Last in the first half on Monday night, Russell Wilson attempted a very different kind of no-look pass. And his close-your-eyes-and-hope-for-the-best effort nearly resulted in a disaster.
It should have. With the ball hanging in the air and Vikings linebacker Eric Kendricks in position to grab and go (he had a trailer to the left in the event a pitch was needed), the score easily could have been (should have been) 7-3 at intermission. (Or at least 6-3, if Bobby Wagner had managed to illegally leverage his way over the center and block the extra point, with the flag being thrown and then picked up.)
But Kendricks caught the ball and inexplicably fell down. It was a detail that was lost in the collective befuddlement over Russell Wilson doing non-Russell Wilson things, but in a game where points were scarce, it’s a play that Kendricks had to make. And he knows it.
“I think I should have scored, man, for real,” Kendricks said after the game, via Chris Tomasson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “I want to be great. I want to be one of the great linebackers in the league and I got to score those.”
Indeed he does. With the Minnesota offense continuing to struggle, the defense needs to create field position and/or points, if the Vikings are going to secure the ability to travel to Dallas or Chicago and lose soundly in the wild-card round.