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These are excerpts from this article. To read the whole thing click the link below.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/11/08/minnesota-vikings-overtime-decision-week-9-nfl
Vikings Flip the Script
An unorthodox decision in OT helps Minnesota win its fourth straight and grab a share of the NFC North lead. Plus, Greg Hardy, Marcus Mariota, Week 9 player awards and much more
by Peter King
I’ve always had a lot of respect for Mike Zimmer, who has some elements of cornball, Parcells and wide-eyed kid in his coaching repertoire. So here he was Sunday, in the wind tunnel of a stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota (14 mph, gusting to 26 mph), with the wind playing tricks on the kickers and the quarterbacks. He’d seen Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein bomb a 61-yard field goal going mostly with the wind, but then, going the same way, a Zuerlein 48-yarder broke sharply to the right, like a Clayton Kershaw curveball. It was a weird wind.
End of regulation. Rams 18, Vikings 18.
Zimmer sent captain Chad Greenway out for the overtime coin flip. First, he had to decide what to do if the Rams lost the flip and it was Minnesota’s decision—elect to receive or to defend a goal. “It wasn’t an easy decision, I can tell you that,” Zimmer said after the game.
The announcers thought it was fairly obvious. “I don’t think the wind’s enough of a factor to turn [the ball] down,” said FOX’s Charles Davis.
In the 42 years since the NFL adopted overtime as a rule, this was the 530th OT game. Only 10 times had a coach not taken the ball if given the choice to start the extra period. Even with the wind as a factor, it didn’t seem as if there was much of a decision to make. Who’d want to hand the ball to a team with the hottest running back in football, Todd Gurley, to start OT, especially after he had run for 52 yards in the last 12 minutes of regulation?
At midfield, Rams captain James Laurinaitis called tails. Referee Ronald Torbert flipped the coin. Heads.
“We want to defend this end,” Greenway said, pointing to the west goalpost.
“You want to defend this end?” Torbert said, with a rise in his voice on the word “defend.”
Greenway nodded.
* * *
Photo: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
Blair Walsh's winning field goal came after the Vikings opted to defend to start overtime.
Upstairs, Thom Brennaman told his audience, “How about that?”
“You don’t see that very often,” said Charles Davis. “Hey, that’s a lot of confidence in your defense.”
“When they come asking about it after the game,” Brennaman said ominously, “it better be.”
Coaches who have made such a call know they will either be ridiculed or lionized. In 2002, taking the light wind and trusting his defense in overtime backfired on Detroit coach Marty Mornhinweg in Champaign, Ill., the Bears’ home that year while Soldier Field was being refurbished. Chicago took the ball on the first possession and drove to the winning field goal. That was in the last half-season of Mornhinweg’s forgettable 5-27 reign.
Two years ago Bill Belichick actually did it, handing the ball to Peyton Manning in Foxboro on a brutally cold November night with 22-mph winds swirling around Gillette Stadium. “The wind,” Belichick said. “It was definitely significant.” On the fifth possession of overtime, New England kicked a field goal to win, 34-31.
The wind, again, here.
The Vikings took the wind, and Zimmer sent his defense out to load the box on Gurley on first down. Terrific diagnosis by safety Harrison Smith on first down. He burst through the line, got a great pursuit angle on Gurley, grabbed his arm and waited for reinforcements. Nose tackle Linval Joseph smothered Gurley for a six-yard loss. Then it was pretty easy. A screen to Tavon Austin was stuffed, Nick Foles threw an incompletion, the Rams punted, and the Vikings took over at their 49. They drove to the Rams’ 22, mostly using Adrian Peterson’s legs to get there, and Blair Walsh, with the wind, blasted a 40-yard perfecto halfway up the net. Vikings 21, Rams 18.
“It was the wind,” Zimmer said, sounding like Belichick. “I thought, ‘Man, I don’t want to give them the opportunity to kick another long field goal to win the football game.’ So, we decided to defend the goal.”
He didn’t seem particularly bothered by what might have been had the Rams driven to the winning touchdown on the first series.
* * *
I asked Zimmer: “So you’re tied for the division lead with Green Bay—both 6-2. You surprised?”
“I try not to look at the records,” Zimmer said from Minnesota. “I just try to prepare the best we can for every game, every day. Our coaches do a really good job working with our players on why exactly we win games and why exactly we lose them. And I talk to them about New England a lot. I have a lot of respect for Bill Belichick’s approach to the game, and he transmits that to his players. They could win by 40 or lose by 40, and after the game you hear his players and coaches say all they’re focused on is the next game. That’s all that matters. The records, the playoffs, there’s nothing we can do about that today. We’ve just got to play the next game the best we can.”
That makes so much sense, but in today’s world with players and teams and owners being bombarded by fans in all kinds of ways, it’s often harder to keep that perspective. This won’t help Zimmer. It’s great that the Vikings have rebounded from a 2-2 start to win four straight over the past month. But the road ahead, compared to Green Bay’s, looks tougher.
What the Vikings will have to do is hope Teddy Bridgewater gets out of concussion protocol this week so he can face the surging Raiders out west. Zimmer seemed optimistic that Bridgewater would be okay after taking a shot to the head from St. Louis cornerback Lamarcus Joyner while sliding in the second half Sunday.
“I thought it was a cheap shot,” Zimmer said. “I don’t think they’re a very clean football team. I hope the league checks into the history of the defensive coordinator [Gregg Williams] when they consider [discipline] this week.”
