Sports Americana

There are great NFL teams.

There are teams that win championships.

And then there are teams that somehow manage to become legendary without ever winning the championship.

The 1998 Minnesota Vikings are one of them.

They went 15-1, scored an NFL-record 556 points, had a quarterback playing at an MVP level, a Hall of Fame receiver, a rookie wide receiver who seemed to break a record every week, and the most accurate kicker in football.

They were supposed to win it all.

Instead, they lost a game they had almost completely won.

And 28 years later, the 1998 Vikings remain one of the greatest examples of the Super Bowl that got away.

A Team That Seemed Impossible to Stop

The Vikings entered 1998 with Randall Cunningham at quarterback.

Cunningham was 35 years old and had already been in the NFL for more than a decade. But in Minnesota, he had something he hadn’t really had before: weapons everywhere.

Robert Smith ran for 1,187 yards.

Cris Carter caught 78 passes for 1,011 yards and 12 touchdowns.

And then there was the rookie.

Randy Moss.

Moss caught 69 passes for 1,313 yards and 17 touchdowns in his first season. He wasn’t simply a promising rookie. He immediately became one of the most dangerous players in the entire league.

Cunningham threw for 3,704 yards and 34 touchdowns while throwing only 10 interceptions.

The result was an offense that seemed almost unfair.

Minnesota scored 556 points, an NFL record at the time, averaging nearly 35 points per game.

They won 15 of their 16 regular-season games.

Their only loss came by three points.

The Vikings weren’t just the best team in the NFC.

They looked like the best team in football.

And Then There Was Gary Anderson

If you were a Vikings fan in 1998, there probably wasn’t a safer person in the world than Gary Anderson.

Anderson didn’t miss a field goal all season.

Not one.

He converted 35 of 35 field-goal attempts and every extra point he attempted.

So when Minnesota reached the NFC Championship Game against the Atlanta Falcons, nobody was particularly worried when Anderson came onto the field late in the fourth quarter.

The Vikings led 27-20.

Atlanta was hanging around, but Minnesota had the game in its hands.

Anderson had already made two field goals that afternoon.

This was a 38-yarder.

Make it, and the Vikings would take a 30-20 lead with only a couple of minutes remaining.

The Falcons would have needed a touchdown, an onside kick, another score and a miracle.

Instead, Anderson missed.

It was his first missed field goal of the entire season.

And it changed everything.

The Falcons Wouldn’t Go Away

Atlanta took the opportunity and drove down the field.

Chris Chandler found Terrance Mathis for a touchdown.

Suddenly, the game was tied.

The Vikings had gone from being moments away from a ten-point lead to watching their perfect season hang by a thread.

Overtime didn’t last long.

The Falcons drove 70 yards in seven plays, setting up their own kicker, Morten Andersen.

Thirty-eight yards.

Good.

Atlanta won 30-27.

The Falcons were going to the Super Bowl.

The Vikings were going home.

What Makes It Hurt

The painful thing isn’t simply that Minnesota lost.

It’s how close they were to winning it.

They had the best record in the NFL.

They had scored more points than anyone.

They had a quarterback playing the best football of his career.

They had Cris Carter.

They had Randy Moss.

They had Robert Smith.

They had John Randle terrorizing quarterbacks on defense.

And they had a kicker who had not missed once all season.

Everything was lined up.

Then one kick went wide.

That’s football.

And sometimes that’s sports.

The Vikings didn’t lose because they were exposed as frauds. They didn’t get blown out. They didn’t collapse against a clearly superior team.

They lost because, in the final minutes of a game they were favored to win, one of the most reliable players on the roster finally missed.

And Atlanta made them pay for it.

The Super Bowl That Never Happened

The Falcons would go on to lose Super Bowl XXXIII to the Denver Broncos, 34-19.

Which makes the Minnesota loss even more fascinating.

Because you can’t help but wonder:

What would the 1998 Vikings have done against Denver?

Would Moss have taken over?

Would Cunningham have continued his incredible season?

Would Minnesota’s explosive offense have overwhelmed the Broncos?

Would John Randle have caused problems for John Elway?

We’ll never know.

That’s what makes the 1998 Vikings so memorable.

They weren’t champions.

They never got the chance to become champions.

They were one kick away from finding out what might have happened.

And maybe that’s why people still remember them.

Because sometimes the teams we remember most aren’t the ones holding the Lombardi Trophy.

Sometimes they’re the ones that came painfully close to holding it.

The 1998 Minnesota Vikings were one of those teams.

And perhaps more than any other team of their era, they represent the question every sports fan eventually asks:

What if?