Win and Pray: The Twins and the Metrodome Make One Last Stand

In April 1982, the Minnesota Twins took the field at the Hubert H. Metrodome for the first time.

Their odds of a pennant were slim: The team had finished in last place in 1981, and was destined for a repeat performance.

This weekend, the Twins take the field at the Metrodome for the last time.

Their odds of a pennant are slim: They’re stuck two games back with three to play. They They need a sweep and a few big favors.

The Twins can do two things right now: Win and pray.

But in its final days as a baseball stadium, the Metrodome can do a little bit more:

It can send off the home team in raucous fashion, and give the visitors a miserable three days in the process.

The Dome has never been a friendly venue for visitors. The turf is quirky. The roof is the same color as the ball. The ball doesn’t carry, and the wall is more of a tarp.

Oh, and it's really, really loud.

It's loud enough that players can't hear one another on the field. It's loud enough that Kirby Puckett described his ears ringing for days after big games.

During the 1987 World Series, the decibel level peaked at 125. In '91, it hit 117. That's loud enough to cause pain. It's the equivalent of revving a chain saw three feet away from your face.

Hey, there's a reason opponents can't stand the place. There's a reason the Twins scratched out 85 wins and playoff berth in '87 even though they went 29-52 on the road, or why they won 90-plus games four times this decade without topping 43 wins on the road.

When the Royals comes to town this weekend, the Dome will greet them with more than 140,000 fans. For Sunday's season finale, the curtain that covers parts of the upper-deck will be lifted, paving the way for some 55,000-plus fans to pack the house.

That's a lot of voices to cram into the Midwest's biggest echo chamber. And if Minnesotans rise to the occasion, Kansas City will hear every last one of them, loud and clear.

When umpires call strikes and balls, they'll need to use sign language.

When Trey Hillman makes a call to his bullpen, he'll need to use smoke signals.

And when presumptive Cy Young winner Zack Greinke toes the mound, he'll channel his inner John-Rhys Davies and ask, "Why does the floor move?"

I can't tell you what the Dome will sound like when Joe Mauer bats. Odds are good that fans in attendance won't be able to tell you, either—at least not until the ringing subsides long enough for them to ask.

Fans will get loud for the National Anthem. They'll get loud for the starting lineups. They'll get loud for the hot dog vendors.

They'll get loud for the scoreboard, too—provided the White Sox give them a reason to cheer.

Maybe the roof will be good for a lost pop-up. Maybe the noise will be good for a booted grounder. Maybe the baggie will be good for a Carlos Gomez Web Gem.

None of it might matter, of course. If Detroit takes care of business, Minnesota is done, and that's all she wrote.

All the Twins can do about it is win and pray.

All the Dome can do is make sure God can hear them.

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Don’t Take Your Guns to Town, Brett: How Favre Fits into the Vikings’ Offense

Picture this one, Vikings fans: Bernard Berrian streaks down the sideline, the Metrodome crowd roars, and Brett Favre cocks his arm back, looking for a home run.

Thrilling? Hell yes.

Advisable? Heck no.

At first blush, Favre seems like the perfect candidate to give Minnesota’s passing game, ranked No. 25 last season, some big-play pizazz. He brings a cannon arm to an offense that features Berrian, whom ESPN’s Christoper Harris calls “a bomb waiting to go off,” and Percy Harvin, who is no stranger to the long ball himself.

Favre likes to throw long; they like to go long. Even in practice, he sends ‘em hard and he sends ‘em deep (that’s what she—er, Visanthe Shiancoe, said.)

The Vikings don’t need the Mighty Mississippian out there launching missiles, though. They need him wielding a scalpel.

The obvious reason is that Minnesota doesn’t need the turnovers that Favre’s aerial ambitions generate. There’s merit to that idea—but not as much as you think.

Nearly half of Favre’s league-leading 22 interceptions last year came on throws of 20 yards or longer. He attempted 57 passes in that range, and tossed up 10 picks to show for it.

That’s one turnover for every five-and-a-half deep attempts. Bad odds? Sure, but no worse than Gus Frerotte, who posted a nearly identical interception rate on long throws in his 11 starts, or Sage Rosenfels, who gave the ball away on one in six tries of 20 yards or more.

In other words, Favre throwing deep is a risk, but isn't really a downgrade.