Zimmer said he thought Bridgewater would be fine this week. After the game, Bridgewater, who’d been in the trainers’ room, met the team coming up the tunnel and said, “Great win, coach.”
“We’re not always a perfect team,” Zimmer said. “But we’ve got good enough weapons at all the spots we need them, we play really hard on defense, and Teddy’s our guy. He’ll continue to be our guy. Sometimes he tries to be too perfect. Like today, I told him, ‘Don’t be afraid to pull the ball down and run with it. Just play. Go play.’” Shortly after that talk, Bridgewater ran up the middle through an empty midsection of the St. Louis defense for a six-yard touchdown. And then he ran around right end for the two-point conversion.
It’s an interesting team—Adrian Peterson chipped in with 125 rushing yards—with a coach learning to make the kind of bold calls veteran coaches make, without fear of failure. Green Bay probably didn’t expect to feel Minnesota’s hot breath on its neck this year, but it’s there, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away.
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Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Greg Hardy has played four games for the Cowboys this season.
On Greg Hardy.
What Greg Hardy has done and said in the past 18 months repulses me. Starting with the alleged serious abuse of girlfriend Nicole Holder in Charlotte on May 13, 2014 … being found guilty in a North Carolina bench trial for assaulting and threatening to kill her … his flippant remarks when he returned to play football last month with the Cowboys about coming out “with guns blazing’’ against the Patriots—he had allegedly thrown Holder onto a futon covered with a stash of automatic weapons … seeing the graphic photos of Holder on Deadspinon Friday, showing the marks and welts from the alleged Hardy abuse … and reading his way-too-little-too-late Twitter apology Saturday (“I express my regret 4 what happened in past”) that defined shallow.
But I also think Greg Hardy has the right to play football for the Dallas Cowboys.
Since 2000, approximately 51 NFL players have been found culpable in domestic-violence cases. We have been moved to widespread public outrage twice: in the Hardy case and in the Ray Rice case last year. Both times we saw images, once in a video (Rice) and once in photos of the abuse victim (Hardy), after a trial with graphic testimony. In many of the other cases, surely the abuse would be comparable to—if not quite as stunning as—what Rice did, and what Hardy allegedly did. But we haven’t been outraged, because we haven’t seen the images.
Why weren’t we outraged over Cardinals linebacker Daryl Washington pleading guilty in 2014 to assaulting the mother of his child, leaving her with a broken collarbone? Or when former Dolphin Phillip Merling was accused by a tearful girlfriend of battery when she was pregnant? Or the numerous other incidents that have left girlfriends and wives battered and in fear of more abuse?
I said the same thing after Rice paid his penalty to the league and to society: He deserves a second chance to ply his professional trade. Rice was suspended by the league for a total of 12 games and won his reinstatement on appeal, and now he sits, almost a full year later, waiting for a team to sign him. Hardy was put on the league’s exempt list for 15 games last year (paid leave), then suspended by commissioner Roger Goodell for the first 10 games of this year after a league investigation into the alleged battery of Holder; Goodell’s ban was cut to four games on appeal, Hardy signed with Dallas, and he began playing for the Cowboys a month ago.
Maybe we can find it in our hearts to forgive Rice because he has been so outspoken against domestic violence and so repentant. Maybe we can’t forgive Hardy because he’s hasn’t. Regardless, the criminal justice system is finished with both men, for now. After Hardy appealed his conviction, Holder refused to cooperate in the case and the charges were dismissed, and, last week, expunged from his record.
The Hardy case stinks. We can all smell it. But the American justice system has released him into society. The NFL kept him off the field for 19 games—Goodell tried for 25 and was rebuffed. If the vast majority of teams in the league wouldn’t touch Hardy, good for them. But Hardy has the right to work, and any of the 32 teams has the right to sign him.
For there to be a realistic movement to ban batterers, this isn’t something Goodell could unilaterally impose. (Goodell, recent history suggests, can unilaterally impose nothing.) It would have to be collectively bargained with the union, and the current CBA does not expire until after the 2020 season. Or the union would have to deem it so important that it would hand the ability to ban domestic abusers to the league. That’s highly unlikely. Where would it stop? Would this be the only crime worthy of a ban? And what if the alleged batterer was never found guilty of a crime, or had charges dropped or expunged, as happened in Hardy’s case? How would that be handled?
What also worries me about a ban is the potential for threats against the battered. Or the potential that victims will refuse to come forward rather than help bring charges that could cost a spouse or boyfriend millions.
Watching Greg Hardy play doesn’t feel good, nor does it look good for the Cowboys or the NFL. And I know we’re a country of second chances. Sometimes the second chance feels cheap and rotten, as this one does. But as bad as it feels, Greg Hardy has the right to work in the field in which he excels, and Jerry Jones has the right to employ him.
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Photo: Michael Zagaris/Getty Images
Through eight games, Russell Wilson has been hit 60 percent more often than in 2014.
The fate of Russell Wilson.
“I’m 100 percent,” Wilson told me the other day. “Absolutely. A hundred percent. The goal is to feel great every week, and right now I do.” Wilson must be wearing some pretty flexible and impenetrable armor, because he has taken hits at an alarming rate in the first half of the season, per Pro Football Focusmetrics.
