Well See That's Your Problem Right There

A loss by seven points is actually not as bad a thing as it could have been, because damn did Minnesota look like they had all the pieces of the puzzle -- except, amazingly, for a running game.  In case you didn't notice, we shut Adrian Peterson down.  He ran for a total of 55 yards -- a far cry from what he was expected to do.  And to be sure, that guy who used to play for the Jets sure played a good game tonight.  But that's not a surprise to anyone, or at least it shouldn't be.

But it's a measure of just how weak our offensive line became that we had to take a coach's challenge to turn a fumble into a safety.  That turned out to be a very smart call -- it saved a net five points, and it kept us in a position where we could in theory have made a comeback to tie or, had a few breaks gone our way, even win.  And Aaron Rodgers played a pretty damn good game, too -- didn't lose his poise once, didn't lose his cool once.  He did have happy feet for a while there, but you would too if you had been sacked eight times.  That's the key statistic there.  Despite that, he threw 384 yards for two touchdowns and a completion percentage of higher than 70%.  A remarkable performance.

So while the loss to the bitter division rival Vikings is certainly not a good thing, let's face it, it was in their house and it could have been much, much worse.  Oh, and since my fantasy football team lets me play two quarterbacks a week, and my quarterbacks were Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, the shootout in Minneapolis tonight propels my team into first place overall.  So there is a silver lining.