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Purple pros overwhelm Arizona Vikings dominate Cards, set up showdown with Falcons
Posted: Sunday January 10, 1999 09:57 PM
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- The Minnesota Vikings proved once again they're unstoppable -- especially in their delirious dome. Robert Griffith intercepted two first-half passes as the Vikings built a 17-0 lead, and Leroy Hoard set a team playoff record with three touchdowns in a 41-21 victory over the upstart Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. That sent the Vikings into next Sunday's conference championship against Atlanta, guaranteeing that a dome team will reach the Super Bowl for the first time in NFL history. It will be the first conference title game ever played indoors and the first in Minnesota in 22 years. And if the Falcons are to reach their first Super Bowl they'll have to do what no team has done this season: stop the highest-scoring offense in NFL history in the noisy Metrodome.
The Vikings, who have the league's best record at 16-1, is 9-0 at home this season, winning by an average of 23 points. They've averaged 41.5 points in their last six games. Minnesota hasn't reached the NFL title game since the 1976 season, when they beat the Los Angeles Rams at old -- and very cold -- Metropolitan Stadium before enduring the last of their four Super Bowl defeats. The weather on Sunday, with the wind chill minus-36 at game time, wasn't a problem. But the raucous atmosphere in the dome, with a sellout crowd screaming and waving white towels, clearly rattled the Cardinals, who were 15 1/2-point underdogs and in the playoffs for the first time in 16 years. After Hoard scored on a 1-yard run on the opening possession, Jake Plummer threw two interceptions, both to Griffith, a safety who hadn't had an interception since Oct. 5.
That gave the Vikings a 17-0 lead before Arizona's $29.7 million man had his first completion or the Cardinals had a first down. It was 24-7 at halftime and 34-14 when Randall Cunningham threw his third TD pass of the day, a 3-yarder to Randy Moss, with 1:31 left in the third quarter. Another Plummer bumble -- a fumbled snap -- led to that score. But as they did all afternoon the plucky Cardinals (10-8), who won their first playoff game in 51 years in Dallas last Saturday, refused to let the game become a total blowout. Mario Bates scored his team playoff record third touchdown (all on 1-yard runs) to make it 34-21 early in the fourth quarter.
Minnesota answered with a 12-play drive capped by Hoard's 6-yard run, his 13th score of the season, to seal the most significant win of coach Dennis Green's tenure. Green, whose .634 regular-season winning percentage is the best in Vikings history, was just 1-5 in the playoffs going into Sunday's game. But there never was much doubt about Green's second postseason victory. Not with this offense. Without a significant injury on offense for the first time since October, the Vikings punted only once. After beating Jacksonville 50-10 in their last regular-season home game, the Vikings seemed on the way to a similar margin early in the game. They led 7-0 and had a first down at the Cardinals 7 on the first play of the second quarter when Cunningham's forced pass to Moss was intercepted by Aeneas Williams in the end zone. Plummer's two badly thrown interceptions helped Minnesota make it 17-0 on Cunningham's 15-yard pass to Andrew Glover and the first of Gary Anderson's two field goals. The Vikings then stopped the Cardinals on fourth-and-goal late in the second quarter when Plummer threw incomplete, but linebacker Dwayne Rudd was called for hitting the quarterback out of bounds. The Cardinals were back in it when Bates scored with 3:32 left in the half, but the Vikings weren't finished. Robert Smith, who ran for a team-playoff-record 124 yards on the day, gained 45 on the ensuing drive. Hoard finished it with a 16-yard catch to make it 24-7 at the half.
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