Here is a look at the punishment of Wilson, 2014 vs. 2015, through eight games:
Year................Sacks................ Hits................. Total Hits
2014.................. 17..................... 26........................ 43
2015.................. 31..................... 33........................ 64
The one good sign for Wilson is that his remade offensive line had its first sackless game of the season eight days ago against Dallas. (Seattle had its bye this weekend.) “We’ve got a lot of room to grow,” said Wilson. “I’m confident we’ll continue to grow as an offense.”
Wilson said all the right things about his line, and he was earnest about it. As former NFL quarterback and current Seattle-based radio analyst Hugh Millen says, Wilson has to take some responsibility for protection calls at the line gone awry. But it stands to reason he would have had to take the same responsibility last year too, and he’s getting hit significantly more this year. It’s been a struggle nearly every week for the Seahawks, and when they play three home games in 15 days coming off the bye beginning next Sunday—against the NFC West-leading Cardinals, the Niners and the Steelers—Seattle will get the briefest of respites. None of those three teams has a great pressure defense.
PFF ranks center Drew Nowak 25th among starting centers, right guard J.R. Sweezy and left guard Justin Britt the 66th and 73rd-rated guards, and left tackle Russell Okung 35th and right tackle Garry Gilliam 72nd among tackles. That’s bad, and that has to improve for Seattle to be a playoff factor in two months.
“It seems like every week, more than ever, we’re getting every team’s best shot,” Wilson said. “We’ve just got to keep finding ways to win.”
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Photo: Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Percy Harvin caught 71 passes for three teams over the past three seasons, including 19 with the Bills in 2015.
Well, I guess $31.5M doesn’t buy what it used to.
The strange career of 27-year-old Percy Harvin—there needs to be a book written on it—stalled Saturday, when the Bills placed him on injured reserve with what the team said was a knee injury. He had been plagued by a sore hip, the same hip that short-circuited his 2013 season in Seattle and required surgery, but the knee was a new thing. I would think some team would want to sign Harvin for close to the minimum with little guaranteed money next year, but after the Seahawks blew a $12 million bonus on him in 2013, and after Buffalo blew through $6 million this year for such little impact, Harvin will have to re-dedicate himself and really love the game to rekindle his career in 2016.
Exactly three years ago, at the midpoint of the 2012 season, Harvin was one of the two or three most dangerous weapons in football, scoring as a rusher, receiver and returner for Minnesota in the season’s first two months. But he suffered an ankle sprain in Week 9 at Seattle, and in what would be a precursor of the next three seasons, was plagued by the injuries to the point that he couldn’t return, and the Vikings placed him on IR. Notable as we consider whether Harvin has played his last snap:
• Touchdowns scored in the first 3.5 seasons of his career: 29.
• Touchdowns scored in the last 3.5 seasons of his career: 4, including postseason.
• Games played for Seattle, the New York Jets and Buffalo: 21, including postseason.
• Money Harvin earned from the Seahawks, Jets and Bills: $31.5 million.
• Offensive touches for the Seahawks, Jets and Bills: 116. Yards: 1,069.
• Touchdowns from scrimmage for the Seahawks: 1.
• Touchdowns from scrimmage for the Jets: 1.
• Touchdowns from scrimmage for the Bills: 1.
There is only one positive tributary for Seattle this morning, if it ponders the money and draft capital it spent on Harvin. When the Seahawks dealt Harvin to the Jets in mid-2014 for a sixth-round pick, they used that sixth-round pick (along with third-, fourth- and fifth-round choices) to trade up for receiver/returner Tyler Lockett of Kansas State.
Harvin: 5-10 ½, 183.
Lockett: 5-10, 182.
The whippet-like Lockett has scored three ways in the first half of his rookie season—on a 43-yard reception, a 57-yard punt return and a 105-yard kickoff return.
Who does that remind you of?
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Photo: CBS
Ray Lewis's recent book tour has resulted in more questions about the linebacker's involvement in a double-murder in Atlanta in 2000.
ICYMI … Ray Lewis on Atlanta, on NPR.
Ray Lewis has written a book, I Feel Like Going On: Life, Game and Glory, with Daniel Paisner, and has a version of the events that unfolded in the winter and spring of 2000 in Atlanta when two men were murdered and Lewis and two friends were charged with the killings. Lewis eventually pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and got 12 months of probation. NPR’s Daniel Greene asked Lewis about the experience.
“It’s always interesting that the first thing people go to is they always say, ‘You were charged with double murder,’” Lewis told Greene. “But nobody ever wants to say that from day one there was not one inch of evidence on me. I hear people bring up Atlanta like, ‘Oh Atlanta is supposed to scare me.’ Atlanta doesn’t scare me, Atlanta wakes me up, only to realize that first of all, put your trust in no man, and second of all, you don’t ever have to live like you are guilty when you know you are innocent.”
Greene pointed out there were some facts missing from the re-telling of the story in Lewis’ book. “You’re only talking about facts that was already [thrown out] of the case 100 percent,” Lewis said. “ … So you talk about blood, but we’re not talking about the facts, because you are only coming from the perspective … because you don’t have a clue what happened that night! So when you ask someone—”
Interrupted Greene: “Many of your fans read some of that stuff, like, ‘Blood found in Ray Lewis limo.’ Do you feel like you offered enough details in this book to really explain?”
