It Certainly Was a Weak End for the Vikings

This was going to be the weekend of all weekends in Minnesota. You betcha.

The party started Saturday night with Gov. Jesse (the Body) Ventura’s inaugural bash, officially titled The People’s Celebration, which was attended by 14,000 well-wishers and curiosity seekers at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis.

The new governor wore a tan buckskin suit with a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, bandanna and a loop in his right ear lobe, sang along with Warren Zevon on “Werewolves of London,” and roamed among a crowd in which bikers danced next to soccer moms.

Ventura delivered one 12-word speech, closing with his first decree: “Let’s party, Minnesota.”

Party, the Minnesotans did. They were still rocking Sunday at 11:35 a.m., when the Minnesota Vikings kicked off against the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC championship game.

After hearing complaints from the last two visiting teams to lose here, NFL officials tried to minimize the noise inside the Metrodome, known here for obvious reasons as the Thunderdome.

They moved the speakers at field level as far from the Falcon bench as possible, but there was nothing they could do to quiet the Viking playoff-record crowd of 64,060 that roared as long and as loud as it could in an effort to disrupt the Atlanta offense.

Then, suddenly, after almost five quarters of head-knocking football and head-splitting noise, came the most deafening sound of all. Silence. The People’s Celebration was over.

So was the Vikings’ season, brought to a premature end by as unlikely a bunch of party crashers as the NFL has ever seen. You can talk all you want about how the Falcons had won 15 of 17 games before Sunday, including two against the San Francisco 49ers, and were NFC West champions.

But they are still the Falcons, an undeniable pedigree that even their coach, Dan Reeves, alluded to after the game, when he said, “When a team like the Atlanta Falcons can reach the Super Bowl, it gives everybody in the NFL hope.”

How did this happen, this 30-27 overtime victory that sends the Falcons to Miami for Super Bowl XXXIII instead of the team for the ages Vikings?

That was the question Minnesota fans were asking as they filed out of the Metrodome, at least as stunned as they were when Dallas Cowboy quarterback Roger Staubach’s “Hail Mary” pass to Drew Pearson knocked the Vikings out of the playoffs three days after Christmas in 1975.

The one link to that game on the field Sunday was Reeves, who was the Cowboy offensive backfield coach then. Maybe it was his presence on the opposing sideline that again doomed the Vikings, although, drained of energy and emotion less than five weeks since undergoing quadruple-bypass surgery, he had no more reasonable explanations for this victory than he did that one.

He and his assistants will break down the films today and comment on the Falcons’ soft zone defense, their double-teaming against Randy Moss and their reading of blitzes that gave Chris Chandler time to pass even after it was established that the running game had deserted them.

But Reeves’ best analysis immediately after the game was that the Falcons won because they refused to lose. His counterpart, Minnesota Coach Dennis Green, would have been no less astute if he had said that the Vikings lost because they refused to win.

The Vikings had their best chance with still more than a minute remaining in the first half. Trailing, 20-7, having failed to generate any offense since their opening drive and frustrated by the crowd, the visitors were demoralized. All the Vikings had to do was kill the clock and run to the dressing room without pulling any hamstrings.

Instead, they got greedy. Only in hindsight could one argue with their strategy. For the Vikings, the highest scoring offense in NFL history, greed has been good.

“We were trying to put them away,” Green said, emphasizing that the Vikings have the league’s best two-minute offense. “That’s been our style all year.”

He realized a turnover was possible, but it wasn’t likely. The Viking quarterback, Randall Cunningham, had thrown only 11 interceptions in 17 games and had lost only one fumble.

This time, he was hit from behind and fumbled. The Falcons scored three seconds later from the Minnesota 14 to trail at halftime by only six, 20-14.

The People’s Celebration was not interrupted, and even though the anticipated blowout didn’t occur in the second half against the persistent Falcons, the Vikings still seemed in control.

The game was all but over--again--with 2:07 remaining, when the Vikings’ perfect kicker, Gary Anderson, trotted onto the field with a 27-20 lead for a 38-yard field goal.

Considering Anderson’s record of 122 consecutive successes on extra points and field goals dating to last season, Reeves said he already was plotting how the Falcons could score twice within the last two minutes.

Anderson missed, wide left.

“It just goes to show that no one’s perfect,” Cunningham said. “Everybody just patted him on the back and said we’ll give him another chance.”

They never did. After the Falcons tied the game with 49 seconds remaining on a John Elway-like 71-yard drive by a decidedly non-John Elway-like quarterback, Chris Chandler, Green finally acknowledged that the Vikings couldn’t move the ball at will. Two plays and seven yards into the drive, he instructed Cunningham to let the clock run out.

Long after the Falcons won in overtime on a field goal by Morten Andersen from, ironically, 38 yards, Cunningham ran into Reeves in the tunnel beneath the stadium. They embraced.

“I’m sorry about the way it ended for you,” Reeves said.

“That’s OK,” Cunningham said. “The Lord took care of you today.”

“I don’t understand it,” Reeves said, “but I’ll take it.”

*

Randy Harvey can be reached at randy.harvey@latimes.com