One play after the Saints’ first TD, Keenum’s backpedaling interception put the Saints in position to score again. Bank Stadium touched 118 decibels.īut in the second half, a team that has coolly brushed off the agony of its ancestors suddenly seemed destined to receive it as an heirloom. Three drives - all of them at least seven plays - helped the Vikings construct the lead, as noise levels at U.S. They forced Drew Brees into two first-half interceptions while limiting the former Super Bowl MVP to 117 yards on 8-of-18 passing. It strained credulity - the Vikings led 17-0 at halftime - to suggest this victory would be one they’d have to pull back from the brink. It’d be a shame to let something like that go to waste by us not showing up.” There’s a lot of guys in this locker room, including myself, this is our first playoff win. “We should celebrate this and enjoy this,” tight end Kyle Rudolph said. on Sunday, with the winner advancing to Super Bowl LII at U.S. It means the Vikings will play the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field at 5:40 p.m. ”ĭiggs’ catch was the first touchdown in NFL playoff history to win a game as time expired. I’ve tried to put these guys in all of these different situations throughout the course of the year and luckily it paid off. “We actually practice that one every week. “I said to one of the guys on the sideline, ‘We’ve been practicing all these situations through OTAs and training camp and even during the season,’ ” Zimmer said. Vikings receiver Stefon Diggs scored a 61-yard touchdown to win Sunday's game over New Orleans 29-24. Instead, as Williams dove at the air beneath him, Diggs stumbled forward, regained his balance and sprinted toward the end zone with the ball aloft in his right hand. Diggs snared the ball, expecting Saints safety Marcus Williams to hit him as he landed. In a desperate attempt to get into field-goal range with 10 seconds left, Keenum hit Diggs on a corner pattern - given the number 7 in the route tree developed by Don Coryell - at the Saints 34-yard line. I give it all to God, because things like this just don’t happen.” Things go, you walk home and worry about tomorrow. “It’s a storybook ending - and it never ends that way,” Diggs said. It secured the Vikings’ first trip to the NFC Championship Game in eight years, at the end of a fourth quarter that saw Minnesota and New Orleans combine for 29 points, and turned what might have been another heartbreak into what might have been the greatest moment in franchise history. And the fourth quarter of the Vikings’ divisional playoff game against the New Orleans Saints on Sunday threatened to burn a few more horrors - the deflected Ryan Quigley punt, the Drew Brees fourth-down conversion, the Wil Lutz field goal - into the state’s collective sports psyche.īut with 10 seconds left Sunday, needing at least a field goal with no timeouts left and the ball on their own 39-yard line, the Vikings called “Seven Heaven.” And they watched Stefon Diggs leap for a Case Keenum pass, turn the corner and march a fanbase right out of sporting hell.ĭiggs’ 61-yard touchdown catch, on the final play of the Vikings’ 29-24 victory over the Saints, delivered the kind of euphoric moment Minnesota fans are used to witnessing only as victims. The term “Hail Mary” was coined to mark a play that ended the season of perhaps the greatest team Bud Grant coached. The tormented history of the Vikings can be written through failure in moments like the ones Mike Zimmer drilled in the Mankato heat: Missed field goals. The play, “Seven Heaven,” was one the Vikings have practiced hundreds of times, in the tedium of summer workouts meant to ready this team for the instances that have left decades-long scars on its fanbase.
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