Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Cursing the Vikings or Jinxing the Packers

Sunday's playoff game between the 8-8 Vikings and the 10-6 Packers should be great. Some factoids from an ESPN.com column:

Only one team, the 1967 Green Bay Packers, lost its final two games of the season and went on to win a Super Bowl. The Eagles, Falcons and Vikings will try to duplicate that feat this year.

Minnesota was 11-5 in the first halves of the last two seasons and 6-10 in the second halves.

The Vikings, who play at Green Bay in the wild-card round, have lost 20 of their last 21 games outdoors.

More, germane to the fact that the Packers won their two games against the Vikes this season, from another ESPN.com article:

• There have been 17 wild-card games in which the teams were divisional opponents who faced each other twice during the season... Eight times, one team had swept the season series, and five of those teams went on to win the third matchup, pretty much debunking the popular notion that it is next to impossible to defeat a team three times in the same season.

In short, "Go, Pack, go!"