The franchise that once brought to the NFL an ill-advised “Triangle of Authority” has now provided a similar, yet far better, term.
Vikings guard Alex Boone, appearing on Monday’s PFT Live on NBC Sports Radio, explained his decision to sign in Minnesota in this way: “I mean everything about that place is amazing. The cold weather, they’re in the best division, they’re the best team right now, this is the trifecta of amazingness happening all at once.”
The cold weather won’t be part of that trifecta of amazingness in 2016, since the Vikings will be moving indoors again. Boone says he didn’t realize that.
“Florio, let me tell you a true story,” Boone said. “I thought that they were gonna be playing at the University of Minnesota Stadium for one more year. I was so excited until I got there and they were like, ‘Look at our new stadium you’re going to be playing in next year.’ I was like heartbroken. I thought there was one more year.”
That didn’t change his mind about signing with the Vikings, a team he decided to join early in the process.
“Once the smoke cleared and everything was happening and we realized they were real players I told my agent, ‘Hey listen I want to be in Minnesota right now and this is the place to be,’” Boone said. “And he was like, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re saying?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I know what I want and that’s where we wanna go.’”
And so Boone goes to Minnesota and leaves behind a 49ers team that has had plenty of issues the past two years. Boone, who never minces words, tried to explain what went wrong in San Francisco.
“It was chaotic,” Boone said. “We didn’t want it to be that way but it was just guys were retiring and free agency guys were leaving. It was such a whirlwind for everybody especially when [Patrick Willis] and Justin [Smith] decided to retire. It was like, ‘What is going on?’ and then [Chris] Borland retired, Anthony [Davis] retired and it was kinda like, ‘Now what’s really going on?’ You know, it was like the wind was just knocked right out of us and we didn’t know what to do. I think everybody at the same time was like, ‘We’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna be okay. We will fix the problem but we didn’t.’ We couldn’t and it was a shame because that was such a great team and I really wanted so much success for that team. But we just couldn’t do it.”
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