By: Abby Altman

With a fantastic draft, a great off season, and most injured players returning ready to work, the Vikings 2021 season was highly anticipated. 

Many Vikings fans expected a comeback from the less than average season last year, but week 1 made most fans lose hope. At halftime, the Vikings were down 7-14. That doesn’t seem bad, but fans watching knew things weren’t looking good. The offense in the first half was abysmal. They received 12 penalties for a total loss of 116 yards, including 3 false starts in the opening drive, and 4 penalties in the first 8 snaps. 

“We shot ourselves in the foot, especially in the first half, way too many times,” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer stated.

 The offensive line gave up 3 sacks, and the offense scored just 1 touchdown in the first half. 

Kirk Cousins, possibly the most hated player on the Vikings in recent years, played well but was seemingly overshadowed by the loss. Cousins went for 36/49, with 351 yards, and 2 touchdowns. 

The defense was another story, and not a much better one. The Bengals offense, Joe Burrow, Joe Mixon, and the rest of the offensive stars, picked up 366 total yards, and 2 touchdowns in the first half, and 1 in the second.

Erik Kendricks looked like he was ready to be back, with 15 tackles, to lead the league after 1 week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to stop Cincinnati from scoring 

But for many, the main story of the game was neither team. It was the refs. 

With 10:00 left in the 4th quarter, WR Justin Jefferson caught a 20 yard pass from QB Kirk Cousins, and proceeded to run the final 20 yards to land in the end zone. The refs didn’t call the touchdown, stating that he was down before he landed in the end zone, and called third down. Further replays clearly showed an image of Jefferson hanging over the end zone, his body clearly still off the ground. The call was not overturned. 

After a horrendous first half, the Vikings managed to pull it together, and came back to tie the game with a 53 yard kick made by Greg Joseph with 3 seconds on the clock. The game went into overtime, and both defenses looked strong forcing each team to punt at least once. 

With less than 2 minutes on the clock in overtime, the Vikings were sitting roughly on the 40 yard line. Getting very close to field goal range, the Vikings called 1 more play. With a handoff to star RB Dalvin Cook, his run ended on the bottom of a pileup with a group of Cincinnati defenders. The refs called a fumble, recovered by Bengals linebacker Germaine Pratt. The Vikings challenged the call, and after several minutes were spent reviewing the play, the ruling on the field stayed a fumble, allowing the Bengals to set up their game winning field goal drive. 

Online comment sections since then have been flooded with fans, some Vikings, some not, stating that “Dalvin didn’t fumble”. Many fans were outraged that the ruling on the field was not overturned. 

In a post game conference, Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen spoke out about the game and the offensive mistakes. Thielen stated that the Vikings felt “[R]eally confident coming into this game”. Obviously, that confidence was shot down by mistakes. Thielen made a comment saying that he believes this is a good team and will bounce back in week 2. From the interview on Minnesota Vikings YouTube, Thielen says, “You gotta play clean football, because that’s (penalties) what loses games”. 

By: Charlie Fragassi

This year, the 2021 NFL draft took place in Cleveland, Ohio.

The NFL draft was held with spectators allowed for the first time since last year, when there were no fans allowed because it was pretty much the start of COVID-19. It was held via Zoom, and the players had cameras on and were attending it virtually that way.

Fortunately, things have gotten better so the NFL decided to hold the draft allowing fans. The NFL still was fairly cautious about COVID, so obviously people were wearing masks, but what I thought was cool, was that in the pavilion where the draft was held, they had something called an inner circle. In the inner circle, the only people allowed were people who were fully vaccinated because those people were the closest to the stage and the players when they came out.

As I stated earlier, in last year’s draft, the draft participants were all in a Zoom call at home. This year, the players had the option to fly out to Cleveland and attend the draft in person. This is cool because the players get to go out on stage in front of everyone and meet the commissioner of the league, Roger Goodell, along with receiving their jersey right on stage in real time.

A lot of players opted to go in person to the draft, but a large chunk of them wanted to stay home and celebrate this special moment with their family and friends in the comfort of their own home, which, in my opinion, would be the most ideal thing to do.

Although it may have felt weird to have an in person NFL draft with fans, hopefully it continues this way in the future and we don’t have to worry about having an online draft ever again.

By: Jimmy Somerville

As you may know, the NFL season is back and in action even with the coronavirus. But there is a catch – there are either no fans allowed or very few allowed.

And the NFL is a business at the end of the day, whether you think of it as a business or not, so their goal is to make a profit (money).

So, since they aren’t allowed to have fans, or some teams will allow a maximum of ten thousands fans, where the average NFL stadium can fill up around 70,000 fans, how is the NFL still going to make money, and are they going to be in financial trouble?

The answer is the NFL would lose around 15.47% of their profit if they did not allow one single fan to buy a ticket. Because, in 2018, the NFL made up 15.47% of their profit by selling tickets. So, assuming the 2020 data would be similar to the 2018 data, the NFL would lose around 15% of their profit.

Now, 30 years ago, ticket sales would probably make up around 50% of the NFL’s profit because now, there is more advanced technology where the NFL can sell jerseys and other fan apparel online.

Losing 15% of profit can hurt, but the NFL made 15 billion dollars in 2019, so they will be just fine, and remember, they can still bring in some fans, so they will probably lose around 12% of profit, which is more than noticeable, but won’t hurt them too badly in the long run.

So, to answer my final question, the NFL will still make around roughly 88% of the profit they would’ve made without the coronavirus, this season, by having their games televised with expensive TV deals. And, like I said earlier, they also make money by selling jerseys and other fan apparel. In 2015 the NFL made more than 50% revenue from just TV deals. So the NFL will be fine.

-Jimmy Somerville

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/fans-at-nfl-games-2020-covid-19-attendance-tickets/1vh5xyd47cokq17yykgepds6zi
• https://geoshen.com/posts/nfl-stadiums-ranked-by-seating-capacity
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/193364/percentage-of-ticketing-revenue-in-the-nfl-since-2006/