Most Pivotal Vikings Game of the Last Decade?

The most pivotal game was the Seattle playoff loss.

Zimmer was in his 2nd year and the team had rapidly progressed under him. A young talented D on the rise and a potential franchise qb in Teddy, the future looked promising.

They had gone on the road to Green Bay which was considered a better team and beaten them in the season finale to take the division. A gritty game that included a great fake punt call and conversion by Adam Theilan. This is the kind of critical game test that Zimmer has mostly failed since but early on he passed that one with flying colors.

Then he got Blair Walshed. And I think it made him play more conservative than he already was down the line. I think it instilled doubt in him that has lingered to this day. I also think playing outdoors in his first two years sat better with him than playing indoors.

And that was Teddy's last start in purple. The QB carousel that followed, the gradual revelation of Zimmer's various flaws, and the unwillingness of management to do roster turnover in an aggressive way -- hanging on to guys, overpaying them, favoring the coaches defensive pets, even refusing to kick Walsh long past the point when they should have, it all adds up to a team that is continually good but never great.

And to me that Seattle loss was the turning point early in in Zim's tenure. Since then it's just a sort of roller coaster--2016 collapse, 2017 Keenums horseshoe finally ran out of gas, 2018 the many flaws of Kirk and his 8-7-1 no playoffs vibe, and 2019 Zim/Kirk losing critical games at times that made for 10 wins instead of 12-13 and a more favorable playoff path.

Seattle game by far

The day Teddy got injured for most pivotal, I believe he could have won it all

I'm going to regret asking this, but in hindsight, which is worse: Walsh missing the kick or the team going on and only adding to the "What if?" surrounding Bridgewater? Knowing what was to follow, which is more painful at this point?

Walsh missing the kick. It isnt a pointless fantasy to think we would have won that game of he made that kick.

It is a pointless fantasy however, to think Bridgewater would have miraculously been equal to or better then all of the subsequent QBs that came after him, despite having never showed himself even remotely capable of that at any point in his career.

I was over the Walsh miss by the end of that night - an indication of how overcome with excitement I was at the direction of the team. I figured we would be in the playoffs a ton for years to come.

- We weren’t getting past Carolina that year anyway IMO
- We had a good HC & GM
- We had a young & developing roster
- And after so many QB failures we FINALLY had our guy with Teddy

Then one fateful practice, a soul-crushing injury occurred that took it all away from us and I still haven’t recovered from. For me this isn’t even close. At most I find the Walsh miss mildly annoying for costing Teddy a playoff win.

We'd have a SB by now if Teddy didn't injure his knee.