SKÖLIOSIS WEEK 13: J.J. MAXX — Vikings 0, Seattle 26
If anyone knows what it’s like to be a loyal fan of the Purple, it’s the readers of SKÖLIOSIS — your weekly reminder that being a Vikings fan is bad for your health.
You Get What You Paid For
Years ago I worked for a tech company based in Minnesota that shipped me off to cover Microsoft as an account in Seattle. It was my first real grown up job. I was there for 4 years, working my way up as a young sales rep, figuring out the corporate world as I went. The tech company was a startup with the normal ups and downs and in one of those down years they had a large rift, letting go of half the sales force, myself included. We had a 2 year old and a brand new 5 month old baby boy (that incidentally turns 21 this week, Happy B-day Bode! Love ya!). We were living paycheck to paycheck, so clearly being laid off was stressful. A real lowpoint. My amazing wife, like many others, has always loved being a bargain shopper. “Saving” us money by spending it on thrifty deals. On one of her foraging expeditions she bought me a pair of men's loafers from a garage sale. They appeared to be hardly worn at all. After being laid off I had my first job interview with another tech company based in Seattle. I put on my fanciest suit and decided to wear the used loafers my wife got me that looked as good as new.
I popped in some Doublemint gum, drove to the interview with my updated resume in hand, wearing my freshly pressed suit and my newish used bargain loafers. I parked, walked into the building nervous but excited, and as I was walking down the hallway towards the office, I noticed my shoes were making an aggressive squeaky noise, but tried to ignore it. As I walked further, I noticed they started to feel even a little slippery and squishy under my feet. Soon I felt a drafty feeling on my toes, like someone left a door or window open in my shoes, and as I opened the door and was signing in at the front desk for my interview, I looked down in horror to see my shoes had literally disintegrated around my feet. My argyle sock covered toes were protruding out the top of the shoes like they were trying to make an escape. Behind me down the hallway it looked like I’d tracked mud all the way down back to the elevator, but it was in fact the soft rubber of the shoes which had crumbled into pieces as I was walking down the hall, as if I’d been smashing Oreo cookies and leaving the crumbs in piles to remember my way back out like a character in Hansel and Gretel.
The squeak I had been hearing was clearly the rubber crying for mercy under my 190 lb frame, and abandoning ship. Needless to say, I was mortified and shook. I didn’t know what to do. I’d also taken my gum out of my mouth to discard it before the interview and was still clutching the half chewed piece in my open palm like it was a sick baby bird. I was frozen like a deer in headlights, still trying to figure out what to do about my shoe situation, deciding if I should just run for it or fake a medical situation like mysterious concussion symptoms that developed in the car ride over. But before I could come up with anything my interviewer approached, who I kid you not, looked like a doppelganger of Daniel Day Lewis’s character Bob the Butcher from the movie Gangs of New York, or Professor Hinkle from Frosty the Snowman.
This menacing man walked up to introduce himself, upon which I immediately transformed into a blabbering stuttering mess, apologizing for the mess I’d made in the hall and trying to explain how my piñata shoes had just exploded and I wasn’t sure how, or why, yada, yada. I also still had my gum in my hand and was looking at him pleadingly, as if to ask, “where is the garbage please?” To which he responded by extending out his right hand, which in my discombobulated state, I assumed was meant to relieve me of my chewing gum. So I handed it to him. That’s right, I put the saliva covered glob of Doublemint right in his bare hand, which of course in hindsight I realized was more likely extending to shake my hand, as normal professional adults in the business world often do. Right, of course it was.
(AI recreated memory - although Bob the Butcher was not some sort of desk Minotaur as it suggests - but he was terrifying none the less)
The crazy twist to it all? Despite all that, they still offered me the job! But guess what? Despite being jobless, having two kids under three years old at home, no savings, no plan. No idea what I was going to do next, I declined the offer. Because I realized if they were that hard up, that if this weird tech startup with Professor Hinkle running their sales department was willing to hire me, despite the absolute disaster of an interview, I figured that it was probably a red flag. Something was in fact wrong with them, not me. It was probably not someplace I should work. Plus, working for a guy that embodied Bob the Butcher sounded terrifying. Phew, disaster avoided the way I see it.
