Pelissero: Vikings' wayward season officially on highway to hell
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FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- If the NFL season is a dimly lit highway, as Brad Childress told players in a meeting weeks ago, the Minnesota Vikings are doing 120 on a mile-high Autobahn, flames snapping at every turn of the dystopian hellscape that surrounds them.
Rumors about Childress' job security only will get louder after a 28-18 defeat on Sunday that left Brett Favre in stitches, Randy Moss begging the New England Patriots to take him back and the reeling Vikings three games below .500 for the first time in nearly three years.
Only then -- after a 34-0 nutcracking at Green Bay on Nov. 11, 2007, dropped the Vikings to 3-6 -- have things seemed so dire for Childress' team as they do now.
Only then was it so absurd to even mention the word playoffs in a locker room filled with superstars.
"That's not even our thought process right now," veteran end Jared Allen said. "We need to correct what's going on now before we worry about the playoffs. We've got nine games to try to do something. We've got to beat Arizona at home (next week), and we'll start with that."
Moss may be driving the Irrational Response Express -- next stop: free agency! -- but he got a few things right in his postgame rant-ifesto.
Fifty drunks in a bar and 68,756 at Gillette Stadium can agree the Vikings were outplayed and outcoached in what should have been their most desperate 60 minutes.
Childress wasted a challenge on Madieu Williams' clownery and whiffed on the decision to pass up a go-ahead field goal in favor of a failed fourth-and-goal run before halftime.
Tom Brady had enough time in the pocket to comb his hair while throwing for 240 yards and a touchdown on 16 completions.
Third-stringer BenJarvus Green-Ellis got loose for 112 yards and two scores at a 6.6 clip on the ground.
Favre couldn't finish, Adrian Peterson didn't have a run longer than 9 yards and Patriots coach Bill Belichick put safety Brandon Meriweather on Moss' side all day, disturbing his former charge's fragile psyche while holding him to a single catch for 8 yards on a designed run play.
"The bad part about it," Moss said, as if there were a good part, "(is) you have six days to prepare for a team, and on the seventh day ... they come over to me and say, 'Dag, Moss, you was right about a couple plays and a couple schemes they were going to run.'
"It hurts as a player that you put a lot of hard work in all week, and toward the end of the week, Sunday, when you get on the field, that's when they acknowledge about the hard work you put in throughout the week. That's actually a disappointment."
Add Moss to the line of veteran players who have questioned their lack of involvement in game-planning with Childress, who can thank the threat of a lockout and a contract that runs through 2013 for keeping talk of his dismissal in the theoretical realm for now.
He made the only logical decision before game time by letting Favre start despite his busted heel. And the 41-year-old quarterback delivered perhaps his best performance all season, save for a pass behind Percy Harvin that turned into an interception and the blow to the chin that bloodied and busted him with about 7½ minutes to go.
"All these defeats are bitter pills to swallow," Childress said. "But we've got nine to go, and (Sunday's is) not coming back. It's important that we kind of cast our vision forward."
Maybe the Vikings can find some solace in a schedule that serves up Arizona (3-4) and sinking Chicago (4-3) the next two weeks.
Maybe they can build around the rise of Harvin (six catches, 104 yards), the consistency of linebacker Chad Greenway (11 tackles) and the knowledge that -- once again -- they overcame enough of their issues to have a shot in the fourth quarter.
"I feel like this team is close," Favre said. "I have no idea what will happen the rest of the year, but I am in it to win it. So, hopefully, our guys will not go south from this."
Or maybe they'll follow Moss' lead and, instead of fighting the flames, just hit the eject button before they're engulfed.
This season is a highway, all right, and these Vikings have to be wondering if their navigator even has the right directions.
