Monday Night Football brings to you a clash of the final NFC Central contenders, the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings. With every other team in the division losing this week, first place is ripe for the taking. It's all about who wants it more, Neal Anderson and the Bears or Herschel Walker and his millions of wasted dollars. Both teams appear, on paper, to be playoff caliber teams--but that may mostly be due to the fact they play in the same division as Tampa Bay. Chicago is a few pieces stronger, and a win tonight would almost get the t-shirt presses going somewhere in Zanzibar.
Quarter One
Chicago wins the toss, and if the other two previously featured games have taught us anything, it's that this game is pretty much over with already. After Johnny Bailey takes a short kickoff to the Minnesota 48, Neal Anderson wastes no time in making me look like a seasoned soothsayer when he takes the first play over the top of the defense for a 34 yard gain. One play later, and Brad Muster is pulling in a 14 yard pass for the first Chicago touchdown of the game.
Chicago leads 7-0
 |
| X marks the horribly placed third-down pass |
Minnesota readies itself to get back in the game after a Herschel Walker return to their own 35 yard line. Coach Jerry Burns tells Walker to hit the showers, kid, your work is done, but Walker is talked into staying by the more level-headed running backs coach. Wade Wilson comes out guns blazing, but is sacked by Mike Singletary for an 8 yard loss. After Walker gains the 8 back, Wilson pulls out the flea-flicker on 3rd and 10, after only two minutes having passed in the game. The play that Wilson has stated "never fails" soars over the head of Anthony Carter, bouncing away in quiet failure out of bounds.
Bailey returns the punt to the Bears 21 yard line. Alternating plays by Anderson and Muster get the Bears 21 yards, followed by a Jim Harbaugh scamper for another 14. The Vikings' defensive coordinator finally realizes the Bears offense is actually running plays and sends the team out there to stop them. The plan appears to work at first, until Anderson leaps over somewhere between 2 and 11 defenders for a 30 yard gain. Three plays later, the Anderson pitch that Harbaugh has stated "never fails" gets the Bears another 6 points.
Chicago leads 14-0
Quarter Two
On the first play from scrimmage, Wilson is intercepted to the surprise of nobody.
The Bears use their new opportunity to clog their dirty Chicago cleats into the Vikings throats by surprisingly deciding to keep Anderson on the sideline. The plan doesn't appear to pay off, after a 6 yard Muster loss is followed by an incomplete pass and a Chris Doleman sack. The Vikings get the ball back after a short delay of about a minute and some change.
 |
The real injustice is that the most exciting of plays
is only worth 2 points |
Starting back at their own 19, Coach Burns tells his team there'll be no more fancy-boy showboating and it's time to get some hands dirtied. This is showcased by his decision to run the Hassan Jones reverse play for a loss of 10 yards. In an act that the phrase "icing on the cake" was invented for, Dan Hampton proceeds to sack Wilson in the end zone for a safety.
Chicago leads 16-0
Bailey takes another awful kickoff and jogs all the way to the Vikings 41 yard line. Anderson takes three straight runs for a total of 23 yards, but after a no-gain stop and a Harbaugh sack, it's 3rd and 16. Unfortunately, for the remaining three hundred Vikings fans in attendance, the 17 yard snag by Anderson is all the motivation they need to drop their braided helmets and leave. Sadly enough for them, they weren't there to see Anderson take another 7 yard pass to the end zone for his second score of the game.
Chicago leads 23-0
 |
The transparent Metrodome roof didn't prove to be very popular,
especially when to amateur aviators mooned the crowd |
With 31 seconds left in the half, the Vikings start with just okay field position at their own 42. A shocking completion by Jones for 25 yards gets Minnesota into Fuad Reveiz range to salvage some pointage and get the Vikings into the locker room with some momentum. When his kick sails wide left, the Metrodome deflates for the first time in its short history. Luckily the loud groans from the remaining fans inflates it in time for the half.
Halftime - Bears 23, Vikings 0
Quarter Three
The Vikings start with the ball on their own 47, and Wilson comes out with fleas flickering. He lobs another one up to Carter, but once again it's incomplete as the pass is broken up. Carter returns to the huddle and tells Wilson to just throw it next time, as it becomes too hard to shed the 8 defenders that show up by the time the ball arrives. Wilson tells Carter to stick it, and to "learn a thing or two from this next play". Although Jones loses 6 yards on the reverse, Wilson acts like he meant to do that as a lesson. His sudden selfish righteousness that he'd come to be infamously known for leads to a sack on the next play, and Harry Newsome is on to punt the ball into a stack of half-eaten Dome Dogs.
 |
| The purple you see may actually be from the choking |
There is exactly one inconsequential play between the punt and a Neal Anderson 53-yard touchdown run. You know your defense is reeking when that meaningless play is actually a 27-yard completion, something Minnesota's offense has only read about in heroically epic tales.