Started at the Bottom and Now Were…Still Here
I’m sure by now if you're still reading Skoliosis articles, you realize we love our metaphors and you can already see where this one is going. Yep, the only person to have a worse interview for a job than me, might just be Mr. Max Brosmer. And the Vikings quarterback situation is a pair of exploding shoes. Coach KOC and Kwesi put on the fancy suit, they got the resume updated, a fresh hair cut, and upgraded our trenches with the biggest free agent spend in the league, and popped in some breath mints to get ready for this season. And after all that effort, they went and got a pair of bargain shoes from JJ Maxx to play quarterback, thinking nobody would notice. Thinking they could scheme and fast talk (whisper?) their way around it. And then the shoes both imploded in the hallway before the interview even started. And now here we are looking back at the last 13 like a trail of exploded soles. And yes we could spell that the other way, but why kick a fan base when it’s down.
The real question is, what does this all make us, the loyal pathetic fans that keep tuning in week after week to watch this train wreck of a team? If Kwesi and Coach KOC’s 2025 edition of this team is a disaster in exploding shoes, shaking our hands with sticky wads of gum in the palm. Then who are we the fans that are still willing to tune each week to watch this absolute disaster of a team, how desperate does that make us? Hell, even Adam Theilen is waving the white towel, begging for his release so he can be free of this nightmare. Can we as fans do the same? Can we request to be released from this debacle and be placed on fan waivers? I’m calling my agent now….umm, she said no. She said I should absolutely quit though. On the bright side she also said she found me a good deal on a pair of trousers…wait a minute. Who even says trousers any more?
Cancelling Our Max Subscriptions?
We do have to hand it to the PR team for this year’s Vikes though, right? Right when we’re ready to hang it up for the season, ready to start enjoying our Sundays again without the looming disappointment of a Vikings disaster, they dangle a little carrot out there to get us back. To keep us from cancelling our subscription for the season, they tease a little promise of a new show that looks promising.
No, we are not talking about the Vikings using our admittedly stellar kicking team tandem to promote this week’s game on social media, although that was an interesting choice indeed. And Will Reichard and our chubby punter have been a few of the bright spots in this otherwise black hole of joy.
Nor are we talking about the matchup of the Vikings Byron Murphy Jr. versus Seattle’s Byron Murphy II. The latter with a neck so wide some kids graffiti’d “Chosen 1” on it while he was sleeping, and the other with a neck so long his turtle neck came with guitar strings.
No, we are talking about the move to start our other bargain bin rookie, Max Brosmer, the kid with a Minnesota Gopher pedigree, 2 extra years of prefrontal cortex development, and the face of an animated Disney hero. A guy that looks like he descended from a family of swashbucklers or could be a character in an Alexander Dumas novel and knows how to speak Pepe Le Pew fluently.
Color some of us intrigued! In fact some of us homers (he was a Gopher!) may have even taken the overs on an array of prop bets on the kid, fully expecting him to be the next Kurt Warner or Brock Purdy. Legend had it in pregame narratives that the ball didn’t touch the ground all week in practice, alluding to him being so accurate that there were zero incompletions in practice all week. Instead we got treated to a Nathan Peterman show, which for those that don’t know was another young QB that got his first start for the Buffalo Bills in 2018 and proceeded to throw 5 INT’s in one half.
The good news is that was pretty much the rock bottom before the Bills drafted Josh Allen the next season.
So, was Sunday our rock bottom? Is it possible to go any lower? Are we on the cusp of our Josh Allen type resurgence? I guess this is what we should expect when shopping for QBs at JJ Max. Maybe we should consider getting our next one at Target, as it would be nice to find a QB that can hit an intended one in stride.
We Need To Talk About Kevin
In fairness to young Max Brosmer, perhaps he and JJ aren’t the problem at all. Maybe we need to start talking about Kevin. The QB Whisperer. At what point does that narrative change? I mean, in hindsight haven’t we really just had eight or so mediocre and terrible QB’s come and go through here the last few years? Cousins, Dobbs, Hall, Mullens, Darnold, Wentz, McCarthy, Brosmer. That’s a Mount Rushmore of forgettable if you really think about it.
At what point do we wonder if KOC is the coaching equivalent of Francis Ford Coppola, churning out a couple classic seasons, but from here on out are we just gonna be the MegaFlopolis Vikings? A movie best seen in iMax Brosmer.
No thanks, I think I’ll wait for the rest of this season when it comes out on video.
But who am I kidding. I’ll be tuned in next week as always. Cheering both of these JJ Max boys to become the men we know they can be. Because we’ve all had our exploding shoes moment at one point or another. You just gotta keep believing, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and trusting that things will get better.
Onward and Upward.
Skol!!
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