February 12, 2020 • 52 mins
There was no roller-coaster ride more fun than the 2009 Minnesota Vikings, who went as far - and fell as suddenly - as Brett Favre's arm would carry them. The entire world expected a Super Bowl, but what we got was potentially more entertaining - and controversial. And yeah, the NFL completely changed a huge rule because of Favre and the Vikings. The second act to the Favre career drama brought all the thrills you could possibly want. Relive it with us here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Special Teams, a production of I Heart Radio
Greetings and Welcome inside the latest Special Teams with Jason
(00:23):
Smith and Mike Harmon podcast. We take a look back
at a very special year in sports, very special team
in that special year. This week we look at the
two thousand and nine Minnesota Vikings. No, they didn't win
at all, but my goodness, did they give us a
year to remember. It was Brett Farve his best year
(00:44):
post post Green Bay rather and we'll get into the
Jets in a little bit, because you know, I got
Jets a little bit away station. This is one of
those memorable teams that did not win a championship. And look,
as we do things on special teams, that's kind of
where we go. Sometimes it teams that win it all.
Sometimes it teams that don't win but are incredibly memorable.
(01:04):
And we saw an NFL rule change because of the
two thousand nine Minnesota Vikings that we still have today
rule changes. The craziness of Brett Farve, which is the
overriding topic for the season, The way this roster was assembled,
some stars that as you and I sit and talk
about this, uh, this team looking back a decade, you
(01:27):
still had many guys still traversing the sidelines of NFL rosters.
I mean, pretty pretty exciting stuff that, you know. I
just remember the Brett farrv himming and hawing really infuriated
a lot of people, including me. So and and since
it's all about me, that's really what it comes down.
Because he couldn't get out of the bleeping NFC North.
(01:47):
You know, Well, here's the thing he goes through before
the two thousand and eight season, yet another I think
I want to retire. And the Packers had had it
with him, and we talked about Brett Farve because it's
back when I was doing All Night on ESPN Radio,
and we had talked about Brett Farve every day and
it was great because it was about something on the field.
It was a controversy on the field. Should the Packers
(02:08):
let Brett Farve play, should they let him go, should
they trade him? And it was different, which what's what
made it fun. They finally decided to move on. They
trade him to the Jets in two thousand and eight.
He plays two thousand and eight, He has a great
year until he tears his bicep. The Jets can't win
in December and he moves on, he quote retires again
(02:28):
and you think this is it for Brett Farve. But
then again, it's never it for Brett Farve. I mean, look,
I think in two thousand twenty one, he's gonna come
back at fifty three years old. He looks like he
yoked up Santa Clause running around. I mean, come on,
But Farv decides in two thousand and nine after he
retires from the Jets at the end of two thousand eight.
I mean, phase were great. For when he was a
(02:49):
quarterback with the Jet was phenomenal. He beat the Patriots
in a big Thursday night game in New England. He
beat the Titans when they were undefeated. The Jets were
eight and three, and I thought, they're gonna win the division.
We're going to the playoff. It's far far, far far
of my whole life was Bred Farve. I was doing
things in fours just because his number was four. It
was incredible. And then he tears his bicep and he
(03:10):
can't throw the football anymore. The Jets don't win, and
then okay, Bred Farve has done. The Jets realize we
have to move on, we have to get to somebody else.
But then slowly you start to hear the rumors as
the winter turns into spring bred Farv, who had wanted
to go to the Minnesota Vikings when he first was
let go from the Packers, but the Packers weren't gonna
let him go to an NFC North foe. He decides
(03:33):
to come out of retirement and sign with the Minnesota Vikings.
With ten years to look back at this, you can
easily see bread Farve and the long game he played,
whereas I want you to let me go with the Packers,
and I wanted to let me go to the Vikings.
Packers said we're not gonna do that because it came
down to trade to him to either Tampa Bay or
(03:53):
the Jets, and they picked the Jets. But I guarantee
you the long play with Farv was, you know what,
I'll go play someplace else for a year, I'll retire again,
then I'll get to Minnesota because I can't get to
Minnesota now, but I want to go play for Brad
Children's we had a relationship with before Brad Children's was
the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, and you knew
that's what he was gonna do. He comes out of
(04:15):
retirement and suddenly he gets where he wanted to be.
He went somewhere else for a year, and then he
gets the Minnesota Vikings and he wants to exact revenge
on the Green Bay Packers, and it becomes the story again.
Far for the Jets was a huge story, and now hey,
it's continuing his first year with the Vikings. I just
don't know that he's ever gotten the proper credit for
the mcinvelian genius and being able to come right back
(04:38):
into the division, or enough blame for something that right now,
players get absolutely brutalized on social media and throughout all
media when they orchestrate a power play of getting out
Anthony Davis wanting to go to the Lakers, Lebron James
holding everybody how much everybody universally loved bread Farm outside
(04:59):
of Tames in the NFC North, everybody loved bread But
see that he was always the funny scenario of you
know that guy that you respect, right and see all right,
he keeps beating us a man. He's fun to watch
because it's so unconventional and the arm strength and the
gambler style throws whatever. As a guy growing up in
(05:20):
Chicago Bears fan, you just watch and you'd marvel at
what he'd do. And then of course he passes the
baton to Aaron Rodgers, and it's more of the same.
What is its seventeen and four in the last twenty
one games against the Bears. But it's it's just the
idea that you know, you're you're terrorized by this guy.
You kept waiting from to maybe put your uniform on,
(05:40):
and and and the cycle, but instead you you appreciated
the talent. But I don't think he ever got one
or the other right. Even elway from not not coming
into the Colts or Eli Manning for forcing the trade
out of San Diego, they at least there's blips on
there and stains on the it was are you gonna retire?
(06:01):
And that was the whole thing, is that that's where
the only backlash he had came from was again, you're
not We don't know if you're gonna retire again. Really,
you don't know if you want to play again. I
was trying to punish for fantasy magazines. Man, I needed
that information. But now, well this is back when fantasy magazines,
oh we gotta publish in March. Well, I have to
because that's when the magazine is publishing. I don't know,
I gotta, I gotta get it in before the draft.
(06:22):
But that was now. Now when in retrospect you look
back at things a decade ago, a decade in in
the rear view mirror, and it was okay, this was
just a strategy to get to the Minnesota Vikings. He
only retired from the Jets because he had to retire
so he could then get to the Vikings. And he
really didn't want to be a Jet. No, he didn't,
He didn't him. He was a great for a little while,
(06:43):
but that there are reports out of New York that
that even the players got a little sick and tired
of him because he would have like his own office,
like Eric Mangini, who was a coach, would give him
his own office. He didn't really hang out with the
guys as much. He wasn't quite the the guy they
expected him to be when he joined the team. Well,
but that's just it. The difference between and and we
watch it now, the old quarterback, right, the difference between
(07:03):
how Tom Brady is with his teammates that are half
his age and what Brad Farve was right because essentially
you had the same dynamic. But all you ever hear
is how integrated Brady is with the team and wanting
to know the guys. Hi, I'm Tom Brady. Is how
he welcomes them to camp. Right, he goes and finds
and seeks them out versus Farv and you know, it's
(07:26):
his world. Here's a pair of wranglers here you go.
What what what? What? What do you like? A thirty?
Here you go? Yeah, let let met you those right there.
You know, if they just cut him off into George,
they can recreate the top gun volleyball. You know, if
your beard is getting a little gray, I can give
you that. You know, you can kind of brush it
through and then you can kind of look younger. No
one can tell. So Farve joins the Minnesota Vikings, and
(07:47):
he joins the head coach. He wanted to join in
Brad Children's You're a guy. I like this because I
was one of the few people in the world with
a Brad Children's impressure. You may be the only guy
with a Brad Childrens impression. I can't say I've ever
heard another. Ah. We have to make sure on offense
that we uh throw the ball down field a little
(08:07):
bit more and uh put more points on the board. Uh,
and that's a pretty good Brad Childrens senior offensive assistant
your Chicago Bears. So Farve joins the team and it
becomes the story in the NFL. The Minnesota Vikings become
page one news. And this is a team that is
(08:28):
already loaded and ready to go. This is a team
with Adrian Peterson in his prime, Sydney Rice who became
a star receiver with the with the Minnesota Vikings that year.
That's the guy that five turned into a star receiver.
Visanthe Shanko, who well had the speaking of big in
the locker room. He had that, but we won't talk
about that. Uh, that's a film After Dark. Brian McKinney,
(08:53):
Steve Hutchinson, Jared Allen, Kevin Williams, all Pro Bowlers. This
was a star studded team who drafted Percy Harvin in
the same year and then he became a weapon. And
so this was everything far of ever one. And I
have the big receivers, I got the fast receivers. I
have the running back I always wanted. This is it.
This is everything he ever had in Green Bay and
now He's got everything all at once, all rolled into one.
(09:16):
I mean you look at that defensive front, which has
been the trademark of the Minnesota Vikings for as long
as I can remember. At this point, it's that same
build from the inside out. And then this, you know
they drafted load Hold load Load load Hold. Yes, so
he becomes a starter and as a rookie top top
pick alongside Percy Harvin guys, and like Harvin, goes on
(09:39):
to win the Rookie of the Year award when it's
all said and done, but for far of orchestrated, perfectly
finds himself in a beautiful situation. And I always like
the name load Holt that I would want to be
Jason Loadholt. Yeah. I mean there's there's a lot of
ways you can go, a lot of careers. The Minnesota
Vikings are now paid one news. How is Brett Farve
(10:01):
going to fit in? Is he going to get revenge
against the Green Bay Packers? Can he bring the Vikings
to the Super Bowl? So while this is happening, what
else was happening in two thousand and nine? It was
the Miracle on the Hudson as Sully was able to
save everybody's life. The plane that was attacked by birds
(10:24):
and the engine was able to land in the Hudson.
Everybody gets out. Years later, Tom Hanks plays him in
a movie. Kind of a surreal kind of experience. I'm
sure for him. Every time I go to the Universal
Studios back line, there it is. There's this grade. We
filled that up with water and Sully, and let me
show you a picture of Sully. Bernie made Off played guilty.
(10:45):
Surely after that, I realized, Oh, now I know why
the Mets can't sign anybody. Oh because they were in
on the Ponzi scheme with Bernie made Off, never forced
to sell the team, but going away, you know, you
know money. Now it's we're still struggling. You know, you
made you made it to the World Series. I know,
despite that, It's like, despite all their efforts, the Mets
(11:06):
made it to the kind of deal on Jacob deGrom
this offseason. I mean, come on, if you remember, it
was Thanksgiving weekend when Tiger Woods car hit a fire.
Hydrinton Allen Nordegren came out with a golf club and
suddenly tiger Woods world turned upside down. He admitted to
many affairs and his life has never been the same.
Ten years ago. Uh, you know, I remember him. He
(11:27):
was in a onesie posing for a photo with you
with the international team that you know, well, I mean,
he's trying to humanize himself, you know. I remember going
to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo very shortly after,
because that's came out. And there's a scene in Girl
the Dragon Tattoo. Sorry spoiler alert, there's a scene in
(11:48):
which character is getting chased out of a house, gets
into a car, and another character grabs a golf club
on the way out and bashes in the rear window,
which is the story what happen with Ellen order going
to talk? So that happens, and it's a very tensely
like A Girl the Dragon Tattoo is a really great movie,
and it's very silence of the lamb's escates, and this
(12:11):
is a really tense scene. And I just laugh in
the theater. I look at my wife and we laughed
to each other. Nobody else has left, and look at
me like, what are you laughing at dude? What's wrong
with you? I go, this is the Tiger Woods thing? Wait,
oh my god. Ripped from the headlines Modern Family debut
that year sweets has did Farmville? I still get requests?
