The Bills were trying to play a Jedi mind trick on the Vikings regarding the identity of their starting quarterback on Sunday. The Vikings ultimately got the droid they were looking for.
After the crazy, insane, insane, crazy showdown in Buffalo, which resulted in a 33-30 overtime win for Minnesota, I asked cornerback Patrick Peterson if the Vikings expected to see quarterback Josh Allen, given the mystery the Bills tried to construct.
“We knew he was playing,” Peterson said. “That’s who we wanted to play. We wanted to play this team at their full strength because we’ve been hearing enough about we haven’t played good teams, we haven’t played good quarterbacks. Well, we just did it today and we won from coming back, you know, so what you gonna say now?”
There’s no much left to say. The Vikings keep finding ways to win. They hadn’t beaten a great team on the road -- in years.
They did it on Monday. It was perhaps their biggest regular-season win as the visiting team since 1998, when they beat the Packers on a Monday night at Lambeau Field, it what was the national coming-out party for rookie Randy Moss.
For third-year receiver Justin Jefferson, it was a day to make a stream of clutch catches -- and for quarterback Kirk Cousins to make one clutch throw after another. And for someone else to step up when the team needs someone else to step up.
There’s still a long way to go this season. But the Vikings are altering perceptions and realities by doing what they haven’t done in a long time. They took the show on the road and stuck it to an elite team. And they wanted that elite team to be at its most elite.