“I’m feeling pretty bad”.
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“We’ll see how it goes”, Carroll said.
Veteran CFL kicker Paul McCallum feels Blair Walsh’s pain.
“It’s a chip shot”, Vikings Coach Mike Zimmer said. Other Vikings were simply in a state of shock.
“It’s so quick that I don’t know what happened”, Walsh said, fighting through tears. “I think our chances are as good as anyone’s”. “That’s something that will haunt me throughout the offseason”. “It’s kind of hard to swallow and really hard to explain”. He wouldn’t let his holder or long snapper accept any part of the blame. “There’s a high percentage that they make them, but you’ve still got to do it”. Again, in four hours of football, at home, with a weather advantage the Vikings couldn’t muster up a single touchdown.
The temperature at kickoff at TFC Bank Stadium was -6 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of -25. The Seahawks won that game, 31-17, but the Panthers beat them this season, 27-23, on the road. Seattle’s game plan to not allow Peterson to defeat the Seahawks worked for the second time this season.
He dropped to a knee to pick it up 16 yards behind the line of scrimmage, sprinted right to avoid a sack with two Vikings in close pursuit, then found Tyler Lockett wide open around the 30. The Vikings managed only 58 yards rushing and became the seventh team in the past eight games Seattle has held under 100 yards rushing. Walsh needed to do little more than tap the ball through the uprights to send his team to the next round of the playoffs.
“We’re fortunate. Very fortunate to get that”, said Russell Wilson, who was 13 for 26 for 146 yards with a touchdown and an interception.
In 2014, the Seahawks played two road games featuring extreme weather conditions.
Naturally, it turns out Walsh is from the cursed lands of South Florida, where any professional athlete who touches a football is, for whatever reason, sentenced to a thousand years of ineptitude.
That said, it’s a tad easier to believe when your quarterback finished the season with the best passer rating in the NFL.
The Vikings a year ago picked 11th overall and took Michigan State cornerback Trae Waynes. His ability to get into the backfield in an instant freed up defensive end Cliff Avril, defensive tackle Ahtyba Rubin and linebackers Bobby Wagner and K.J. Wright to finish off running back Adrian Peterson or pressure quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. The second one was good for a first down, but Kam Chancellor pulled the ball out of Peterson’s hands to force a fumble that the Seahawks recovered. At the end of the NFC Wild Card playoff game between the Vikings and Seahawks, the Minnesota kicker made one of the most miserable, unenviable errors in professional sports.
The Vikings had taken over on that final possession with 1:42 remaining, starting on their own 39 before driving to Seattle’s 10.
All of which, of course, makes the inevitable Minnesota fan reaction videos to Walsh’s blunder all the more heartbreaking.
“This was really a survival game for both teams”, Carroll said.
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Carroll was elated after the miss, throwing his arms into the air.