Blank blank blank do you invite you to play Farmville? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
(12:34):
I never got I never went down that dude, just
maybe want to get off Facebook. It was also the
year that Kanye West told Taylor Swift, I'm gonna let
you finish but Beyonce and one of the best videos
of all time, which is still a surreal moment. You
got a lot of run for Kanye West. Yeah, I
would say in his life that's one of the three
(12:54):
biggest things they'll ever be known for. That's probably true.
He got gold Digger was one of the best hip
hop songs ever, and then you have them I'm Gonna
let you finish well. I like the fact that at
the end of twenty nine he's running around like painted
like the silver guy you would pose for a picture
with Hollywood. Tell me I'm wrong. So that's the magical
(13:14):
year of two thousand and nine ahead for the Minnesota Vikings.
Two games that had the world's attention. A playoff game
that has ramifications even ten years out. That's coming up
more right here on Special Teams Week one of the
(13:46):
NFL Season one thing was on the minds of every
football fan. How is my local team going to do?
And how was Brett Farve going to play his first
game with the Minnesota Vikings. All kinds of hype on
the team he's wanted to. He looked looser, he was happier.
His first game against Cleveland, he just threw for a
(14:07):
hundred and ten yards, I mean, very underwhelming, but did
throw for a touchdown. They win. Week two, just a
hundred and fifty five yards, two touchdowns, but they're two
and oh so far. Brett Farve is a little underwhelming
throw in the football, but they win a couple of games. However,
Week three, things changed for Farv and the Vikings. Immediately
(14:30):
he launches a thirty two yard touchdown pass with two
seconds left to play to Greg Lewis to win and
really launch the Vikings legend to beat the San Francisco
forty nine and wind up winning the sp for Best
Football Play. Far jumping around in everybody's arms after it
was one of those passes that you see far throwing.
(14:53):
You go no, no, no, no, no, oh yes, wow,
what a great play. Because Greg Lewis is running along
the back of the end zone. There's players there you
know that you still want to make sure there's enough
time because maybe you can get one more play, but instead,
thirty two yards out, Farve completes it. Now he's a
legend in Minnesota after just three weeks. But said, it's
it always takes that one big play to get your
role in and and because you do have Adrian Peterson,
(15:16):
you don't have to be the forty passes the game
Brett Farve that you were towards the end of the
run in Green Bay, right, you can move on and
change the structure. And you're still learning these young receivers
because he didn't sign with them still fairly late, right
right as camp began, so you didn't have the offseason workouts.
So you build from there. But for for Brett Farve,
(15:40):
it's it became one of the signatures because you knew
he was gonna keep gunning. Right. We celebrate guys like
at least you know you and I, as as we
do our show on Fox Sports Radio, we celebrate guys
like Jamis Winston. You don't know what the next pass
is gonna look like, And that was Brett Farve, Right,
that was Brett Farve. He's gonna win or he's gonna
lose because he's gotta try to find that guy and
(16:02):
needle in the haystack and and try to gun it
through two defenders. He'd make for a good video game
or horror film, I think, or maybe like an action
film where he's like throwing footballs through guys. But I
still remember what was the the NFC championship game he
threw seven picks against against the Was it the falcon
taking through seven interceptions? Yeah, that's dude. Come on, man,
(16:22):
stop trying to throw a football over that mountain, Uncle Rico.
Stop doing it. No time to rest for Bret fog, however,
as the next week was his rematch or first game
against the Green Bay Packers. When he joined the Jets,
the Jets did not play the Packers. But now he
gets the Packers. He gets his old team. But this
is at home. Things are going to be okay, And
(16:46):
things were okay. Packers win the game thirty to twenty three.
Bret Farve has a good game. He gets booed by
fans in Green Bay that traveled all the way up
to see the game. He winds up throwing for two
yards and three touched sounds and now far of his
four and oh he wins his first game against the Packers.
It's like he's winning the divorce. He's winning the breakup.
(17:07):
He had a very fun interview after the game was
over on National TV. Was a Sunday night game and
it was all right, Packers, you thought they were gonna
come through. They couldn't they win the game and now
far of his winning the breakup, and Packers fans are
just incensed, well because the thing about it was, you know,
owing to the competitor, and what he meant to that
(17:28):
city and that franchise is how he'd go and celebrate
after a touchdown. Right, He's slapping the offensive lineman upside
the head, he's sprinting down the field and pointing at
the wide receiver, all those things that if they're the opponent,
normally you're you're ticked off, and now if you're the Packers,
you're really ticked off, because not only did he go
(17:50):
away and even if he said all right, he finally
got where he wanted to, but he had a torn bicep,
and then he comes in and he shreds you like
he did to the efficiency of seventies seven completion rate,
which he never touched uh and three touchdowns. So for
the path for the for the Packers, for the Vikings,
it's three and oh four and oh five and oh
(18:12):
and it's boy, they could go undefeated, they could challenge
the Dolphins. Market was it was all Brett Farv all
the time. And this is you know, in the middle
of my run at all night and at ESPN, and
it really was far of overload. Look, we're talking about
the Vikings so far. We talked about some of the
players on the team and how well they played, and
I get that, but I want people to remember that
(18:35):
it was about one person. This this season and this
entire incarnation of the Minnesota Vikings was about Brett Farve.
We didn't talk about Adrian Peterson, but we didn't talk
about other players. Peterson in two thousand and nine ran
for yards. He had a big season eighteen touchdowns, which
is his career high. And it was oh ye had
(18:55):
Adrian Peterson. Yeah, he's pretty good. He was. He was
coming off a great rookie year. Zoia's second year in
the league too, so it's like, what's he gonna do
for an end care that doesn't matter old number. Their
third year in the league, form where Pin during the
rookie card. He was coming off the sevred yard season,
which was his best one up until that point, and
(19:16):
it was we've never been talked about it because it
was all about Brett Farve. Far far far. So the
Vikings wind up dropping one to the Pittsburgh Steelers, maybe
in a look ahead game because Week eight was the
big show down when they played at Green Bay and
this was all the hate for Brett Farve out in spades.
(19:37):
The signs at the game were insane. You saw signs
that called him trader, that called him Judas. It was
everybody hating Brett Farve. It was now, we're gonna beat
this guy. And there's not many times in my life
where I felt afraid for a player on a football field. Know,
it's a football game and there's security there and everything else,
but I said, boy, something could happen to Brett. I
(19:59):
could see somebody running on the field try to add, Brett,
you think you're so good that it was that kind
of atmosphere at Green Bay. Well, we just look at
in the decades since, how much different in basketball and
in the NFL, Guys changing teams all the time, right,
normally it was especially for a quarterback. You didn't last
that long for one, I mean the whole iron Man things,
(20:22):
the other legend of farv, but just the idea that
you'd still be well enough to come back after such
a long career there and and become the villain. People
conveniently forget the ownership and general manager's side of things,
because eventually, you know, you've got Aaron Rodgers and mothballs.
(20:42):
You've got to do something with it. Oh, they were
happy at this point because okay, well but they still
it wasn't that things are bad for us, because they
had Aaron Rodgers who would go on to have an
incredible career, win a super Bowl. But it was still
you wanted to leave us. We loved you for so
long and we all, oh, all the way back to
or rookie year or either you're in the mid nineteen
nineties and now you were sure you wanted to play,
(21:04):
and then you wanted out and then you wanted away. No, no, no,
we we we can hate you now. Yeah, the saltiness
that that rolls up of you still want to be
viable And for him, he must have felt. I'm sure
it's documented in a million interviews by now of where
he was at psychologically, because obviously he'd had some other issues,
(21:26):
you know, off the field that he was trying to
work through. But when we we look at the forty niners,
they've eventually parted ways with Joe Montana and it wasn't
in the same division. He didn't come back to haunt
them by becoming a member of the NFC West. But
you have you know, farv had an opportunity and a plan,
(21:48):
plan the work, work the plan, and he came back
and you had Aaron Rodgers. And by that point Aaron
Rodgers had already shown himself even in just a year plus.
All Right, we got a guy that's gonna be able
to play some football here. Yet you know that natural
fan reaction short for fanatic, as we talk about all
the time, you're gonna get salty as the guy comes
back as long as it's only the one time, right
(22:11):
is if it's you know, year five on the return going,
that guy's still it's over. It's over. Let it go.
And not getting enough credit for the Vikings is the
offensive line because it was after this game where the
storylines and how good the Vikings were got to more
than just Bred Farv. This is the second time they
played the Packers and they didn't sack bred Farve, not once.
(22:35):
I mean, that was really something. And the Vikings defense
is able to get to Aaron Rodgers as many times
as they could. This lost dropped the Packers to four
and three, and suddenly their playoff possibilities were up in
the air, and everything was great for the Minnesota Vikings.
You got a big kickoff return by Percy Harvin which
helped this out. Farve winds up in this game, throwing
(22:57):
for two forty four yards and four touchdowns, and the
Vikings win this game thirty eight to twenty six in
a game that wasn't really that close. They you go
into the bye week at seven and one, and everything
looks awesome and you're thinking Super Bowl for the Minnesota Vikings,
just cruising on because they're putting up big point totals,
defense is playing well, even giving up the twenty six
(23:18):
against Green Bay. And you've already run four road games
in this process, right, You only lost the the one
game to Pittsburgh on the road, but otherwise you're cruising
along and just setting it up and knocking it down
and still learning those wide receivers in the process because
they were a bunch of young, kind of journeyman guys
(23:41):
as you talk about I mean Sydney, and he never
was the player he was after Bret Farvley, so he
had blipped on the radar, you know. He he had
a couple of years and then he went to Seattle
and the same thing with Percy Harvin, and Percy Harvi
never became the full weapon you expected him and Percy
have off field. In a prior episode of Special Teams
(24:04):
talking about the Gators and Percy Harvin and with the
Seattle Seahawks, he's a frequent contributor to Special teams, but
I talked about Percy Harvin on Special Teams more than
any other players so far. On him. Yeah, But I
mean it shows the impact that he had though, right
if you when we look at players over the last
(24:26):
ten to fifteen years in college and pro football, he's
a guy that stands out of if he had been
able to just stay right right and between some some
mental health concerns and his love of the weed that
he still talks about in his post career. I know
you like the way I say that I talk about
(24:47):
the weed like I'm eighty five years old, that you know.
I get on the internets and then I look up
the weed and that's what it tells me. Derailed, Yes,
and now I'm s a for it him like, harmon,
you want to look up the weed on the interwebs. Hey,
that's a dangerous search and could get you fired. Don't
do it at work, don't do it at home. And
(25:09):
that's one to know. I don't like tell me some
just trying to come to some kind of old man,
old man type voice where it's like, hey, let me
tell you about something, kids, let me tell you I
got I got almost five decades on this planet. Let
me But what's helping far of along at this At
(25:30):
this time, he didn't have the greatest wide receivers. But
when you can't stack and you can't sell out because
Adrian Peterson is going to kill you, that helps immensely.
Look far, it had pretty decent running games on and
off in Green Bay, but he never had a guy
like Adrian Peterson that teams had to is that what
we gotta we gotta sell out for one guy. We
(25:52):
either got to sell out to stop Adrian Peterson. We
gotta sell it to stop Red Farve. We can't stop
both of them, And with the way the offensive line
played and the way in Adrian Peterson ran the football,
you couldn't do it. And even though you don't have
great wide receivers, well, hey, Fars gonna find the right guy,
and he's gonna find the right guy in his progression,
and maybe Sidney Rice and maybe Vasanta Shanko, it could
(26:13):
be anybody else, but he's gonna fund it because you
can't just slant your coverage or try to sell out
like you normally do when a team is one dimensional.
