Gary Anderson, Mr Perfect
What is the worst missed kick in NFL history? Well, maybe the better question is what is the second worst kick in NFL history, because it’s hard to beat losing the Super Bowl on Wide Right.
The Gary Anderson miss is probably the winner. On top of being a devastating shank, it plunged us into a worse timeline.
The setup, for you youngins: The 1998 Vikings were quite possibly the coolest team in NFL history up to that point. Randy Moss. Randal Cunningham. Cris Carter. John Randle. They won 15 games (only the third team to ever do so at that point) and set offensive records. Just game after game of “damn that shit was cool as hell”. Yes they faced a weak schedule, but lets just shove that fact right under the rug and go back to watching Randy Moss style on the Cowboys on Thanksgiving.
Over the course of this magical season, Gary Anderson missed zero kicks. Absolute zero. Every field goal (35/35); every extra point (59/59). The Vikings have a 7-point lead late in the game, and the Falcons force a field goal. It is a 39-yard field goal, in a dome. Even back then, this is not a kick that placekickers missed with any regularity. If you are under 40 yards away, you make the kick unless something goes wrong on the snap. The best kicker in the league lines up on the left hashmark and shanks it just left.
The miss has gained such renown that you’d be forgiven for not knowing the game wasn’t over yet. While a made kick puts the Vikings up 10 with 2:07 left, a nearly insurmountable lead, the Falcons were still 7 points down. The Vikings defense still had a chance to shoot the dirty birds out of the sky. Instead, the Vikings operated as if lost at sea, letting Atlanta march the field and score the tying TD with 49 seconds left. After a few back-and-forths in overtime, the Falcons eventually kicked a 38-yard field goal and won.
The Vikings became the first 15 win team to not even make a Super Bowl, let alone not win it. The Vikings must commit a hazing ritual to all newer fans every few years. This was the real slammer for the elder millennial/younger gen X Vikings fans, a feat only rivaled by 41-0 a couple of seasons later.
What really stings is what this loss left us with instead. These Atlanta Falcons would go to Super Bowl XXXIII to face the reigning champion Broncos, who already broke the curse and got Elway that ring a year prior. Nothing was really on the line for Denver outside more glory. The Falcons pro-bowl safety Eugene Robsinson had a prostitution arrest the night before the Super Bowl, sending the vibes into the toilet. Robinson would give up the dagger touchdown in the 2nd quarter that sent the Broncos far above Atlanta on the scoreboard, a gap they couldn’t hope to close.
The game was a forgettable 34-19 clunker. Elway got his second ring, the Falcons wouldn’t return until nearly two decades later to embarrass themselves even worse, and none of us got to watch Randy Moss and Randall Cunningham in the Super Bowl. Granted, this stupid team would have probably found a way to lose anyway, but it would have made for a more memorable loss. The Vikings are nothing if not spectacular in their failures.
That’s a brutal moment, definitely up there. It’s amazing how one kick can define a career and a season.
This was just a regular season game, but the River City Relay was a missed kick to remember. After scoring a touchdown with some lateral trickery with time having expired in the game, the Saints kicker, John Carney, comes out and misses the game-tying extra point, which at this point in time was still on the two-yard line.
Jon Bois classic, Pretty Good S2 E1
I think what ultimately makes that hurt less is that one of the teams the Saints would’ve needed to lose to make it in the playoffs won later. Plus there’s no guarantee the saints would’ve won in OT either.
At some point, you stop rooting for your cursed team to win and begin wondering how they are going to lose this time.
It was a touching moment when Blair Walsh came out and did a tribute to this play in 2015.
Thanks for telegraphing my pain, Dave. It’s like a stiletto in my heart and every so often, someone like you comes along and gives it a twist. May the diseased fleas from a thousand camels infest the uniforms of the Giants next season.
But be got to see Chris Chandler in the Super Bowl! Oilers fans living vicariously through him…
I still remember where I was when he missed that kick. I was in my friend’s living room, we were watching the game and eating Dominos pizza. He missed and we were all shocked. After the Falcons kicked the winner, we all sat there in stunned silence for what seemed like forever. Half empty pizza boxes were sitting on the floor but even the dog was so shocked by what happened that she didn’t eat any of the pizza, she just sat there.
My dad has been a Vikings fan for decades, so naturally, he passed the curse on to me. He said of the Vikings repeated failures in the NFC Championship Game, “That’s just the sports gods telling us, ‘Trust me, it’s better that you lose now. You do NOT want to see what happens in the Super Bowl'”.
41-0 was literally the first game I was able to watch on TV after Randy Moss and NFL 2K convinced me to be a Vikings fan. And yet I’d still rather go through that game a million times than have to experience Gary Anderson missing that kick live.
We were robbed of a chance of seeing Terrell Davis and Elway torching John Randle. Well mostly Davis given the guy’s track record in the postseason.
On the other hand, Chris Chan played in the Super Bowl.
The Randy Moss in the Thanksgiving game is one of my favorite box scores ever. It’s rate that you can read s box score in football and picture exactly what happened.
This made me understand what being a Vikings fan was going to be like. Thanks Dad for being a Vikings fan and not a Cheesehead.
Fox flashed Gary Anderson’s stats before that fateful kick
Pat Summerall: 39yds away. And it’s NOT GOOD!
Two Legacy of Failures were colliding in that 1998 NFC Championship
A Vikings-Broncos SB would have been a really cool match up. Denver may have still won but Minnesota had the better overall roster IMO