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.

Guess what has two thumbs and is riding an eight-game winning streak?

The Minnesota Vikings. That’s who.

I suppose Viking Nation collectively has considerably more than two mitten-covered thumbs, but you get the point.

With Seattle losing Sunday, the longest active winning streak in the NFL now belongs to your Minnesota Vikings and our Land of 10,000 Thumbs.

Eight straight wins.

An extraordinary achievement, really, for a team that has averaged less than 150 yards passing during the streak and somehow patched that together with four different starting quarterbacks.

And yet, somehow, none of us feels particularly confident about it, do we?

This is the weirdest part.

On one hand, having one of the NFL’s most suffocating defenses feels amazing. Brian Flores has assembled a nasty defense that legitimately feels like it has a better chance of scoring than our offense does when it’s on the field.

A work friend texted me this week after our nine points in field goals last week:

“Your boys gonna score a TD this week?”

I Christian Pondered the question seriously for a minute before responding:

“Our defense might!”

Which isn’t exactly a good thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE having a nasty D. But it’s TDs that get us those free drink tokens at the pubs. It’s TDs that give us permission for those lake plunges. It’s TDs that give us the thumbs-up to celebrate and hug our barstool neighbors.

And it’s starting to become apparent that with this iteration of the Vikings, TDs might be in short supply.

Case (Keenum) in point: Sunday we won an NFL football game without taking a single snap in the red zone.

Zero.

Yeesh.

Lucky we have a kicker who prefers draining putts from the fringe and a kick returner who delivers more packages to the house than Amazon.

But it all had us thinking Sunday:

Is this the most un-fun eight-game winning streak in NFL history?

I find myself apologizing to friends of the teams we beat.

“Yeah. Whoops. Sorry. Not really sure how that happened. Sorry about your quarterback, too. Hope he’s okay!”

Because apparently that’s part of the experience now.

For two weeks in a row, the Brian Flores defense has broken an offense and its starting quarterback, both on weird, fairly innocuous-looking plays where the quarterback suddenly goes down and begins screaming in an unsettling amount of agony.

This week it was Baker Mayfield, who left late with a dislocated thumb on his throwing hand.

Is it too soon to make a “What has one thumb, a $155 million contract extension and an 0-3 record?” joke?

Probably.

Yeah.

It probably is.

For what it’s worth, before you get upset with us, Baker, you should know we only do it out of QB envy.

It’s what happens when you have a little QB.

It gives you a “little QB” complex.

The whole Viking Nation now has short-man syndrome. It makes us mean. It makes us pick fights with people bigger than us.

Anyway, if we can’t joke about broken thumbs, we can at least use them as our theme, can’t we?

So let’s review Sunday’s latest inexplicable Vikings victory the only appropriate way:

Thumbs Up. Thumbs Down. Thumbs Dislocated.

Tom Thumb at QB 👎

We finally got a full game of Kyler Murray at quarterback.

Which, unfortunately, only validated that a full game of Kyler isn’t necessarily a whole lot more Kyler.

There were overthrows. There were balls batted at the line. There were long stretches where moving the football ten yards felt like asking a toddler to carry a sectional sofa up a staircase.

There were flashes. The deep ball to Jordan Addison was beautiful.

But after three weeks of waiting to see what our new quarterback could do, we finally inserted our quarter into the machine and discovered that Ready Player One might not be quite ready.

And then Justin Jefferson disappeared after seven snaps, which certainly didn’t help.

Maybe that’s the problem.

Perhaps Kyler isn’t Ready Player One.

Maybe he’s too Tom Thumb to be our QB1.

It takes two healthy thumbs to be a proficient gamer, after all.

Price Per Myles 👍

If your quarterback needs a short field, there are two solutions:

Get a taller quarterback.

Or find somebody willing to carry the football most of the way there for him.

Ladies and gentlemen, Myles Price.

Price took a Tampa punt 86 yards to the house, Minnesota’s first punt-return touchdown since Marcus Sherels in 2016. He finished with 238 combined return yards — 106 on punts (which might be more of an indicator of the overwhelming number of punts in this game, but whatever) and another 132 on kickoffs. More yardage than our passing game produced, I might add.

That is some spectacular MPG.

Great mileage.

Excellent Price per Myles.

They’re going to have to slap a COEXIST sticker on this guy’s jersey if he keeps it up.