Look Far's Packers teams. They won their fair share of games,
but you could still game plan for them, because in
the end, it was, well, we're gonna stop Red five.
If Dorsey Levins beats us, Dorsey Levins beats us, you
can't say that's well if we at Adrian, well we
(26:34):
can'didate in Peterson pet us. So it became really really
hard to defend. And there's no no surprise why the
Vikings were running through the NFL this way. Why are
you talking about the balance? Fo sixty seven rushing attempts
for the team over the course of the year. Peterson
at three four teen Chester Taylor very effective as the
number two options both as a runner and receiver. Sydney
(26:54):
Rice had eighty three receptions, nobody else with more than sixty,
and obviously in the red zone. Shanko was an absolute
monster for that year, finishing with eleven touchdowns. But trying
to pick your poison on it on a given day,
and even Adrian Peterson a decade later, still gets a
little bit of daylight can still break away. You know,
I missed Chester Taylor because I felt like he played
(27:16):
in the nineties seventies as well. They sounds he played
for the Colts in the seventies at Chester Taylor, he
was really good. I just remember when he was brought
in Chicago, he was going to be a short yardage
back and then couldn't run short yardage place. That makes
it tough, struggled miserably, makes it very difficult that multiple
years trying to bring in a guy to be the
short yardage man, and they just it's not about the Bears.
(27:41):
The second half of the season. I'll help you out,
but here. The second half of the season went very
well for the Minnesota Vikings. They did lose back to
back games late in December, but still finished off the
season with a big thrashing of the New York Giants.
They go onto the playoffs with a record of twelve
and four, and Brett Farve turns out having his best
year that he had had in quite a long time.
(28:04):
Thirty three touchdowns that year for the Vikings. That's the
most he had thrown since nineteen. Seven interceptions for Brett
folk about that number when usually he's at like thirty
seven interceptions. He did have a twenty ninety seven picks.
He had never thrown those few interceptions outside of his
(28:27):
first year in the league with Atlanta when he only
appeared in two games. Seven interceptions for this full year,
every other year the best he had ever done thirteen picks.
But this tells you this type of team he was on.
He didn't have to be the big gun slinger. He
was in a big, well balanced offense, and everything looked
great for them getting out of the regular season and
into the playoffs. Operational efficiency, perfect home record, eight No
(28:51):
the Bears get lost in in Week sixteen and overtime
defeat with thirty six thirty is your final. So you
got some fireworks down the stretch. Jake Cutler led well,
that's the thing about that game. That Week sixteen game
we talked. They lost two in a row, and that
second one was to the Bears and overtime. Uh far'v
(29:12):
actually forced overtime by throwing a touchdown pass on fourth
and goal with no time left to Sydney Rice. But
in overtime Adrian Peterson fumbles, Bears recover. Jake Cutler throws
a touchdown pass to a guy that I will always
have good things to say about. Hopefully he stays, you know,
as devon a Roma Show do, because I won a
fantasy league that year because he scored a couple of
(29:34):
big touchdowns late. He had like a good four games
for the Bears. He did at the end of that year,
and because of that loss, the New Orleans Saints jumped
into the lead for home field advantage. So while the
Vikings go into the playoffs, they go win as the
number two seed with a date in New Orleans, as
long as they won that first week. Den he was
(29:55):
He was great for a couple of guys. I mean
it four. I started him in my fantasy semifinals and
and he was great, and I was like, oh my god,
I love this guy. One of those guys that you watched,
and he had a decent role in Miami, came to Chicago,
had a bit of success, and then flamed out as
quickly as he arrived. So for the Vikings, it was
now the playoffs that had two games away from the
(30:16):
Super Bowl. Coming up. Next, we relive one of the
biggest games in NFL history. Jason Smith Mike Harmon, Special
Teams Podcast. We continue on reliving the two thousand nine
(30:44):
season for the Minnesota Vikings here on the Special Teams
Podcast Jason Smith, Mike Harmon, your genial hosts. You can
hear us Monday through Friday on Fox Sports Radio ten
pm to two am on the East Coast, seven to
eleven on the West Coast. And as we can tinue
want here, I'm thinking, Hey, as the playoffs are happening,
I could see the Jets and the Vikings and the
(31:06):
Super Bowl against each other. This is gonna be awesome.
The Jets and want a big playoff game in San Diego.
I was in attendance for that game. They're in the
a f C Championship game and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, Jets, Vikings,
it's coming. Jets, Vikings it's coming. You get your revenge
on Brett far from me. We lost the we lost
to the cults, and we lost the cults, lost the cults.
We lost the cults and and we lost the cults.
(31:30):
We lost. It was very difficult. It was it was
Peyton Manning, it was you know, you know, it was
you know what we're talking about the Vikings. This is
this is not not making about the Jets. This is
about the have your sad sag the Jets history episode.
What season can we look back at the Jets besides
Super What are you talking about? Here's a talk co tight,
(31:52):
Here's a crappy as season the Jets have had. We're
gonna relive all of them. We'll give you nine minutes
on your love Affair of Curtis Martin shaking his hand
and the Vikings first playoff game, after having a week
to sit back and kick back, they play the Dallas Cowboys,
and this was a high flying Cowboys offense led by
Tony Romo, and they came into Minnesota and had no chance.
(32:15):
The Vikings just blow the doors off the Cowboys thirty
four to three. Romo couldn't do anything. It was very
difficult to watch the Cowboys just lay a complete egg.
But this was more about the excellence of the Minnesota Vikings,
and they win a game we expected and they're in
the NFC Championship Game and not a lot of drama.
Now you look at what that Dallas team was, I mean,
(32:36):
they scored three hundred sixty one points on the years,
certainly no slouch. I mean, you've got other teams that
were rolling up some really ridiculous pinball numbers. But to
go in and get absolutely decimated. And we talked about
the front seven and how effective they were earlier. When
you look at Jared Allen leading the way, I mean,
there's just not a lot of a lot of room
(32:58):
for Tony Romo, and and it's game was never in doubt,
and this was not a nice walk in the park.
Everybody sits down and let's get ready for the next one.
And the next one was the NFC Championship Game at
the New Orleans Saints, a game where the Vikings were
thinking Super Bowl and a great future, and instead it
turned out to be the final playoff game of Brett
(33:18):
Farve's career, a game that in later years were turned
out to be the beginning of bounty gate. But first
the game in and of itself, before we get to
the long lasting ramifications of the NFC Championship game. This
was a classic back and forth battle, right the Vikings
would score, the Saints would score. It was far up
and down the field. It was Drew Brees up and
(33:39):
down the field. The Vikings should have won this game.
So many times they commit five turnovers in the game,
and it's amazing it actually went to overtime. Because you
commit five turnovers, you're on the road in the NFC
Championship game. You're not gonna win. But somehow five turnovers,
three fumbles, two interceptions, one big reception in a minute.
(34:01):
But that should be enough for that should be you
know what, we shot ourselves in the foot and still
they had a chance to go. There's no doubt in
my mind the Vikings were the better team. But you
go in and you make that many mistakes, you cut
those turnovers from five down to two. Let's say you
turn over a couple of times, you're winning this game
and the Vikings are in the Super Bowl. Well, it
(34:21):
goes back to the old predictor of success in the NFL.
I mean, it's obvious and common sense, but the math
bears it out. It's if you win the turnover battle.
I mean, that's that's it. Because you look at statistically,
thirty one first downs toft hundred, sixty five rushing yards
to sixty eight passing yards to a D seven. Just
(34:44):
go on down the line. I mean, it's just absolute
obliteration until you add the turnovers, half, the penalties, win,
time of possession, everything all the way through. But fumbles
Percy Harvin, UH and Bernard Burying help with what Farv
did individually, and down you go. You know, one of
the biggest turnovers in this game that's not talked about
(35:07):
because obviously the interception Uh late in the fourth quarter
is that right before the end of the first half.
Its fourteen fourteen and Reggie Bush back when he was boy,
Reggie Bush is gonna be a great player in the NFL.
He's gonna run for yards a year and catch fifteen
hundred yards and passes. He muffs the punt that the
Vikings recover on the ten yard line, but two plays later,
(35:28):
Farv and Peterson screw up the handoff and Scott Fagitta
recovers the fumble and the game goes into the halftime
tied when clearly this should have been a field goal
lead or a touchdown lead for the Minnesota Vikings. And
I know it's it's hard to say, well, you had
one turnover, they turned it back over, but this ball
is on the ten yard line, and you screw up
(35:49):
a handoff. Little exchanges, I mean, we see it so
often NFL where you've got a quarterback trying to look
off a wide receiver, you know, the little nod in
the wink, and they get the ball snapped because the
center thought he saw a movement of a hand or
whatever it is. And that's the one thing that you
want to watch coaches blow a gasket. I mean, that's
(36:11):
what you always want, the picture and picture of the
replay of the how the head coach or offensive coordinator
respond to a play like that. And we're talking a
title game. This isn't Week one, this isn't Week two.
We're talking big time football and winning time. In the
second half. You had the turnovers, you said by Bernard Berrying,
this turns into a game. With two forty two left,
(36:35):
the Vikings get the football and they drive to the
Saints thirty three yard line. Now this is in Ryan
Longwell's range for a field goal. Ryan long was a
really good field goal kicker. He has been. He's kicking
in yours by Packer now with the right. Yeah, I
gotta you want a great story, Ryan Longwell. You want
a great Ryan Longwell story. So when I was at
NFL Network, uh, we did a lot of stuff with
(36:56):
Steve Mariuchi and Ryan Longwell was in the forty Niners
camp as a rookie and he was great, and mary
Uchi was Maryuchi is the best. He tells stories that
are just so entertaining. And he's like, oh my god,
this guy's gonna be our kicker. We found him. He's
a rookie's great, and I forget who he said he
had on the team already and they went in for
the final cuts. He was like all right, you know,
talking to the GM and all right, and we're and
(37:18):
we're keeping long Well because he's great. They go, no, no, no,
we're paying our kicker the X amount of dollars. We're
not keeping it. We're not We're not gonna cut him.
And he was like wait, wait what. He was like, no,
We're we're paying our kicker already. So we had to
cut Ryan Longwell, who then went on to have a
huge career with the Green Bay Packers. And he would
say that was the first time I looked and I said, okay,
so money is a big deal. He was like, all right,
I get the money part. He thought talent one out.
(37:41):
No no, no, no, no, Well, I mean it's yeah,
And he's still on the hook for some part of it.
And you're talking about cap implications a whole other other
the ball game. So they're on the thirty three yard
line and they run two running plays and Adrian Peterson
and Chester Taylor get tackled for no game. Now think
for a second with the super Bowl on the line,
(38:03):
Chester Taylor is getting a carry. Okay, I get it.
But Chester Taylor is getting a carry with the super
Bowl on the line. Yeah. It's kind of funny because
as you were earlier in the possession, you had a
couple of runs from Adrian Peterson, but then you had
several pass plays before you got back to the Chester
Taylor and now he did run for fourteen yards to
(38:23):
play before he got stuffed first. But it's like, oh boy,
this is the Super bowls coming here. Man, this is
Super Bowl. So let's start criticizing Adrian Peterson for not
being able to suck it up. That's it hot take.
So they call a time out with nineteen seconds left,
and this is a very often overlooked development. Minnesota gets
flagged for having twelve men in the huddle. So now
(38:45):
they're penalized five yards. So now it's the thirty eight
yard line and it's third and fifteen. Now maybe you're
out of Ryan Longwell's range, and maybe you change things
up and say, well, now we've got to get some yards.
