The Minnesota Vikings spent the offseason adding pieces to what most thought was a Super Bowl-caliber roster.
With back-to-back losses, Mike Zimmer's team slipped to 1-2-1 on the season. Heading to Philadelphia for a rematch of last season's NFC Championship Game debacle, the coach preached level-headedness.
Zimmer turned a question about Xavier Rhodes' play into a reminder that it's not how a team starts, but how it finishes.
"I know everybody wants to evaluate everybody after four weeks, but I think if you remember last year, early in the year, Xavier had some penalties, but we cleaned them up. This isn't time for 'woe is me,'" Zimmer said, via The Star Tribune. "If you remember, we were 2-2 at this time last year; we finished 13-3. We were 5-0 the year before; we finished 8-8. We were 2-2 the year before that, and we finished 11-5. All the predictors are really -- this isn't a good time to predict."
Minnesota hasn't won a game since the opening week and heads to Philadelphia on Sunday. Zimmer's squad seemingly hasn't recovered from the 38-7 shellacking by the Eagles in the NFC Championship Game the last time they were in the City of Brotherly Love. A once-stout Vikings defense has given up an average of 27.5 points per game in the four tilts since the loss.
The Vikings visit Philly with history aligning against them. In the last 10 instances where the two teams that met in the NFC Championship Game had a rematch the following season, the winner of the NFC Championship Game is 9-1.
If history holds and the Vikes fall to 1-3-1, the consternation in the Great White North will grow as winter comes.