Considering our offense managed zero red-zone snaps, perhaps this is simply the plan now.

Why make your short quarterback drive 80 yards when special teams can give him a short field?

Thumbs way, way up.

The Reichard Stuff 👍

And once Price gets us within the same ZIP code as the goalposts, apparently that’s close enough.

Enter Will Reichard.

At this point, midfield is basically the red zone.

Reichard casually drilled field goals from 54, 56 and 43 yards Sunday and has now made 26 consecutive field-goal attempts — another longest active streak in the NFL.

Fifty-six yards?

Whatever.

Send him out.

This guy is kicking them so straight a certain POTUS just might petition to rename the Strait of Hormuz the Strait of Reichard before this year is over.

Price provides the mileage.

Reichard provides the points.

Kyler mostly just needs to avoid spilling anything in the car.

Special teams: two enormous thumbs up.

Weapons and Witchcraft 👍

Look, we all know why this team is riding an eight-game winning streak.

Other teams can’t score.

Brian Flores isn’t coordinating a defense anymore.

He’s practicing witchcraft.

I’m increasingly convinced that what appears to be a defensive play sheet in his hands is actually a collection of spells.

There he is on the sideline, breaking sticks, stirring stew and whispering incantations while a collection of gigantic man-children do his bidding.

Turner…

Van Noy…

Cashman…

Wilson…

Metellus…

GO FORTH.

Flores is creating WEAPONS.

Minnesota has now recorded a sack in 31 consecutive games, a franchise record.

Flores is the Man Who Knocks.

He is the Boogie Man.

Thumbs up.

All available thumbs.

Although we might want to keep all actual hands and thumbs inside the vehicle while Flo’s at the wheel, or you might lose them. Don’t say we didn’t warn you Malik Willis.

So Long, J.J. — Thumbs Dis-Relocated 👎

And then there’s J.J. McCarthy.

Our supposed heir to the throne.

Somewhere along this strange Vikings quarterback timeline, our former first-round pick has gone from Quarterback of the Future to the kid with his thumb up alongside I-94 with a backpack and a cardboard sign:

HEADING TO NEW YORK

At this point, J.J.’s Minnesota adventure feels increasingly like one of those childhood stories where the parents assure you the dog is going to a beautiful farm where he’ll have lots of room to run.

Except this farm may be in New Jersey.

Maybe that’s okay.

Sometimes you have to leave home to find yourself.

Sometimes you need a fresh start.

It’s all part of the Hero’s Journey, and many of us hope the kid gets one.

He should be thrilled anyway. If Sam Darnold, Daniel Jones and now Kirk Cousins lighting it up in Vegas have taught us anything, it’s that this won’t end well for us.

In fact, right after I finish writing this, I’ll be heading to Vegas to put copious amounts of money — $25, maybe even — on J.J. having a playoff win before KOC does. And probably at our expense to boot.

Sometimes the universe is so predictable.

READY PLAYER ONE?

Maybe not.

Maybe Kyler Murray is still loading.

Maybe our offense is a glitchy video game where the controller occasionally stops responding.

It’s hard not to wonder what KOC saw out of yesterday’s performance by our new QB1 that gave him the confidence to unload J.J.

Lest we forget, J.J. was the starting QB or took meaningful snaps in at least four of the wins in this streak.

And now he’s gone.

9 is out.  1 is in.

Maybe KOC just realized he doesn’t need a QB to win.

Maybe he realized that as long as he has Flores breaking QBs, he can buy low and sell high. Or are we buying high and selling low? This is so confusing.

All I know is that it’s starting to seem like the Vikings are the team throwing bricks through windows and then selling window replacements.

Maybe KOC and Flores are proving that having a sexy franchise QB is massively overrated.

Ready Player One.

Ready Player Two.

Ready Player Three.

Who cares?

Maybe our Sunday recipe is Myles Price returning punts 86 yards, Will Reichard kicking field goals from St. Petersburg and the defense placing ancient curses on opposing quarterbacks.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s uncomfortable.

It feels completely unsustainable.

Yet we’re 3-0.

Eight straight wins.

Longest active streak in football.

So what has two thumbs and absolutely no idea how the Minnesota Vikings keep winning football games?

This guy.

👍 👍

SKÖL

Epilogue: Donate to a Good Cause

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