You know, we don't want to trot Ryan Longwell out
there for ds out. That's a long one. So they
(39:06):
decided to throw the football, a pass which will forever
live in Minnesota Vikings infamy. Brett Farve rolls out to
one side, tries to turn back against his body and
throw it all the way back across the side of
the field, which we've seen Brett Farve do hundreds of
times during his career. Throw it over the mountains. Sometimes
it results in a in a catch and oh my goodness,
(39:28):
look at the vision Brett Farve. As sometimes it results
in a bad play. It is picked off by Tracy
Porter and instead of a game winning field goal, attempt.
We wind up going to overtime and you get the
famous call by Vikings play by play man Paul Allen,
you could take a knee and try to kick a
fifty five yard field goal. He was hot on the air.
(39:50):
He's the play by play guy and he is so
pissed that Brett Farve does a typical Brett Farve play
and throws it back across his body, which is you
never turned back and throw across the middle to the
other side of the field, because that gives so many
players on the back side. They're already looking at the
football and they can get to it. And that's what happened.
Tracy Porter got to it, and now we wind up
(40:11):
going to overtime and Paul Allen is incense and Vikings
fans are going that's life with Brett Farve. Yet now
and now I get it. It was a great magic
carpet ride. But now we're getting the Brett Farve. You
got him on that play, which is what Packers fans
and the Jets for one year had for him. Since
this was Brett Farve, where you live with him. But boys,
(40:32):
sometimes you gotta die with those passes and they wind
up dying with that pass. Now you still had football
to play at the moment. But if you're a Vikings fan,
that was everything you'd ever seen, right, because you've been
to the Promised Land a few times and then the
door got slammed in your face. Right, No no entry here, right.
And the past Super Bowl appearances, past championship games, there's
been a lot of occasions for the opportunity, uh. And
(40:56):
sorry to our boss as this is UH, is that
you had a lot of opportunities to get your big
signature win and and etch name on the side of
the trophy, and and everybody gets a ticker tape raid instead.
It's all falling apart, and in that moment, like shades
of every bit of anguish for Vikings fans, for their lives.
(41:18):
The coin toss goes the way of the New Orleans
Saints in overtime, and this incredibly great game, dripping with drama,
ends pretty quick. The Saints go down the field without
too much difficulty, a big pass interference call against Ben
Lieber helping the Saints, and Garrett Hartley comes out kicks
(41:39):
the game winning field goal. The Saints win. They go
on to the Super Bowl and for the Vikings, it's
what just happened to us? What just happened? And the
Saints go on they beat the Indianapolis Colts to win
it all. Sean Payton Drew Brees finally get to the
top of the mountain, and the Vikings are left asking
what if? But this didn't and the drama for the
(42:03):
Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints. In the immediate
aftermath after the game was over, a couple of things happened.
The first thing was this game because of the way
it ended. Right, you get to overtime, the Saints get
the football, they drive down the field and kick a
field goal. The NFL changed its rules the following off
season about overtime. It allowed the team who got the
(42:26):
ball first and overtime if they kicked the field goal.
The opposing team then got a possession to try to
score as well. And this is morphed into the NFL
overtime rule that we have now. And make no mistake
about it, this change was made clearly because everybody felt
bad Brett Farve didn't get the football in overtime. How
unfair was it that a legend like Brett Farve didn't
(42:47):
get a chance to go down the field and win
a football game. We've seen so many overtime games decided
in playoffs, regular season, but it didn't matter because Brett Farve,
who was it in the NFL this time, didn't get
a chance to go down the field. The nflus, well,
we want to change the rule now. Crazy thing is
the Vikings voted against this rule change in the off season,
but still it passed. And now we have the overtime
(43:09):
rule we have because of this game, because of that development,
all about the Saints. All we do is change rules
because of the Saints time and time again. We have
the bounty gate that flows out of it, but we
have multiple rule changes now impacted by Sean Payton, his
position on the Competition Committee picking up for longtime Competition
(43:31):
Committee hero Jeff Fisher, our friend here in Los Angeles. Uh.
And it's just crazy that the backlash was so swift
and severe to that it's like you played over time.
It's like, sorry, Brett fav didn't get a chance to
have the ball. Defense didn't do their job period, give
up a long kickoff return to Pierre Thomas and what
(43:54):
twelve plays later, let's it get off the field too. Bad.
After this game, I remember thinking, going, boy, they just
beat the crap out of Farv in this game. The
Saints gave him hit, twisting his ankle, hitting him, hitting
him late. There was excessive roughness calls throughout the game,
and it was just boy or either this is their
game plan was to come and hit Bred Farve or
(44:14):
something else is going on. It was just a game, though. Boy.
Farv got hit and I still think he's feeling some
of those hits from this game. And then in two
thousand and twelve, this game took on a different light
when bounty Gate was put into the American consciousness when
a filmmaker shooting a documentary on Steve Gleason of the
New Orleans Saints took video of the meeting that Greg
(44:36):
Williams had with his defense the night before a playoff game,
and he talked about hitting guys, making them realized that
they were gonna get hit, gonna get hit hard. That
Kyle Williams, let's see what happens when you hit him
in the chin. And we find out about bounty gate,
and bounty Gate became the biggest story in the NFL.
Albeit now it's three years later and we find out
the Saints were paying out bonuses or bounties for injuring
(45:00):
opposing team players. It was an operation from two thousand
nine all the way to two thousand eleven. Greg Williams
got suspended, Sean Payton was suspended for the entire two
thousand and twelve season. But this was the game where
people look back and said, Okay, I get it. This
this is really the beginning of bounty gate. The way
they hit bred far, everything they did to him, this
started bounty gate. Go back and look Ray Edwards, Um,
(45:22):
you know for the vikings was having himself a game.
But well we go through and look at the quarterback
hits on the other side. They were innumerable. And yeah,
and then you watch some of the video highlights, like
you know, the play through the whistle, No, no no, no,
the reverberation of the whistle was really where we got
to for for Greg Williams and that defense. And you know,
(45:47):
the the idea of a defense is to punish opposed buddy.
And we've seen rule changes. Now if you breathe on
a quarterback after the balls out, it's different. Yeah, the
bounty scandal would never happened now. But but lea's a
look at all these penalties. Okay, we gotta stop like
the fact that five kept popping up like whack a mole. Yeah,
I mean that becomes a difficult proposition, right right if
(46:08):
he if he stays down, then maybe the officials are
looking at each other going all right, do we miss something?
What's going on? Not that you could have gone to
review booth at that point to say, hey, please take
a look at what's going on here, but you know,
you look at the way the game's officiated. Now, I mean,
he'd be in bubble wrap compared to the way they
have two hits. Somebody would get thrown out of the game,
(46:30):
and there would be all right, we can't do this anymore.
It's a new NFL look. But because of that game, really,
in retrospect, two big rule change, two things happen. Not
granted for the Saints, it was all the way through,
But that was the game people look back to and said, Okay,
that's the game I can really see starting because of
bred Farve. Now, normally at this time we do the
where are they now? The segment of the podcast. However,
(46:51):
I want to throw this head because I'm gonna tell
you something I don't think you've known about me in
the seven years nearly that we've been together. Okay, Yeah,
So the filmmaker who shot this video of bounty Gate
right that started bounty Gate whole thing with the vic
alright filmmaker was my roommate at ESPN for about two years,
(47:14):
Sean Pamphalon. He was doing the Steve Gleason documentary. He
got video of this and he said, listen, this is news.
I have to come out with it. Many people were
upset that that he decided to do this. The NFL
tried to buy this video and everything. And I'll never
forget this because when I found that it was Sean,
I go, oh my god, Oh my god, Shawn's got this.
And because Sean was a really fun dude, um big
(47:36):
Yankee fan, so he and I always would go at
it with the Yankees and the Mets. But this was
like his moment, and I go, what is he going
to do? What's he gonna do? He's got this video?
And so at this time, I'm an NFL network and
I'm hosting NFL Fantasy Live and I wind up seeing
that it's Shawnago. What's he gonna do? And I go,
(47:57):
I don't know what he's gonna do, but he's very unpredictable.
Sure and off. Right after this story gets out, the
NFL wants the video from him. He puts out this
long missive on his own personal website about football and
the NFL, and Goodell should meet with him before he
turns over the video, and I go, oh my god, Sean,
what are you doing? Dude? What are you doing? So
the day after it comes out that Sean is the
(48:18):
guy with the video, I go into my boss's NFL network.
Now that this story gets really really cool, I shouldn't
stay cool. It gets funny, and I I get a
sense of retribution, right, so retributions of strong word. Yeah,
well so so here. So here's what happens. So I
come in and they're trying to get in touch with Sean.
(48:40):
So I come in and I tell my managers, Hey,
you know this guy who has the video? I go,
I know him really well. I mean we were roommates
in ESPN for two years. I could get in touch
with him and see if you'll give the video up.
And my managers like, oh my god, yes, yeah yeah, yeah,
oh yeah, yeah yeah. Go talk to David Eaton, who
was an executive at NFL Network, and he was because
he was like the guy in charge of the news room,
(49:02):
and he was, you know, the guy you would talk to.
He was the one, you know, in charge of the
daily shows. So I walk up to him and this
is not the first time he didn't treat me the
best when I was when I was at n i
FOL Network. And we walk up and it's me and
my manager and him, and we walk up and my managers, Hey, uh,
Jason wanted to tell you something. I said, Hey, um,
so Sean Pamphalon who has this video? I know him
(49:24):
and I can and he interested me. He goes, we
were on it, we're on it. I said, yeah, no, no,
I get it. But I'm saying I know him and
I can get in contact. Was yeah, I know. We've
we've reached out. We were reached out, were we we
we got it. So I just said, okay, I said,
all right, that's fine, and I backed away. I saidt
you know what, you've blown me off right here twice
now and this happened. Okay, that's fine, that's fine, that's fine.
So there you go. Now you know a little bit
(49:45):
more about me. And I had a whole thing and
where are they now? All right, you know what, give
me your best one, give me your best one? Form right, well,
you know what. I don't have any further information, but
there was a great article about Chester Taylor watching the
(50:06):
World Series of Poker and uh deciding, hey, I could
do that. So by the late you know, two thousand sixteen,
two thousand seventeen, he was actually entering big time steaks pokers.
I decided I could learn how to do this. So
he was involved in that. I used to think I
could learn how to do that and be a professional
(50:27):
poker player. A couple of times I won when you know,
friends would have a night and I'm going, hey, I
could do this professionally. Yeah, I was good enough to
play in a in a home game that I did. Okay,
Phil loadhold, I mean I had to pull. He actually
is back with the Vikings and he was helping with
as an intern in the nun Wooten Scouting Fellowship program.
(50:53):
How about that? All like guys to come and give back. Hey,
you the former second round pick got himself and there
but are burying? Um? Is this development mentoring and management
for athletes and entertain it not bad. Eric Frampton, financial
consultant for Fidelity, how about that? And he walks around
and says, dude, you you have your representative, okay, teaching
(51:19):
people how I should come? What else am I gonna say?
Do you do you feel? Do you feel? You? Do
you feel? Come on? The boy spots has always been
the coolest thing. I mean we wait. I took my
kids to go see Aerosmith, and as soon as they
started doing that for sweet emotion, both my kids started
cheering wildly. Do you do you have insurance? Do you
(51:39):
have insurance? All right? I think that's a good place
to stop. So there it is our look back at
the crazy season that involved the two thousand nine Minnesota Vikings.
If you have any ideas you want to pitch us
some teams you think we should spotlight here on special teams,
hit us up on Twitter at how about a fresca
Mike Swollen doubt. We'll see what we can do. Have
(52:02):
a great week and we'll talk to you in a
few days. Before you go, rate and review the show.