“You don’t have to bring up those details when you already lived it,” Lewis said. “The part that I brought up was the part that was left out. All the stuff that you’re talking about, that was all through the case, so if you really wanted to know about all of that, go through the case and you will find out all of that. This is kind of how I leave Atlanta. Nobody ever has to convince me or ask me to prove myself to people. I don’t prove myself to people, I don’t live to prove myself to people and I never will. Never!”
Greene: “Two powerful images of you: devout man, father, [Michael] Phelps described you as inspiration. Then there is Ray Lewis who some people suggest is a murderer. Is it hard to live with those two personas out there?”
Lewis: “No. No, absolutely not. That’s why I wrote the book. Because who Michael Phelps knows, that’s who Ray Lewis is. Everything else that you just said—the only thing I heard that you said, honestly, of the whole thing, was murder.”
An uneasy conversation, but good radio.
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Photo: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
Lamarcus Joyner was penalized for this hit on a sliding Teddy Bridgewater.
“I know that guy. My mom knows his mom, my dad knows his mom. I would never intentionally do a dirty play like that on Teddy Bridgewater. It was a bam-bam play. He’s a taller stature guy compared to me. I did not know he was gonna slide. When I launched, he slid, and we connected. If I could take it back, I would take it back, because I am not a dirty player. Was it intentional? Not at all. So I can’t fix the problem. But how I feel inside, it’s not good.”
—St. Louis cornerback Lamarcus Joyner, after knocking an acquaintance from his Miami youth, Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, out of the game Sunday with a clubbing to the head as Bridgewater was sliding.
“If we were on the street, we probably would have had a fight.”
—Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer, after the 21-18 win over St. Louis, referring to Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Zimmer was angry that Rams cornerback Lamarcus Joyner cheap-shotted quarterback Teddy Bridgewater on a slide, knocking Bridgewater out of the game. Zimmer blamed Williams, whose defenses are notoriously aggressive.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Adam Vinatieri, kicker, Indianapolis. At age 42, in what was probably Peyton Manning’s last game ever in Indianapolis, Vinatieri had the clutch moment of the day. That is not new. With 6:13 to play in a 24-24 game, Vinatieri, the oldest player in football, booted a 55-yard field goal to knock Denver from the undefeated ranks … and just maybe save the job of his embattled coach. Of course the kick was straight down the middle, and good with six or eight yards to spare.
Greg Zuerlein, kicker, St. Louis. It’s one thing to kick a 61-yard field goal outdoors in Minnesota in November. It’s another to kick said field goal with a 17-mph wind blowing across the field … and to be so solidly hit it would been good from 68 yards or so. They don’t call him Greg the Leg for nothing. Thought Zuerlein missed a crucial 45-yarder in the fourth quarter that would have tied it, he came back and hit his fourth of the day, from 53 yards, to send it to overtime. For the day, in the wind, he hit from 45, 61, 35 and 53.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Marvin Lewis, head coach, Cincinnati. In his 200th regular-season game as coach of the Bengals (he’s 108-90-2), a 31-10 win over Cleveland on Thursday night, Lewis did something else significant: He piloted the Bengals to their eighth win without a loss, and no AFC North team has ever been 8-0 in the 14-year history of the latest gerrymandered NFL division structure. For all the heat Lewis takes (he’s 0-6 as a playoff coach), think of coaching the same team for 13 years, and building a team competitive almost every year in a division with powers Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Lamarcus Joyner, cornerback, St. Louis. For taking a cheap shot at an obviously sliding Teddy Bridgewater in the fourth quarter, a hit to Bridgewater's head that appeared to knock the quarterback out for at least a few seconds. Totally unnecessary. Joyner should have been thrown out for it, in addition to getting a roughness call.
I think this is what I liked about Week 9:
The physical wrestling-match of an interception by Rams cornerback Trumaine Johnson at Minnesota, preventing a Vikings touchdown.
Love the early needle-threading by Teddy Bridgewater through the Rams secondary.
Reggie Bush saying he would likely sue the city of St. Louis for having exposed concrete so near the playing field at the Edward Jones Dome. Bush slipped on the concrete and tore his MCL.
Bridgewater’s decision to run for a third-quarter TD instead of making a riskier throw, and then running around right end for the two-point conversion.
Rams safety Rodney McLeod’s stout stop of Vikings receiver Mike Wallace short of a first down late in the first half, and then later, in the open field on Adrian Peterson.
Vikings defensive tackle Linval Joseph—my Player To Watch This Weekend—dragging down Todd Gurley on a failed Ram two-point conversion. Joseph looked like a cowboy roping a steer and overpowering it.
I think if you lost track of Green Beret free-agent long-snapper Nate Boyer, formerly of the Seattle Seahawks, he’s doing something cool with his life now that he’s looking for the proverbial next challenge. Our exchange late in the week:
Boyer: Chris Long of the Rams reached out to me the day I got cut. He asked me if I had any ideas what to do [for vets]. I said we’ve got 22 suicides a day among veterans. We have nothing to fight for. We need a challenge. We want to continue to serve. Part of our makeup is to face the obstacles and do something good for the world. Chris has this initiative to build wells for these communities in east Africa desperate for water.
