USA TODAY sports
The Bills attempted to play a Jedi mind trick on the Vikings regarding the identity of their starting quarterback on Sunday. The Vikings finally got the droid they were looking for.
After the crazy, insane, insane, insane showdown in Buffalo that resulted in a 33-30 win in overtime for Minnesota, I asked cornerback Patrick Peterson if the Vikings were expecting to see quarterback Josh Allen given the mystery that the Bills were trying to construct.
“We knew he was playing,” Peterson said. “We wanted to play it. We wanted to play this full-strength team because we’ve heard enough that we didn’t play good teams, we didn’t play good quarterbacks. Well we just made it today and we benefited from coming back you know so what are you going to say now?
There isn’t much more to say. The Vikings always find ways to win. They hadn’t beaten a great team on the road – in years.
They did it on Monday. It was perhaps their biggest regular-season win as a visiting team since 1998, when they beat the Packers on a Monday night at Lambeau Field, which was the national coming-out party for rookie Randy Moss.
For third-year wide opener Justin Jefferson, it was a day to make a torrent of clutch catches — and for quarterback Kirk Cousins to make clutch throw after clutch throw. And for someone else to step up if the team needs someone to step up.
There is still a long way to go this season. But the Vikings are changing perceptions and realities by doing what they haven’t done in a long time. They took the show to the streets and taped it to an elite team. And they wanted this elite team to be at their best.