Whether you're listening on I Heart Radio, I Heart Radio, apps, Apple,
whatever it is, give us a rate, tell us you
like it. We will love you forever and ever and
(52:24):
ever Special Teams is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
(52:46):
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Special Teams, a production of I Heart Radio
Greetings and Welcome inside the latest Special Teams with Jason
(00:23):
Smith and Mike Harmon podcast. We take a look back
at a very special year in sports, very special team
in that special year. This week we look at the
two thousand and nine Minnesota Vikings. No, they didn't win
at all, but my goodness, did they give us a
year to remember. It was Brett Farve his best year
(00:44):
post post Green Bay rather and we'll get into the
Jets in a little bit, because you know, I got
Jets a little bit away station. This is one of
those memorable teams that did not win a championship. And look,
as we do things on special teams, that's kind of
where we go. Sometimes it teams that win it all.
Sometimes it teams that don't win but are incredibly memorable.
(01:04):
And we saw an NFL rule change because of the
two thousand nine Minnesota Vikings that we still have today
rule changes. The craziness of Brett Farve, which is the
overriding topic for the season, The way this roster was assembled,
some stars that as you and I sit and talk
about this, uh, this team looking back a decade, you
(01:27):
still had many guys still traversing the sidelines of NFL rosters.
I mean, pretty pretty exciting stuff that, you know. I
just remember the Brett farrv himming and hawing really infuriated
a lot of people, including me. So and and since
it's all about me, that's really what it comes down.
Because he couldn't get out of the bleeping NFC North.
(01:47):
You know, Well, here's the thing he goes through before
the two thousand and eight season, yet another I think
I want to retire. And the Packers had had it
with him, and we talked about Brett Farve because it's
back when I was doing All Night on ESPN Radio,
and we had talked about Brett Farve every day and
it was great because it was about something on the field.
It was a controversy on the field. Should the Packers
(02:08):
let Brett Farve play, should they let him go, should
they trade him? And it was different, which what's what
made it fun. They finally decided to move on. They
trade him to the Jets in two thousand and eight.
He plays two thousand and eight, He has a great
year until he tears his bicep. The Jets can't win
in December and he moves on, he quote retires again
(02:28):
and you think this is it for Brett Farve. But
then again, it's never it for Brett Farve. I mean, look,
I think in two thousand twenty one, he's gonna come
back at fifty three years old. He looks like he
yoked up Santa Clause running around. I mean, come on,
But Farv decides in two thousand and nine after he
retires from the Jets at the end of two thousand eight.
I mean, phase were great. For when he was a
(02:49):
quarterback with the Jet was phenomenal. He beat the Patriots
in a big Thursday night game in New England. He
beat the Titans when they were undefeated. The Jets were
eight and three, and I thought, they're gonna win the division.
We're going to the playoff. It's far far, far far
of my whole life was Bred Farve. I was doing
things in fours just because his number was four. It
was incredible. And then he tears his bicep and he
(03:10):
can't throw the football anymore. The Jets don't win, and
then okay, Bred Farve has done. The Jets realize we
have to move on, we have to get to somebody else.
But then slowly you start to hear the rumors as
the winter turns into spring bred Farv, who had wanted
to go to the Minnesota Vikings when he first was
let go from the Packers, but the Packers weren't gonna
let him go to an NFC North foe. He decides
(03:33):
to come out of retirement and sign with the Minnesota Vikings.
With ten years to look back at this, you can
easily see bread Farve and the long game he played,
whereas I want you to let me go with the Packers,
and I wanted to let me go to the Vikings.
Packers said we're not gonna do that because it came
down to trade to him to either Tampa Bay or
(03:53):
the Jets, and they picked the Jets. But I guarantee
you the long play with Farv was, you know what,
I'll go play someplace else for a year, I'll retire again,
then I'll get to Minnesota because I can't get to
Minnesota now, but I want to go play for Brad
Children's we had a relationship with before Brad Children's was
the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, and you knew
that's what he was gonna do. He comes out of
(04:15):
retirement and suddenly he gets where he wanted to be.
He went somewhere else for a year, and then he
gets the Minnesota Vikings and he wants to exact revenge
on the Green Bay Packers, and it becomes the story again.
Far for the Jets was a huge story, and now hey,
it's continuing his first year with the Vikings. I just
don't know that he's ever gotten the proper credit for
the mcinvelian genius and being able to come right back
(04:38):
into the division, or enough blame for something that right now,
players get absolutely brutalized on social media and throughout all
media when they orchestrate a power play of getting out
Anthony Davis wanting to go to the Lakers, Lebron James
holding everybody how much everybody universally loved bread Farm outside
(04:59):
of Tames in the NFC North, everybody loved bread But
see that he was always the funny scenario of you
know that guy that you respect, right and see all right,
he keeps beating us a man. He's fun to watch
because it's so unconventional and the arm strength and the
gambler style throws whatever. As a guy growing up in
(05:20):
Chicago Bears fan, you just watch and you'd marvel at
what he'd do. And then of course he passes the
baton to Aaron Rodgers, and it's more of the same.
What is its seventeen and four in the last twenty
one games against the Bears. But it's it's just the
idea that you know, you're you're terrorized by this guy.
You kept waiting from to maybe put your uniform on,
(05:40):
and and and the cycle, but instead you you appreciated
the talent. But I don't think he ever got one
or the other right. Even elway from not not coming
into the Colts or Eli Manning for forcing the trade
out of San Diego, they at least there's blips on
there and stains on the it was are you gonna retire?
(06:01):
And that was the whole thing, is that that's where
the only backlash he had came from was again, you're
not We don't know if you're gonna retire again. Really,
you don't know if you want to play again. I
was trying to punish for fantasy magazines. Man, I needed
that information. But now, well this is back when fantasy magazines,
oh we gotta publish in March. Well, I have to
because that's when the magazine is publishing. I don't know,
I gotta, I gotta get it in before the draft.
(06:22):
But that was now. Now when in retrospect you look
back at things a decade ago, a decade in in
the rear view mirror, and it was okay, this was
just a strategy to get to the Minnesota Vikings. He
only retired from the Jets because he had to retire
so he could then get to the Vikings. And he
really didn't want to be a Jet. No, he didn't,
He didn't him. He was a great for a little while,
(06:43):
but that there are reports out of New York that
that even the players got a little sick and tired
of him because he would have like his own office,
like Eric Mangini, who was a coach, would give him
his own office. He didn't really hang out with the
guys as much. He wasn't quite the the guy they
expected him to be when he joined the team. Well,
but that's just it. The difference between and and we
watch it now, the old quarterback, right, the difference between
(07:03):
how Tom Brady is with his teammates that are half
his age and what Brad Farve was right because essentially
you had the same dynamic. But all you ever hear
is how integrated Brady is with the team and wanting
to know the guys. Hi, I'm Tom Brady. Is how
he welcomes them to camp. Right, he goes and finds
and seeks them out versus Farv and you know, it's
(07:26):
his world. Here's a pair of wranglers here you go.
What what what? What? What do you like? A thirty?
Here you go? Yeah, let let met you those right there.
You know, if they just cut him off into George,
they can recreate the top gun volleyball. You know, if
your beard is getting a little gray, I can give
you that. You know, you can kind of brush it
through and then you can kind of look younger. No
one can tell. So Farve joins the Minnesota Vikings, and
(07:47):
he joins the head coach. He wanted to join in
Brad Children's You're a guy. I like this because I
was one of the few people in the world with
a Brad Children's impressure. You may be the only guy
with a Brad Childrens impression. I can't say I've ever
heard another. Ah. We have to make sure on offense
that we uh throw the ball down field a little
(08:07):
bit more and uh put more points on the board. Uh,
and that's a pretty good Brad Childrens senior offensive assistant
your Chicago Bears. So Farve joins the team and it
becomes the story in the NFL. The Minnesota Vikings become
page one news. And this is a team that is
(08:28):
already loaded and ready to go. This is a team
with Adrian Peterson in his prime, Sydney Rice who became
a star receiver with the with the Minnesota Vikings that year.
That's the guy that five turned into a star receiver.
Visanthe Shanko, who well had the speaking of big in
the locker room. He had that, but we won't talk
about that. Uh, that's a film After Dark. Brian McKinney,
(08:53):
Steve Hutchinson, Jared Allen, Kevin Williams, all Pro Bowlers. This
was a star studded team who drafted Percy Harvin in
the same year and then he became a weapon. And
so this was everything far of ever one. And I
have the big receivers, I got the fast receivers. I
have the running back I always wanted. This is it.
This is everything he ever had in Green Bay and
now He's got everything all at once, all rolled into one.
(09:16):
I mean you look at that defensive front, which has
been the trademark of the Minnesota Vikings for as long
as I can remember. At this point, it's that same
build from the inside out. And then this, you know
they drafted load Hold load Load load Hold. Yes, so
he becomes a starter and as a rookie top top
pick alongside Percy Harvin guys, and like Harvin, goes on
(09:39):
to win the Rookie of the Year award when it's
all said and done, but for far of orchestrated, perfectly
finds himself in a beautiful situation. And I always like
the name load Holt that I would want to be
Jason Loadholt. Yeah. I mean there's there's a lot of
ways you can go, a lot of careers. The Minnesota
Vikings are now paid one news. How is Brett Farve
(10:01):
going to fit in? Is he going to get revenge
against the Green Bay Packers? Can he bring the Vikings
to the Super Bowl? So while this is happening, what
else was happening in two thousand and nine? It was
the Miracle on the Hudson as Sully was able to
save everybody's life. The plane that was attacked by birds
(10:24):
and the engine was able to land in the Hudson.
Everybody gets out. Years later, Tom Hanks plays him in
a movie. Kind of a surreal kind of experience. I'm
sure for him. Every time I go to the Universal
Studios back line, there it is. There's this grade. We
filled that up with water and Sully, and let me
show you a picture of Sully. Bernie made Off played guilty.
(10:45):
Surely after that, I realized, Oh, now I know why
the Mets can't sign anybody. Oh because they were in
on the Ponzi scheme with Bernie made Off, never forced
to sell the team, but going away, you know, you
know money. Now it's we're still struggling. You know, you
made you made it to the World Series. I know,
despite that, It's like, despite all their efforts, the Mets
(11:06):
made it to the kind of deal on Jacob deGrom
this offseason. I mean, come on, if you remember, it
was Thanksgiving weekend when Tiger Woods car hit a fire.
Hydrinton Allen Nordegren came out with a golf club and
suddenly tiger Woods world turned upside down. He admitted to
many affairs and his life has never been the same.
Ten years ago. Uh, you know, I remember him. He
(11:27):
was in a onesie posing for a photo with you
with the international team that you know, well, I mean,
he's trying to humanize himself, you know. I remember going
to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo very shortly after,
because that's came out. And there's a scene in Girl
the Dragon Tattoo. Sorry spoiler alert, there's a scene in
(11:48):
which character is getting chased out of a house, gets
into a car, and another character grabs a golf club
on the way out and bashes in the rear window,
which is the story what happen with Ellen order going
to talk? So that happens, and it's a very tensely
like A Girl the Dragon Tattoo is a really great movie,
and it's very silence of the lamb's escates, and this
(12:11):
is a really tense scene. And I just laugh in
the theater. I look at my wife and we laughed
to each other. Nobody else has left, and look at
me like, what are you laughing at dude? What's wrong
with you? I go, this is the Tiger Woods thing? Wait,
oh my god. Ripped from the headlines Modern Family debut
that year sweets has did Farmville? I still get requests?