I said how about if I take a wounded vet, a friend of mine, a single-leg amputee, and we climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money? First we thought we would raise enough money to build two wells, but now we want to raise $1 million and get 22 wells built. And I’ll do it with my friend Blake, who took a knee on an IED and had three years of depression. Now that’s started to change. I’m not a mountain-climber, but I love challenges, I love new things, and I love working in the Third World.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/11/08/minnesota-vikings-overtime-decision-week-9-nfl
Vikings Flip the Script
An unorthodox decision in OT helps Minnesota win its fourth straight and grab a share of the NFC North lead. Plus, Greg Hardy, Marcus Mariota, Week 9 player awards and much more
by Peter King
I’ve always had a lot of respect for Mike Zimmer, who has some elements of cornball, Parcells and wide-eyed kid in his coaching repertoire. So here he was Sunday, in the wind tunnel of a stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota (14 mph, gusting to 26 mph), with the wind playing tricks on the kickers and the quarterbacks. He’d seen Rams kicker Greg Zuerlein bomb a 61-yard field goal going mostly with the wind, but then, going the same way, a Zuerlein 48-yarder broke sharply to the right, like a Clayton Kershaw curveball. It was a weird wind.
End of regulation. Rams 18, Vikings 18.
Zimmer sent captain Chad Greenway out for the overtime coin flip. First, he had to decide what to do if the Rams lost the flip and it was Minnesota’s decision—elect to receive or to defend a goal. “It wasn’t an easy decision, I can tell you that,” Zimmer said after the game.
The announcers thought it was fairly obvious. “I don’t think the wind’s enough of a factor to turn [the ball] down,” said FOX’s Charles Davis.
In the 42 years since the NFL adopted overtime as a rule, this was the 530th OT game. Only 10 times had a coach not taken the ball if given the choice to start the extra period. Even with the wind as a factor, it didn’t seem as if there was much of a decision to make. Who’d want to hand the ball to a team with the hottest running back in football, Todd Gurley, to start OT, especially after he had run for 52 yards in the last 12 minutes of regulation?
At midfield, Rams captain James Laurinaitis called tails. Referee Ronald Torbert flipped the coin. Heads.
“We want to defend this end,” Greenway said, pointing to the west goalpost.
“You want to defend this end?” Torbert said, with a rise in his voice on the word “defend.”
Greenway nodded.
* * *
Photo: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
Blair Walsh's winning field goal came after the Vikings opted to defend to start overtime.
Upstairs, Thom Brennaman told his audience, “How about that?”
“You don’t see that very often,” said Charles Davis. “Hey, that’s a lot of confidence in your defense.”
“When they come asking about it after the game,” Brennaman said ominously, “it better be.”
Coaches who have made such a call know they will either be ridiculed or lionized. In 2002, taking the light wind and trusting his defense in overtime backfired on Detroit coach Marty Mornhinweg in Champaign, Ill., the Bears’ home that year while Soldier Field was being refurbished. Chicago took the ball on the first possession and drove to the winning field goal. That was in the last half-season of Mornhinweg’s forgettable 5-27 reign.
Two years ago Bill Belichick actually did it, handing the ball to Peyton Manning in Foxboro on a brutally cold November night with 22-mph winds swirling around Gillette Stadium. “The wind,” Belichick said. “It was definitely significant.” On the fifth possession of overtime, New England kicked a field goal to win, 34-31.
The wind, again, here.
The Vikings took the wind, and Zimmer sent his defense out to load the box on Gurley on first down. Terrific diagnosis by safety Harrison Smith on first down. He burst through the line, got a great pursuit angle on Gurley, grabbed his arm and waited for reinforcements. Nose tackle Linval Joseph smothered Gurley for a six-yard loss. Then it was pretty easy. A screen to Tavon Austin was stuffed, Nick Foles threw an incompletion, the Rams punted, and the Vikings took over at their 49. They drove to the Rams’ 22, mostly using Adrian Peterson’s legs to get there, and Blair Walsh, with the wind, blasted a 40-yard perfecto halfway up the net. Vikings 21, Rams 18.
“It was the wind,” Zimmer said, sounding like Belichick. “I thought, ‘Man, I don’t want to give them the opportunity to kick another long field goal to win the football game.’ So, we decided to defend the goal.”
He didn’t seem particularly bothered by what might have been had the Rams driven to the winning touchdown on the first series.
* * *
I asked Zimmer: “So you’re tied for the division lead with Green Bay—both 6-2. You surprised?”
“I try not to look at the records,” Zimmer said from Minnesota. “I just try to prepare the best we can for every game, every day. Our coaches do a really good job working with our players on why exactly we win games and why exactly we lose them. And I talk to them about New England a lot. I have a lot of respect for Bill Belichick’s approach to the game, and he transmits that to his players. They could win by 40 or lose by 40, and after the game you hear his players and coaches say all they’re focused on is the next game. That’s all that matters. The records, the playoffs, there’s nothing we can do about that today. We’ve just got to play the next game the best we can.”
That makes so much sense, but in today’s world with players and teams and owners being bombarded by fans in all kinds of ways, it’s often harder to keep that perspective. This won’t help Zimmer. It’s great that the Vikings have rebounded from a 2-2 start to win four straight over the past month. But the road ahead, compared to Green Bay’s, looks tougher.
What the Vikings will have to do is hope Teddy Bridgewater gets out of concussion protocol this week so he can face the surging Raiders out west. Zimmer seemed optimistic that Bridgewater would be okay after taking a shot to the head from St. Louis cornerback Lamarcus Joyner while sliding in the second half Sunday.
“I thought it was a cheap shot,” Zimmer said. “I don’t think they’re a very clean football team. I hope the league checks into the history of the defensive coordinator [Gregg Williams] when they consider [discipline] this week.”
