson/Dan Bailey/Even Kaare Vedvik
As Justin Gaard and the guys touched on, Kai Forbath actually played a big part in the Minneapolis Miracle game. Although the Saints matched his field goal, without that we would have never been in the position to win the game in such dramatic fashion. Besides that though, he was ok. All I really remember about Forbath was that he seemed to have missed a shit ton of extra points.
The Dan Bailey/Daniel Carlson/Kaare Vedvik times all kind of blend together for me. Dan Bailey was the man in Dallas but in typical Minnesota fashion, he came here and sucked. We even tried to draft a decent kicker with Daniel Carlson and he also sucked (of course now he’s killing it for Vegas)! I remember that stupid game with Green Bay that ended in a tie when Carlson missed a couple in overtime and then was released the following day. Bon Voyage. And in there somewhere we traded a fucking FITIH ROUND PICK for Kaare Vedvik who was on the team for about 4 days so that makes sense.
Soooooo Should We Just Go For 2?
I don’t know what we’re gonna do this year. We’ve got something called Greg Joseph, so who knows? Maybe he’ll be alright. It really can’t be much worse than it has been in the past and as Vikings fans, I don’t think we could be hurt more than we have in the past. Hey… at least Greg is jacked:
It seems that with analytics, more and more teams are starting to go for 2 point conversions which the Vikes should definitely look into because we could really use some Moneyball, Billy Beane type shit to happen when it comes to our special teams.
Now, enjoy this video of Dan Bailey missing 4 kicks in one game:
Great guy, better drinker. One of the better looking husky guys around.