NFL Minnesota

Minnesota is still looking for its first Super Bowl title, but this fall, they will get the NFL Films Super Bowl treatment. As part of the outstanding America's Game series, a pair of Vikings teams will be featured in Missing Rings. Just like with the Super Bowl winning teams, NFL Films will interview three or four players from the team, then tell the story of the season through NFL Films footage and broadcasts from the time.

If you haven't seen an America's Game on the NFL Network, each episode is just about best hour on football that you'll ever see.

NFL Films will feature the 1970 Vikings team that lost to the Chiefs in Super Bowl IV. That team is the one that started an impressive run of four Super Bowl appearances in seven seasons. But the other Vikings show may be even better--it will explain the story of the 1998 Vikings, a 15-1 team that has to rank among the best teams to not even make it to the Super Bowl, and one of the best offenses of all time. Both should be great stories, and are good ways to feature a pair of teams that were great, just not great enough.

The episodes will air in September and October.

In the middle of Peter King's informative look at what's going to happen with the Packers and Brett Favre, he dropped in this nugget which should frighten Packers fans and give Vikings fans plenty of reasons to hope for a Favre return.

Overwhelmingly the team that makes the most sense to sign Favre for a couple of years is Minnesota. The Vikings are training Tarvaris Jackson to be their quarterback of the future, but he's an unproven commodity with promise at best. Their offensive coordinator is Darrell Bevell, who was Favre's quarterback coach for three years, from 2003-05. They have a close relationship. Not Steve Mariucci-Favre close, but Favre has a lot of respect for him. Imagine Favre in purple. It's an absolutely vomitous scenario for the Packers, imagining Favre playing for their arch-rivals -- and imagining Favre charging out of the tunnel at Lambeau Field for the opening game of the 2008 season. Lambeau Field, Monday Night Football, the night Favre was supposed to have his number retired for the Packers.

Obviously, if the Packers decide to release Favre to get out from under his $12 million cap hit, the Vikings should be calling him immediately. Offensively, the only real questions with this team are whether Tarvaris Jackson is ready to lead them to the playoffs. Give Adrian Peterson, Chester Taylor and Bernard Berrian Brett Favre and watch the points pile up. Minnesota is a team that was on the cusp of the playoffs last year with horrendous quarterback play and a mediocre pass rush, adding Favre and Jared Allen would make the Vikes a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

Barack Obama made a campaign stop in Fargo on Thursday, and the focus of his speech was military veterans benefits. But on Sundays in the fall, Fargo becomes Minnesota Vikings country, so Obama also took a brief moment to talk a little smack to the many Vikings fans in attendance.

"You guys need to be re-educated," the Minneapolis Star Tribune quotes the Illinois senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee saying. "Go Bears!"

Obama did find one Chicago fan in the audience, an 11-year-old boy wearing a Bears hat. Obama asked him what he'll be doing this summer, and the boy said he'll play golf and football. Obama responded, "I wish I was doing that for the summer."

That's what Hillary Clinton wishes Obama was doing this summer, too.

Via Sports by Brooks.

If you go to eBay right now you can bid on an autographed rookie card of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. No surprise there.

But it is a little surprising that the seller, identified as cooley717523, is none other than Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley. Cooley explains on the Shutdown Corner blog that he has always loved football cards, and he and his wife are now becoming collectors and sellers:

At home with hundreds of cards, we decided that it would be fun to create our own account on eBay and sell them. We tried to take great pictures and then describe the cards. Christy wants to describe every card as beautiful. I don't know if that's a great way to describe a card, but it seems catchy enough.

We have our first cards listed for sale and three of them have bids already. I'm pretty sure we'll spend way more money buying cards than we'll ever make on them, but we've had a blast giving it a try.

Cooley has set the starting bid on the Peterson card at $150.

Less than a year ago, the Vikings got plenty of bad publicity when they announced that they were docking the pay of Troy Williamson when he failed to return promptly after attending his grandmother's funeral. Whether it's a case of learning from that experience or just being altruistic, the Vikings deserve a lot of credit for how they're treating Kenechi Udeze.

Udeze, the team's first-round pick in 2004, is battling leukemia. He hopes to be back on the field for the 2009 season, but at this point no one knows when or if he'll ever play football again. When the Vikings placed Udeze on the non-football injury list this week, they told him that they would pay his full $800,000 salary this year, even though they were under no obligation to pay it. By doing so, they've ensured that Udeze will be able to focus fully on his recovery this year, with no financial concerns.

