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.

Let’s all just breathe for a minute Purple fans.

Inhale for 4 seconds…hold…now exhale for a count of 4.

Feel your breath on the back of your throat to create that soft, ocean-like sound while breathing in and out through your nose. A breathing technique taught in yoga studios everywhere as Ujjayi breathing, otherwise known as “victory breath” because it is believed to help one overcome obstacles and achieve inner peace. As of November 1st, 2025 here in Minnesota, we will affectionatley shorten ujjayi breathing to simply J.J. breathing. Because our new yogi teacher, young sensei J.J. McCarthy, just might be teaching Viking Nation how to breathe again. After suffering 5 weeks of Carson Wincing pain, which for many of us Vikings fans felt more like watching funny skateboard fail videos, or the grape stomp lady falling and writhing in pain for 3 hours. The Carson Wince experiment got to the point where most of us were unsure if we could endure any more of it.

Luckily, our new young padawan came back just in time to calm our restless souls. Just as we were considering hanging up our jerseys for the season, the kid came back and reminded us that our path to inner peace can be achieved via some solid breath work, and more importantly, a competent QB 1 performance.

Out with the bad, in with the good. Exhale out number 11, inhale a little number 9.

In that context, this week's motor city matchup was a reminiscent of the riddle of the young girl that comes upon a semi truck that has wedged itself under a low bridge, and watches as helpless engineers try to figure out how to get the truck unstuck, tossing around crazy ideas of dismantling the truck or digging out the road beneath the truck, until the young one strolls up to the truck driver and whispers a simple solution to the driver. Just let some air out of the tires. Yes, a little tire exhale! Addition by subtraction.

The riddle of course feels like a metaphor for this year’s Vikings, a team that listened to its own preseason hype with our fan base getting too big for our britches until we found the organization seemingly getting stuck under the low bridge of reality and a litany of injuries. But life has a way of doing that right? Of not going quite as planned. So this was our reminder, that during those times, when things get the most overwhelming, down and dire, that’s when it's important to go find a comfortable spot, such as a “soft bench”, and just practice breathing.

Seeing J.J. sitting alone on that very soft looking bench pregame, finding Zen in the Lion’s Den, was a helpful reminder, that when all else fails, a little re-centering always helps. Of course, when a street fight breaks out come playoff time, we’ll see which is better to have at the helm. A Zen guy or a Zyn guy . . .

UPWARD DOG, DOWNWARD DOG

That said, it’s fair to say none of us are completely sighing with relief just yet. We’ve got a ways to go before achieving Nirvana, because we’ve been down this road before. We know this pain cycle all too well. Making this journey even more interesting is that young J.J. seems to be an unusually polarizing figure early in his NFL career does he not? It feels like he, more than any player we can remember in recent history, has everyone picking a side on whether he’ll turn out to be a legit franchise QB, or the next Christian Ponder. It seems that everyone is rushing to come to some final judgement before we have all the evidence. Will he be an eventual perennial Pro-Bowl QB, or a career back up? Depending on which side you picked, watching the Vikings games have taken on new meaning. Some of us found ourselves not even caring necessarily if the Vikings won on Sunday, as much as just watching the game in search of our own confirmation bias clues or validation points of whichever J.J. narrative we had put our poker chips on. Maybe PrizePicks should be rolling out long term bets like this on J.J., because everyone seems to want to make one, which has made his ups and downs even more agonizing.

And thus far, after 3 games, his results truly have been a roller coaster. He’s an upward dog one week, and a downward dog the next. Player of the week after his first win, soft benched two weeks later. J.J. seems to be stuck in some sort of NFL Buddhist samsara cycle of birth, death and rebirth on a weekly basis. Emphasized by him literally giving birth between games his last go round as a starter before his soft benching death, or, ahem, injury. J.J.’s stat lines even seem to support some sort of karmic loop with their eerie repetitiveness, with him putting up identical stats and final scores in his first two NFL wins. Time is a flat circle:

Win 1: 27-24 Road Win Over the Bears. J.J.’s Stats 143 Yards Passing, 2 Passing TDs, 1 Rushing TD, 1 INT - (which was followed up the next week with a humbling home loss to the Falcons, a bird mascot team dressed in black)

Win 2: 27-24 Road Win Over the Lions. J.J.’s Stats 143 Years Passing, 2 Passing TDs, 1 Rushing TD, 1 INT.

Yep, you read that right. Identical stats. It’s giving us Bill Murray waking up to “I Got You Babe” vibes in Groundhog Day, a creepy sort of deja vu going into a follow up home game with another bird mascot team dressed in black looming with the Ravens.

Let’s hope J.J. can help us break the pain cycle and achieve Nirvana sooner than later, because as of now it's hard to not want to take the “Less” option on all his prize picks for next week. Don’t say Ned Ryerson didn’t warn us.

SOME NAMASTY DEFENSE

Meanwhile, one guy who is certainly not Zen, is Brian Flores. And thank goodness for that. It was great to see his Defense get back to their Namasty ways Sunday, sacking Goff 5 times and stuffing the Lions run game. Additionally our Special Teams helped make J.J.’s life a lot easier with a couple big “Myles the Price is right, bitch” kick returns, a blocked field goal nicely returned by Isaiah Rodgers, a Harrison Smith fumble recovery, all tallying up to a team clearly on a mission to help young J.J. with some confidence boosting short fields to work with. Like letting him hit off the ladies’ or junior tees in a golf match. They had J.J. playing the short executive par 3 course for most of Sunday, which is great, but let's see how he holds up when he is asked to pull out the driver on a long par 5 with a sustained drive.

CHAIR YOGA

One J.J. pregame ritual we aren’t sure about yet, is his lugging of a $10.5K Shiftwave chair to all his road games. A chair that he uses in the locker room before games to help provide “calm in the chaos.” This seems a little like the kids that showed up for sleepovers with the special pads that would sound an alarm if they started wetting the bed, or that work mate on a business trip that lugs his C-Pap machine that you have to listen to all night because your company is too cheap to get grown adults their own rooms. We need more research into this contraption. Also, we definitely need more pregame videos of this ritual before we can pass final judgement…

MINNE-SOTAPOP CURTIS

Still, while we have our reservations about this weird dork contraption, we're willing to give it a pass given J.J.’s other pregame move of donning a mechanic shirt which he said was a nod to getting back to a “blue collar” mindset. That’s cool and all, but we couldn’t help thinking he was channeling the Outsiders Sodapop Curtis, the peacemaker of the Curtis family clan between Ponyboy and older brother Darry. Even if Sodapop was the peacemaker of the Curtis family, the Zen one if you will, he was still a greaser, and still ready to rumble.

And that’s what was fun to watch Sunday. A guy that was Zen when he needed to be Zen, but was a dog when he needed to be a dog. One part Sodapop Curtis, one part Sodapop Popinski, delivering the knock-out punch we needed, right when we needed it.

Like a Dog in the Street!!! Let’s hope J.J. is more upward dog than downward dog this week!

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SKOL!!

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