Chicago leads 30-0
And on the Vikings next drive, Anthony Carter defies all expectations when he jumps and snags a 38 yard reception from Wilson. From there, Carter makes his way to the showers, declaring his job "well done". Unfortunately for the remaining players, a 9 yard sack, pass block and meaningless run means that Reveiz is on to miss another boot from 39 yards out.
With time running down in the third quarter, Chicago pulls out its "Fuck Minnesota" playbook and gets Anderson to follow up a 22 yard strike with a 40 yard bootleg run into the end zone.
Chicago leads 37-0
 |
Not using Fenney until the 4th quarter pretty much
sums up the score of this game |
Quarter Four
Starting at their own 24, Coach Burns tells the team "maybe we should use that Fenney guy". Accordingly, two straight runs by Rick Fenney nets the Vikings a rare first down. The next play is a flea flicker fan's worst nightmare--the blitz-sack, causing a fumble by Jones when he tosses it back to his quarterback, who's gone missing beneath a half-dozen Bears uniforms. The fourth quarter heroics of Rick Fenney continue, however, when he somehow is in the area to scoop up the fumble and keep it in Minnesota's hands. Jones is rewarded on the next play for his wise decision-making with a reverse that is blitzed for another 5-yard loss, but on 3rd and 10 there's another Fenney sighting, and the Vikings somehow have their second consecutive third-down conversion. Four plays later, however, and the team in purple has to make the depressingly desperate choice to go for it on 4th and 10. When the closest person to Wade Wilson's pass is an empty treadmill on the sidelines, the Bears get the ball back.
The Bears run down the clock with some Muster runs mixed in with a few Anderson sprints. With one minute to go, Anderson breaks it open again and is waltzing towards the end zone for his potential fourth touchdown. And somehow, some divine goddesses of mercy shine down on the Minnesota Vikings when Joey Browner is allowed to strip the ball at the Minnesota 21-yard line.
Moral victory well in hand, Wilson simply hands the ball off to Herschel Walker with one second to go, mainly so that he can earn his $75 million per game salary for showing up.
Final: Bears 37, Vikings 0
I was expecting a Bears victory, but the blowout of this proportion, mixed with a Vikings shutout, simply confounds me.
Tecmo can be a cruel bitch sometimes, and that's why we all love her. However, the utter contempt she showed for Minnesota in this game kind of makes one raise their eyebrows at what kind of awful, audacious act the Vikings representative in Japan must have pulled to earn this sort of treatment. A tip of the hat very deservedly goes to Neal Anderson, who used the AstroTurf of the Metrodome to propel himself into a very Tecmo-ish 243 rushing yards. Chicago stands alone in first place atop the NFC Central, which is akin to saying that I stand atop my friends in blogging about Tecmo in that their wives can still bring them up in conversations with their families and not break down crying tears of shame.
**************************************************************************************
Due to the NFL's mouth-watering obsession with having two Monday Night Football games in Week One, I present to you an encore presentation featuring the Phoenix Cardinals and L.A. Rams in the West coast game. However, I will not go into length about the details of the game due to an anonymous check I received to keep from disclosing that Johnny Johnson was a member of the 1991 Phoenix Cardinals. I sent the check back, of course, but will still only present this short blurb due to my utter lack of caring for the outcome of this game.
Phoenix (0-0) * L.A. Rams (0-0)
The man himself, Johnny Johnson, ran wild for 124 yards and two scores. The offensive statistics themselves are actually very eerily similar, but the 9 point difference appears to be in Timm Rosenbach's desire to feed footballs to the opposition. Jim Everett is nearly flawless with a 71% completion rate and 2 passing touchdowns, however even if there was an All-Star game after one contest, he'd still be leaps and bounds behind his division mate Joe Montana's Week One performance.
Tomorrow: Look for our 'Looking Ahead' feature, which will showcase the upcoming matchups and next week's featured games! (Grogan mention inevitable)