Zimmer said he thought Bridgewater would be fine this week. After the game, Bridgewater, who’d been in the trainers’ room, met the team coming up the tunnel and said, “Great win, coach.”
“We’re not always a perfect team,” Zimmer said. “But we’ve got good enough weapons at all the spots we need them, we play really hard on defense, and Teddy’s our guy. He’ll continue to be our guy. Sometimes he tries to be too perfect. Like today, I told him, ‘Don’t be afraid to pull the ball down and run with it. Just play. Go play.’” Shortly after that talk, Bridgewater ran up the middle through an empty midsection of the St. Louis defense for a six-yard touchdown. And then he ran around right end for the two-point conversion.
It’s an interesting team—Adrian Peterson chipped in with 125 rushing yards—with a coach learning to make the kind of bold calls veteran coaches make, without fear of failure. Green Bay probably didn’t expect to feel Minnesota’s hot breath on its neck this year, but it’s there, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away.
* * *
Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Greg Hardy has played four games for the Cowboys this season.
On Greg Hardy.
What Greg Hardy has done and said in the past 18 months repulses me. Starting with the alleged serious abuse of girlfriend Nicole Holder in Charlotte on May 13, 2014 … being found guilty in a North Carolina bench trial for assaulting and threatening to kill her … his flippant remarks when he returned to play football last month with the Cowboys about coming out “with guns blazing’’ against the Patriots—he had allegedly thrown Holder onto a futon covered with a stash of automatic weapons … seeing the graphic photos of Holder on Deadspinon Friday, showing the marks and welts from the alleged Hardy abuse … and reading his way-too-little-too-late Twitter apology Saturday (“I express my regret 4 what happened in past”) that defined shallow.
But I also think Greg Hardy has the right to play football for the Dallas Cowboys.
Since 2000, approximately 51 NFL players have been found culpable in domestic-violence cases. We have been moved to widespread public outrage twice: in the Hardy case and in the Ray Rice case last year. Both times we saw images, once in a video (Rice) and once in photos of the abuse victim (Hardy), after a trial with graphic testimony. In many of the other cases, surely the abuse would be comparable to—if not quite as stunning as—what Rice did, and what Hardy allegedly did. But we haven’t been outraged, because we haven’t seen the images.
Why weren’t we outraged over Cardinals linebacker Daryl Washington pleading guilty in 2014 to assaulting the mother of his child, leaving her with a broken collarbone? Or when former Dolphin Phillip Merling was accused by a tearful girlfriend of battery when she was pregnant? Or the numerous other incidents that have left girlfriends and wives battered and in fear of more abuse?
I said the same thing after Rice paid his penalty to the league and to society: He deserves a second chance to ply his professional trade. Rice was suspended by the league for a total of 12 games and won his reinstatement on appeal, and now he sits, almost a full year later, waiting for a team to sign him. Hardy was put on the league’s exempt list for 15 games last year (paid leave), then suspended by commissioner Roger Goodell for the first 10 games of this year after a league investigation into the alleged battery of Holder; Goodell’s ban was cut to four games on appeal, Hardy signed with Dallas, and he began playing for the Cowboys a month ago.
Maybe we can find it in our hearts to forgive Rice because he has been so outspoken against domestic violence and so repentant. Maybe we can’t forgive Hardy because he’s hasn’t. Regardless, the criminal justice system is finished with both men, for now. After Hardy appealed his conviction, Holder refused to cooperate in the case and the charges were dismissed, and, last week, expunged from his record.
The Hardy case stinks. We can all smell it. But the American justice system has released him into society. The NFL kept him off the field for 19 games—Goodell tried for 25 and was rebuffed. If the vast majority of teams in the league wouldn’t touch Hardy, good for them. But Hardy has the right to work, and any of the 32 teams has the right to sign him.
For there to be a realistic movement to ban batterers, this isn’t something Goodell could unilaterally impose. (Goodell, recent history suggests, can unilaterally impose nothing.) It would have to be collectively bargained with the union, and the current CBA does not expire until after the 2020 season. Or the union would have to deem it so important that it would hand the ability to ban domestic abusers to the league. That’s highly unlikely. Where would it stop? Would this be the only crime worthy of a ban? And what if the alleged batterer was never found guilty of a crime, or had charges dropped or expunged, as happened in Hardy’s case? How would that be handled?
What also worries me about a ban is the potential for threats against the battered. Or the potential that victims will refuse to come forward rather than help bring charges that could cost a spouse or boyfriend millions.
Watching Greg Hardy play doesn’t feel good, nor does it look good for the Cowboys or the NFL. And I know we’re a country of second chances. Sometimes the second chance feels cheap and rotten, as this one does. But as bad as it feels, Greg Hardy has the right to work in the field in which he excels, and Jerry Jones has the right to employ him.
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Photo: Michael Zagaris/Getty Images
Through eight games, Russell Wilson has been hit 60 percent more often than in 2014.
The fate of Russell Wilson.
“I’m 100 percent,” Wilson told me the other day. “Absolutely. A hundred percent. The goal is to feel great every week, and right now I do.” Wilson must be wearing some pretty flexible and impenetrable armor, because he has taken hits at an alarming rate in the first half of the season, per Pro Football Focusmetrics.
