Teddy Bridgewater's impressive night overshadowed by final play
GLENDALE, Ariz. – Teddy Bridgewater and his Minnesota Vikings coaches talked through the third-down scenarios.
Throw to the sideline, Bridgewater was instructed. Find a receiver outside, or throw the ball away. Don’t throw over the middle, and don’t take a sack. Just get safely to fourth down, and let kicker Blair Walsh send the game against the Arizona Cardinals to overtime.
But a spin move from Cardinals linebacker Dwight Freeney ruined those plans. Freeney slapped the ball out of Bridgewater’s hands with five seconds remaining. There would be no field goal try. There would be plenty of second guessing those final moments that spoiled an otherwise brilliant night in a 23-20 loss for the second year quarterback.
Perhaps a safer choice than telling Bridgewater to throw out of bounds would have been to bring Walsh out for a 48-yard field goal on third down. Walsh had hit from 54 yards, into the same uprights, earlier in the quarter.
“I thought about it,” Minnesota coach Mike Zimmer said. “I thought about a lot of things. Throwing the ball to the end zone. But we were trying to get the ball out of bounds to get a little closer to kick the field goal and go to overtime.”
Zimmer had reason to trust his quarterback.
Bridgewater threw for a career-high 335 yards, finding success with screen passes to his tight ends, three of whom had receptions of at least 15 yards by halftime. Bridgewater appeared comfortable moving in the pocket and rolling out of it on designed bootleg plays that repeatedly burned the Cardinals defense.
Bridgewater was particularly effective in leading an 88-yard touchdown drive in the fourth quarter, capped by a seven-yard scoring strike to Mike Wallace that tied the game at 20.
It was a sign that Bridgewater and the passing game might be capable of carrying the Vikings offense. The Cardinals largely contained running back Adrian Peterson outside of the Vikings’ opening drive, when Peterson rushed four times for 38 yards, including a 9-yard touchdown. Peterson lost a fumble in the third quarter, one of three lost fumbles for the Vikings in the game.
“I think we took a big step as a unit,” Bridgewater said. “We showed we’re capable of doing things. Whenever we’re clicking on all cylinders we’re a tough team to stop.”
The Vikings still look like a playoff team – though it is still unclear if that will happen as winner of the NFC North, perhaps the No. 3 seed, or as a wild card at seed No. 5 or 6. Now the Vikings will spend Sunday anxiously watching to see how the Green Bay Packers, now with a half-game lead in the division, play at Dallas.
“We have three games left. These three games are important, very important,” Bridgewater said. “We can’t look too far down the road.”
Follow Lindsay H. Jones on Twitter @bylindsayhjones.
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