(Tarvaris Jackson fans, now’s your chance to complain about leaving him out of the mix. Just remember what happens when you ask him to carry the load.)

The real reason Favre is best served sticking to the short stuff has as much to do with accentuating his positives as it does with eliminating his negatives. Simply put, he’s deadly from close range.

Even in a down year, Favre completed nearly 76 percent of his passes within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage last year. Those sound like “gimmes,” but they also make up around the vast majority of a quarterback’s throws—typically, around 70 percent.
Frerotte and Jackson connected on just 67 percent of short throws last year. If Favre had the same number of attempts they did, he would have completed about 27 more passes on short attempts alone.

Under the same conditions, he would have completed 15 more throws than Rosenfels, who made good on about 71 percent of his passes of 10 yards or shorter.

But Favre isn’t merely an upgrade over Minnesota’s lackluster collection of passers. When it comes to picking defenses apart underneath, he’s an artiste of the highest order. There isn’t a starting quarterback in the league—not Philip Rivers, not Peyton Manning, not even the oh-so-meticulous Chad Pennington—who was more efficient in short-yardage passing last season.

Any strong-armed quarterback can launch a rocket toward the end zone and hope for the best—heck, T-Jack could play that role just fine. It takes talent to play a dink-and-dunk game that controls the ball and moves the chains. Favre still has plenty to offer in that department.

So if Favre the gunslinger lands a few deep shots against the Chiefs tonight, cheer all you like—it’s a rush, after all, and a nifty highlight.

But save some applause for Favre the surgeon, too. When he starts slicing away, he’s got the tools to bleed the other guys dry.

For more on the Vikings, follow Marino on Twitter @MarinoEccher.

Say What You Want, But the Vikings Are Just More Fun with Favre

Vikings fans are cheering. Packers faithful are jeering. Pundits are bouncing between, "Say it ain't so," and, "I told you so."

And Sage Rosenfels probably feels a lot like Ben Stiller in There's Something About Mary, standing in front of Cameron Diaz and wondering, "What the hell is Brett Favre doing here?"

There's a red No. 4 on the practice field at Winter Park today, and it's not John David Booty.

Surprised? Don't be. The only real shocker here is that Favre pulled such a clumsy "no means yes" routine to avoid training camp, when it would have been just as easy to dodge the Mankato State dormitories by postponing his decision until the team was back in the Twin Cities.

Beyond the time lost in camp, however, signing Favre makes as much sense today as it did three weeks ago. Brad Childress hit the nail on the head: "The same variables that made this a unique and positive situation previously, still exist."

In other words, Favre was the Vikings' best option at quarterback on July 28, and he still is. He was better than Rosenfels and Tarvaris Jackson then, and he's better now, too.

You can rip Favre for giving the team the run-around. You can rip Childress for going from "there's not a chance" to picking up Favre at the airport, leaving the quarterbacks with whom he vowed he was "going forward" in the dust.

But it's hard to rip the decision from a football perspective. As we examined last week, strong quarterback play is a key indicator of a Super Bowl contender.

There aren't 32 quality quarterbacks in the league right now. There may not be 16. If Favre is effective, he's one of them. If he isn't, Rosenfels will still be there, and the team will be no worse off than it is right now.

Some media outlets are just happy they got it right. The headline at FOXsports.com, where Jay Glazer predicted a Favre comeback yesterday: "Told ya so."

Some are convinced the team got it all wrong. SI.com's Peter King called the Vikings Favre's "enablers", and said both the player and the club are "making a mistake."

If they are, it may be the most profitable misstep in franchise history.

The front page of the Vikings' official Web site has been replaced by a banner bearing Favre's face that reads "Are you ready 4 some football?"—complete with links to purchase Favre jerseys and season tickets, of course.

The team's Ticketmaster site reportedly crashed under the sudden influx of traffic this morning.

The Metrodome's cheapest nosebleed seats for the Packers-Vikings game on Oct. 5 (face value: $30) are going for $200 each on Stubhub.com.

For the rematch at Lambeau on Nov. 1, the cheapest tickets will set you back $349 (or a cool $1,750 for six). Now that's a stimulus package.

Oh, and those Minneapolis stadium talks that have been frustrating the team for more than a year just might get a shot in the arm.

