Man oh Man

Let's look back to August 16th, 2007.

I was at the Mall of America with Alec and we were on a search. I was just looking around for some hats and shoes (the usual) and he was on a Lord of the Rings type quest for a Joseph Addai jersey.

While having trouble finding the Addai jersey, we stumbled into the big Foot Locker on the 3rd floor. He noticed that they were selling rookie jersey's for $49.99. Included in these jerseys was new Vikings rookie Adrian Peterson. Earlier that week he had romped over the Jets and gave us all a little preview of how this season might go for him. I hadn't really been a die hard Vikings fan because I was tired of cheering for a team who spent more time in jail than in the Red Zone and they didn't really have a superstar.

Alec looked at the jersey and goes, "Dude, he's going to be a stud...and it's only $49.99, buy it". So I gave into peer pressure and bought my first Vikings jersey since Randy Moss was burning the turf (not the way many of you may think, the legal way of course).

In all honesty...who would have known it would have been the smartest jersey buy of my life? Well Alec did.

Yesterday, those of you who got a chance to watch the Vikings/Chargers game may have seen the emergence of the next great thing in the NFL. In a state where the most popular player since Kirby Puckett was traded to Boston and where Kirby's replacement is surely going to another team, Minnesota was in dire need of a superstar. Well, we've got one.

Adrian Peterson, "All Day" dubbed by him and his teammates, ran for an NFL single game record of 296 yards. He would have had well over that had he not been horse collar tackled by a San Diego cornerback. He also had 3 touchdowns to go with that. A 1 yrd, 64 yd and 45 yd. He is carrying this team on his back. He was running so well that even Brooks Bollinger looked like a steady quarterback with his big strike to rookie Sidney Rice.

Yesterday was truly the day of the rookie for the Minnesota Vikings. As much problems coaching that Childress has had and Vikings brass for their incompetence, they drafted pretty dawggone well. They drafted the next Eric Dickerson (maybe better?) as well as a talented receiver who can leap forward about 5 yards.

The Vikings defense shut down a Chargers offense who can score at the drop of a dime. LaDanian Tomlinson looked like the rookie on Sunday. Only having one Touchdown and maybe 45 yards rushing or so. And don't even get me started on Philip Rivers. I think Marshawn Lynch had a better game passing than Rivers did. He made the Giants look great for taking Eli off of the Charger's hands a couple years ago. Give the front line credit as well. Kevin Williams and Pat Williams got amazing pressure on Rivers to force him into those bad throws.

The part that I'm excited about? The schedule gets very favorable from here on out for the Vikings. They are at Green Bay next weekend, then after that they have Oakland, Chicago, Detroit and Washington at home and the New York Giants, San Francisco and Denver away. The Vikings are only 3-5 right now and have yet to get completely blown out in a game. If they can get some consistency at QB and have AP run like he has been, this team could easily see the playoffs. Jeff George did it without an AP and he went 8-2, so anything's possible.

I'm very excited to see where this team can go. There are glaring problems at QB, but like I said, as long as AP runs like that, just hand the ball off Brooks...hand it off.