The best trash talkers in sports, from Muhammad Ali to Joe Namath to the Fab Five to Deion Sanders, have always had two qualities:

1. They're funny.
2. They can back it up on the field.

By those two standards, it appears that Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson may be developing into a great trash talker.

This week he was asked to name the toughest defense he had faced, and he answered, the San Diego Chargers. And then he added, "That was a joke."

Peterson, of course, ran for an NFL record 296 yards against the Chargers last season, and he drew a laugh with that comment. Somehow I'm guessing players on the Chargers won't find it funny.

I haven't heard too many people picking the Minnesota Vikings as Super Bowl contenders, but Paul Zimmerman of Sports Illustrated sounds ready to get that bandwagon rolling:

Let's get down to basics. Run the ball. Stop the run. Best in the league at both last year. I can't help it -- I'm hooked on the fundamentals. Their middle triangle of tackles Kevin and Pat Williams, backed up by E.J. Henderson, is classic. ...

So far, so good. I agree with Dr. Z when he talks about how good the Vikings will be at running the ball and stopping the run. But then he goes into a long examination of quarterback Tarvaris Jackson, and he fails to persuade me that Jackson is ever going to be a good NFL quarterback. Zimmerman just thinks Jackson is somehow going to get more accurate, without really explaining why.

It sounds like a defense's nightmare. Put Chester Taylor and Adrian Peterson in the backfield together and watch defenses worry about both of them.

But Vikings coach Brad Childress doesn't plan on using Taylor and Peterson together too much. Much like he did last year, Peterson will get a majority of carries, and Taylor will get plenty of snaps as a replacement for Peterson. But they'll rarely get onto the field together.

"At times it will make sense," Childress said. "If we feel like it can create a personnel advantage. There's only one ball to carry. So I would assume that somebody would be a diversion, somebody would be either carrying it or we'd be throwing it. If it creates something that they do personnel-wise to adjust to it that we feel like we an ability to attack than you might see that. But we're not apt to just do that just to say that they're both in the backfield at the same time."

Childress has a good point. There just aren't a lot of ways that getting too tailbacks on the field gives a team advantages in the modern-day NFL. There was a time when nearly every team had a halfback and fullback who were both comfortable carrying the ball, but those days are long gone. And with neither Taylor or Peterson really comfortable in the role of the lead blocking back, there are only a couple of plays in the playbooks that would use them both to an advantage.

So we'll still see a lot of carries for both Peterson and Taylor, but we won't see them getting them at the same time.

I noted this morning that Charles Rogers' high school coach claimed that the Minnesota Vikings were interested in Rogers' services. And I expressed skepticism that the Vikings would actually want the former Lions draft bust.

Now Judd Zulgad of the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Rogers' high school coach was wrong: The Vikings have no intention of bringing in Rogers for a workout.

At this point, it would be a huge shock if Rogers ever set foot on an NFL field again. Although he's only 27 years old, he's had a two-year layoff, he was widely described as lazy and lacking motivation, and he was never any good in all the chances the Lions gave him. He had undeniable talent at Michigan State, but that was six years ago. Unless he wants to go to Canada, he's done as a professional football player.

I always think people overlook Charles Rogers when they list the all-time biggest busts in the history of the NFL draft. Sure, he always makes the list, but he's never at the top, and really, how was he any better than Tony Mandarich or Ryan Leaf? At least Mandarich and Leaf caught on with other teams after they washed out with the Packers and Chargers. Rogers didn't do that.

At least, he hasn't yet. But some people still think it's possible. He said this about his future:

''When I know, you guys will be the first to know,'' Rogers told The Saginaw News. ''That's all I'm saying right now.''

And his high school coach said this:

''He's had a couple workouts with some teams and has a workout with the Minnesota Vikings. He's getting caught up (with playing in the NFL again). I tell him to play where he can play and enjoy it. People get caught up on where the best spot for him is."

I suppose it's possible that the Vikings will really give Rogers a tryout, but color me skeptical that he'll actually be invited to training camp, and extremely skeptical that he'll ever play another regular-season down in the NFL. Rogers wasn't good enough to help the Lions win when they cut him in 2006. What makes anyone think he's good enough to help a team win after a two-year layoff?

Via PFT.