Think fans are getting jazzed up about the situation? Go check out the commentators Star Tribune's story, telling us that we'll see "Favre hoisting the Lombardi trophy (to the envy of all cheeseheads) in five months."

Then pop on over to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and listen to the faithful explain, "If you found out your wife was cheating on you, your kid was doing drugs, or your best friend was only using you for your money, you'd be feeling the same thing...that many people feel about Favre going to the Vikings."

Twin Cities sports radio host Dan Barreiro even tracked down Packers fanatic Carl Gerbschmidt, who may or may not exist. Gerbschmidt reported that he was drowning his sorrows at a bar in Chippewa Falls, Wisc., after setting the Favre-owned truck he won at an auction on fire.

This ought to be fun.

Everyone in Minnesota who took their shots at Favre for his love of attention might want to take a minute to bask in the glow of the cameras currently pointed at our state.

Doesn't that feel good? You start to understand why he enjoys the sensation. And nothing could have delivered that kind of spotlight like Favre.

So what the hell is Brett Favre doing here, anyway?

Is he trying to win another Super Bowl for his daughter, as he said in tonight's press conference? Is he trying to go out on his own terms? Is he just trying to play some football and put $12 million in the bank?

We don't know yet. But it's going to be a hell of a ride.

For more on the Vikings, follow Marino on Twitter @MarinoEccher.

For Vikings Fans, Love Doesn't Come Cheap

When the Vikings made the trek to Indianapolis on Friday, team executives noticed how nicely the one-year-old Lucas Oil Stadium suited the Colts.

They made sure the Minnesota public noticed, too.

"This would be great in Minneapolis," said Lester Bagley, the team's vice president of public affairs and stadium development. "The frustrating thing is that the person that's working the hardest to get a deal done and keep the Vikings in Minnesota is [owner] Zygi Wilf.”

Translation: We'd love to build one of these ourselves, and it would be a shame if we had to do it somewhere else.

After a 48-year romance with the good people of Minnesota, those Vikings still know how to push our buttons.

They know we’re just a teensy bit insecure about a slicker, sexier city making a play for our purple pride. They know we’re still wary of losing a hometown team after Bud Selig tried to contract the Twins in 2002. And they know we love the Vikings enough to put up a fight for them when push comes to shove.

In this case, however, love isn’t a battlefield. It’s a stadium, and it costs $950 million.

That’s a lot of love.

For Vikings ownership, commitment issues are nothing new. Red McCombs toyed with the idea of moving the team to Los Angeles for profit. He kicked around the notion of moving it to San Antonio, his hometown, for fun.

When Wilf bought the team in 2005, he promised that his involvement with the Twin Cities was more than just a fling. Heck, when he vowed, “We will be in the Minneapolis area forever,” he practically dropped to one knee.

At this point, though, his words sound an awful lot like sweet nothings. Bagley said in February that if a stadium deal isn't done when other cities come calling, "it's not going to be a favorable outcome for the Twin Cities in terms of the long-term future for the club."

Why can’t the Vikings quit playing games (with our hearts)? Because they’re set to quit playing games in the Metrodome after the 2011 season. Once that lease expires, they're back on the singles market, looking for a shoulder to cry on and a place to crash.

The latest homewrecking suitor to throw himself at the team is California real estate developer Ed Roski, a billionaire who helped finance L.A.'s Staples Center.

Roski's come-hither trump card? A proposal for a privately financed $800-million stadium in Industry, Calif., 15 miles east of Los Angeles.

He's got a list of small-market teams with whom he's flirting. The Vikings are on it.

So far, the team has given him the cold shoulder. Apparently, he hasn't called lately (just what kind of a gentleman does that make him, anyway?).

But Bagley's comments on the stadium situation remind us that Roski and other out-of-town admirers certainly aren't out of the picture, either. There are still plenty of Casanovas out there with eyes for our beloved Vikes—and if we can’t tie the knot, somebody else will.

We’re fiercely loyal and faithful to a fault, but those qualities won’t be enough to keep the team by our sides. NFL owners aren’t romantics. They’re gold diggers. Wilf is in this business for the money, and it’s going to take money to get the Vikings to embrace the state the way the state embraces the Vikings.

