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.

It’s Homecoming season, which is the time of year when high schools and colleges across the land have their Homecoming parades, and welcome back their alumni with a variety of team spirit events during the week, ultimately culminating in a Homecoming dance, crowning of the Homecoming King and Queen and of course the actual Homecoming football game itself. But let’s not forget the ancillary Homecoming traditions like spiking the punch bowls while the gym teacher is busy flirting with Miss Fickerbocker and slipping corsages over the wrist of that date who is really just your buddy’s sister that you had a contingency agreement with to go together if your respective dream dates still didn’t know you existed.

Which feels like the perfect metaphor for this Viking season when you think about it doesn’t it? We are at the dance with our contingency plan, Carson Wentz. In a bed we made ourselves after spurning date requests from 3 Homecoming Queen viable candidates because we chose instead to hold out for that special one, only to find out he is a Bubble Boy, confined to his plastic bubble bedroom by his overprotective parents who fear his crystal heart can’t hack the outside world.

Instead, we stand on the edges of the gymnasium with our substitute date Carson watching all the “what could have beens” doing the worm and break dancing on the floor, having the time of their lives. Watching as Daniel Jones dances his way to 6-1 and both Sam Darnold and Aaron Rodgers wiggle right behind at 4-2. We could be having more fun with any one of those three, instead we have “Carson Wince,” single handedly increasing the stock price for Icy Hot, ice baths and anti-wrinkle creams that many of us have started applying Monday mornings after holding our grimace faces for 3 hours straight.

While the NFL doesn’t have an official Homecoming Week (one of many reasons they just aren’t as fun as college football), this week did mark an unofficial homecoming of sorts for our Purple who returned stateside after spending half a month on a European vacation in the land of royalty. Only to return and remind us that we are a team without a leader. A Viking ship without a rudder. We are circling Losers Cove with no direction, because we have no true North Star to guide us, and it's making this season a chore to get behind.

“Hey, Who wants to go to the local VFW and watch Carson Wentz, a guy that’s 32 going on 45, throw backward passes out of bounds and pick 6’s to his old team for 3 hours and then do the walk of shame home, wondering if we should take our purple off so we can feel less pathetic?” That’s not the easiest Sunday mission statement to get behind.

Maybe She’s Not All That

Part of our problem might just be Kevin “Quarterback Whisperer” O’Connell’s unwavering belief that he can turn any nerdy girl QB into a Homecoming Queen with just a little KO makeover. Which in fairness to him, has partly been true the last few years.

Our concern is that he seems to be addicted to it. Instead of molding us a QB we can have a future with, he is just mass producing them like some sort of NFL version of Chip and Johanna Gaines, flipping QB houses with spackle and shiplap and then shipping them off to other teams around the league, helping build QB dynasties everywhere but here. Let’s not forget though that while KO has produced a few solid remodels, several of them have been one hit wonders, squeaking out a few gems before turning back into pumpkins: see Joshua Dobbs, Nick Mullens, Jaren Hall.

9-1-1, What’s Your Emergency (QB)?

Point being, maybe sometimes a house needs more than a quick flip. Sometimes to do it right, it needs to be torn down to the studs, completely rewired, completely rebuilt.

What KO needs to understand is that after years of serial QB dating, the Vikings faithful are itching to settle down. We are starving for some continuity, a franchise QB that we can buy a jersey for and it's not gonna be obsolete after one season. At this rate we need a Vikings jersey trade-in program or some sort of subscription model. Consider that the Purple have started 26 QB’s now in the last 25 years. Our Average QB life expectancy is less than a season. So forgive us we got overly excited about the possibility of J.J. McCarthy providing us some stability for the next 10 years for a change. Forgive us for not getting particularly excited about the Carson Wentz experiment, because even if KO did manage to turn him into a Homecoming Queen, he only has a couple years in him at best. Hell, the Eagles traded him in for a newer model 5 years ago, so having him start for us now is like having to wear your older brother's hand-me-down sports coat to the Homecoming dance, the musty one that has been sitting in a box in the attic for 5 years. Wentz is the apartment your dad first moves into after the divorce, with its rented furniture and paper plates.

We want a future. We want to be able to hang pictures on the walls with nails and not tape. We want to write in pen, not pencil. We want a bottle of hope. If it takes a few years to be built, so be it. Which it seems is exactly what Vikings brass are trying to prepare us for if this Sunday’s morning paper is any indication.

Do we have to do this as some grand unveiling though? Can we not watch this process playing out real time on game days? If it had been J.J. McCarthy throwing pick 6’s and backwards passes Sunday we still would have walked home Sunday, but with our heads a little higher, at least knowing this is just part of the growing process. Then again, perhaps that’s why they are being so careful with J.J., not wanting to rush the product out before all the wiring is done and risk an Extreme Makeover disaster.

Youth is Wasted on the Young

Instead the current lineup of Vikings feels more like watching an aging parent making mistakes, and knowing it’s part of a decline versus part of growth. As a result, these Vikings have us all prematurely aging. It has our lives flashing before our eyes. We want our Sundays to be about slowing things down for 3 hours, not speeding things up. Hell, even TJ Hockenson is gonna have to remove the son from his name and have it changed to TJ Hockengramps at this rate, as he seems to be aging at an accelerated clip like he drank from the wrong chalice in Indiana Jones.

This is what happens when your QB is Robin Williams from the movie Jack. The kid that prematurely ages and somehow finds his way into your friend group and now your best friends with an oversized adult male when you're just trying to stay a kid enjoying a kids’ game.

Who can blame TJ for growing old on us? They say you become the 5 people you hang out with most. This is just what happens when you hang out with a QB that looks like he can hook you up with senior discounts at movies. Maybe this explains why Jordan Addison needs so many naps and our Tush Push Defense just employs a guy laying down on the field. Come to think of it, maybe that should be the official Vikings Jersey we all start wearing this year. The Tyler Batty jersey where we just lay down as the rest of the Vikings walk all over us, cause that’s what it's always felt like to be a Viking fan. The Purple Doormats.

Of course maybe that’s the point. Maybe they are hoping hanging out with Old Man Wentz will just help J.J. grow up fast with the rest of us. Super charge his aging process.

The good news is that the one thing we’ve always been good at here in the Purple state is keeping our hope intact. Despite all our many let downs. Despite all the heartbreaking failures, we’ve never had crystal hearts here in Minnesota. We didn’t grow up in bubbles. We’ve been exposed to all the elements and are stronger for it. We aren’t suggesting the Vikings should have bought us a shiny new expensive QB to love in Free Agency. We are merely saying that we’re more than capable of watching the new kid fail while he learns. Of watching the sausage get made, and living in the house while it gets remodeled. In the meantime, it's hard to love what you cannot see.

This is how we grow. And hopefully ride off into the sunset together one day.

Epilogue: Donate to a Good Cause

Please don’t forget to join us in donating after each Viking win.

Join us in donating @ https://www.scoliosis.org/donate/

SKOL!!

NETWORK PARTNERS