This was me at halftime of the Jaguars game:

THEY ACTUALLY DID IT! I can’t believe we had a 27-point comeback and it was somehow the second most wild comeback this season. I already talked at length about the Jaguars comeback and how it actually felt like the Jags were the better team the whole time once Trevor got over his yips. The Jaguars found themselves, the Chargers pulled a classic Chargers, Joey Bosa was a baby, and everyone laughed except for like, 150 people in Los Angeles. It was delightful.

The Vikings however…less delightful. So much has been written and stated this year about how the Vikings were frauds. We all knew it. Everyone could tell this team was not as good as their record. But even frauds still have…some ability. You have to have some cohesion as a team to take advantage of situations when they are gifted to you, and the Vikings indeed spent this entire season being maybe the best team ever at grabbing those tiny threads of hope to win games. Analytics experts listed them as not a 13 win team, but a 8 or 9 win team that fluked into 13 wins. That feels right, and that would put them directly on par with the 9 win Giants team they faced.

The game was a mess. Both defenses played badly, but the Vikings defense was just a total failure. The Giants defensive problems felt, in part, due to coaching peculiars. Wink Martindale understood that blitzing this team was never going to work in the Giants favor so to his credit he pulled back significantly compared to his usual style and instead focused everything on stopping Jefferson. It worked! Jefferson was a non-factor all day. Sadly the team wasn’t able to keep up in regards to everything else and KJ Osborn, TJ Hockenson, and the company still did a ton of damage and Kirk played pretty well. The Giants pass rush wasn’t too threatening outside All-Pro Sexy Dexy being a menace. Meanwhile Daniel Jones could seemingly do whatever the hell he damn well pleased against the Vikings.

A lot of Giants fans have come around to believing Jones is the guy after this season, and I understand the optimism, but I think a lot of people are getting ahead of themselves after a great performance against a woeful pile of trash. Pretty much every throw was to a WR 5 yards separated from the nearest Viking. We can be proud of Jones while still recognizing that his job on Sunday was one of the easier jobs he’s had all year, maybe ever. This was the least amount of drives the Giants have had in a game all year, and they scored 30 points for the second time this season. The Vikings defense should be ashamed of itself and I’m stunned the coordinator is still employed because the roster has talent. EDIT: I just checked twitter and his firing announcement got released as I was writing this post. Lol.

But if you play with fire long enough, you get burned. The Vikings couldn’t stop sticking their hands on the stove like a drunk frat bro at a college party trying to prove how he could handle the heat. The Vikings magic chance still came, despite it all. On third down, a (once again wide open) Darius Slayton dropped a pass that would have easily been a first down if he held on. It was deflating, Slayton was inconsolable on the sideline, and now it felt like VIKINGS BULLSHIT ™ was coming. On the next drive, after a great stop, the refs gifted Minnesota with another chance on one of the worst roughing the passer calls of the year, which is saying something. Another gift from the gods to Minnesota. But the Giants forced 4th down anyway and Kirk lost any respect people had built up for him this season by dinking it down to TJ Hockenson 6 yards short of the marker with the season on the line. Xavier McKinney wrapped him up and that was that.

I kinda feel bad for Kirk and I also don’t. A guy who plays it safe and pads his stats but doesn’t push the team forward has long been a Cousins critique and him dunking it on 4th to a guy who was going to immediately get contacted with the season on the line is extremely Kirk. Cousins played well all game, the loss isn’t on him, but in the most vital of situations, he played it too safe. I’d have respected him trying to throw off his back foot to triple-covered Jefferson more than that throw. At least in that spot Jefferson has a chance to catch it or maybe pull a PI call. The season is on the line, everything has a low probability of success, take the damn shot.

Anyway you are welcome for now thinking about Kirk Cousins’ Skol Juice.