Did Minnesota Run Up the Score?
At the two-minute warning of Sunday afternoon's divisional playoff game, the Minnesota Vikings had the ball with a 27-3 lead and were facing a fourth down. When they didn't bring out the field goal unit, the smart money was on them simply running the ball up the middle. If they got a first down, they could kneel out the remaining clock and head into the locker room with a blowout victory. If not, the Cowboys still weren't going to muster four touchdowns in less than two minutes.
Instead, Brett Favre dropped back and found tight end Visanthe Shiancoe in the end zone for a touchdown -- making the score 34-3. There was 1:55 left on the clock. Cowboys linebacker Keith Brooking chased Favre to the sidelines and had a heated exchange with Vikings defense end Jared Allen. Brooking later called the play "classless."
Shiancoe's reply: "Hey, you never know. They could score four touchdowns. We scored 24 points in one quarter last game against the Giants. So hey. Stop it."
The latter part of Shiancoe's statement will be the refrain of those defending the Vikes' choice to go after an extra touchdown. You are both NFL teams. You are both good NFL teams, appearing in the second round of the playoffs. If you don't want a team to score a touchdown on you, make a play and prevent it.
The first part of Shiancoe's statement, however, is frankly pretty ridiculous. Talking about scoring 24 points in one quarter at home against a non-playoff team is a bit different than coming back to score that many in 1:55 on the road against a stellar defense (especially when they only mustered three field goal attempts and zero touchdowns all game).
In fairness to Shiancoe, he seemed to be pretty oblivious to the situation, considering he initially asked "why?" when members of the media said the Cowboys were upset with the play call.
Vikings nose tackle Pat Williams told ESPN.com that Brooking should feel lucky after his sideline encounter. "We don't care what Keith Brooking says," Williams said. "He was about to get his ass whupped on our sideline over there. It don't matter. Nobody said anything when they blew out the Eagles.
"It's the playoffs. It ain't no regular-season game. If you lose, you go home. We take no pity on them. Do they expect us to? I don't care about no Brooking. He can say whatever he wants to say."
It seems obvious that everyone can agree the last score was unnecessary, but does that definitely mean it's poor sportsmanship?
"We play 'em again next year, so we'll see how that goes," Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said.
"I will say this," he continued, "I don't know how you take the compete out of Brett Favre. They were playing the game, that's all."
FanHouse's Dan Graziano contributed to this report.
what they did wasn't a suprise.. in tha previous series, Vikings took a shot at tha endzone on 4th down but failed..
I wouldn't even call it "runnin up tha score" anyway, there was over 2 minutes left to go and even tho there's no way in hell Dallas could've scored 4 TDs in 2 minutes, I'm supposed to stop playin tha game for you? Child please, like Shiancoe said, if you don't wanna get scored on then stop me
Okay, Keith. Sure.