Blank blank blank do you invite you to play Farmville? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
(12:34):
I never got I never went down that dude, just
maybe want to get off Facebook. It was also the
year that Kanye West told Taylor Swift, I'm gonna let
you finish but Beyonce and one of the best videos
of all time, which is still a surreal moment. You
got a lot of run for Kanye West. Yeah, I
would say in his life that's one of the three
(12:54):
biggest things they'll ever be known for. That's probably true.
He got gold Digger was one of the best hip
hop songs ever, and then you have them I'm Gonna
let you finish well. I like the fact that at
the end of twenty nine he's running around like painted
like the silver guy you would pose for a picture
with Hollywood. Tell me I'm wrong. So that's the magical
(13:14):
year of two thousand and nine ahead for the Minnesota Vikings.
Two games that had the world's attention. A playoff game
that has ramifications even ten years out. That's coming up
more right here on Special Teams Week one of the
(13:46):
NFL Season one thing was on the minds of every
football fan. How is my local team going to do?
And how was Brett Farve going to play his first
game with the Minnesota Vikings. All kinds of hype on
the team he's wanted to. He looked looser, he was happier.
His first game against Cleveland, he just threw for a
(14:07):
hundred and ten yards, I mean, very underwhelming, but did
throw for a touchdown. They win. Week two, just a
hundred and fifty five yards, two touchdowns, but they're two
and oh so far. Brett Farve is a little underwhelming
throw in the football, but they win a couple of games. However,
Week three, things changed for Farv and the Vikings. Immediately
(14:30):
he launches a thirty two yard touchdown pass with two
seconds left to play to Greg Lewis to win and
really launch the Vikings legend to beat the San Francisco
forty nine and wind up winning the sp for Best
Football Play. Far jumping around in everybody's arms after it
was one of those passes that you see far throwing.
(14:53):
You go no, no, no, no, no, oh yes, wow,
what a great play. Because Greg Lewis is running along
the back of the end zone. There's players there you
know that you still want to make sure there's enough
time because maybe you can get one more play, but instead,
thirty two yards out, Farve completes it. Now he's a
legend in Minnesota after just three weeks. But said, it's
it always takes that one big play to get your
role in and and because you do have Adrian Peterson,
(15:16):
you don't have to be the forty passes the game
Brett Farve that you were towards the end of the
run in Green Bay, right, you can move on and
change the structure. And you're still learning these young receivers
because he didn't sign with them still fairly late, right
right as camp began, so you didn't have the offseason workouts.
So you build from there. But for for Brett Farve,
(15:40):
it's it became one of the signatures because you knew
he was gonna keep gunning. Right. We celebrate guys like
at least you know you and I, as as we
do our show on Fox Sports Radio, we celebrate guys
like Jamis Winston. You don't know what the next pass
is gonna look like, And that was Brett Farve, Right,
that was Brett Farve. He's gonna win or he's gonna
lose because he's gotta try to find that guy and
(16:02):
needle in the haystack and and try to gun it
through two defenders. He'd make for a good video game
or horror film, I think, or maybe like an action
film where he's like throwing footballs through guys. But I
still remember what was the the NFC championship game he
threw seven picks against against the Was it the falcon
taking through seven interceptions? Yeah, that's dude. Come on, man,
(16:22):
stop trying to throw a football over that mountain, Uncle Rico.
Stop doing it. No time to rest for Bret fog, however,
as the next week was his rematch or first game
against the Green Bay Packers. When he joined the Jets,
the Jets did not play the Packers. But now he
gets the Packers. He gets his old team. But this
is at home. Things are going to be okay, And
(16:46):
things were okay. Packers win the game thirty to twenty three.
Bret Farve has a good game. He gets booed by
fans in Green Bay that traveled all the way up
to see the game. He winds up throwing for two
yards and three touched sounds and now far of his
four and oh he wins his first game against the Packers.
It's like he's winning the divorce. He's winning the breakup.
(17:07):
He had a very fun interview after the game was
over on National TV. Was a Sunday night game and
it was all right, Packers, you thought they were gonna
come through. They couldn't they win the game and now
far of his winning the breakup, and Packers fans are
just incensed, well because the thing about it was, you know,
owing to the competitor, and what he meant to that
(17:28):
city and that franchise is how he'd go and celebrate
after a touchdown. Right, He's slapping the offensive lineman upside
the head, he's sprinting down the field and pointing at
the wide receiver, all those things that if they're the opponent,
normally you're you're ticked off, and now if you're the Packers,
you're really ticked off, because not only did he go
(17:50):
away and even if he said all right, he finally
got where he wanted to, but he had a torn bicep,
and then he comes in and he shreds you like
he did to the efficiency of seventies seven completion rate,
which he never touched uh and three touchdowns. So for
the path for the for the Packers, for the Vikings,
it's three and oh four and oh five and oh
(18:12):
and it's boy, they could go undefeated, they could challenge
the Dolphins. Market was it was all Brett Farv all
the time. And this is you know, in the middle
of my run at all night and at ESPN, and
it really was far of overload. Look, we're talking about
the Vikings so far. We talked about some of the
players on the team and how well they played, and
I get that, but I want people to remember that
(18:35):
it was about one person. This this season and this
entire incarnation of the Minnesota Vikings was about Brett Farve.
We didn't talk about Adrian Peterson, but we didn't talk
about other players. Peterson in two thousand and nine ran
for yards. He had a big season eighteen touchdowns, which
is his career high. And it was oh ye had
(18:55):
Adrian Peterson. Yeah, he's pretty good. He was. He was
coming off a great rookie year. Zoia's second year in
the league too, so it's like, what's he gonna do
for an end care that doesn't matter old number. Their
third year in the league, form where Pin during the
rookie card. He was coming off the sevred yard season,
which was his best one up until that point, and
(19:16):
it was we've never been talked about it because it
was all about Brett Farve. Far far far. So the
Vikings wind up dropping one to the Pittsburgh Steelers, maybe
in a look ahead game because Week eight was the
big show down when they played at Green Bay and
this was all the hate for Brett Farve out in spades.
(19:37):
The signs at the game were insane. You saw signs
that called him trader, that called him Judas. It was
everybody hating Brett Farve. It was now, we're gonna beat
this guy. And there's not many times in my life
where I felt afraid for a player on a football field. Know,
it's a football game and there's security there and everything else,
but I said, boy, something could happen to Brett. I
(19:59):
could see somebody running on the field try to add, Brett,
you think you're so good that it was that kind
of atmosphere at Green Bay. Well, we just look at
in the decades since, how much different in basketball and
in the NFL, Guys changing teams all the time, right,
normally it was especially for a quarterback. You didn't last
that long for one, I mean the whole iron Man things,
(20:22):
the other legend of farv, but just the idea that
you'd still be well enough to come back after such
a long career there and and become the villain. People
conveniently forget the ownership and general manager's side of things,
because eventually, you know, you've got Aaron Rodgers and mothballs.
(20:42):
You've got to do something with it. Oh, they were
happy at this point because okay, well but they still
it wasn't that things are bad for us, because they
had Aaron Rodgers who would go on to have an
incredible career, win a super Bowl. But it was still
you wanted to leave us. We loved you for so
long and we all, oh, all the way back to
or rookie year or either you're in the mid nineteen
nineties and now you were sure you wanted to play,
(21:04):
and then you wanted out and then you wanted away. No, no, no,
we we we can hate you now. Yeah, the saltiness
that that rolls up of you still want to be
viable And for him, he must have felt. I'm sure
it's documented in a million interviews by now of where
he was at psychologically, because obviously he'd had some other issues,
(21:26):
you know, off the field that he was trying to
work through. But when we we look at the forty niners,
they've eventually parted ways with Joe Montana and it wasn't
in the same division. He didn't come back to haunt
them by becoming a member of the NFC West. But
you have you know, farv had an opportunity and a plan,
(21:48):
plan the work, work the plan, and he came back
and you had Aaron Rodgers. And by that point Aaron
Rodgers had already shown himself even in just a year plus.
All Right, we got a guy that's gonna be able
to play some football here. Yet you know that natural
fan reaction short for fanatic, as we talk about all
the time, you're gonna get salty as the guy comes
back as long as it's only the one time, right
(22:11):
is if it's you know, year five on the return going,
that guy's still it's over. It's over. Let it go.
And not getting enough credit for the Vikings is the
offensive line because it was after this game where the
storylines and how good the Vikings were got to more
than just Bred Farv. This is the second time they
played the Packers and they didn't sack bred Farve, not once.
(22:35):
I mean, that was really something. And the Vikings defense
is able to get to Aaron Rodgers as many times
as they could. This lost dropped the Packers to four
and three, and suddenly their playoff possibilities were up in
the air, and everything was great for the Minnesota Vikings.
You got a big kickoff return by Percy Harvin which
helped this out. Farve winds up in this game, throwing
(22:57):
for two forty four yards and four touchdowns, and the
Vikings win this game thirty eight to twenty six in
a game that wasn't really that close. They you go
into the bye week at seven and one, and everything
looks awesome and you're thinking Super Bowl for the Minnesota Vikings,
just cruising on because they're putting up big point totals,
defense is playing well, even giving up the twenty six
(23:18):
against Green Bay. And you've already run four road games
in this process, right, You only lost the the one
game to Pittsburgh on the road, but otherwise you're cruising
along and just setting it up and knocking it down
and still learning those wide receivers in the process because
they were a bunch of young, kind of journeyman guys
(23:41):
as you talk about I mean Sydney, and he never
was the player he was after Bret Farvley, so he
had blipped on the radar, you know. He he had
a couple of years and then he went to Seattle
and the same thing with Percy Harvin, and Percy Harvi
never became the full weapon you expected him and Percy
have off field. In a prior episode of Special Teams
(24:04):
talking about the Gators and Percy Harvin and with the
Seattle Seahawks, he's a frequent contributor to Special teams, but
I talked about Percy Harvin on Special Teams more than
any other players so far. On him. Yeah, But I
mean it shows the impact that he had though, right
if you when we look at players over the last
(24:26):
ten to fifteen years in college and pro football, he's
a guy that stands out of if he had been
able to just stay right right and between some some
mental health concerns and his love of the weed that
he still talks about in his post career. I know
you like the way I say that I talk about
(24:47):
the weed like I'm eighty five years old, that you know.
I get on the internets and then I look up
the weed and that's what it tells me. Derailed, Yes,
and now I'm s a for it him like, harmon,
you want to look up the weed on the interwebs. Hey,
that's a dangerous search and could get you fired. Don't
do it at work, don't do it at home. And
(25:09):
that's one to know. I don't like tell me some
just trying to come to some kind of old man,
old man type voice where it's like, hey, let me
tell you about something, kids, let me tell you I
got I got almost five decades on this planet. Let
me But what's helping far of along at this At
(25:30):
this time, he didn't have the greatest wide receivers. But
when you can't stack and you can't sell out because
Adrian Peterson is going to kill you, that helps immensely.
Look far, it had pretty decent running games on and
off in Green Bay, but he never had a guy
like Adrian Peterson that teams had to is that what
we gotta we gotta sell out for one guy. We
(25:52):
either got to sell out to stop Adrian Peterson. We
gotta sell it to stop Red Farve. We can't stop
both of them, And with the way the offensive line
played and the way in Adrian Peterson ran the football,
you couldn't do it. And even though you don't have
great wide receivers, well, hey, Fars gonna find the right guy,
and he's gonna find the right guy in his progression,
and maybe Sidney Rice and maybe Vasanta Shanko, it could
(26:13):
be anybody else, but he's gonna fund it because you
can't just slant your coverage or try to sell out
like you normally do when a team is one dimensional.
Look Far's Packers teams. They won their fair share of games,
but you could still game plan for them, because in
the end, it was, well, we're gonna stop Red five.
