A week after a game that was both the 1,000th game (regular season and playoffs combined) in franchise history and the largest comeback in NFL history, the Minnesota Vikings host the New York Giants Saturday in their final regular-season home game. Minnesota finishes with road games at Green Bay and Chicago.
Kickoff is at noon. The game will be televised on Fox with Adam Amin on play-by-play, Mark Schlereth as analyst and Kristina Pink on the sideline.
The Vikings overcame a 33-0 halftime deficit vs. Indianapolis last week to win 39-36 in overtime to win the club’s first division title since 2017.
Teams that have led by 30 points at any point of the game now have a record of 1,548-2-1 in the regular season and playoffs since 1930.
In an AFC Wild Card Game on Jan. 3, 1993, the Buffalo Bills overcame a 35–3 deficit to beat the Houston Oilers 41–38 in overtime to set the then-record for largest comeback in NFL history.
The tie was a 1960 game between the Bills and Denver Broncos that the Bills led 38-7 in the third quarter. That game ended a 38-38 tie.
The Vikings lead the all-time series with the Giants 17-12 but three of the most memorable games in the series were New York wins, all at home, in three different stadiums.
Minnesota leads 16-10 in regular-season meetings while New York has won two of the three postseason matchups.
Tarkenton beats the Vikings
Fran Tarkenton still holds most Vikings’ passing records, playing 13 of his 18 seasons in the NFL with Minnesota. For five seasons from 1967-1971 he played for the Giants and went 1-2 in meetings with the Vikings.
That win came in the opening game of the 1969 season at Yankee Stadium.
Minnesota took a 23-10 lead early in the fourth quarter on Fred Cox’s third field of the game from 10 yards out (the goal posts were on the goal line at the time).
The Giants would come from behind to win 24-23 with Tarkenton throwing touchdown passes of 16 and 10 yards to Don Hermann.
The win ended a long losing streak for New York, which had lost in its last four games in 1968 and all of its preseason games, including a 37–14 loss to the crosstown rival New York Jets, who had upset the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III the previous season.
That loss to the Jets leding the team to fire head coach Allie Sherman in mid-September, one week before the regular season began. Offensive backfield coach Alex Webster was promoted to head coach.
Joe Kapp did not see any action at quarterback in that game for the Vikings. Gary Cuozzo was under center, going 13-for-28 for 255 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.
Kapp took over at QB for the Vikings in their home opener the next week, a game we wrote about last week:
After the loss in the opener Minnesota won 12 in a row before dropping the season finale at Atlanta 10-3.
In the postseason the Vikings beat the Los Angeles Rams 23-20 and Cleveland 27-7 before losing Super Bowl IV to Kansas City 23-7.
41-donut
The 2000 Vikings were the No. 2 seed for the NFC Championship Game but were solid favorites on the road vs. the No. 1 seed Giants.
But it was all New York that day at Giants Stadium as the home team scored two touchdowns in the first quarter and then scored two more TDs in the second and added a pair of field goals to lead 34-0 at halftime on the way to a 41-0 win.
Daunte Culpepper was 13-for-28 passing for 78 yards and threw three interceptions. Robert Smith led Minnesota in rushing with 44 yards on seven carries.
Kerry Collins was 28-39 passing for 381 yards and five touchdowns for the Giants.
The Josh Freeman game
Josh Freeman played one game with the Vikings.
It was memorable. But not for the right reasons.
Just 10 days after acquiring him, Freeman put together 60 minutes of the worst quarterbacking possible as the 1-4 Vikings lost 23-7 to the 0-5 Giants in a Monday Night Football game at MetLife Stadium.
With a limited play sheet, Freeman was under pressure throughout the game and was 20-53 passing for 190 yards and one interception. Minnesota’s TD came on an 86-yard punt return by Marcus Sherels.
Freeman was actually going to start for Minnesota the next Sunday night at home vs. Green Bay Packers, but wound up having concussion-like symptoms that forced him out of action. He never played another snap for the Vikings.
After not playing in 2014, Freeman played for the Brooklyn Bolts of the Fall Experimental Football League (FXFL) in 2015. He spent most of that offseason and all of training camp with the Miami Dolphins before being waived during final cuts Sept. 5.
Freeman did play one more NFL game. He was picked up by the Indianapolis Colts for the final game of that 2015 season and was 15-28 passing for 149 yards, one TD and one interception in a 30-24 win over the Tennessee Titans.
Midwest connection
The Giants have a historical connection to the Upper Midwest from hosting training camps in the region.
The club trained at Wisconsin-Superior in 1939, 1941, 1942, 1946, 1947 and 1948. It was at those camps that a young Bud Grant was first exposed to pro football by taking in the practices as a spectator.
In 1952 and 1953, the Giants held their training camp at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.
Details of the Giants tenure in St. Peter are covered in the book Gustavus Athletics: A Century of Building the Gustie Tradition, 1880-1980 by Lloyd Hollingsworth.
New York also played a pair of preseason games at Parade Stadium in Minneapolis against Green Bay in 1953 (the preseason opener) and in 1955 against the Baltimore Colts, the fourth of six preseason games the club played that season.
The Giants played intra-squad games at St. Peter, promoted as the Green Giant Bowl and at Austin as the Spam Bowl.