Here is a look at the punishment of Wilson, 2014 vs. 2015, through eight games:
Year................Sacks................ Hits................. Total Hits
2014.................. 17..................... 26........................ 43
2015.................. 31..................... 33........................ 64
The one good sign for Wilson is that his remade offensive line had its first sackless game of the season eight days ago against Dallas. (Seattle had its bye this weekend.) “We’ve got a lot of room to grow,” said Wilson. “I’m confident we’ll continue to grow as an offense.”
Wilson said all the right things about his line, and he was earnest about it. As former NFL quarterback and current Seattle-based radio analyst Hugh Millen says, Wilson has to take some responsibility for protection calls at the line gone awry. But it stands to reason he would have had to take the same responsibility last year too, and he’s getting hit significantly more this year. It’s been a struggle nearly every week for the Seahawks, and when they play three home games in 15 days coming off the bye beginning next Sunday—against the NFC West-leading Cardinals, the Niners and the Steelers—Seattle will get the briefest of respites. None of those three teams has a great pressure defense.
PFF ranks center Drew Nowak 25th among starting centers, right guard J.R. Sweezy and left guard Justin Britt the 66th and 73rd-rated guards, and left tackle Russell Okung 35th and right tackle Garry Gilliam 72nd among tackles. That’s bad, and that has to improve for Seattle to be a playoff factor in two months.
“It seems like every week, more than ever, we’re getting every team’s best shot,” Wilson said. “We’ve just got to keep finding ways to win.”
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Photo: Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Percy Harvin caught 71 passes for three teams over the past three seasons, including 19 with the Bills in 2015.
Well, I guess $31.5M doesn’t buy what it used to.
The strange career of 27-year-old Percy Harvin—there needs to be a book written on it—stalled Saturday, when the Bills placed him on injured reserve with what the team said was a knee injury. He had been plagued by a sore hip, the same hip that short-circuited his 2013 season in Seattle and required surgery, but the knee was a new thing. I would think some team would want to sign Harvin for close to the minimum with little guaranteed money next year, but after the Seahawks blew a $12 million bonus on him in 2013, and after Buffalo blew through $6 million this year for such little impact, Harvin will have to re-dedicate himself and really love the game to rekindle his career in 2016.
Exactly three years ago, at the midpoint of the 2012 season, Harvin was one of the two or three most dangerous weapons in football, scoring as a rusher, receiver and returner for Minnesota in the season’s first two months. But he suffered an ankle sprain in Week 9 at Seattle, and in what would be a precursor of the next three seasons, was plagued by the injuries to the point that he couldn’t return, and the Vikings placed him on IR. Notable as we consider whether Harvin has played his last snap:
• Touchdowns scored in the first 3.5 seasons of his career: 29.
• Touchdowns scored in the last 3.5 seasons of his career: 4, including postseason.
• Games played for Seattle, the New York Jets and Buffalo: 21, including postseason.
• Money Harvin earned from the Seahawks, Jets and Bills: $31.5 million.
• Offensive touches for the Seahawks, Jets and Bills: 116. Yards: 1,069.
• Touchdowns from scrimmage for the Seahawks: 1.
• Touchdowns from scrimmage for the Jets: 1.
• Touchdowns from scrimmage for the Bills: 1.
There is only one positive tributary for Seattle this morning, if it ponders the money and draft capital it spent on Harvin. When the Seahawks dealt Harvin to the Jets in mid-2014 for a sixth-round pick, they used that sixth-round pick (along with third-, fourth- and fifth-round choices) to trade up for receiver/returner Tyler Lockett of Kansas State.
Harvin: 5-10 ½, 183.
Lockett: 5-10, 182.
The whippet-like Lockett has scored three ways in the first half of his rookie season—on a 43-yard reception, a 57-yard punt return and a 105-yard kickoff return.
Who does that remind you of?
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Photo: CBS
Ray Lewis's recent book tour has resulted in more questions about the linebacker's involvement in a double-murder in Atlanta in 2000.
ICYMI … Ray Lewis on Atlanta, on NPR.
Ray Lewis has written a book, I Feel Like Going On: Life, Game and Glory, with Daniel Paisner, and has a version of the events that unfolded in the winter and spring of 2000 in Atlanta when two men were murdered and Lewis and two friends were charged with the killings. Lewis eventually pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and got 12 months of probation. NPR’s Daniel Greene asked Lewis about the experience.
“It’s always interesting that the first thing people go to is they always say, ‘You were charged with double murder,’” Lewis told Greene. “But nobody ever wants to say that from day one there was not one inch of evidence on me. I hear people bring up Atlanta like, ‘Oh Atlanta is supposed to scare me.’ Atlanta doesn’t scare me, Atlanta wakes me up, only to realize that first of all, put your trust in no man, and second of all, you don’t ever have to live like you are guilty when you know you are innocent.”
Greene pointed out there were some facts missing from the re-telling of the story in Lewis’ book. “You’re only talking about facts that was already [thrown out] of the case 100 percent,” Lewis said. “ … So you talk about blood, but we’re not talking about the facts, because you are only coming from the perspective … because you don’t have a clue what happened that night! So when you ask someone—”
Interrupted Greene: “Many of your fans read some of that stuff, like, ‘Blood found in Ray Lewis limo.’ Do you feel like you offered enough details in this book to really explain?”
“You don’t have to bring up those details when you already lived it,” Lewis said. “The part that I brought up was the part that was left out. All the stuff that you’re talking about, that was all through the case, so if you really wanted to know about all of that, go through the case and you will find out all of that. This is kind of how I leave Atlanta. Nobody ever has to convince me or ask me to prove myself to people. I don’t prove myself to people, I don’t live to prove myself to people and I never will. Never!”