If Dorsey Levins beats us, Dorsey Levins beats us, you
can't say that's well if we at Adrian, well we
(26:34):
can'didate in Peterson pet us. So it became really really
hard to defend. And there's no no surprise why the
Vikings were running through the NFL this way. Why are
you talking about the balance? Fo sixty seven rushing attempts
for the team over the course of the year. Peterson
at three four teen Chester Taylor very effective as the
number two options both as a runner and receiver. Sydney
(26:54):
Rice had eighty three receptions, nobody else with more than sixty,
and obviously in the red zone. Shanko was an absolute
monster for that year, finishing with eleven touchdowns. But trying
to pick your poison on it on a given day,
and even Adrian Peterson a decade later, still gets a
little bit of daylight can still break away. You know,
I missed Chester Taylor because I felt like he played
(27:16):
in the nineties seventies as well. They sounds he played
for the Colts in the seventies at Chester Taylor, he
was really good. I just remember when he was brought
in Chicago, he was going to be a short yardage
back and then couldn't run short yardage place. That makes
it tough, struggled miserably, makes it very difficult that multiple
years trying to bring in a guy to be the
short yardage man, and they just it's not about the Bears.
(27:41):
The second half of the season. I'll help you out,
but here. The second half of the season went very
well for the Minnesota Vikings. They did lose back to
back games late in December, but still finished off the
season with a big thrashing of the New York Giants.
They go onto the playoffs with a record of twelve
and four, and Brett Farve turns out having his best
year that he had had in quite a long time.
(28:04):
Thirty three touchdowns that year for the Vikings. That's the
most he had thrown since nineteen. Seven interceptions for Brett
folk about that number when usually he's at like thirty
seven interceptions. He did have a twenty ninety seven picks.
He had never thrown those few interceptions outside of his
(28:27):
first year in the league with Atlanta when he only
appeared in two games. Seven interceptions for this full year,
every other year the best he had ever done thirteen picks.
But this tells you this type of team he was on.
He didn't have to be the big gun slinger. He
was in a big, well balanced offense, and everything looked
great for them getting out of the regular season and
into the playoffs. Operational efficiency, perfect home record, eight No
(28:51):
the Bears get lost in in Week sixteen and overtime
defeat with thirty six thirty is your final. So you
got some fireworks down the stretch. Jake Cutler led well,
that's the thing about that game. That Week sixteen game
we talked. They lost two in a row, and that
second one was to the Bears and overtime. Uh far'v
(29:12):
actually forced overtime by throwing a touchdown pass on fourth
and goal with no time left to Sydney Rice. But
in overtime Adrian Peterson fumbles, Bears recover. Jake Cutler throws
a touchdown pass to a guy that I will always
have good things to say about. Hopefully he stays, you know,
as devon a Roma Show do, because I won a
fantasy league that year because he scored a couple of
(29:34):
big touchdowns late. He had like a good four games
for the Bears. He did at the end of that year,
and because of that loss, the New Orleans Saints jumped
into the lead for home field advantage. So while the
Vikings go into the playoffs, they go win as the
number two seed with a date in New Orleans, as
long as they won that first week. Den he was
(29:55):
He was great for a couple of guys. I mean
it four. I started him in my fantasy semifinals and
and he was great, and I was like, oh my god,
I love this guy. One of those guys that you watched,
and he had a decent role in Miami, came to Chicago,
had a bit of success, and then flamed out as
quickly as he arrived. So for the Vikings, it was
now the playoffs that had two games away from the
(30:16):
Super Bowl. Coming up. Next, we relive one of the
biggest games in NFL history. Jason Smith Mike Harmon, Special
Teams Podcast. We continue on reliving the two thousand nine
(30:44):
season for the Minnesota Vikings here on the Special Teams
Podcast Jason Smith, Mike Harmon, your genial hosts. You can
hear us Monday through Friday on Fox Sports Radio ten
pm to two am on the East Coast, seven to
eleven on the West Coast. And as we can tinue
want here, I'm thinking, Hey, as the playoffs are happening,
I could see the Jets and the Vikings and the
(31:06):
Super Bowl against each other. This is gonna be awesome.
The Jets and want a big playoff game in San Diego.
I was in attendance for that game. They're in the
a f C Championship game and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, Jets, Vikings,
it's coming. Jets, Vikings it's coming. You get your revenge
on Brett far from me. We lost the we lost
to the cults, and we lost the cults, lost the cults.
We lost the cults and and we lost the cults.
(31:30):
We lost. It was very difficult. It was it was
Peyton Manning, it was you know, you know, it was
you know what we're talking about the Vikings. This is
this is not not making about the Jets. This is
about the have your sad sag the Jets history episode.
What season can we look back at the Jets besides
Super What are you talking about? Here's a talk co tight,
(31:52):
Here's a crappy as season the Jets have had. We're
gonna relive all of them. We'll give you nine minutes
on your love Affair of Curtis Martin shaking his hand
and the Vikings first playoff game, after having a week
to sit back and kick back, they play the Dallas Cowboys,
and this was a high flying Cowboys offense led by
Tony Romo, and they came into Minnesota and had no chance.
(32:15):
The Vikings just blow the doors off the Cowboys thirty
four to three. Romo couldn't do anything. It was very
difficult to watch the Cowboys just lay a complete egg.
But this was more about the excellence of the Minnesota Vikings,
and they win a game we expected and they're in
the NFC Championship Game and not a lot of drama.
Now you look at what that Dallas team was, I mean,
(32:36):
they scored three hundred sixty one points on the years,
certainly no slouch. I mean, you've got other teams that
were rolling up some really ridiculous pinball numbers. But to
go in and get absolutely decimated. And we talked about
the front seven and how effective they were earlier. When
you look at Jared Allen leading the way, I mean,
there's just not a lot of a lot of room
(32:58):
for Tony Romo, and and it's game was never in doubt,
and this was not a nice walk in the park.
Everybody sits down and let's get ready for the next one.
And the next one was the NFC Championship Game at
the New Orleans Saints, a game where the Vikings were
thinking Super Bowl and a great future, and instead it
turned out to be the final playoff game of Brett
(33:18):
Farve's career, a game that in later years were turned
out to be the beginning of bounty gate. But first
the game in and of itself, before we get to
the long lasting ramifications of the NFC Championship game. This
was a classic back and forth battle, right the Vikings
would score, the Saints would score. It was far up
and down the field. It was Drew Brees up and
(33:39):
down the field. The Vikings should have won this game.
So many times they commit five turnovers in the game,
and it's amazing it actually went to overtime. Because you
commit five turnovers, you're on the road in the NFC
Championship game. You're not gonna win. But somehow five turnovers,
three fumbles, two interceptions, one big reception in a minute.
(34:01):
But that should be enough for that should be you
know what, we shot ourselves in the foot and still
they had a chance to go. There's no doubt in
my mind the Vikings were the better team. But you
go in and you make that many mistakes, you cut
those turnovers from five down to two. Let's say you
turn over a couple of times, you're winning this game
and the Vikings are in the Super Bowl. Well, it
(34:21):
goes back to the old predictor of success in the NFL.
I mean, it's obvious and common sense, but the math
bears it out. It's if you win the turnover battle.
I mean, that's that's it. Because you look at statistically,
thirty one first downs toft hundred, sixty five rushing yards
to sixty eight passing yards to a D seven. Just
(34:44):
go on down the line. I mean, it's just absolute
obliteration until you add the turnovers, half, the penalties, win,
time of possession, everything all the way through. But fumbles
Percy Harvin, UH and Bernard Burying help with what Farv
did individually, and down you go. You know, one of
the biggest turnovers in this game that's not talked about
(35:07):
because obviously the interception Uh late in the fourth quarter
is that right before the end of the first half.
Its fourteen fourteen and Reggie Bush back when he was boy,
Reggie Bush is gonna be a great player in the NFL.
He's gonna run for yards a year and catch fifteen
hundred yards and passes. He muffs the punt that the
Vikings recover on the ten yard line, but two plays later,
(35:28):
Farv and Peterson screw up the handoff and Scott Fagitta
recovers the fumble and the game goes into the halftime
tied when clearly this should have been a field goal
lead or a touchdown lead for the Minnesota Vikings. And
I know it's it's hard to say, well, you had
one turnover, they turned it back over, but this ball
is on the ten yard line, and you screw up
(35:49):
a handoff. Little exchanges, I mean, we see it so
often NFL where you've got a quarterback trying to look
off a wide receiver, you know, the little nod in
the wink, and they get the ball snapped because the
center thought he saw a movement of a hand or
whatever it is. And that's the one thing that you
want to watch coaches blow a gasket. I mean, that's
(36:11):
what you always want, the picture and picture of the
replay of the how the head coach or offensive coordinator
respond to a play like that. And we're talking a
title game. This isn't Week one, this isn't Week two.
We're talking big time football and winning time. In the
second half. You had the turnovers, you said by Bernard Berrying,
this turns into a game. With two forty two left,
(36:35):
the Vikings get the football and they drive to the
Saints thirty three yard line. Now this is in Ryan
Longwell's range for a field goal. Ryan long was a
really good field goal kicker. He has been. He's kicking
in yours by Packer now with the right. Yeah, I
gotta you want a great story, Ryan Longwell. You want
a great Ryan Longwell story. So when I was at
NFL Network, uh, we did a lot of stuff with
(36:56):
Steve Mariuchi and Ryan Longwell was in the forty Niners
camp as a rookie and he was great, and mary
Uchi was Maryuchi is the best. He tells stories that
are just so entertaining. And he's like, oh my god,
this guy's gonna be our kicker. We found him. He's
a rookie's great, and I forget who he said he
had on the team already and they went in for
the final cuts. He was like all right, you know,
talking to the GM and all right, and we're and
(37:18):
we're keeping long Well because he's great. They go, no, no, no,
we're paying our kicker the X amount of dollars. We're
not keeping it. We're not We're not gonna cut him.
And he was like wait, wait what. He was like, no,
We're we're paying our kicker already. So we had to
cut Ryan Longwell, who then went on to have a
huge career with the Green Bay Packers. And he would
say that was the first time I looked and I said, okay,
so money is a big deal. He was like, all right,
I get the money part. He thought talent one out.
(37:41):
No no, no, no, no, Well, I mean it's yeah,
And he's still on the hook for some part of it.
And you're talking about cap implications a whole other other
the ball game. So they're on the thirty three yard
line and they run two running plays and Adrian Peterson
and Chester Taylor get tackled for no game. Now think
for a second with the super Bowl on the line,
(38:03):
Chester Taylor is getting a carry. Okay, I get it.
But Chester Taylor is getting a carry with the super
Bowl on the line. Yeah. It's kind of funny because
as you were earlier in the possession, you had a
couple of runs from Adrian Peterson, but then you had
several pass plays before you got back to the Chester
Taylor and now he did run for fourteen yards to
(38:23):
play before he got stuffed first. But it's like, oh boy,
this is the Super bowls coming here. Man, this is
Super Bowl. So let's start criticizing Adrian Peterson for not
being able to suck it up. That's it hot take.
So they call a time out with nineteen seconds left,
and this is a very often overlooked development. Minnesota gets
flagged for having twelve men in the huddle. So now
(38:45):
they're penalized five yards. So now it's the thirty eight
yard line and it's third and fifteen. Now maybe you're
out of Ryan Longwell's range, and maybe you change things
up and say, well, now we've got to get some yards.
You know, we don't want to trot Ryan Longwell out
there for ds out. That's a long one. So they
(39:06):
decided to throw the football, a pass which will forever
live in Minnesota Vikings infamy. Brett Farve rolls out to
one side, tries to turn back against his body and
throw it all the way back across the side of
the field, which we've seen Brett Farve do hundreds of
times during his career. Throw it over the mountains. Sometimes
it results in a in a catch and oh my goodness,
(39:28):
look at the vision Brett Farve. As sometimes it results
in a bad play. It is picked off by Tracy
Porter and instead of a game winning field goal, attempt.