Hollingsworth acted as coordinator between the Giants and the college, providing space for their equipment, arranging transportation, scheduling meals, providing field equipment, supervising locker room and laundry facilities, and setting up an auxiliary training room in Rundstrom Hall where they were housed. Fortunately, the number in camp was less than what is prevalent in practice, but 50-60 large pro athletes taxed the small fieldhouse locker rooms, especially on warm, humid August days.
Two Gustie football players, Jim Knight and Roger Carlson, were employed to do the laundry and the custodial work in the fieldhouse. Their daily association with the Giants prompted a criticism by some MIAC coaches, implying that they were practicing with the pros.
Among those living and practicing on campus were some well-known names in the sports world: Tom Landry (famed coach of the Dallas Cowboys), Frank Gifford (popular TV sports announcer), Kyle Rote (legendary all-pro), Dick Nolan (coach of several NFL teams), Bill Austin (later to coach the Giants), Al DeRogotis (later to become a well-known sports commentator). Among others well known in their day: Charlie Conerly (QB), Eddie Price (FB), All-Pro tackle Arnie Weinmeister, All-Pro center Ray Wietecha, Tex Coulter, a tackle who doubled as a cartoonist and artist, some of whose Gustavus campus sketches appeared in the New York papers.
After the two years at Gustavus the Giants moved their training camp to Connecticut in order to be closer to their home office. When the Vikings became an expansion team, the Giants recommended the Gustavus site for training. However, by this time some of the practice field had been lost to construction and the size of the training camp squads had outgrown the locker rooms. The inadequacy of practice fields and dressing facilities also prevented the Dallas Cowboys from training at Gustavus.
Tom Landry, with favorable recollections of Gustavus, visited campus with general manager Tex Schram, but the day they were on campus happened to be the day a bulldozer began tearing up the practice field as part of the chapel construction.
Landry so favored a Minnesota training camp location that when Gustavus facilities were inadequate he chose to train at St. Olaf for two years:
"In my 12 years in the league I'd have to say that St. Olaf gave us the best camp I've ever been to in terms of food, practice fields, and housing," Dallas Coach Tom Landry said.
Notes
Quarterback Kirk Cousins completed 34 passes and threw for a career-high 460 yards and four TDs last week vs. Indianapolis. He joins Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow and Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa as the QBs since 2020 to post that statline in a single game.
Wide receiver Justin Jefferson’s 307 receptions is the second-most in a player’s first three seasons. He trails only Michael Thomas (321).
Running back Dalvin Cook has reached 1,000 yards rushing for the fourth time. That matches Robert Smith for the second-most in franchise history. Adrian Peterson’s seven is the most.
Kicker Greg Joseph has set a record for most game-winning field goals with four.
The Vikings became the team in NFL history to score on an interception return, punt return and kickoff return in the same game in a 24-21 win on Nov. 13, 2005 at Giants Stadium. Darren Sharper returned an interception 92 yards, Koren Robinson had an 86-yard kickoff return and Mewelde Moore had a 71-yard punt return.
Scores
The Vikings lead the series 17-12.
12-06-1964: Minnesota Vikings 30, New York Giants 21
10-09-1965: Minnesota Vikings 40, New York Giants 14
11-05-1967: Minnesota Vikings 27, New York Giants 24
09-21-1969: New York Giants 24, Minnesota Vikings 23
10-31-1971: Minnesota Vikings 17, New York Giants 10
12-16-1973: Minnesota Vikings 31, New York Giants 7
10-17-1976: Minnesota Vikings 24, New York Giants 7
11-16-1986: New York Giants 22, Minnesota Vikings 20
10-30-1989: New York Giants 24, Minnesota Vikings 14
12-09-1990: New York Giants 23, Minnesota Vikings 15
01-09-1994: New York Giants 17, Minnesota Vikings 10 (NFC Wild Card Game)
10-10-1994: Minnesota Vikings 27, New York Giants 10
09-29-1996: New York Giants 15, Minnesota Vikings 10
12-27-1997: Minnesota Vikings 23, New York Giants 22 (NFC Wild Card Game)
12-26-1999: Minnesota Vikings 34, New York Giants 17
01-14-2001: New York Giants 41, Minnesota Vikings o (NFC Championship Game)
11-19-2001: Minnesota Vikings 28, New York Giants 16
11-10-2002: New York Giants 27, Minnesota Vikings 20
10-26-2003: New York Giants 29, Minnesota Vikings 17
10-31-2004: New York Giants 34, Minnesota Vikings 13
11-13-2005: Minnesota Vikings 24, New York Giants 21
11-25-2007: Minnesota Vikings 41, New York Giants 17
12-28-2008: Minnesota Vikings 20, New York Giants 19
01-03-2010: Minnesota Vikings 44, New York Giants 7
12-13-2010: New York Giants 21, Minnesota Vikings 3
10-21-2013: New York Giants 23, Minnesota Vikings 7
12-27-2015: Minnesota Vikings 49, New York Giants 17
10-03-2016: Minnesota Vikings 24, New York Giants 10
10-06-2019: Minnesota Vikings 28, New York Giants 10
Total points: Minnesota Vikings 663, New York Giants 549