Somehow, Vikings Are Still Kicking

Randall Cunningham dropped to his knees. Cris Carter closed his eyes. Others grabbed hands and bowed heads.

The Minnesota Vikings couldn’t bear to look at the ending of their wild-card playoff game with the New York Giants on Saturday, and who could blame them?

They had stumbled around Giants Stadium for most of three hours, only to have their fall suddenly broken by the collapsing Giants, as if awkwardness were contagious. And now, with 10 seconds left, the Vikings amazingly were on the verge of winning.

They needed only a 24-yard field goal. On a slick surface. In a light snow. With a kicker who already had missed once.

“Did we think it was a sure thing?” defensive lineman Jerry Ball asked. “Are you kidding me?”

Eddie Murray chipped a knuckleball through the uprights, opening his teammates’ eyes to a 23-22 comeback victory, sending two teams into a frenzy.

Dancing first were the Vikings, who had erased a nine-point deficit in the final two minutes after appearing as if they could not score nine points all afternoon.

They ran around the middle of the suddenly silent stadium, dodging fallen Giants, crowing their way to the warmer second round.

“This is about as good as it gets,” said Chris Walsh, the Viking receiver who recovered an on-side kick that led to the winning score.

Across the country, also surely dancing were the San Francisco 49ers.

Until those final 10 seconds, they were set to host a second-round playoff game next weekend against the winner of today’s game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Detroit Lions. Two dangerous teams on distinct missions.

But now, the 49ers get the Vikings, a team that, until the final minutes Saturday, played exactly like one that had lost five of its last six games.

A team that trailed, 16-0 and 19-3.

A team whose offense could not advance the ball past the 50-yard line until midway through the third quarter.

A team that lost fumbles on two of its first three possessions.

A team whose quarterback, Cunningham, completed only 15 of 36 passes.

“All week, everybody was talking about the Giants, nobody thought we would win this game,” said Carter, sighing. “Then we came out and did the opposite of what we wanted to do.”

Typical of this game was the very first play, when Viking Mitch Berger slipped as he was connecting on the opening kickoff. His rear hit the ground before the ball did.

The Giants laughed until their kicker, Brad Daluiso, took the same fall later.

Viking Coach Dennis Green used those incidents as a metaphor for the afternoon, and properly so.

“The glass-half-empty people, they were saying, ‘Oh, no, our guy slipped,’ ” Green said. “But I’m like, ‘Just wait, their guy will slip too.’ ”

And how.

The Giants had displayed an essentially incompetent offense against one of the league’s worst defenses but had survived on Viking mistakes until late in the third quarter.

Leading, 19-10, their game plan came apart when their inexperienced defensive backfield came apart. All Cunningham had to do was watch.

With 3:45 remaining in the quarter, the Giants were forced to call timeout when teammates Phillippi Sparks and Conrad Hamilton began shoving each other on the field after an argument about coverage.

“We lost our composure at that time and we can’t do that,” Giant Coach Jim Fassel said.

The Vikings noticed.

“Teams like Green Bay and San Francisco challenge each other, but they would never do something like that on the field,” Carter said. “Maybe it was inexperience, I don’t know.”

Whatever it was, Viking receivers suddenly were getting open, Cunningham suddenly was not afraid to scramble. The game suddenly seemed in doubt.

Cunningham ran and passed and even fumbled them to a field goal on that drive, closing the gap to six after Leroy Hoard had turned his drop into a 21-yard gain.

The Giants immediately drove the other way, but the Vikings stopped them at their seven-yard line, resulting in Daluiso’s fifth field goal.

The score was 22-13 with seven minutes remaining, but something had changed.

“I can’t explain it, I really can’t,” Green said.

After another change of possessions, Cunningham hit Carter for 19 yards, then found Jake Reed in the back of the end zone for a 30-yard touchdown with 1:30 remaining.

The Vikings still trailed by two, so they would need to recover an on-side kick, and then execute another drive.

“We had to do everything perfectly,” Green said.

This imperfect team did.

The on-side kick skidded off the hands and chest of receiver Chris Calloway, bounced off the hands of a couple of other Giants and was grabbed by Walsh.

“We do it twice a week, and even more so in training camp, so it’s something we practice a ton of,” Walsh said.

They certainly couldn’t practice what happened next, a drive that featured Cunningham’s third-down pass to Carter for 21 yards against Hamilton, guarding him for the first time all day after Jason Sehorn had basically shut him down.

Then Cunningham lofted a ball down the sideline for Reed, who couldn’t get it because he had been bumped by Sparks. The pass-interference call gave the Vikings the ball on the 21-yard line, then Robert Smith’s run up the middle moved it to the five, setting up Murray.

And crushing the Giants. Their 25 players appearing in their first postseason game will have much to remember. So will Fassel, also in his first postseason game as a head coach.

On the other side, it was redemption for two men.

Cunningham was playing in only his fifth game this season after sitting out all of last season while working as a marble cutter.

Green was winning his first playoff game in five tries and setting himself up as a conquering hero before his likely off-season trip to become head coach of the Oakland Raiders.

“People are going to be talking about this game for a long time,” Green said.

It is uncertain what they will be saying, but here’s guessing that the Vikings won’t be listening.