Shoot, Yes, Carter Has Right Play : Pro football: Viking pesters coaches, then turns a short pass into a long score to beat the Bears, 33-27, in overtime.

For most of the fourth quarter and overtime Thursday, Cris Carter desperately paced the Minnesota Viking sideline. He screamed, he gestured, he pleaded.

In this marathon brawl against the Chicago Bears, the veteran wide receiver knew a play that would send them through the ropes. He just knew it.

He would fake a short route, the sort of play the Vikings had been running all evening, and then head downfield. The Bears would be fooled. He would catch a pass and run forever. He just knew it.

Carter jumped in the faces of his coaches and screamed some more.

“Run the shoot , run the shoot ,” he yelled.

Tired of listening, six minutes into overtime they finally ran the shoot .

Fifteen seconds later, Viking fans everywhere were screaming.

Placing a series of exclamation points on a game that left both teams in awe, Warren Moon lofted a 15-yard pass that Carter caught at midfield and carried 50 more yards for a 65-yard touchdown to give the Vikings a 33-27 overtime victory in the Metrodome.

While Carter celebrating the score by kneeling under the goal posts and lifting his hands to the sky, many other players from both sides collapsed on the turf, some in sorrow, others in plain shock.

Not only did the victory pull the Vikings and Bears even atop the NFC Central with three weeks to play--the Vikings have the edge in the tiebreaker with two victories over the Bears--it made certain that for the rest of the season, neither team will be the same.

The Vikings will never again believe they are beaten.

The Bears will never again be convinced that they have won.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Viking guard Bernard Dafney. “I saw Cris catch the ball, I saw him running . . . and I fell on my knees. And I stayed there for a while. I was in shock.”

Chris Zorich, defensive tackle for the Bears, was in a different sort of frozen state.

“I saw him get the ball, so I turned and ran, and ran, and hoped that maybe he would fumble it,” Zorich said. “But . . . he didn’t. This was so hard.”

Less than a minute earlier, the Bears had come within inches of a victory. But Kevin Butler’s 40-yard field-goal attempt at the end of the first overtime drive was wide left.

“You’ve got to make those,” said Butler, who missed for only the sixth time in 19 game-on-the-line situations.

He certainly didn’t miss because the Vikings were jinxing him.

“At that point, I was too tired to even cross my fingers,” Viking safety Vencie Glenn said.

Moon was so tired and battered, he never even left the bench during the kick. Instead, he watched it on a television.

“It was very nerve-racking,” Moon said. “But games like these are the reason you want to play quarterback.”

It was this sort of game:

--The lead changed hands six times.

--The Vikings believed they had won on a leaping touchdown catch by Carter of a one-yard pass from Moon with 4:12 to play. But the Bears tied it on Butler’s 33-yard field goal with 1:55 left.

--The Bears believed they had it won after taking a 24-16 lead in the third period. That was when Steve Walsh threw his second touchdown pass, this one a perfect 15-yard lob to Greg McMurtry.

But while trying to protect a three-point lead with 6:18 remaining in regulation, the ball was slapped from the hands of Bear running back Lewis Tillman by Jack Del Rio, who recovered the fumble to set up the first Moon-to-Carter scoring connection.

“This was one of them dog fights where you fight, you fight, you fight . . . and even though we won, you go home and say, ‘I don’t want to fight them no more,’ ” Glenn said.

The ending was as simple as it was spectacular.

On the Vikings’ second play after Butler’s miss, Carter went in motion from left to right at the Minnesota 35, then dashed 15 yards downfield along the right sideline.

He gave linebacker Joe Cain a head fake toward the inside. Cain, playing because safety Mark Carrier had left the game because of a hand injury, bought it.

Carter kept running, then turned for the ball, and there it was, soaring from Moon’s sore right hand. Carter raced untouched until the 10-yard line, where he avoiding diving safety Shaun Gayle and trotted across the goal line.

“I wanted it, I really did,” said Carter, smiling. “And when I got it, I knew it was over.”