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.

Are any of us really surprised that Taylor Swift didn’t show up to Minnesota last Sunday? If you were, you haven’t been paying attention. You haven’t been reading the tea leaves. You don’t know what it’s like to be a Minnesota Viking fan.

We don’t get to have nice things. We don’t get to know what it feels like to be a winner. To be one of the cool kids. It’s not in our Purple DNA. Taylor understands this, she even made a song seemingly just for us Vikings fans, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Taylor’s PR team also probably understood that if she came here, she might get some of that loser stink on her that doesn’t wash off easily much like the B.O. in Jerry Seinfeld’s car that attached itself to people taking on a life of its own.

More likely though, the reason Taylor didn’t come to Minnesota is simply because it was not in the NFL script for this season. Because if you haven’t heard already, the NFL is scripted similar to WWE wrestling, and every reality show on TV such as Survivor and the Golden Bachelor (sorry honey). Yep, apparently each NFL season a group of writers are assembled to develop the story lines and preordain a Super Bowl Champ, a biggest loser, League MVP, Rookie of the Year and everything in between.

As former high school football players (Did we mention All-Conference and All-Conference Honorable Mention btw?), we at Sköliosis never believed this conspiracy theory that the NFL could possibly be scripted. The only scripts we had were what pick up lines we might unsuccessfully use in the McDonald’s parking lot after our games. But this season amidst a Hollywood writers’ strike, it does have us wondering. Could the NFL actually be scripted?

Evidence #1: Lack of Creativity

One of the complaints or fears during the writer’s strike is that Hollywood is employing A.I. to write more and more of its movie and television scripts. Replacing the creativity of real people and writers with low cost ChatGPT generated narratives. Admittedly, so far this Vikings season is certainly lacking in creativity. Is the NFL using ChatGPT to write Vikings games scripts? Are they using the same prompts for the Vikings each week?

Have the Vikings have a big, exciting play only to have a crushing turnover on first drive.

Have the Vikes dig a big hole early and not score any points in the first quarter.

Have Kirk Cousins put up big stats but crumble at key moments towards the end of the game.

Have the Vikings lose a close one score game.

Or maybe they only finished one of our Viking game scripts before the strike happened and they have been forced to reuse the same script each week since? It’s like we are stuck in a Groundhog Day loop of recycled games over and over each week. But it’s almost as if the NFL writers don’t really care about our script, because ultimately the Vikings don’t matter this year. The Vikings are a video game NPC (Non-Player Character) relegated to just being a background character in the main video game players story, much like Ryan Reynolds character in the movie Free Guy. In Free Guy, Reynolds is a living and breathing NPC experiencing the same day over and over again as a background non-relevant character. Eventually his character realizes it, decides to go off script, eventually changing his destiny. Could the Vikings experience a similar bounce back to Reynolds in Free Guy? Elevating from video game NPC to shoulder to shoulder with Taylor Swift in a luxury suite cheering for a Super Bowl Champion? Could this be our future if we can find a way for the Purple to go off script and breakout of our assigned NPC role?

Evidence Number 2: Bad Autocorrect?

Sometimes when you look really hard, you can see the seams in poor creative construction. The rewrites. The autocorrects. When Roger Goodell was dictating his plot story for this week to his ChatGPT app, was he trying to get more Taylor Swift into the storyline? Did his autocorrect misunderstand and give us “Moore Taylor and Smith” instead? Or are the Swifties pooling their babysitting money to do NIL deals pushing their Chiefs agenda similar to the Pork producers in Iowa?

The whole thing just seems a little lazy. Going from last year’s 13-4 team that won all of the one score games, to trending towards a 4-13 season this year where we lose all the one score games. It just can’t be that simple, can it?

Or maybe Taylor Swift is just living rent free in all of our minds. All Taylor All the Time. Please make it stop.

Evidence #3: Referees Enforcing the Script

Lastly, and perhaps most blatantly, have been the absurd amount of calls or non-calls going in the Chiefs favor over the last 2 weeks of Taylor Mania. Last week during the Jets Monday night game with the Chiefs, even as a non-partial and general Jets disliker, there were several terrible calls in favor of the Chiefs. Most notably a “defensive holding” call on Sauce Gardner that overturned a potential game changing interception. Not to mention another hog tie holding non-call on a Chiefs lineman as Mahomes scampered for a 30 some yard gain on a 3rd and long.

The Vikings fate started to feel eerily similar Sunday as we experienced a weird series where on a 3rd and 12 the Chiefs had 3 penalties on a single play, only to have all of them mysteriously waived as the flags were mysteriously picked up. One of those penalties was a nearly identical if not more egregious hold by their defender, then Sauce’s last week. But perhaps even more oddly was that same player taking off his helmet while pleading his case, which is also an immediate foul, only to have the ref just tell him to put it back on and pick up the flag. Weird, huh?

It’s almost like the NFL script writing is so bad that now we see when they have to re-write on the fly to make up for it. Like when the Dallas “Who shot JR” episode was reduced to a dream or the uncomfortable Different Strokes “Bicycle Man” episode where Dudley got molested. We know you remember.

Conclusion

So, full confession here, some of us at Sköliosis didn’t even watch the game Sunday. It occurred to us that we’ve seen this exact same episode too many times. And that ruining another Sunday for a 1-3 team was a bad investment. Besides we already knew exactly what was going to happen and that maybe what we needed to do was break out of our script as fans. To do something different. But apparently, it’s not that easy to get out of the Groundhog Day loop, because guess what happened. Instead of staying home and watching the Vikes lose painfully to the Chiefs with Kelce and Taylor and Ryan Reynolds and company, we instead decided to attend the Rams game who were playing the other Kelce brother. And guess who showed up? Yep, Ryan Reynolds Wrexham BFF Rob McEllheny. Further proof that even if you can get to standing within a few feet of the cool kids you won’t quite get to be one if you’re a Vikings fan. Whether you’re watching the game on Sunday or not, you’ll still end up feeling like an NPC, and the Vikes will still lose in the exact same script we have long gotten way to comfortable reading.

Oh well, division play starts this weekend, and there’s still time. And who knows maybe with a little luck, and if we all work together, we can still break the script.