We wind up going to overtime and you get the
famous call by Vikings play by play man Paul Allen,
you could take a knee and try to kick a
fifty five yard field goal. He was hot on the air.
(39:50):
He's the play by play guy and he is so
pissed that Brett Farve does a typical Brett Farve play
and throws it back across his body, which is you
never turned back and throw across the middle to the
other side of the field, because that gives so many
players on the back side. They're already looking at the
football and they can get to it. And that's what happened.
Tracy Porter got to it, and now we wind up
(40:11):
going to overtime and Paul Allen is incense and Vikings
fans are going that's life with Brett Farve. Yet now
and now I get it. It was a great magic
carpet ride. But now we're getting the Brett Farve. You
got him on that play, which is what Packers fans
and the Jets for one year had for him. Since
this was Brett Farve, where you live with him. But boys,
(40:32):
sometimes you gotta die with those passes and they wind
up dying with that pass. Now you still had football
to play at the moment. But if you're a Vikings fan,
that was everything you'd ever seen, right, because you've been
to the Promised Land a few times and then the
door got slammed in your face. Right, No no entry here, right.
And the past Super Bowl appearances, past championship games, there's
been a lot of occasions for the opportunity, uh. And
(40:56):
sorry to our boss as this is UH, is that
you had a lot of opportunities to get your big
signature win and and etch name on the side of
the trophy, and and everybody gets a ticker tape raid instead.
It's all falling apart, and in that moment, like shades
of every bit of anguish for Vikings fans, for their lives.
(41:18):
The coin toss goes the way of the New Orleans
Saints in overtime, and this incredibly great game, dripping with drama,
ends pretty quick. The Saints go down the field without
too much difficulty, a big pass interference call against Ben
Lieber helping the Saints, and Garrett Hartley comes out kicks
(41:39):
the game winning field goal. The Saints win. They go
on to the Super Bowl and for the Vikings, it's
what just happened to us? What just happened? And the
Saints go on they beat the Indianapolis Colts to win
it all. Sean Payton Drew Brees finally get to the
top of the mountain, and the Vikings are left asking
what if? But this didn't and the drama for the
(42:03):
Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints. In the immediate
aftermath after the game was over, a couple of things happened.
The first thing was this game because of the way
it ended. Right, you get to overtime, the Saints get
the football, they drive down the field and kick a
field goal. The NFL changed its rules the following off
season about overtime. It allowed the team who got the
(42:26):
ball first and overtime if they kicked the field goal.
The opposing team then got a possession to try to
score as well. And this is morphed into the NFL
overtime rule that we have now. And make no mistake
about it, this change was made clearly because everybody felt
bad Brett Farve didn't get the football in overtime. How
unfair was it that a legend like Brett Farve didn't
(42:47):
get a chance to go down the field and win
a football game. We've seen so many overtime games decided
in playoffs, regular season, but it didn't matter because Brett Farve,
who was it in the NFL this time, didn't get
a chance to go down the field. The nflus, well,
we want to change the rule now. Crazy thing is
the Vikings voted against this rule change in the off season,
but still it passed. And now we have the overtime
(43:09):
rule we have because of this game, because of that development,
all about the Saints. All we do is change rules
because of the Saints time and time again. We have
the bounty gate that flows out of it, but we
have multiple rule changes now impacted by Sean Payton, his
position on the Competition Committee picking up for longtime Competition
(43:31):
Committee hero Jeff Fisher, our friend here in Los Angeles. Uh.
And it's just crazy that the backlash was so swift
and severe to that it's like you played over time.
It's like, sorry, Brett fav didn't get a chance to
have the ball. Defense didn't do their job period, give
up a long kickoff return to Pierre Thomas and what
(43:54):
twelve plays later, let's it get off the field too. Bad.
After this game, I remember thinking, going, boy, they just
beat the crap out of Farv in this game. The
Saints gave him hit, twisting his ankle, hitting him, hitting
him late. There was excessive roughness calls throughout the game,
and it was just boy or either this is their
game plan was to come and hit Bred Farve or
(44:14):
something else is going on. It was just a game, though. Boy.
Farv got hit and I still think he's feeling some
of those hits from this game. And then in two
thousand and twelve, this game took on a different light
when bounty Gate was put into the American consciousness when
a filmmaker shooting a documentary on Steve Gleason of the
New Orleans Saints took video of the meeting that Greg
(44:36):
Williams had with his defense the night before a playoff game,
and he talked about hitting guys, making them realized that
they were gonna get hit, gonna get hit hard. That
Kyle Williams, let's see what happens when you hit him
in the chin. And we find out about bounty gate,
and bounty Gate became the biggest story in the NFL.
Albeit now it's three years later and we find out
the Saints were paying out bonuses or bounties for injuring
(45:00):
opposing team players. It was an operation from two thousand
nine all the way to two thousand eleven. Greg Williams
got suspended, Sean Payton was suspended for the entire two
thousand and twelve season. But this was the game where
people look back and said, Okay, I get it. This
this is really the beginning of bounty gate. The way
they hit bred far, everything they did to him, this
started bounty gate. Go back and look Ray Edwards, Um,
(45:22):
you know for the vikings was having himself a game.
But well we go through and look at the quarterback
hits on the other side. They were innumerable. And yeah,
and then you watch some of the video highlights, like
you know, the play through the whistle, No, no no, no,
the reverberation of the whistle was really where we got
to for for Greg Williams and that defense. And you know,
(45:47):
the the idea of a defense is to punish opposed buddy.
And we've seen rule changes. Now if you breathe on
a quarterback after the balls out, it's different. Yeah, the
bounty scandal would never happened now. But but lea's a
look at all these penalties. Okay, we gotta stop like
the fact that five kept popping up like whack a mole. Yeah,
I mean that becomes a difficult proposition, right right if
(46:08):
he if he stays down, then maybe the officials are
looking at each other going all right, do we miss something?
What's going on? Not that you could have gone to
review booth at that point to say, hey, please take
a look at what's going on here, but you know,
you look at the way the game's officiated. Now, I mean,
he'd be in bubble wrap compared to the way they
have two hits. Somebody would get thrown out of the game,
(46:30):
and there would be all right, we can't do this anymore.
It's a new NFL look. But because of that game, really,
in retrospect, two big rule change, two things happen. Not
granted for the Saints, it was all the way through,
But that was the game people look back to and said, Okay,
that's the game I can really see starting because of
bred Farve. Now, normally at this time we do the
where are they now? The segment of the podcast. However,
(46:51):
I want to throw this head because I'm gonna tell
you something I don't think you've known about me in
the seven years nearly that we've been together. Okay, Yeah,
So the filmmaker who shot this video of bounty Gate
right that started bounty Gate whole thing with the vic
alright filmmaker was my roommate at ESPN for about two years,
(47:14):
Sean Pamphalon. He was doing the Steve Gleason documentary. He
got video of this and he said, listen, this is news.
I have to come out with it. Many people were
upset that that he decided to do this. The NFL
tried to buy this video and everything. And I'll never
forget this because when I found that it was Sean,
I go, oh my god, Oh my god, Shawn's got this.
And because Sean was a really fun dude, um big
(47:36):
Yankee fan, so he and I always would go at
it with the Yankees and the Mets. But this was
like his moment, and I go, what is he going
to do? What's he gonna do? He's got this video?
And so at this time, I'm an NFL network and
I'm hosting NFL Fantasy Live and I wind up seeing
that it's Shawnago. What's he gonna do? And I go,
(47:57):
I don't know what he's gonna do, but he's very unpredictable.
Sure and off. Right after this story gets out, the
NFL wants the video from him. He puts out this
long missive on his own personal website about football and
the NFL, and Goodell should meet with him before he
turns over the video, and I go, oh my god, Sean,
what are you doing? Dude? What are you doing? So
the day after it comes out that Sean is the
(48:18):
guy with the video, I go into my boss's NFL network.
Now that this story gets really really cool, I shouldn't
stay cool. It gets funny, and I I get a
sense of retribution, right, so retributions of strong word. Yeah,
well so so here. So here's what happens. So I
come in and they're trying to get in touch with Sean.
(48:40):
So I come in and I tell my managers, Hey,
you know this guy who has the video? I go,
I know him really well. I mean we were roommates
in ESPN for two years. I could get in touch
with him and see if you'll give the video up.
And my managers like, oh my god, yes, yeah yeah, yeah,
oh yeah, yeah yeah. Go talk to David Eaton, who
was an executive at NFL Network, and he was because
he was like the guy in charge of the news room,
(49:02):
and he was, you know, the guy you would talk to.
He was the one, you know, in charge of the
daily shows. So I walk up to him and this
is not the first time he didn't treat me the
best when I was when I was at n i
FOL Network. And we walk up and it's me and
my manager and him, and we walk up and my managers, Hey, uh,
Jason wanted to tell you something. I said, Hey, um,
so Sean Pamphalon who has this video? I know him
(49:24):
and I can and he interested me. He goes, we
were on it, we're on it. I said, yeah, no, no,
I get it. But I'm saying I know him and
I can get in contact. Was yeah, I know. We've
we've reached out. We were reached out, were we we
we got it. So I just said, okay, I said,
all right, that's fine, and I backed away. I saidt
you know what, you've blown me off right here twice
now and this happened. Okay, that's fine, that's fine, that's fine.
So there you go. Now you know a little bit
(49:45):
more about me. And I had a whole thing and
where are they now? All right, you know what, give
me your best one, give me your best one? Form right, well,
you know what. I don't have any further information, but
there was a great article about Chester Taylor watching the
(50:06):
World Series of Poker and uh deciding, hey, I could
do that. So by the late you know, two thousand sixteen,
two thousand seventeen, he was actually entering big time steaks pokers.
I decided I could learn how to do this. So
he was involved in that. I used to think I
could learn how to do that and be a professional
(50:27):
poker player. A couple of times I won when you know,
friends would have a night and I'm going, hey, I
could do this professionally. Yeah, I was good enough to
play in a in a home game that I did. Okay,
Phil loadhold, I mean I had to pull. He actually
is back with the Vikings and he was helping with
as an intern in the nun Wooten Scouting Fellowship program.
(50:53):
How about that? All like guys to come and give back. Hey,
you the former second round pick got himself and there
but are burying? Um? Is this development mentoring and management
for athletes and entertain it not bad. Eric Frampton, financial
consultant for Fidelity, how about that? And he walks around
and says, dude, you you have your representative, okay, teaching
(51:19):
people how I should come? What else am I gonna say?
Do you do you feel? Do you feel? You? Do
you feel? Come on? The boy spots has always been
the coolest thing. I mean we wait. I took my
kids to go see Aerosmith, and as soon as they
started doing that for sweet emotion, both my kids started
cheering wildly. Do you do you have insurance? Do you
(51:39):
have insurance? All right? I think that's a good place
to stop. So there it is our look back at
the crazy season that involved the two thousand nine Minnesota Vikings.
If you have any ideas you want to pitch us
some teams you think we should spotlight here on special teams,
hit us up on Twitter at how about a fresca
Mike Swollen doubt. We'll see what we can do. Have
(52:02):
a great week and we'll talk to you in a
few days. Before you go, rate and review the show.
Whether you're listening on I Heart Radio, I Heart Radio, apps, Apple,
whatever it is, give us a rate, tell us you
like it. We will love you forever and ever and
(52:24):
ever Special Teams is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
(52:46):
your favorite shows.
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