Greene: “Two powerful images of you: devout man, father, [Michael] Phelps described you as inspiration. Then there is Ray Lewis who some people suggest is a murderer. Is it hard to live with those two personas out there?”
Lewis: “No. No, absolutely not. That’s why I wrote the book. Because who Michael Phelps knows, that’s who Ray Lewis is. Everything else that you just said—the only thing I heard that you said, honestly, of the whole thing, was murder.”
An uneasy conversation, but good radio.
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Photo: Adam Bettcher/Getty Images
Lamarcus Joyner was penalized for this hit on a sliding Teddy Bridgewater.
“I know that guy. My mom knows his mom, my dad knows his mom. I would never intentionally do a dirty play like that on Teddy Bridgewater. It was a bam-bam play. He’s a taller stature guy compared to me. I did not know he was gonna slide. When I launched, he slid, and we connected. If I could take it back, I would take it back, because I am not a dirty player. Was it intentional? Not at all. So I can’t fix the problem. But how I feel inside, it’s not good.”
—St. Louis cornerback Lamarcus Joyner, after knocking an acquaintance from his Miami youth, Vikings quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, out of the game Sunday with a clubbing to the head as Bridgewater was sliding.
“If we were on the street, we probably would have had a fight.”
—Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer, after the 21-18 win over St. Louis, referring to Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Zimmer was angry that Rams cornerback Lamarcus Joyner cheap-shotted quarterback Teddy Bridgewater on a slide, knocking Bridgewater out of the game. Zimmer blamed Williams, whose defenses are notoriously aggressive.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Adam Vinatieri, kicker, Indianapolis. At age 42, in what was probably Peyton Manning’s last game ever in Indianapolis, Vinatieri had the clutch moment of the day. That is not new. With 6:13 to play in a 24-24 game, Vinatieri, the oldest player in football, booted a 55-yard field goal to knock Denver from the undefeated ranks … and just maybe save the job of his embattled coach. Of course the kick was straight down the middle, and good with six or eight yards to spare.
Greg Zuerlein, kicker, St. Louis. It’s one thing to kick a 61-yard field goal outdoors in Minnesota in November. It’s another to kick said field goal with a 17-mph wind blowing across the field … and to be so solidly hit it would been good from 68 yards or so. They don’t call him Greg the Leg for nothing. Thought Zuerlein missed a crucial 45-yarder in the fourth quarter that would have tied it, he came back and hit his fourth of the day, from 53 yards, to send it to overtime. For the day, in the wind, he hit from 45, 61, 35 and 53.
COACH OF THE WEEK
Marvin Lewis, head coach, Cincinnati. In his 200th regular-season game as coach of the Bengals (he’s 108-90-2), a 31-10 win over Cleveland on Thursday night, Lewis did something else significant: He piloted the Bengals to their eighth win without a loss, and no AFC North team has ever been 8-0 in the 14-year history of the latest gerrymandered NFL division structure. For all the heat Lewis takes (he’s 0-6 as a playoff coach), think of coaching the same team for 13 years, and building a team competitive almost every year in a division with powers Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Lamarcus Joyner, cornerback, St. Louis. For taking a cheap shot at an obviously sliding Teddy Bridgewater in the fourth quarter, a hit to Bridgewater's head that appeared to knock the quarterback out for at least a few seconds. Totally unnecessary. Joyner should have been thrown out for it, in addition to getting a roughness call.
I think this is what I liked about Week 9:
The physical wrestling-match of an interception by Rams cornerback Trumaine Johnson at Minnesota, preventing a Vikings touchdown.
Love the early needle-threading by Teddy Bridgewater through the Rams secondary.
Reggie Bush saying he would likely sue the city of St. Louis for having exposed concrete so near the playing field at the Edward Jones Dome. Bush slipped on the concrete and tore his MCL.
Bridgewater’s decision to run for a third-quarter TD instead of making a riskier throw, and then running around right end for the two-point conversion.
Rams safety Rodney McLeod’s stout stop of Vikings receiver Mike Wallace short of a first down late in the first half, and then later, in the open field on Adrian Peterson.
Vikings defensive tackle Linval Joseph—my Player To Watch This Weekend—dragging down Todd Gurley on a failed Ram two-point conversion. Joseph looked like a cowboy roping a steer and overpowering it.
I think if you lost track of Green Beret free-agent long-snapper Nate Boyer, formerly of the Seattle Seahawks, he’s doing something cool with his life now that he’s looking for the proverbial next challenge. Our exchange late in the week:
Boyer: Chris Long of the Rams reached out to me the day I got cut. He asked me if I had any ideas what to do [for vets]. I said we’ve got 22 suicides a day among veterans. We have nothing to fight for. We need a challenge. We want to continue to serve. Part of our makeup is to face the obstacles and do something good for the world. Chris has this initiative to build wells for these communities in east Africa desperate for water.
I said how about if I take a wounded vet, a friend of mine, a single-leg amputee, and we climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money? First we thought we would raise enough money to build two wells, but now we want to raise $1 million and get 22 wells built. And I’ll do it with my friend Blake, who took a knee on an IED and had three years of depression. Now that’s started to change. I’m not a mountain-climber, but I love challenges, I love new things, and I love working in the Third World.
