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Adversity faced: The offense couldn’t rekindle the magic of the previous
season, and the Vikings got off to an unexpectedly poor 2-4 start.
How the team coped: Mixed results. A change in the starting lineup from Randall
Cunningham to Jeff George worked well, but there was a lot of finger pointing throughout
the season, and the Vikings had a disturbing tendency to fall behind in games. They made
the playoffs, which was a nice turnaround from their 2-4 start, but they still fell short
of preseason expectations when they were a popular Super Bowl choice.
The uniforms appeared to be the same. The key players appeared to be the same.
The results, however, couldn’t have been more different. The scoreboard could tell
the difference.
Who were these imposters pretending to be the Vikings’ offense?
During the 1998 regular season, the Vikings’ offense scored an astonishing 556
points, torching opposing defenses like an arsonist with a lucrative insurance policy in
his back pocket.
Two games into the 1999 season, however, it was clear that something was wrong. In each
of these two games, the Vikings were held to a mere 17 points. That’s not horrendous
for some teams, but these were the high-flying Vikings. It was like watching Babe Ruth
suddenly turn into a singles hitter.
The second 17-point output caught up with the Vikings. After beating the Falcons 17-14
in Week One, they lost to the Raiders 22-17.
The offense that was a high-revving sports car weaving in and out of traffic a year
earlier was suddenly sputtering along the side of the road.
Vikings QB Randall Cunningham, the comeback story of the previous season, suddenly was
treated like a dart board at a busy pub. The Raiders sacked him six times.
"As good of a quarterback as he is and has been, nothing beats putting good
pressure on him," Raiders DT Russell Maryland said. "You get him on the ground,
and you start to get to him."
Suddenly the Vikings were the hunted instead of the hunters, and the frustration
showed. Trailing only 22-17 with more than seven minutes remaining, the Vikings went for
it on 4th-and-10 from the Raiders’ 39. They came up short.
"I just felt like we had to try to make something happen," Vikings head coach
Dennis Green said.
Frustration. Impatience. These were not the qualities displayed by the Vikings just one
season earlier.
Worst of all, the Vikings had not yet hit rock bottom. There was more angst than is
found in a daytime soap opera still to come.
A 23-20 loss to the Packers the following week dropped the Vikings below .500 for the
first time since 1995.
When adversity strikes, some teams work their fingers to the bone, and some teams point
those fingers at one another. Vikings fingers were pointing.
Vikings offensive coordinator Ray Sherman, who had taken over an offense run so
magnificently the season before by Brian Billick, was under fire.
WR sensation Randy Moss took a can of gasoline to that fire when he said finding ways
to beat the ever-present double-teams he was facing are "what coordinators are
for."
Veteran WR Cris Carter blamed the Vikings’ loss to the Packers on CB Jimmy
Hitchcock, who was burned by Corey Bradford for the deciding touchdown on 4th-and-1 with
12 seconds left.
Hitchcock enjoyed receiving the criticism about as much as someone would appreciate
being given a case of the mumps.
"I don’t want to answer any questions about that anymore," Hitchcock
said.
The Vikings probably didn’t want to answer any questions about what was wrong with
them after they lost to the Bears 24-22 two weeks later to again fall below .500, this
time at 2-3.
Like it or not, however, the questions kept getting asked.
"I really don’t know what’s wrong," Moss said. "We keep
struggling week in and week out. We just can’t put the puzzle together to make it
work."
Perhaps most distressing of all was the sense that the loss to the Bears, a 4-12 team
the season before, was not a fluke.
"Face it, the best team won today," Vikings DL Jerry Ball said.
During the week that followed, the persistent questions didn’t get any easier to
answer.
"My spirit is crushed," Hitchcock said.
Fans were calling for Cunningham’s head to be delivered on a silver platter.
"Right now is not the time to lose confidence," Cunningham said.
As if the team didn’t have enough distractions to deal with, Minnesota
Timberwolves coach Flip Saunders said Moss’ agent had contacted him about the
football star taking a crack at the NBA sometime down the road.
The 15-1 regular season that the team had enjoyed the previous year felt like a
lifetime removed.
"I never thought we’d be in this situation," Hitchcock said. "I
know a lot of people are going to be picking us apart this week. What we’re going to
do here is pull closer together, come out and work harder."
Cunningham said, "Things are different this year because teams have a better idea
of how to stop us. We’re going through the blues, and we just have to keep working
through it.
"Last year we had the identity of the offense that everyone had to shoot for, and
that’s gone this year. We need to find a new identity."
Cunningham didn’t know it at the time, but that new identity was about to make its
presence felt.
Continued on Page 2
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