^^Well in the 2000 NFC championship game the Vikings got their ass handed to them 41-0 by the Giants. The thing that always bugged me about it was that midway through the season Fassel made the famous "Playoff Promise" that the Giants would make the playoffs after they had put themselves in pretty bad position coming into week 9 or 10 iirc.
Well long story short they quickly beat a ton of teams and found their way into the playoffs as the #1 seed. But after that NFC championship game there was a lot of talk about them taping the Vikings practice and specifically their signals...this discussion went on for about two days in the sports media at a fevered pace...then it suddenly stopped and nobody mentioned it again.
The way the Pats thing was handled, and the way the NFL handles all perceived threats to its image has lead me to wonder if the Vikings weren't cheated the exact same way and the story swept under the rug (it's far from the first time it's happened in the NFL). Considering we were 2nd in yards per play and were 5th for points scored, it seemed pretty damn odd for us to magically get shut out in the biggest game we'd played all year as a strong offense like that.
The idea that they knew what plays we were calling made a lot of sense, especially given that nearly 20% of Culpepper's interceptions for the season were thrown in that one game against a slightly above average pass defense (they were ranked 9 or 10 iirc at the time)
I'm over the incident now, and I have no idea if it was true, but the patriots fiasco always reminded me of that, and very very few people remember it...but we die hard vikings Fans remember.
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