Vikings demolish Giants on Sunday night, clinch playoff berth

The Minnesota Vikings had a playoff berth dangling in front of them. The New York Giants were missing their best player and were 120 game minutes, give or take an overtime, from a much-needed offseason. One guess who won their matchup on Sunday night.

Look, there’s no way to paint this garbage gold: unless you’re a Vikings fan, this 49-17 Minnesota win was a stinking mess. Blame the Giants for that; the Vikings certainly held up their end of the deal. Teddy Bridgewater has validated every bit of faith in him, quietly leading this team to the postseason and, on this night, keeping the Vikings under control and moving, always moving downfield.

The Vikings’ ground game was so strong it’s tough to tell where Minnesota’s skill ended and New York’s incompetence began. Adrian Peterson rushed for 104 yards and a touchdown, and Jerrick McKinnon notched 89 yards and two touchdowns, with both players ripping off long, decisive runs.

Conventional wisdom has long held that no one player outside of the quarterback can reshape the fortunes of an entire NFL team, but conventional wisdom is so wrong in so many ways when it comes to Odell Beckham Jr. Beckham, given the week off after his jawing/taunting/targeting of Josh Norman and the Carolina Panthers last week, was the most valuable player in this game simply by demonstrating that the Giants are an ineffective, muddled mess without him in the lineup.

With nothing to fear from Beckham, the Vikings could smother the Giants receivers and contain their runners. The Vikings threw waves of pressure at Eli Manning, intercepting him three times and sacking him four. In the capper to a particularly ugly weekend for the Manning family, Eli was both ineffective and overwhelmed.

The Vikings now face the Green Bay Packers for supremacy in the NFC North. Winner gets a home game in the playoff. The Giants, meanwhile, wonder what could have been in the fragile, fractured NFC East, and head toward the offseason with nothing secure and everything in flux.

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