Given the shortage of private investors lining up to invest a billion dollars into a downtown Minneapolis facility, most of the cash is going to have to come from public sources—around $700 million, by current estimates.

For a state facing a $4.6 billion budget deficit in the next fiscal year, that’s an awfully pricey wedding.

Should we pony up? You’ve got me on that one. Like most citizens, I hate the idea of using public money to make a rich man richer. Like most fans, I hate the idea of losing the team.

But that’s the dilemma Minnesota will face over the next two years. It’s the question all small-market fan bases face: How much love can we afford?

The answer could leave plenty of people with broken hearts.

For more on the Vikings, follow Marino on Twitter @MarinoEccher.

How Close to a Title Are the Vikings? Not as Close as You Think

Whatever the Minnesota Vikings are putting in the Kool-Aid this offseason, it sure goes down smooth.

The team’s presumptive blueprint for success this year—run the ball, stuff the run, rush the passer, and turn Percy Harvin loose on the league—is an easy-to-swallow cocktail of conventional football wisdom.

Listen to the pundits talk about “a team that appears to be a competent quarterback away from winning the Super Bowl,” and the buzz sounds even better. It’s enough to make you stop asking how the Vikes are going to make the Super Bowl, and start wondering what the heck is going to stop them.

We’ve got Adrian Peterson! We’ve got Jared Allen! We’ve got the Williams Wall! How could this go wrong?

Well, we’ve got a few ideas. A quick look at the factors behind a typical championship contender reveals a few glaring holes in Minnesota’s title hype.

To be sure, the Vikings boast trophy-caliber elements in a few phases of the game. In the 39 years since the AFL-NFL merger, the average title game participant has finished around No. 9 in rushing and a little better than No. 8 against the run.

Minnesota clocked in at No. 5 and No. 1 in those categories last year. That’s good news.

But the average Super Bowl team also finishes right around No. 7 in passer rating. In fact, 80 percent of Super Bowl contenders finish in the top 10 in passer rating, while just 65 percent finish in the top 10 in rushing. Despite conventional wisdom, passing the ball efficiently is more important than racking up yards on the ground.

The Vikings finished No. 18 in passer rating in 2008—worse than all but seven of the 78 participants in Super Bowl history. That’s bad news.

Along the same lines, disrupting an opponent’s passing rhythm is almost as important as shutting down the running game: Super Bowl teams average league ranks of 7.78 in run defense and 7.93 in opposing passer rating.

Despite a top-five pass rush, last year’s Vikes finished No. 16 in defensive passer rating. That’s more bad news: Of the 39 teams who’ve won the Super Bowl, just four have allowed their opponents to pass the ball with comparable efficiency.

And for a team that hangs its hat on a stout defense, Minnesota falls short in the most important measure of a Super Bowl contender: The ability to keep points off the board.

The average Super Bowl team finishes between No. 6 and No. 7 in scoring defense. The average champion finishes a bit better than No. 5. Eighty-two percent of teams that are good enough to make the title game finish in the top 10.

Last year’s Vikings finished No. 13. Respectable? Certainly. Title-worthy? Not really.

Falling short of Super Bowl averages in a single category, or even a few categories, doesn’t knock a team out of contention. Plenty of teams compensate for shortcomings in one area by excelling in another (recall that the 2000 Ravens won it all with Trent Dilfer under center).

The Vikings’ real problem is that there is little precedent for success among teams that are terrific at stopping the run, but less successful in keeping opponents out of the end zone. Almost every Super Bowl contender built around a dominating ground game has also featured an elite scoring defense.

Just three teams have reached the title game that finished in the top five in rushing defense, but outside the top 10 in scoring “D”: The ’86 Broncos, the ’83 Redskins, and the ’92 Bills.

All of those teams finished No. 6 or better in scoring. All of them sent a quarterback to the Pro Bowl. All of them lost the Super Bowl, by an average margin of 27.6 points.

This year’s Vikings are only in a position to do one of those things.

So the next time somebody tells you the Vikings are a quarterback away from the Super Bowl, ask ‘em which quarterback (Brady? Montana? Tarkenton?) they have in mind.

Next time you hear about Minnesota’s championship-caliber defense, remind them that most opponents don’t run the ball on every down.

And the next time the Vikings offer you a glass of Kool-Aid, well, drink up and hope for the best—frankly, the season is more fun that way.

