Case Keenum and the cosmic forces of Vikings-Bills
EAGAN — If you don’t believe in ghosts, aliens, Bigfoot or any other type of poltergeist, you’re going to have a really tough time explaining the 2022 Minnesota Vikings season.
The Vikings’ next opponent — like most of their opponents this year — is working through the possibility of their starting quarterback not playing. If Buffalo’s superstar Josh Allen sits with an elbow injury suffered against the New York Jets, it will mark the fourth game in which a backup has started versus the Vikings in nine games and the fifth overall No. 2 or 3 that they have faced.
That’s weird enough. But Buffalo’s backup is Case Freaking Keenum, so he would be the third ex-Viking QB to match up against the Team of Destiny this year. If the Giants sign Sam Bradford or Spergon Wynn, it’s going to be really spooky. Heck, the way things are going in Indy, the Colts may end up with Kelly Holcomb by the time they come to Minnesota.
Think about how absurd it is for the Vikings to have a Kirk Cousins revenge game in Washington followed by Keenum and Stefon Diggs playing against their former team — the team that let them both go unceremoniously despite being the Minneapolis Miracle tandem. Hulu and Netflix would have turned this thing down due to being too unrealistic. Josh Allen hasn’t missed a game since 2018 and somehow it came against this team. Like Joe Buck said: Unbelievable.
If there’s a sideline pass between those two that goes for a touchdown, I’m getting up and walking out of the Highmark Stadium — which is basically a haunted house, by the way.
If the Vikings were 4-3 and the Bills were a Super Bowl contender, this game would still have juice. But the Vikings fly into the Rust Belt at 7-1 with lots of buzz. Suddenly the power rankers have gotten wind of their success. Kirko Chainz or whatever is making TMZ and Kirk Cousins is appearing on the ManningCast. Talk about irony — these are two franchises who have always melted right about at the moment the world starts to go, “How ‘bout them Vikings/Bills?”
Whichever team loses this one is going to feel like they’ve taken the all-time lead for most cursed team. Right now it’s neck and neck. Minnesota has wide left, Buffalo has wide right. They both have four Super Bowl losses. Buffalo went 17 years without making the playoffs while the Vikings have reached the NFC title game five times since the 80s and never gotten to The Big Game.
Buffalo is playing in the NFL’s toughest division, so if they come apart with Keenum at the helm, the table-crashing diehards of Buffalo are going to feel like Allen’s UCL was the big bang of their Super Bowl season. If the Vikings lose, it’ll be a classic hype-got-to-them disappointment, like the one they suffered in Kansas City in 2019 when Patrick Mahomes sat and Matt Moore delivered a bucket of ice water to their hot streak.
The thing about these teams is that without Allen, Buffalo looks a lot like Minnesota. They have one dominant receiver and questions elsewhere. They have an offensive line that seems vulnerable. They have a good defensive line and spotty secondary. They have a new play caller who hasn’t quite gotten it all together yet. And they have a quarterback who is prone to hot and cold stretches. Remember, this is the same Keenum who posted a 107.2 QB rating over the final eight games of the 2017 season. Likewise, Cousins went 8-2 with a 118.1 rating in the middle of the 2019 season.
Oh, what does it all mean?
In the moment it feels like you couldn’t have drawn up a better same-old-Vikings test. If things are really different, you win this one, right? If you’re not a product of one-score luck and other teams stepping on their own feet, you show it in this game, right? If you can walk into the cold, windy dungeon and slay a dragon of fate with the whole world watching, you’re the real deal, yeah?
Not really but all of that sounded good.
The situation is much more dire for the Bills because of the state of the AFC. Their 6-2 record is just a shout away from New England and Cincinnati’s 5-4 and the Dolphins and Jets are getting stronger as they go (and both beat Buffalo already).
If Keenum plays, they need him to be 2017 Keenum. They also aren’t a team riding the wave. They are a team that was steamrolling opponents and all the statistical markers of a club that reaches the Super Bowl.
The Vikings are so far up in the NFC North that a back-to-earth loss would be like their boat getting hit with a chicken wing. It doesn’t even have to knock them off course, much less sink them.
The stakes exist in the next four games for the Vikings as a whole. They go up against teams with winning records, elite defenses and (generally) good coaching. Come out of that run 2-2, 3-1 or better and the train stays on the track. A losing streak could take a bite out of the momentum and confidence they have built up over the first half of the season.
So from the perspective of irony and general madness, the Vikings’ matchup in Buffalo is compelling. The only thing that would have made it more dramatic is if the game had been at night time. You wanna talk about creepy, that’s Orchard Park at night. But otherwise the Vikings are now looking at a game that’s similar to their other matchups this year. Miami, New Orleans and Washington put a lot of talent around their backup QBs and the Vikings came out on top. Without Josh Allen, the chances of going 8-1 greatly increase and nobody will ever go back in January and complain that you did it against the wrong types of opponents.
If Allen miraculously does play, Buffalo’s odds at showing which team is the real Super Bowl contender go up significantly. Or a Vikings win would send a signal that they need to be taken very seriously as Super Bowl favorites themselves. And it would open the door to it being dubbed the Medical Miracle game. Am I right?
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