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When it comes to officiating grievances, a lot of Minnesota sports fans have a photographic, albeit one-sided, memory.
They can tell you what they were wearing during Drew Pearson's catch. They remember what they had for dinner the night Phil Cuzzi said Joe Mauer's fair ball was foul.
The default when a loss can't be blamed on the coach or the highest-paid player — the latter of which almost happened Sunday — is to blame the refs.
Instead? The Vikings overcame the Shawn Hochuli jinx and what fans would say are 60 straight years of bad luck, which Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast.
And it was Packers fans airing their grievances Sunday after a Kirk Cousins reprieve and a last-second 34-31 Vikings victory.
At issue: eight penalties for 92 yards on Green Bay, to just three for 25 on the Vikings, And in particular, an overturned interception near the end of regulation that changed the narrative on Cousins' day and possibly the Vikings' season.
On the play, Darnell Savage originally was credited with an interception of Cousins near the two minute warning. But replay showed — correctly and obviously, despite the whining coming from across the border — that Savage didn't control the ball as he hit the ground. Instead of Green Bay ball tied 31-31, the Vikings maintained possession and drove for the winning field goal as time expired.
Twitter captured the meltdown in real time. Many of the best tweets are unprintable and filled with obscenities and/or misspellings, but here are a few I can share:
Plenty of fans reacted to a tweet from Cheesehead TV's Aaron Nagler, who wrote that the "@Vikings won their Super Bowl thanks to @NFLOfficiating."
Packers players and coaches, it should be noted, seemed more apt to blame themselves for the penalties. Head coach Matt LaFleur fumed about a 12 men on the field penalty on the defense that gave the Vikings five free yards on their final drive.
Vikings fans? They were mostly apt to note that the breaks finally went their way for a change.