But don’t be surprised to find a few key ingredients missing.

For more on the Vikings, follow Marino on Twitter @MarinoEccher.

Adrian Peterson's Poundage and the Art of Saying Nothing

Way back in April, when NFL Draft coverage was in full swing and the Minnesota Vikings had precious few headlines to offer, Adrian Peterson gave us something to talk about.

The league's leading rusher announced that he was looking to gain as many as 12 pounds in the offseason, pushing his playing weight to 230 "just to see how it feels."

It was the easiest media mini-frenzy he's ever incited.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune listened to him, tracking down a wary reaction from Brad Childress—"230 is awful big"—for good measure. So did USA Today. The Washington Post gave the comment a blurb.

Sports Illustrated ran with it, hunting down reactions from prominent NFL running backs about what the extra bulk could do to Peterson (lost speed, knee injuries) if he followed through and packed on the pounds.

And then he didn't.

When Peterson reported for training camp last week, he tipped the scales at 220, three pounds heavier than his playing weight last season. All the fuss was dedicated to extra junk that never made its way to AP's trunk.

Peterson said he learned his lesson: "Never talk about my weight, because it'll be something you hear about the whole summer," he told reporters at camp last Friday.

If he meant that, he missed the point. The real lesson here is that with a few choice words, a media-savvy star can reel in a boatload of offseason attention without lifting a finger.

The remark that started the whole ordeal—"God willing, I will get to 225, 230"—was a throwaway line. It was nonsense. It was fantasy. It was a daydream (Gosh, I wonder what it'd be like out there if I was a real big guy...) that Peterson happened to voice aloud.

He wasn't going to get to 230. That's bulldozer territory—Shaun Alexander, Fred Taylor, Deuce McAllister. If Peterson had rolled into Mankato looking like any of those guys, Childress would have had a heart attack.

He wasn't going to get to 225. Look at the man. Where are those extra pounds gonna go? Unless he borrows a page from the Pat Williams book of nutrition, he's carrying about as much punishment as his frame will allow.

None of that mattered. In the absence of actual Vikings storylines over the summer, weighing the pros and cons of a beefier Adrian Peterson was terrific fodder for football pundits.

His "goal" of playing at 230 was enough of a stretch to be easy to criticize, but not quite outlandish enough to dismiss as absurd. It was simple enough to market for public consumption, and specific enough to throw a smidgeon of analysis into the equation.

Feasible or otherwise, real or not, it's a softball of a topic that provides an easy fix for all those maniacs determined to keep football in the spotlight year-round.

Adrian, you don't need to learn to avoid dispensing these kinds of innocuous verbal gems. You need to learn to keep them coming.

Tell us you hope to catch 50 passes next year. Tell us you're aiming for 3,000 all-purpose yards. Tell us you want you throw five or six touchdowns out of the Wildcat. Tell us you're going to grow an 18-inch 'fro, "just to see how it feels."

Are any of those things going to happen? Nope. But if you don't think about them to hard, they sound like things that could happen. They sound just legitimate enough to write about—and make no mistake, we'll write about them.

You don't have to mean any of it. You just need to say it. Just put it out there and let a few media types run with it.

Will these kind of proclamations be the kind of thing "you hear about the whole summer?" You bet they will. And that's a good thing.

We get a few story ideas to tide us over until August. You get column inches dedicated to you and to the Vikings during a stretch on the calendar when football has no business being in the news.

There may be other ways to get that kind of attention—get a DUI, shoot yourself in the leg—but in terms of return on your investment, it doesn't get much cheaper than a passing statement about a made-up aspiration.

If you need inspiration, look no further than Shaquille O'Neal, the master of non-information himself.

Last September, Shaq-fu told us he was going to retire in exactly 735 days (never mind that that number would put the end of his career right at the start of the 2010 season). He told us Amar'e Stoudemire's new nickname was "Sun Tzu," and even let an Arizona Republic beat writer pick the moniker (never mind that nobody in their right mind has called Stoudemire that since).

He's not talking to make a point. He's not talking to make a difference. He's just talking to talk.

It's a gift, really. So keep talking, Adrian Peterson. We promise we'll listen.

Even if it turns out you're not really saying anything.


For more on the Vikings, follow Marino on Twitter @MarinoEccher.