A weekly appearance with Paul Allen, voice of the Vikings, on KFAN addressed one item of unresolved business from the memorable Monday night matchup between Minnesota and Chicago.
The Bears, as Peyton Manning pointed out in real time, should have kicked the ball out of bounds to keep the clock on the right side of the two-minute warning. This would have operated as an extra timeout for the Bears, who at the time had only one.
If the Bears had kicked out of bounds, what if the Vikings had declined the penalty and forced a re-kick? Could the Bears and Vikings have sparked a perpetual loop of kickoff out of bounds/re-kick that, in theory, would still be going?
Fortunately, no. Per the league, the Vikings could not have declined the penalty and forced a re-kick.
The two choices for the receiving team when a kickoff goes out of bounds is to take the ball 25 yards from the spot of the kick (which usually translates to the receiving team’s 40) or to take the ball where it went out of bounds. Which means that the Vikings would have gotten the ball with 2:02 to play, giving the Bears an extra timeout, courtesy of the two-minute warning.
Of course, that would have opened the door for something daring from the Vikings. A play-action pass, for example, and a deep shot to receiver Justin Jefferson. As long as the play takes at least two seconds, it wouldn’t have mattered if the Vikings had thrown an incomplete pass.
